Mango Fun

Well it seems as though a couple of weeks have passed since I have last written. It seems to me, in a way, more like a year. Spending quality time being the only tubab in your village is almost like living in another world. I walked into the PC house in Kedougou today and another volunteer said hello today and I shouted happily, "Oh my God, English! I feel like I've forgotten what it is like!" In the next few hours several ice cream cones entered my mouth while three languages exited. Pular, French, and English. These people here are now probably some of the only people in the world who can understand my melange of languages! It's pretty cool.

Mangos! It's mango season here and that is what people do. Mangos. They take mangos off the tree and eat them. With all the mango trees around and the hundreds and hundreds of mangos on each tree, you would think there would be too much for 900 people. But no, certainly not. if 900 people want to eat about 5 mangos a day, that adds up! It's the starving season here and mangos are quite a treat! There are pretty much no veggies in my village these days, and no other kinds of fruit. Never. No meat really either. It's corn, rice, peanuts and jumbo. Maybe an onion here and there. Oh, and mangos. Lots of mangos. I eat about 4 or 5 a day. Don't ask about my bowel movements. I'm working on that. Oh, and bofore coming here, I think I ate about 3 whole mangos in my life. Mangos are yummy! I look forward to my 5 a day. And to make food more interesting here I have been upping my Vitacafe (a powdered sweeted milk coffee instant drink, yucky in usa but lovely in my village) to about 2 a day. Yes. And my gas has run out so Dalanda, my sister will wake me up in the morning and give me hot water from the water she is heating for breakfast. My sis btw, is still great! She is exhausted every day from being the only one that works. We are working on this issue...

Oh have I mentioned that the starving season is well on it's way. When we are having the corn couscous with sauce, it's been difficult for the locals to find what to put in the sauce. Now a days they are getting leaves off of trees. Yes. Which reminds me,one day about 7 kids climbed up a tree just outside of my compound and picked all the leaves off. They had just recently sprouted (it'sone of those rare trees that have leaves in the dry season). It was quite a speticle, kids throwing leaves down to women waiting and the bottom and running to get the leaves before another woman, or a cow, got there first. Here is a pic :) Notice how high up those kids are! Oh, and the leaves are yummy, btw. Much better than salty onion water without leaves.

My garden is still almost like my child and it is tucked firmly under my wing. The blistering heat, which easily reaches 130 in the sun (it was actually measured 142 in the sun yesterday), is detrimental for the cold loving cabbage that is flourishing in my garden due to my constant surveylance of my make shift shade structure. The sun has managed to fry a couple cabbage plants on the edge of my shade structure, but the others are all beautiful! Unfortunately, I didn't take a pic. I will next time. Who wants to see a bunch of cabbage anyway?

Cabbage is the only vegetable I have in my garden. The others have been toasted or pulled and eaten. Don't get me wrong though, there are other things sprouting: Trees, of course! My pepeniere has begun sprouting and it's perdy. Thats all I have to say about that.

So I've been kicking myself into gear and I had the chief of the village call a town meeting. Nobody showed up. What a damper, eh? Perhaps it's because they called for it to be at 10:00 in the evening and people were eating, sleeping, or drinking tea! Heck, I wanted to get out of there to pull water. Yes, I have been pushed to pull water at night now because of all the issues of people throughout the day. There have been several issues at the forage and I've been having fun with it. On days that I get bored in my hut I will go out and interview villagers about the water problem. It's kinda like I'm in a mystery novel. It's hard to explain this, so I will stop. Needless to say, there is a water problem in my village which makes my job rather difficult. Maybe I can help do something about the water problem?

In the meantime, pulling water at night is great because African women, or people that pull water, are afraid of the dark. There is no one there at night except the occasional man and his bike and bidons. They are all super nice. The night water pulling crew are now buddies.

