Yeeeeeeee haw!

A million hours of public transport. Yes. Thats what I've done. To Dakar and back. Twice. To and from my village. To other villages, days and days of driving. Almost died a million times. My family with me, almost dying a million times. But then, eventually, getting used to the feeling and realizing the here, when traveling, you just need to put your life in the hands of... well, whoever you think controls that sort of stuff. But if you are gonna travel, in wind blown dirty hot cars, you might as well travel in style, right?

My family came to visit! What a strange and wonderful experience to let two lives and two families collide. The whole experience was a bit overwhelming. So many things coming at me from so many angles. While it was happening I must admit I didn't quite know what exactly was happening. Now that it's over, now that it's the past, I can see what happened.
Boy was I sick when my family came! I hear amongst other volunteers that it's common for healthy volunteers to get sick right when their families come. Perhaps it's an inner excuse to get sick, with your real mom by your side worrying about you and trying to make you feel better. Could that be?
This is the sickest I have been since I had been here. It started out as a cold thing and Fever, body ache, non stop headache. Bleh. It started the day before the fam got here and finally ended 10 days later, two days before the family left. Just to clarify my state of mind for my sick days. I was like... blah. Fever every day fluctuating from 99 to 102.6 degrees,yet we were constantly on the go and I did my best to ignore it (probably not the best idea seeing as how I didn't treat it). Mom got so worried. My bro and his guy were so patient with my really bad mood. The people in my village thought I was being rude. The sickness finally ended with my brother diagnosing me (haha) with a sinus infection/flu after the headaches got so bad that I could barely function and I was so clogged up there I couldn't taste or smell a thing. Not to mention I almost lost my voice and couldn't talk without coughing all the time. Eventually got on meds, it went away.
Now the pretty part of their visit. What a wonderful experience! I had the logistics of the trip planned out to a tee. We spent most of the time in my region. I wanted them to meet certain people and have certain experiences, and they did. I worked out when to give them luxury, when to give them my “rouging it” experiences. We ate tourist food (clean food), and I coaxed them into the local foods as well (here is the family eating dinner in my hut). We spent 4 whole days in villages. We did a couple days in my village (with local transport, something exhausting that I wanted them to experience, which they would probably do a better job of describing because I'm so used to it). We spent a very difficult 2 days in my village. The stay in my village was actually the most difficult time for me of the whole trip, which is not what I would have expected. With my sickness and the pressure that all the villagers were putting on me, I almost went completely ins ane those days. For some reason I had this lovely image of the village welcoming my family, maybe giving them a couple of gifts, greeting them, and then letting us be to explore on our own. How wrong I was! My village is... well... not like that. The problem with my village is that everyone is dirt poor, people don't really work together as one, and there are 1200 people there that want individual attention. Yes, there were many wonderful people who came and greated my family. My host family was wonderful with my family. My closest friends in my village were wonderful to my family. Numusara, my best farmer gave us a chicken. He is a wonderful man. Everyone else greeted us non stop all day ever day. We were nervous about leaving the compound. Or should I say, I was nervous. We did eventually wander around and... AAAHHH!!! We only had a few households we wanted to visit. My favorite people and best friends and stuff. But nooooooo that wasn't going to happen. Apparently the word got out that my family was coming (even though my brother was trying to keep it discreet by only telling the village “leaders” and telling them to keep it secret so we wouldn't get bombarded with people expecting my family to throw them a party). People stopped us on the road non stop. People I kinda knew, people I know I've seen before and people I don't know and have never talked who who apparently know me. They all gave me endless crap! Every person kept saying they were mad at me and ashamed of me for not telling them that my family was coming. How dare I not stop at every single one of the 120 compounds and tell each of the 1200 residents that my family was coming and that we wanted to greet them!? Yes, I realized then and I realize now that this is the cultural thing to say for the locals that really means “hello, I am glad your family is here, I want to greet them too, welcome now give me a present,” But I could not stop getting frustrated with their critical method of delivery and I kept giving them the same apologetic/argumentative response until I wanted to scream and cry at the same time. Man, I had so many things I wanted to show my family and so many places in my village I wanted to take them, yet after one lap around one small area of my village I went home and we hid. We just hid. I must say, I was still strong for the small amount of circling we did do. We managed to get some pictures and they are lovely.
I hope the trip to my village wasn't quite as stressful for them. I mean, they didn't understand a word I was saying to anyone, seeing as how I was speaking Pular only. All they really needed to do was shake hands and reply “Jam tun” to everything anyone said.

Here is my fam posing w some local kids.


Below - my two families combines

A Land Cruiser driven by a retired French man named Bruno picked us up the following morning. The second I left my village a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders. The fam lightened up too. We were going exploring (where no1 knew me, yay!!!). We had a two day excursion planned with Bruno and we would go to three villages and look at three different local “tribes” We explored the Basari culture first in the village of Etiolo (Ech-oh-low). There we stayed at a nice “campement” and had a tour of the scattered village and learned about the ways of life of the Basari. Each household is a 10-20 minute walk away from the other. This made the Basari very difficult to conquer during colonialism because .. well they couldn't group together the people. The way of life of the Basari is still very, very traditional. They are animists that have slightly converted to Christianism. One of the most fascinating parts of Basari culture is their male initiation ceremonies. There are three steps to “manhood” and they are all quite fascinating. If you want me to explain them, call my cell phone and we can have a long converstaion about that.

below-walking through Basari territory

We then visited Pular nation. Hell, Pular is everywhere, so that doesn't count. We really just went to Dindefelo and visited the waterfall. We got to go one a hike to the waterfall after a really, really exhausting car ride to get there. Man was I sick!

Family at the waterfall

Then we drove to our last destination, a village on top of a mountain called Angel (on-gel). This village is Bedik. The Bedik is another Christian animist “tribe” and there are only about 8,000 of them in the world (I think). They have their own language and culture as well, and we got to see a little bit of it after climbing up a mountain and seeing the cutest, most quaint village that I have ever seen.

Something funny about our trip... I've traveled wit my family before and we usually don't really buy anything. Here, it was different. We ended up with an entire suitcase full of souvenirs. I think it may be because I live here and I know what is good! We got a ton of hand made Basari and Bedik stuff like masks, statues, flutes, carvings and jewelry. I knew we were in the best place in the world to get hand made stuff, so I made them take advantage. Oh, and while we were in Kedougou I made my fam take advantage of Kedougou's unique fabric that comes from Guinea (the country to the south which generally makes really cool stuff). We got my fam some “indigo” fabric, exclusively found in kedougou (rare in other parts) and got them hand tailored, custom outfits. Lovely. This got my fam interested in local fabrics and we ended up taking several market trips to buy more kinds of fabrics just because it's perdy and possible to make things with them.

