When push comes to shove

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.

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!)

 

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.

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.