Oh, and here is just one example of why it's not very fun to pull water during the day. People waiting in line while people are pumping non stop trying to water their cows. It's the Thiabedji equivalent to a Los Angeles rush hour. Very stressful. I've witnessed several physical fights that have come out of this issue. Oh and I finally got a pic of the forage. This is kinda a medium amount of people. There are cows waiting but most aren't in the shot.

There is a red chicken that hangs out in my compound that can fly. She flies into my garden and digs up my stuff so she can lay in the damp dirt because it's cool. I have turned that chickens life into a living hell because she killed several of my veggies and completely terminated a eucalyptus germination bed that I have been watering for 2 weeks. Everyone within 1000 feet of me knew I had it in for that chicken. The chicken knew I had it in for the chicken. Every time she saw me she would give me her upset "squawk squawk!" before tucking her tail-feathers and running, even before I started chasing her. Haha, I got many hysterical laughters thrown my way as I circled my compound swinging a huge bamboo stick and chucking rocks with my other stick, shouting curse words in Pular. They would ask me what veggies she destroyed now and I would tell them. After about 4 days of this I stopped seeing the chicken altogether. A couple days later I saw her at a different neighbors house. I saw her from quite a distance away but still when she saw me she freaked out. Hehe. She knows better now!

Hehe, so you guys still think I had a meeting in which nobody showed up. Don't worry! There was another one the next afternoon and lots of people showed up and the meeting lasted over an hour! We discussed trees, trees and trees! Then we discussed douches. I am going to continue with a douche project the the volunteer before me was working on. The village was happy to hear that. After my meeting I had a lot of potential farmers to work with, and a lot of excitement to start making pepenieres! I also visited the best "tree field" in my village. The only bananas and the only successful mango orchard in my village. It was very interesting! Bananas need a lot of water to grow and this man did it! His field just happened to be by a river with a part tucked under for flooding for the rainy season, so voila, water!

Here are the bananas. Actually kinda dry now because there is no water. :P

Water in Pular is Ndiem. Cool huh? Ndiem is very important and very hard to come by. Sorry I'm talking nonsense, I'm kind of sleepy.

The puppy is good. I don't know if I mentioned it but he is the puppy of Aggie, the family's dog that came from a volunteer that lived in my village about 3 years ago. She has about two litters a year. Hendu is now the last puppy around. The last girl was lucky, just as I was handing her over to my brother who was going to go strangle her in the forest (we had no choice, no one wanted her), a man said he would take her. He made me name her, I called her jack because it was the only thing I could think of that he could pronounce. Here is a pick of Jack on her day of reckoning. She is lovely.

Anyway, my pup! He seems to have brains. He is growing. I've been bonding with my kids a lot. I realize that before coming here I had pretty much no experience with kids. In American I went to a kid's 1 year old birthday party and had no idea how to treat a baby. Now I play with my 1 year old sister, Fatu, all the time. We are like best buds! I've become my own self proclaimed professional at getting my 4 year old sister, Dienaba, to stop crying. I like to make faces at my 6 year old brother, Usuman, while we are eating. It makes him laugh.

Here is Aggie, Dienaba, and Fatu. Dienaba was messing with Aggie putting lolly pop sticks between her toes. Aggie is very patient with the kids but when they start poking her or hitting her with sticks she will growl at them and My sis will hear and tell the kids, "Achu bareru!" or "Stop dog!" (stop messing with the dog)

Im getting tired of eating rice and corn and peanuts all the time. I don't tell my family this because it would hurt their feelings. The starving season is only beginning and my family has no money. Yay! I've lost lots of weight. It's cool. I'm helping my family out a lot. They are my family, after all. My brother sent me about one billion drink mix things. Thank you, brother, my sugar is set. Sleping outside is great. My whole fam sleeps outside. There isn't a huge bug problem because it's the dry season and a lot of flying insects die. Oh, here is my sis and 2 of her kids sleeping outside. I opened my door and had to take a pic.