What else did we do. Hmmmm. Spent the rest of the time in cities. Man did we do a lot of shopping! We went to Tambacounda and I took a 7 hour nap (sick). No Shopping there. We went to Thies and went to the tapestry factory (great art investment), and then shopped in the market. Then we went to Dakar and spent one day touring things and the next day, at the market bargaining for souvenirs for almost a whole day. By the time we got to Dakar I was feeling a lot better. It just so happens, I love to shop in Senegal because I like haggling for prices. Dakar is, to me, the most difficult place to haggle... my kind of place!!! We spent hours circling and I got to argue with people and yell at people and refuse to pay and walk away and come back again until I gave myself a migraine and had to go take a break. But I loved it deep down. We got lots of cool stuff that I can't even start to list.
We went to Goree Island as well.. a really touristy place that used to be a port for slave transport. What a fascinating island with a great history. But For me, of course, I couldn't stop haggling. We had a boy fix my brothers shoes because he was looking for work. While we waited another boy came and fixed my bag and another fixed Bill's flip flops without him really wanting him to fix them. I'm telling you, people that need money and are looking for work are about 100x more pushy than a used car salesman. We let the kid fix my brothers shoes because he was cute and spoke Pular. Then another one came and then another. We stood there for like 15 minutes until they were done than my poor family stood there while I bargained with these kids for like 15 more minutes in Pular. Ha! The sales people on the island are ridiculous with their pricing! You know, white people usually pay what they think items would be worth in their country. And on this Island, and in a lot of places in Dakar, there area lot of white people that pay a lot, which makes the sellers think that all white people should pay a certain price and all black people should pay like 10% of that price. Take this crappy tshirt for example. Bill saw a shirt he liked that I know you can buy for 4 dollars in a normal market (or less if you really haggle). This man would not sell the shirt for less than 20 dollars and got furious with me for saying that his price was ridiculous. He gave me a 10 minute speech about why Bill should pay 20 dollars even though others can pay 4 dollars. All this while boys were fixing Sean's shoes. I listed to him light-heartedly and then basically go told him to take his 20 dollar shirt and shove it up his ass. The next day we bought the shirt in the market for 4 dollars.
So, my family had fun I think. I think also that I exhausted them with three main things, 1 – public transport., 2- The mood I get in when I'm sick and finally 3- my obvious obsession with bargaining with the locals. Oh dear. Sorry family!
The trip ended on a good note with a midnight ride to the airport followed by me returning to the hotel alone at 1:30 in the morning, feeling suddely so alone and consoling myself by watching prostitutes coming and going from cars on the corner of the road from my 6th floor balcony until I got sleepy and went to bed. The next day I did that painful 16 hour ride back to Kedougou.
Sorry this is so long! But.....
I've changed soooo much in the last 5 weeks. All I've learned in this first year in country was just solidified by my five weeks off circling all over the place. Camp, circling Dakar waiting for my family, leading my family frantically through a country they don't know... all of it together did something to me.
A whole bunch of things kind of just came together. What I'm doing here and what I'm capable of doing here. Before these 5 weeks I had some plans sketched out but I wasn't sure how I could really get things done. The path was a bit blurry. Now.... it's not. After dealing with all the stuff I dealt with, after running around like a chicken with it's head cutoff and dealing with locals that come from every aspect of life, now I can see the path to a goal a lot more clearly. This next year is looking to be pretty freaking awesome. Not at all calm, and not at all lazy. And not knowing what I'm doing? Bring it on! I'm ready! And perhaps I don't know as little as I think.

Ok I have to tell this funny story really quick because it happened, like, yesterday.
I have these Senegalese female friends. I met them at camp (we were counselors together). Well, now I have local friends in Kedougou and we do some pretty freaking awesome things together. The cultural exchange going on between my new city friends and my old village friends... are both enlightening yet very different.
My city gals are going to go far. They are aware of womens rights and are on their way to success! Yesterday I went to a big soccer game in Kedougou with Fanta and Sira, two of my pals. (Fanta on left, Sira on right)

Both of them were there to support their teams but also to get their diplomas for Red Cross first aide. I arrived with Fanta late to the game and we were faced with a line of hundreds of people waiting to get in. Fanta skipped the line with a few sentences and a bribe and got us seats that were great considering all the seats were taken. Then, during half time she drug me up to the Red Cross graduation ceremony thing that was being broadcasted on the radio and being filmed for the national news. All the Red Cross first aid graduates stood in a line facing the audience, and so did I. Fanta brought me a first aide vest so I could fit in. Sira said that I would get a diploma too, standing in for her sister, who was supposed to be there but was sick and at home. So I got filmed getting Red Cross diploma with all the other Senegalese graduates. Wow was that fun.

(me and Fanta)

(Fanta and Sira getting their cirtificates)

The whole time I really could not stop laughing, and I took lots of pics! Then we watched the rest of the game sitting right on the side of the field (amazing seats!). After that I went to Fanta's house and we cooked dinner (more like I stood there and peeled a cucumber while she cooked and laughed at my terrible knife techniques.)
Thats all.
I'm gong to bike back to my village again. Got this garden project thing I'm working on...
till next time!

Campish

I must say, there is nothing quite like a hat that keeps out everything. Say you are hot and want to sit under a waterfall....

