Christmas here was lovely and New
Years was entertaining. I went to a beach town with some friends for
Christmas and basically spent 3 days laying on the beach reading,
splashing in the waves, and enjoying awesome company. It was the
best way to escape site after my first 6 weeks. I also had an
intensive language seminar at the end of that where my LCF came to
Kaffrine for 3 days. So the break was delightful.
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| Christmas at Toubab Dialaw |
I did not end up celebrating the New
Year at site. Instead, I traveled to the lovely region of Fatick
with some friends where we were to stay at a campement on the edge of
the Mangroves. Basically, a gorgeous area full of life (compared to
what I experience at site...) To start off this trip I took my first
mini bus where 30+ people crammed into this vehicle and we stopped at
every village along the way from Kaffrine to Kaolack. Fortunately I
sat in the back of the bus so I wasn't overly squished. And I made
friends with the guy who hangs out the back door or on the ladder to
the roof yelling prices and destinations to people waiting on the
side of the road. It seems a bit dangerous because often times the
bus will start pulling away and the guy has to run and hop on the
back. Oh, and they never wear sturdier shoes than a flip flop. Not
sure how often they get injured in this job but they seem to have a
good time.
When I arrived in Kaolack I found my
friends and we had to argue prices with the next driver to put 8
people in a sept place. It is slightly illegal so whenever we passed
a Gendarmerie (the police station) I would duck down. That part
wasn't a big deal to me because we did something similar to get back
from Christmas vacation. The biggest issue was that we were all set
to go and then the people at the garage decided that our car needed
to go to Dakar instead. So they put us into this very beat up car.
The driver knew his car was struggling and so would take as many bush
paths as possible to avoid the awful state of the regular road. Bush
paths are nicer because it is packed sand, but not nice because it is
a tiny one-lane path with many blind turns. I'm sure you can see
where this is heading. We had multiple close calls. The last one
both cars had to stop to avoid colliding. There was a patch of deep
sand next to us which the other car refused to take so we had to turn
into that. This of course entailed being too stuck in the sand to
move at all. And then the transmission blew. So there was nothing
we could do but push this car along these bush paths in the middle of
nowhere. We passed a few villages and kids would occasionally come
out in order to the see the spectacle of 8 white people pushing this
car. I don't know exactly how far we went but I would estimate it at
about 2 km. Fortunately for us my friend Ash had made friends with a
driver who lived pretty close to there so she called him and he
rescued us when we reached the main road. So that turned out well.
The actual New Years celebration was
an interesting one because we ended up getting kicked out of the
first place we went. The family of one of the volunteers were
visiting and we met with them at their hotel. But the owner of the
place decided we were unruly and said we had to leave. It was a
ridiculous situation but we ended up going to another hotel that is
owned by this awesome Dutch couple and that worked out nicely. There
were fireworks on the docks and Senegalese drummers. The owners even
danced with us late into the night. And then on my way back the next
day I saw a giant troop of baboons!! That was the best way to start
out the new year.
It took me a lot longer to get home
than I had expected because of a transportation strike. I was stuck
at the regional house in Kaolack for a couple of days until that was
over. It was weird not seeing any taxis, busses, or sept places on
any of the roads for days. This country doesn't function well
without the public transit system and things weren't really resolved
then. Another transport strike occurred last week for a few days but
some sort of agreement was finally made (ie the religious leaders who
own most of the vehicles in the public transit system were given
something to assuage their discontent).
I was home for less than a week before
heading out again to the All Volunteer Conference in Thiès. There
were transportation issues again but this time because of a major
religious holiday where people were flooding to Maggal Touba
(slightly less important than the pilgrimage to Mecca for the
Senegalese Mouride Muslim sect which caters to the majority of
Senegal). Basically most of the cars in Senegal were heading to
Touba, so we couldn't get to Thiès. Peace Corps ended up sending
some buses out to consolidated locations for us to get to the
conference. My bus ended up arriving 6 hours late so I didn't make
it to Thiès until almost 4AM. But I was still up by 7AM to attend
the various sessions. It was actually a really fascinating
conference because volunteers from all over West Africa came to
present various projects that they have been working on. It gave me
a lot of ideas for projects here and even things I could do in the
States. There is a really cool recycled paper briquette maker that I
really want to make and use when I get back. It was also really neat
to meet so many other volunteers. I'm still pretty new here so I
hadn't met the majority of volunteers in Senegal, and then there were
also volunteers from Mali, Guinea, Gambia, and Cape Verde so it was
great to network.
After the conference we all headed to
Dakar for the West African Invitational Softball Tournament aka
WAIST. Basically this is a chance for everyone to relax, play some
ball and enjoy the amenities of the largest city in West Africa. I
think I mentioned before, each of the teams chose a theme to dress up
and make things more interesting. My region did Boy scout/Girl scout
and I must say I think I made an awesome Brownie. I ended up not
playing for my team though because we had plenty of people. But I did
decide to help out the Cape Verde/Guinea/Mali team because they were
short players. This included the game against my own team. But that
was really the best game of all because we decided to ditch the
softball and we played full-contact kick ball! It was a free for all
with very few rules and blurred lines on who was playing for whom.
There was tackling, intentional fumbling, and at one point the third
baseman decided to score a point for the other team by running home!
(Thanks Christi!) It was the best kickball game I've had in a really
long time. And I became an honorary member of PC Cape Verde! I intend
to visit sometime this summer. (Side note: Peace Corps is leaving
Cape Verde in September! They have decided the job is done and their
presence is no longer needed. The volunteers who aren't leaving
before then will be transferred to another country for the rest of
their service. So I need to visit soon!)
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| Cape Verde Softball team |
Another aspect of WAIST is the PC
Talent Show, Prom, and date auction. During Prom/Date Auction I
ended up enlisting the help of some friends and we bought our friend
Bob, who is a volunteer in Cape Verde. All the proceeds go to a
scholarship fund for underprivileged girls, so we figured an
afternoon of friends hanging out would be a good way to support that.
I'm sure he felt pretty special going out to dinner with 3 lovely
ladies. So all in all, I had a great time dancing, hanging out with
other volunteers and eating great food in Dakar.
I had one day to recover from WAIST
before my next conference, which was training for the PC Senegal Peer
Support Network. 2-3 volunteers from each region were selected for
this support counsel that any volunteer can turn to when they are
struggling or maybe just need someone to talk to. It is also an
important thing to have during crisis situations. We had a two-day
training with psychologists, medical staff, and the cross cultural
coordinator in order to be most effective in this work. Since this
is the line of work that I want to pursue, I'm really grateful that I
can do this during my service.
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| Peer Support Network |
The rest of my month has been spent
reconnecting with people at site, working in my garden and on the
school gardening projects, as well as doing a seed collection
training where we went into the bush and collected seed pods.
Basically I spent a morning climbing trees and running around in as
much forest as we have in this part of Senegal with friends. We also
had a picnic in a Baobab grove and were eventually chased away by a
swarm of bees. So all in all, a great time!
Now I'm off to IST (In Service
Training) which marks the completion of my first 3 months as a
volunteer. We will have 11 days of intensive agriculture training and
preparation to kick start projects. I'm looking forward to this
because I'm hoping it will give me the direction I've been lacking
thus far.
P.S. If you were wondering, I have now
been able to get halfway through my laundry before someone stepped in
to help me. Progress! Maybe soon they will trust me to do the whole
thing on my own.