Ok, closing thought! I came back to Kedougou yesterday with the auto Lumo, or the market bus. Every wednesday an african bus thing caled an alhum takes a bunch of supplies to restock the boutiques. It also takes people. Then it drives back the same day. The ride is 2 dollars. So I hitched a ride yesterday, sitting snuggles up with African women all sittingon sacks of corn. I will be spending the next week in Kedougou, and we are going to a nearby small city called Makko for work purposes. A regional strategy meetting/regional getaway. I will take the car back to my village the following wednesday. Im taking the car because it would be hard to carry a 120lb sack of rice, a queen sized foam matress, 50ish oranges, a propane gas thing, and myself back to my village on a bike.

So a picture. Our auto Lumo got a flat tire about halfway home. This is never a big deal, btw, flat tires just haappen. So we all got off while they fixed it and I was bored so I just started taking pics and then made someone take a picture of my andd got several people to be in it with me. So here is the pic. It was taken yesterday, so it's new. yay!

The Heat is On

It's April, and for us Senegalese Peace Corps Volunteers that means its hot outside! I believe that it gets up to 130 degrees Fahrenheit in some places. I don't know how hot it gets in my village because I don't have a thermometer but when lunch is over but during the day time its hard to do much its so hot. The whole village does pretty much nothing between noon and 5:00pm. A couple of days ago after lunch I wanted to lay down. Its supposed to be a few degrees cooler in the hut so I put my plastic mat thing on the floor and laid on it and just stared at the ceiling as sweat dripped down my whole body. You have to lay carefully as well, if you have any part of your skin touching any other skin its a sweat trap, so you have to really spread out. I have a bed with a mattress but it is a heat trap and I haven't even laid on it once in a couple of weeks. Anyway after laying for about 20 minutes staring blankly and occasionally shoeing my dog away, who was curious as to why I was on the floor, I gave up trying to sleep and went back outside to sit with my sis and a bunch of other people who were braiding each other. As it turned out it was cooler outside, but only because there was a breeze. If there is no wind it is a lot hotter outside.
At night my sleep schedule is strange. After dinner I lay on a bamboo table with my sis and a kid or two and we kinda chat 9:30 then we go pull water. We have oved to pulling water at night because there are less people. Then we lay back down and fall asleep until about midnight. Then something wakes me up and I go and sleep in my backyard for the rest of the night. It gets cool and pleasant at night. I love sleeping outside. I sleepon a fold out cot. I can basically sleep on any surface now. hard serfices are no problem. Heck, yesterday I took a nap in a pile of leaves behind a rock.
The hot weather doesn't always stop me. A couple of days ago I put on my gardening hat and sunglasses and a and built a bamboo and mosquito net shade structure for my future Chinese cabbage plot. (pictured without net)

It took a good few hours of working in the hottest part of the day. My mom came up to me when I was done and told me that I shouldn't be working in the sun, that it would hurt my body. Oh well. So yeah, I have a cabbage and tomato pepeniere just because. We had planted cabbage several times and something kept eating it so I made a mosquito net cover for it and tried again. Here is my baby cabbage. Perdy, isnt it?

There is regular cabbage which might die in the heat, and there is Chinese cabbage which is supposed to be more heat tolerant. I plan on giving them both shade and when it grows I bet I can get my mom to sell it in our weekly market. Then I will let the family fight over who gets to spend the money. Argh. Oh and then there is the possibility that the heat could kill it anyway, or something else. Oh well.
So April is a special month for us Agroforestry volunteers because that is the time that most of the tree pepineres are started. I started by making my own this week, just because. I got sand (I could write a novel on my sand collecting experiences, but this is all you get), and manure, and mixed it together. I dug a hole. Then it was time to fill the tree sacks so I told my mom one morning, who was sitting around munching on a green mango, that I needed some children to put dirt in bags for me. She called over my little 6 year old brother, spouted off some rapid Pular to him and off he went. He returned with about 15 kids from ages 2-11. They filled about 150 sacks in about 20 minutes. It was an amazing sight. They were all so happy to go into the Tubabs garden area and work for her. They all worked at their own pace, some filling up sacks quickly with no problem and then there was the 2 year old who came up to me crying with an empty sack in his hand. I would help him open the sack, show him how to put dirt in it and he would approach me 5 minutes later with a sack about 25% full. That was pretty darn cute. Here is a pic of the kids filling pots. The little boy standing in the light blue is the 2 year old.