Anyway, hello out there to whoever is reading this! Are you still following me after over a year of being away from home? If so, wow. I'm impressed. If not, you probably aren't reading this right now, right? Well maybe they are.
Anyway, back to business. I'm in Dakar! I'm with a friend, a fellow PCV that I randomly met and we randomly stumbled into this random luxurious hotel and asked them if we could use their wireless Internet and they said yes. Yay for black leather couches and cold drinks!
So I have just had an amazing few weeks. Two great things have happened. First of all, I spent 10 days involved in a week-long Summer Camp for the youth of Kedougou. I had been aware that I would be involved with this camp for a whole year. Heck, I even planned my family's visit around this camp, because I felt like I should be involved. Yet, knowing that I would be involved doesn't mean that I knew what I was getting involved with. I admit that all I really did was put the time aside, without really knowing what to expect.
The camp turned out, in my opinion, to be amazing. I've been spending this whole year learning first hand the paths and the obstacles to helping people and helping with the tedious “one step forward, two steps back” task of development. So, the camp to me was yet another PC project that I would learn something from and maybe help out a bit.
But what a great week! It turns out that this was the second year that the camp held place. One of the biggest problems with starting projects is trying to turn them into something sustainable. Something that will last beyond our short presence and continue to help the population after we are no longer a part of it. The camp is on it's second year now with a good plan that will hopefully make it last for many years and produce man leaders.
So summer camp doesn't exist here. There is a summer vacation but when out of school there is no time to play. In fact they usually spend their summers with their families helping with the laborious task of farming and keeping up with house work So for them the idea of going to a camp to have fun and meet new friends and play with tubabs is great to them. So that is what we did. We had two groups of kids, one group of first-year campers and one group of second year campers, and we threw a summer camp!
The camp took place in Dindefelo, a village popular for tourists because of it's beautiful waterfall and mountains, and weekly lumo. There were about 10 Senegalese camp counselors and maybe 7-10 PCVs running camp. We had agreements with the town and the campement where we stayed and lots of other people. We then spent a week together doing many activities. There were fun activities and learning activities, both of which ended up being fun. I was responsible for the Agroforestry activity. I did a pepeniere and outplanting activity for the first year campers and a grafting activity for the second year campers. After my activity I spent the rest of the week helping with other activities, which included many kinds of sports, teamwork games, scavenger hunts, art,

races,

soccer, food sustainability courses, gender and development,

career day,

and even a human rights course. The human rights course was just a lecture but was intense because the campers and the counselors (often teachers) started a heated debate about the right of a teacher to hit a student. Then of course there were the hikes, both to the waterfall and to the top of the mountain where there were amazing viewpoints, tops of waterfalls and caves.

The next amazing thing that happened. Well, I don't know if it is amazing. I went to Dakar. I haven't been out of the Kedougou region now for almost 8 months. Talk about a homebody! I'm in the capital of the country and I don't know my way around at all! I'm a bit ashamed but then again, there is nowhere to go but up! I've been wandering around a lot these last few days, trying to get a feel of the city so I can lead my family around when they come. Oh and they get here tomorrow evening, how exciting! We have plans to go straight to Kedougou off the plane. We will spend a couple of days in Kedougou, hen they will take my “auto lumo” to my village where they will spend two nights meeting my villagers and looking at some of the work I've done. Then I have a driver picking us up who will lead us on explorations of basari, bedik and pular villages for a couple of days. After that we will slowly make our way back up to Dakar, stopping a couple places on the way to see the sights. We will end the stay with a few days to explore Dakar.
Ok, I'm tired and I have places to be and monkeys to groom!

Until next time.

I'm alone in the execution line of a laser tag game.

Hello! Thought I would write a quick blog just because.
It's been a clusterfuck. Maybe it's the year volunteer thing. All kinds of things pouring in on all different sides.

I thought I'd be having a down moment in my village work wise, with all the tree planting done. Instead, something threw me into a whirlwind of different “jobs” coming in at all angles. It's then that you start realizing your limitations, your strengths, your weaknesses, and realize it's time to sort all that crap out or just get the hell out (sorry, had to say that cuz it rhymed). So, I've been playing my hand in starting up some new projects and seeing if it really is possible to get something done in a village that has a rather unique esprit. But the obstacles just keep coming in every angle and now I can't sleep!

So that is just my village. Lots of other things happening. A sort of change of pace for me. I'm going to be leaving my village for 5 weeks. I haven't been gone from my village for over 5 days in over 7 months! Yes, was being a homebody but boy do I know how my village works, vraiment!
What will I be doing for five weeks?

I'm going to be helping with a “summer camp” for girls for a week. I'm going to Dakar to take my mid-service exam (required) and have a few days off waiting for my family to get here. I'm going to pick up my family in Dakar and travel around with them for two weeks (we will go to my village for a couple of days, so I suppose I'm not “technically" gone for 5 weeks...but come on...). Then I'm going to slowly make my way back to my village.

Yay, my family is coming! Well, to be more specific, it's my mom, my brother and his guy. All amazing people. I've traveled with them many times but this is the first time that I get to make the itinerary. It's the "Sheila" test for how well I can plan a trip. Yay! Though I do have some obvious advantages seeing as how they are coming to visit me in my home.

Through all this stuff I've been doing another thing that all Peace Corps volunteers tend to go though. I've been thinking of potential paths to follow when my service is over. I've been considering things from grad school to hobo traveling, to organic chicken and pig farming on an uninhabited island, to getting a job, and thought about living in just about every country of the globe and every corner of the states as well. Oh and you can't forget the prospect of staying in your village for the rest of your life and becoming the third wife to a one-eyed, toothless old man and providing him with many children.
Well, especially after that last image, I've been driven to do some personal career counseling (Yes, I'm my own therapist... thats the way it is here), and have been surfing the internet lots and I think I found a future path!!!! It's like magic! It hit me like a light! It iluminated and then exploded right on top of my head! It all fits together and I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel that begins my next chapter in life! My future is....
To be continued (aka these paths change every day)... Hehe.

So I've been here about a year now. It's a great feeling. I kinda feel like I just recently started to really be ready to do some work while actually knowing what I'm doing. Prospects for this next year are bright, yet busy and evidently frustrating as well. I'm excited!
Because that year mark has arrived, that means there are new volunteers coming into our Kedougou mixture! In fact, they just visited us for a couple of days. We have four new girls and three new guy volunteers that will be installed into their villages in about a month. How exciting!




Ok, thats all. I didn't take many pictures recently. Just a few on a rainy day. Here ya go.

Oh and this little guy... he is a "bug" that has been living in my room for a couple months now. We have a symbiotic relationship. He eats bugs and never bothers me, and I let him hide under my trunk. we meet every single day when I sweep under the trunk, and he just kindly moves out of the way while I sweep, then goes back under the trunk when I'm done. Here he is on my bed. haha!

bye bye

Frustrating, Lovely, Mysterious.

I've had a couple of people who know me here read my blog and come up to me and say “Gee, Sheila. I read your blog and it's amazing (of course!) but you really butter up your time here to make it sound so, well, beautiful. Why didn't you talk about all that crap you were going through in your village or how you've been so frustrated at people these past couple months?”
And my reply is all simple. This blog is public. While there are plenty of frustrations and problems and obstacles, those are mine to work through, and through all of those frustrations I am still accomplishing things, and you guys usually end up getting the end product, which is usually quite wonderful.
The truth is, sometimes it's easy to be grouchy in your village. I could probably admit that if you talked to people that know me in my village they would say that “Careful when going up to her, these days her tongue has been on fire!”
But why? Why be frustrated with your life and work in your village and in turn with the people in your village? The answer is easy! It's life! You are an American, alone in a village coming from a completely different background and you are trying to live and get things done at the same time, and sometimes, doing both of that can be hard! And it's well known for Peace Corps agroforestry volunteers that you can aim for 100% and work your butt off and only get a 10% success rate. Just imagine those constant letdowns in your daily life and add people walking up to you every day and asking for a present. ROOOAR!!! Sometimes you just gotta put that foot down. Haha.
Here's an example. This farmer guy, a guy who really talks up his desire, made a mango pepeniere. It's time to plant. Doesn't planting trees sound lovely? Ok, so you go to his house and set up a plant date and he stands you up five times, telling you each day to come back the next day. Then you finally catch him and he hasn't prepared a damn thing and you end up carrying all the trees he planted and the digging tools to his field for him. And then he plants a couple of trees and leaves the rest to his assistant while he goes and does other things. Then you find out that all the mangoes he planted are seeds from grafted mangoes, which you aren't supposed to plant. Everything you say to him about how far to plant tree from each other and why you should plant local seeds instead of grafted seeds goes in one ear, past his smiling, nodding head, and straight out the other ear. You ask him to repeat what you said and he says something in the realms of “you had porridge for breakfast.”


Ok, enough of that. Lots of cool stuff going on. Lets talk about my success! I guess I could add a few frustrations, just to add the yang to the yin, yaknow.
Trees are planted! We planted about 20 in the post de sante.
I planted (tried for 5 days to organize students to help me but failed) 25 trees in the school yard. My 6 year old brother helped, and my 2 year old sister and 3 and 5 year old neighbor boys came as well, so it was more like babysitting.

Lots of mango pepenieres were planted, which I will still need to follow up on. I ended up with a lot of extra trees and not much time left to plant so I tied a big bucket on the back of my bike, filled it with baby trees and circled the village several times giving trees out. It turns out that that is a great way to get trees planted. I gave about 30 nebadie trees (healthy leaves) to the womens group. I gave flamboyants (a perdy tree non-existant in my vill) out to people who live by the main road, and lots of other trees to random people. And I'm relatively sure these people are planting these trees. It's so easy to plant one or two at your house or field and take care of it. Then you get to tell everyone that you got a tree from Jenaba Jallo (me!)

I love my best farmer. His name is Numusara. He is like a grandpa to me. He always offers me things and never asks for a thing. Every time I show up at his house or field he is so happy. If my dog tags along and gets into ruckus and I try to control him tells me that my dog is fine (like eating his food, chewing on one of his baby trees.
On the professional side, it's nice having that ultimate farmer. The one that if you're feelin frustrated you can just go to and realize that you have a purpose! All you have to do it go to his field and he will lead you around and show you all the trees he has planted along his fence, and the papayas he has transplanted, or where he is going to plant next, etc. he goes on and on talking about the work he wants to do, and it's all great! Instead of you telling him what he could do with his field, he says, "just wait until the next time you come! I'll have cleared this whole section of the 10ft tall straw and have planted corn and 20 more papaya trees and manioc!" Anyway, I got a photo shoot with this guy. There was this time when he was leading me through some nasty grasses and my flip flop kept breaking and he tried to get me to use his shoes. Awe aint that sweet. And one great thing about now, is that my farmer is really happy! He has a lot of new grafted mango trees, and the grafted on brenches are sprouting!

So I brought my camera to Numusara's field yet again and realized that I didn't have a good pic of him and or course he welcomed my request to take pics, and even posed. Here is him beside one of his grafted mango trees (his baby!), and his thriving banans, which he is the only one in my village with bananas!

Lalala. Bleh. I don't feel like writing a blog so I'm just going to talk about nonsense .

It's Ramadan. That month where people fast. They don't eat or drink while the sun is out. If you want to know the insane reasoning behind it, or how it effects people's work and mood and strength and attitudes on life, give my cell phone a call and we will have a several hour conversation.
I'm trying to fast while I'm in my village but it's hard. I did it for two days successfully but on the third day I got in my hut after 3 hours of plantin peanuts and was real thirsty. I was alone in the household, alone in my hut, tired, sweaty, and starting me smack dab in the middle of my face was a bottle of water. Just me and it. I drank and felt guilty. It was over.

Um. yeah I've been talking a lot about farming and farming is still happening. It's my favorite spare time activity. Dalanda, my sis has her own corn and peanut field and I've franchised 50% of it. It's half mine. Well she gets all the goods but I get to do 50% of the labor. Yay! So I'm bent over planting or weeding several hours a day. I love it. It's a great work out and I love all the blisters I get on my hands and the insane rashes I get on my arms and endless ant-bites I get from working bare-footed. But all sarcasm aside, going to the fields is my favorite part of the day. It's peaceful, it's a great workout and you don't feel like you are living such a different life from them locals.
I'm trying to find different ways to approach working with the womens group so I went and worked with them on their funyo field for 4 hours. I got to hear them talking about they way they work without them smiling and nodding at me.

I told my sister, Dalanda I'd give her 2,000cfa (4 dollars) if she caught a bird with her bare hand. So she did. Then she tied it to a string, pulled out it's flight feathers and gave it to her son to play with. I sat and watched the whole “caught a bird” culture and watched the bird die a rather terrible death. Such is the way I have been learning culture these days. Which, by the way, cultural learning just don't stop, no matter how long you stay in a place. No more dares like that for me! Those birds are kinda like pests though. She caught it while it was stealing her corn she had set out to dry.

Now for the mysterious. One of my sisters that lives in my village has had a strange yet serious illness for the past months. I've always known her as the 25 year old sister that lives about 10 compounds down who comes over every day. She has a great husband and 4 kids. I see her every day in my life in the vill.
Here is her illness and her situation. Keep in mind that I'm do doctor! At the time I had the village bystandards perspective!
She had a kid that was stillborn. She went back to work the day after, recovering normally. A week later she complained of a massive headache and stomache ache, and got sick. She laid down and didn't get back up. She stopped eating and stopped talking. Day by day she lost her brain. She layed there and moaned saying over and over “ohhhh, mom, whats happening to me?” (her mom never left her side, and still hasn't). Then she stopped talking all together. She stopped having any recognition in her eyes what so ever. She could no longer control her body. She couldn't sit up, she couldn't walk, she couldn't talk. She just laid and stared. And made faces of pain. Everyone in the village said she went crazy. Her mom and kids and husband would go into the room and ask if she knew them and she would grunt “no.” She could only lay down, roll over, and grip something, like a hand.
The village nurse refused treatment without money. After money was found he made a diagnosis and didn't tell anyone what it was, just put her on a bunch of meds. I asked my brother and he said she was put on anti malaria meds, glucose, antibiotics and something to increase the blood.
She is slowly recovering. I was worried. I watched my perfectly sane sister lose her sanity. She reminded me of a vegetable that can't to anything and knows nothing. Now she eats. Now she is getting some recognition in her eyes. Slowly. She still can't control her body and can't talk.
So I looked it up online after I got back to Kedougou and I know what it is. So now am I doctor? No! But I realize how much online medical information can change a life. No one in the village has a clue what she has, even my brother, who is the medical assistant! The nurse knew what it was and did the treatments then told the family to call in an Imam to get her brains back an Imam is a Muslim magical healing man, very popular in village illnesses, I've heard lots of stories of their magical healing abilities
according to Google my sister has Cerebral Malaria, a strain of malaria that occurs in 20-50% of malaria cases. In Cerebral Malaria something stops blood flow, and deprives the brain of oxygen. This can cause all kids of problems but only in rare cases does it cause “cerebellar ataxia,” which I looked up on Wikipedia, which is what my sister has. It basically puts you in brain vegetable state without being in a coma. It's like your brain is in a coma (can't do anything, move or think) but you don't lose consciousness. According to the website, the craziness last 4 weeks and goes away withing 1-2 weeks after treatment. So should she heal, which would be a miracle to these people and I know, would be credited to the Imam!
I was really scared for my sis. I watched her brain die, and hopefully will see it come back to life. I'm glad I looked that up!
Ok, enough for now. Keep livin!

Still Here

Ok so I just spent a bunch of time in my village and a whole lot of stuff happened. Actually, I wasn't planning on coming back to town for another couple of weeks but I was drawn here by electricity. In other words, I needed to charge my phone, upload my pictures and catch up on blogs!

I must announce, I got my new camera! I've been taking tons of pictures, of course, so expect me to post a lot! Here are some just for fun.

Farming

So I guess the themes of this two and a half weeks would be work and fun. It seems like it would be an easy thing to split work from fun. You know, when are you doing your job and when are you not doing anything? Even when you are wandering around your village doing nothing it still seems like you are doing something. Just having a two minute conversation on the road with someone can cause quite an exchange of culture, which is part of my job here. Then there are those days when I don't really leave the compound but end up working harder than most days. I've been helping out as much as I can in the house as well as in the fields in my spare time. In other words, I'm staying busy!
Ok, so I guess I'll talking Agroforestry stuff. That will be work.
Two things went on recently. August is here, so it's the month of tree planting, and also, on the 5th of August I had a grafting formation in my village. I'll start with the grafting formation. For those of you who don't know, mangos are big here in senegal. There are two kinds of mangos, local, small, sweet mangos that are everywhere, and then there are giant mangos. They ripen at different times, and the giant/grafted mangos make a lot more money for people than small mangos do. So, in order to get a good grafted mango tree you need to be able to do this very specific little technologocal thing called grafting. That is where you take one young local mango tree, a tree that is a year or two old, and you combine it with a grafted mango tree. This means that you combine two trees and get the best of both trees. Local mango trees have roots that better withstand the dry season, while the grafted mango trees give bigger fruits that ripen at a different time, keeping the flow of mangoes coming. If you learn this technology of combining two trees, which is just simple yet specific information that just about no villagers know, you can graft a tree really easily. So the formation was meant for a small number of people from several different villages. We ended up having about 12 people from 8 different villages. My sister made lunch for them all and throughout the whole formation I ended up biking back and forth regulating any technical problems, aka supplies. I thought the formation would be easy but boy was I wrong! finding all the people and explaining to the hundreds of other peo[people that they couldn't come was quite a task. There were some negative quirks on the day of the formation as well, like locals inviting themselves to the formation after I had already refused many people who had asked to come in my village. Argh!
Photos of the formation: Here we all are in a meeting talking about what grafting is. We got a local grafting expert to bethe formation teacher. It was Peace Corps who just organized it all.

Here they are learning how to graft a tree. First they watch and listen, then they do it themselves! Very hands on lessons.

Oh, and I did another hike to the mountain top villages. This time I was accompanied by my 15 year old brother, Soulaiman, and Phil. Here are some photos!


So, other than that, it's tree planting time! Along with that I feel I should introduce yet another group of French people that have come to give a helping hand to my village. This time there are five, and like before, it is great not being the only tubab in the village! This group's main focus was AIDS and education. They did causeries on AIDS, and spent a lot of time with the local youth of Thiabedji doing exchanges of cultures. I loved watching the eyes light up in the villagers when they learned something new, like how they dance in Paris! Anyway, one of the the first things I did with our visitors was plant some trees in the village health center. groforestry and

health come together! that was fun.

As for the rest of the tree planting, it is underway and I think I will talk about it more in my next blog.
So, what did I do for fun? Well the thing that comes to mind first probably wouldn't be considered fun, but it was! I farmed a lot. These days that consists of weeding acres and acres of land with a little tool called a keri, by hand.. Sometimes I did 4 hour stretches. It hurts your back a lot to bend over and you always end up drenched in sweat and covered in dirt. But it's great, really! There was a cultivating party at my house recently. A group of girls got together and weeded my family's field in exchange for a feast and a dance party that lasted until 4:00am! This has to have been one of my favorite days in Thiabedji! During the day I was going back and forth between watching the gals (and some guys as well) working and the field and back to home where there was a team of some great women preparing food for some 60 people! And it was all centered around my sister, Dalanda. My family explained to me that every year the girls pick a woman in the village who they love, and the work/food and party exchange takes place. Omar, my sisters wife, killed our only sheep for this party. It was big! Here are some of the happenings in the field:

And at home, the preparing of the meal.

Then the meal was taken to the field.

One of the French students had a birthday and as a surprise, they had rented a car that was to take them all to the famous waterfall in dindefello. Well, lucky me, I got invited to come along! In truth, I have been a bit ashamed that I haven't been to this waterfall yet. I feel like I am the only volunteer in my region that hasn't been there. Until now! We took a 2.5 hour ride on a really rought road to get there, walked 20 minutes to the waterfall, and then just relaxed, had a picnic, swam, and made tea m it was time to go. Haha. the tea at the waterfall was a bit of a stretch. Two locals friends of ours from the village were also invited and they brought a cot, a propane tank, and all the fixings to make ataaya (tea). It was hilarious to see all these white people there in their swimsuits with backpacks, sitting on rocks, and then there was, at the head of the river going away from the waterfall, my two buddies on their cot cookin up tea in their city clothes. I got a picture of this, which in my opinion, is priceless!
Waterfall pics as well :)

Lots of fun things happened, really. I got to show the French visitors some of my favoirite quaint mango orchards. We all farmed my sister's field together. There were soccer games and other nighttime parties. Most of all I've just been having a lot of fun spending time with my ssister and the French students, and all our friends!
Well, thats all for now. Until next time

People

I suppose this entry will be about the month of July because, well, I haven't written much about the month and now it's almost over. How time flies here when you're having fun! Heck, even if you're not having fun, you look back and realize how quickly it is all passing.

I have discovered that the 4th of July in Kedougou is quite well known throughout the country to all Senegal Peace Corps Volunteers. It's the party, and I must say, we had quite a party at our regional house. The planning started months in advance with budget planning, job designation and activity ideas. We anticipated about 80 people and lot and behold, about 80 people showed up,not including local friends that came. Kedougou is one of the more exotic regions in the country so volunteers often like to come here to get their "nature fix," by biking to waterfalls or going to a part of the Gambia river where there are hippos. Then there is your floating down the river to the local hotel to get your warthog sandwich, which is becoming a Kedougou norm. Anyway, a lot of region exploring went on but everyone was at the party for the day of the party. On the day of the party the Peace Corps had an activity that involved the locals, to help promote and educate the people about what the peace corps is and teach them a bit about our country. We did a 4k run around the city! The run was open to all and organized by two volunteers in Kedougou, Alan and Thomas. The radio advertised it, the pooliticians reglated it. There was a tent and Djs and American music, free cold water, chairs, registration, and for those not running, games with prizes. It was a blast! I think about 80 people ran, inclusing about 15 volunteers and the entire Kedougou police and Military forces. Holy crap those guys are in amazing shape. Anyway, the volunteer that got 1st place among volunteers got 18th place amongst the whole group. Which is still pretty darn fast considering that the 2nd place volunteer got like 32nd place.

The party was fun as well and included a lot of music, food, games and even fireworks! The African touch happenened just after it got dark when I line of traditionally dressed Basari warriors came parading through the back door in a straight line, doing their warrior dance and hooting and hollering. All the Americans gathered up to watch, and danced as well and we were delighted when the end of the line came around, to see an old lady about 5 feet tall taking up the tail end of the line, just dancing away.

Ok, on to the next thing. After the party I went back to my village, but not alone! I brought Phil with me. I know you must be asking yourself, "Who is Phil?" Well, Phil is Phil! Phil is a guy who is in Senegal doing research for the Fulbright institute on the politics of gold mining in Senegal. He lives in Dakar but travels all around talking to gold miners of all levels of gold mining, and organizations and companies and stuff. I guess that kind of explains it. Well Phil has been to my village before to look at the gold mining that it going on. I know I've written about it before. It's a really small scale, under the table artisan gold mine, and now that it's farming season, there are only about 5 miners working on the mountain. Phil is doing a lot of work with my gold miners and if I tried to explain what kind of work he was doing it would just confuse you all, so if you want to know about it just call my cell phone and be prepared for hours of super exciting and quite philosophical conversation. But really, what he is doing it pretty darn cool and I can't wait to see how all his research mixes together. The gold miners in my village definitely love him, thats for sure. Here is a picture taken by phil of Tuncara. This man not only gold mines, but he also farms, has a young orchard, and is our village's only baker. He is one of the best multi-taskers I've ever known, and he does all of his tasks well.

There are also, don't forget, 6 French people in my village. They were getting pretty settled, well, as settled as you can get on a three week stay in a relatively remote African village. There was daily play day still, and random adventures. They also did another malaria skit mixed with a dance party with music. It was basically the same play but this time it was bigger and better. This time they had a microphone, a much bigger crowd, and all the enders there to support them, they had several doctors to share their knowledge, and even personal testimonies from the locals! I did a project with the French people as well. We put some money and effort together to make a large batch of Neem Lotion. Neem lotion is a locally produced lotion made from the leaf of a local tree that naturally repels mosquitoes. Yay! We spent a long time circline the village and handing out the lotion and explaining its purpose to the locals. The locals loved the lotion and I've been trying to find a way to get the women's group to start making the lotion to sell, because people loved it.
Ok, so more stuff happened but lets move on

Phil went home, the French people went home, and then I went back to Kedougou to take part in a big project that was going on in Kedougou. The Kedougou volunteers had teamed up with an organization called Netlife, who was planning on distributing about 14,000 mosquito nets to every single bed in the region of Saaraya, which is a HUGE region just beside Kedougou. Netlife bought the nets and got them here but asked for our help in distributing them because of our experience in communicating with the locals and our knowledge of how to get around. Well, one of the volunteers took charge of organizing the whole thing. That is Matt. Boy did he work hard! Then he needed our help for three weeks in the actual distribution. Volunteers worked for from a few days to all three weeks. I worked for about 8 days.

I had no idea what I was getting into when I signed up for this! What an amazing experience! Both good and bad, fun and stressful, and it was all rapid fire and non stop adventure. I don't care to give all the details, but here are some experiences that just stand out.

A couple of fun crazy people. Crazy people are everywhere in ever culture, but these two I'm going to mention.
In Saaraya, the regional capital (it's a big village, not even a city), there is a young man who doesn't speak and spends all day walking around with a radio, walking up to people, and cracking their knuckles, both on fingers and toes. He just walks up to you, sticks his hand out like he wants to shake it, then takes your hand with both ofhis hands and cracks each one of your knuckles, then he takes the other hand and does it as well. If you are sitting, he will then move on to your feet and crack those too, but it's not as common because he usually encounters people who are standing. At first it's a bit strange but then you see him walk over tto a group of people who live in the city, and it seems as if they almost wait in line to get their knuckles cracked by him. Then there are those who simply refuse to give their hand to him when he puts his hand out, so he calmly moves on to the next person. So, Saaraya has its own knuckle cracking man. He came up to me twice and I only let him crack my knuckles once. I'm not really into that... haha.

Then there was the crazy guy of one of the villages we went to to distruibute. He was probably about 40 years old. Well I was in a room full of mosquito nets and he was excited to get his mosquito net so he kept coming into the room with the nets and doing little solo improv skits. He was a karate man, a bronco rider from a rodeo, a hunter in the forest, and someone who accidentally sat on a porcupine. He was very animated and loud with all his skits. He always gathered quite an audience and everyone always burst out laughing when he did a skit and he gave them all high-fives. The man who was helping me translate, who lived in the village said that this man was off his rocker, yet harmless.

Off-road adventuring! People in American pay loads of money to explore the wilderness in a 4x4. Imagine doing it for free with a local ambulance driver from dawn to dusk. And this off roading was nothing like... well, off roading. I guess it was. Sometimes we were driving on roads meant only for bikes. So basically we were trudging through 2-3ft tall grass and mud, weaving through trees and bushes, seeing only thick, dense, neon green forest from every angle, listening to the driver tell stories about what you should and shouldn't do when you come into contact with a lion. We passed so many river crossings that seemed unpassable at first that by the time we were done, we didn't even take a second glance at the seemingly unpassable parts. Our driver's name was Gouda, like the cheese. He was a, and I quote, "fucking badass." that man can drive!

Well, we did get stuck in the mud once. I was laying in the back of the vehicle, exhausted, on bags and bags of empty mosquito net bags with six live chickens tied up beside me protesting at every bump when suddenly I realized that we were no longer going forward and the tires under me were only spinning. Then we stopped and I hear those words you ever want to hear from your badass driver, the one who can drive through anything,. "Oo,o, c'est grave." or "This is not good." So what to do when stuck in the mud in the middle of nowhere with no cars within probably 75 miles, no cell phone signal, and no tools to get the car unstuck? Is it the end of the world? Heck no! All we needed was man power, and we weren't too far from a village full of men made of pure muscle that we just gave a bunch of mosquito nets to. So we sent a message to the village via someone we found on a motorcycle, and about 10 men came running to the rescue, faster than any tow-truck would ever have gotten to someone broken down on an American highway. They looked at the situation, had a brief huddle, gave the words and every man scattered into the forest like lions! They scattered and disappeared amongst the trees. They all came back at the same time loaded with huge tree branches covered with leaves. They dug the excess mud out from under the car in a second, and put the branches in the tracks to give the tired something to grab. Then they did another huddle, and Hut, hut! They all, single file, walked briskly in a straight line, forward on the trail. Five minutes later they came back with rocks, and big ones. 3 or 4 piled on their heads or cupped in their shirts. They put the rocks under the tires to give the tires something to sit on. Then they all got behind the car and pushed as it tried to go forward. No luck but a bit of movement. They readjusted the rocks and sticks and this time told the car to go backwards as they pushed. And let me tell you, 10 African men can push hard. The car moved more, but didn't get unstuck. They adjusted the rocks one more time. Got behind the car, told it to go, and pushed. The car leaped out of the mud and went zooming on forward as the locals jumps in the air and clapped, hooting and hollering with joy. Then they thanked us for the nets and started walking back to their village, covered from head to toe with mud.

People. We dealt with lots of people who have a very, very different perspective than us, and a very different way of thinking than us. Sometimes, when your head is full of the technicallities of the job you are trying to do, it's hard to remember that the locals really have no idea what you are doing for them, other than giving them a present. We got so many "gimme, gimme, gimme!" attitudes. We had so many frustrated people amongst the excitement. It really was up to us to organize the people and teach them what we were actually doing for them. It took a few villages until we started knowing how to get the people into a mindset of what we were actually trying to do for them, other than give them a present. Each village was different. Some were big and some were absoutely tiny and completely isolated. I distributed alone in a village of 83 people, 6 households. Nobody in the entire village had every gone to school. There was no school in the village. Of all the people, one man spoke a little bit of Pular (in this region the language is Malinke, not Pular), and one man spoke a little bit of French that he learned because he picked it up by visiting the neighboring village. In other words, he is a genius that never went to school a day in his life. Many of the villages had absolutely no medicine of any kind. Luckily every village had a motorcycle though, and it could be used in case of emergency. Unless, of course, it rains a lot and that motorcycle can't cross the river, which tends to be the case a lot in the rainy season.
Well, I think this is long enough. Even though there was so much more!

Oh and all these pictures are borrowed. I should have my new camera soon though.
Until next time!

It's Farmin time!

Ahhhh life in an African village... It's wonderful!

Before going back to my village I spent the night with another volunteer named Hayes, in her village. Hayes is my closest neighbor, only about 20 Kilometers from my village. There I negotiated transport for my cement and then, before bed, we watched "Twilight" on her laptop! Hayes lives in a village that is smaller than mine but due to its location, it is more developed. It has power in the evenings and a middle school and cars and robinets (a robinet is a water source that works like a faucet, while a forage works like a pump and a well works like... a well.). Anyway, the fact that I saw that movie was great because I've been a fan since day one. I read that book while I was studying abroad in France.

So I just got back from spending a lovely two weeks in my village. There's nothing quite like a moment in time where your whole family is getting along, people say that you speak good Pular, and when you actually take peoples humor as jokes rather than insults. Yes, if all these things are happening you cant help but have a wonderful time. Oh, and nature always helps too, right? Things are growing! Everyone can feel the season changing and everyone loves it! The signs of seasons changing here are so different than any season changes in America. Here, the first sign is the cows. What a relief the rain brings for cows, and due to that, everyone! When it rains, cows can drink in natural puddles. If they are drinking far away from us they don't come and wait by the forage. That means people don't spend hours a day watering the cows, which means the forage, our main water source, is much less crowded! Also, with the rains, comes grass. Cows love grass, so they stop trumping through house compounds trying to steal last bits of corn from pots and pans, and they stop nosing around and trying to eat whatever they can get from us. Now we just don't see cows. Well, not very often. No more animals invading our living room is a great thing! Of course this doesn't take into mind chickens, who just live here. Man those things are annoying as heck. Imagine 8 people gathered around a bowl of rice and baby chickens weaving under your feet picking up what you drop. Aahh!!

Farming is the biggest change. I finally get to see the men work. Oh my goodness! Ok, I'm being sarcastic, but then again I'm not. Me and the women in the village joke around about it all the time. The men are finally doing something instead of sitting around and drinking tea all day. Hehe. Anyway, Everyone is out and about these days preparing their fields, and first and foremost, planting their corn. The farming methods here are quite old fashioned. The most high tech farming that is available in my village is a little metal plow drug by two cows. Here is a pic!
My family doesn't have cows. If you don't have a cow, you've got to either swoon someone into letting you borrow theirs, or... find another way. I helped my brother Omar plant his field of corn without plowing it first. With that, you just take to the field a dabo (the most used farming tool) and seeds, and a rope. You use the rope as a guide for a straight line, and you plant , bent over, digging a little hole and putting the seed in.

I did this for hours with my family. It is hard work! The problem is, that there is grass and weeds also growing over the whole field. In order to get rid of that my brother bought herbicide. My mom also has a field, right outside of our compound. She got rid of the weeds for that by waiting for the corn to sprout, then taking her dabo and spending hours each day scraping the weeds by hand. All people working with a dabo works completely bent over. It is literally back breaking work. I did it for like 45 minutes and was out cold. So, farming is starting! Volunteers said that it's naïve of me to what to learn about farming by helping my family with it. It's true that I am not a professional farmer. But the way I see it, if I'm to really learn about a culture I've got to get my hands dirty, right? And I'm still new and leaning, so learn I shall. Now I can walk out to the fields that I helped plant and look at their progress with a special understanding of how it was made.

Ok, other happenings. Random but interesting. There are now 6 French medical students that are living in my village for the next month. They all come from Paris, and are in either their second or third year of med school. They are between 20 and 22 years old. 2 men and 4 women. So, suddenly I have become not the only, but one of 7 tubabs living in my village! They have been here for over a week now and I have been having a lot of fun with them. 7 tubabs can definitely light up a village more than one! They are like a burst of culture for these people and everyone, especially the kids, love them! They have a play time almost every afternoon just playing games with the kids. They have done a play as well about how malaria is caught.

These guys came right as the mosquito season started, so they are working with malaria prevention things. I find being in their presence very interesting because they had absolutely no cultural training before they arrived. Fresh meat? Yes! Seeing how they reacted to what I see as normal aspects of daily life make me realize how much I have "integrated" over these past 10 months. Anyway, one of the things I end up being for the new guys is a tour guide. Daily life can be boring living in a village when you don't know what is going on, so I have offered nature hikes. We have already gone to the top of a mountain, where we ran into two bee hives and a snake, and got lost on the way back because I couldn't see the mountains (my vantage points) because of the new leaves in the trees. It was fun though and nobody was hurt!
Oh and just a random note about Malaria. It's everywhere here man. My little 6 year old brother just got it. He is very sick but got on meds and got better fast. My sister had it in the dry season. I asked my sister how many times she has had it since she was born, and she said somewhere around 30 times. Malaria here is seen a lot differently than it is in America. It's still seen as a scary illness though. My sis said she is afraid of it, even though it is so common. It is true that if not treated, it can kill you quickly. Luckily I am on meds that will prevent me from getting it. I also do the most I can to avoid mosquitos.

So just recently I also went on another biking adventure. This time I went to Mako (again) with Hayes to meet some friends to give a biking tour to. I swear I live in one of the prettiest parts of the country (biased? Maybe..).

The biking trip to Mako from my village is absoutely breathtaking, and once again, some of its charm is those little villages you stop at and find people sitting over their breakfast porridge, who, when you arrive, look up at you and smile. They never quite know what to say to a tubab that just shows up in their rather isolated village. Then when you greet them in their language,their smiles get even bigger. It's almost priceless. Then you ask for directions and they gladly hop up and accompany you to the proper road, and you say your thank yous, exchange names and go on your way and say, "until next time!" Anyway, Here are some pics of that trip!
There was a moment on the trip where I slammed on my breaks in the middle of the woods and jumped off my bike and ran towards a tree. Why? Laare! There is a local fruit that is in season but it's hard to find in my village because people go out and collect it and sell it to a big truck that sends it to cities to be sold! Well there are wild laare bushes all over in the forest, and I knew I was far enough from a village for their to be some fruit on the tree. Sure enough, it was full of it! How great is is to be able to eat local fruits in the middle of the woods on a long bike ride. We also came across several trees with another edible local fruit. I forgot the name, but it reminds me of kinda a "sweet avocado." I took a pic. Here.

So... that was my two weeks. I had some questions asked now that I will answer. What is a pepeniere? I guess I didn't explain that. A pepeniere is a tree nursery. It's a bunch of sacks that you fill with dirt and then you put seeds in, and the trees go. We make pepenieres to give trees a head start. We plant the pepenieres in the dry season and water them every day. Then when the rainy season comes the trees are big enough and they will have a head start so when the rain comes the tree will grow a lot more. Here is a picture of Alan with one of my pepenieres in my backyard. And here is my school pepeniere as well.

You can also make a garden pepeniere, which is like a nursery that you plant a bunch of seeds and when the plant gets bigger you plant in a bigger plot with more spacing. It saves on watering, which is important in places without running water. Here is Alan with one of the pepenieres in my backyard

Also, what is a douche! I said that people are making douches. I realize that I didn't explain what that is. I know in French is means shower. Or a faucet that cleans … well.. I dont know. But not here in Africa. In Africa a douche is the hole in the ground that you use to go to the bathroom. Every household in a village should have a douche because it stops people from pooping in the forest which gets people sick, especially when it rains and the water flushes it all over the place. Pooing in a hole is good. The hole is dug about 3-4 meters deep, 1.5 meters by 1.5 meters in size, then lined with iron and cement with just an opening at the top.

So thats all... The 4th of July is coming, by the way. The Kedougou regional house is known for having the biggest party where volunteers come from all over the country. That should be fine. I signed up to be a bartender.
Well, thats it! Oh and a picture for the road, a giant Fromagio tree. I talked a bit about them in my last blog, so I thought I'd share a picture.