After all the sacks were filled and we moved them into the hole I dug I gave each kid a nice piece of tattoo soccer chewing gum and we had a tattoo chewing gum party. The big kids helped the little kids put their tattoos on and I helped as well. It was a fun day.

So soon hopefully the pepineres will be sprouting up all over the village. Im hoping to do a few large projects and several small ones in my first year. Oh, and I dont think I mentioned this but a couple of weeks ago we had an agroforestry conference where all the Senegal agfo volunteers came together in Kedougou and we all talked about our experiences and got to discuss work and ask questions and we got seeds. It was really helpful.
Life in the village is... happening. It's hot. I've gone on nature adventures (pictured below) a couple of times to get some time away from "o haali tun," (He was just joking) and "a fenay" (You're lying).

My sister keeps reminding me that it's all part of the culture. Still it can be tiring when people constantly try to chose your future husband and when every other word out of their mouth is them asking you for something, including the shirt off your own back. It seems sometimes as if the conversation never goes beyond any of that, which makes one occasionally wonder what worth they are to the villagers. I take my sisters words to heart though and I realize that I'm still adjusting to a new culture, and in turn I am finding out more about myself in seeing how I deal with cultural clashes. Other than wanting time to myself here and there, I generally take it pretty well. It helps to see things from their side as well. Perhaps they don't quite know what to say to a stranger and that is the easiest thing to say. Like when someone is really tall, people tend to say, "Hey, you are really tall."

Just for the record, here is an example of words I hear lots and lots and lots and lots..
I like your panya, give it to me. Give me your shirt. Hi Dienaba (me). How is your garden? When the carrots are ready will you give me some? Oh and some salad seeds to? Good morning. No, I didn't eat breakfast (lie). Can you give me something to eat? Bring me some American food from your room. I had another man try to physically drag me ino my room so I would give him some American food from it ( and no, people don't know I have food in there, they assume). Give me a mango. Help me find a white wife. Marry me. Marry my friend. I twisted my wrist, will you give me a bandage? Give me a stuffed animal. Give me a radio. Let me use your phone. I'm leaving town, give me a present. Hey what are you doing? Watering your garden? Thats nice, can I borrow your knife? Can you give me some soap? When you go to Kedougou, bring me back some phone credit. Yes, I know I can buy it here but I don't have any money and I need to make a call. Buy me an MP3 player. Let me use your knife so I can protect myself. And the list goes on. About 9 out of 10 interactions sometimes it seems starts with "give me this." One of my friends every time I see him, augments what he asks for. The last time it was 500,000francs. I realize that people are joking. But often times they aren't as well. I give all sorts of answers, some work, some don't. I walked by a group of old men one day and one of them shouted me me, "Hey! I want a white wife and I want her to come live here and give me 8 children!" I replied by saying, "That is wonderful, I want 500 million francs and 700 cows and 200 sheep." Then I would look to the man sitting next to him and ask, "And you? What do you want?"

On another note, it's great having a dog. Well it has been great. Though when people see him walking with me down the street they tell me "Hey, give me your dog." Thats awesome because people here don't even like dogs that much. Raising a dog in my village will be a fun experience. He eats rice and peanut butter and corn and beans instead of dog food. He has no fences and leashes don't exist. He is covered in fleas and ticks (I take them off every day but they keep getting back on him). He has no vaccinations, he has all his dew claws and there is no spaying and neutering here, it just doesn't exist. I'm the only one who touches my dog. I always wash my hands afterwards. So far he knows only me and everyone else is a stranger. I think it's a good way for him to start out. He is starting to follow me places like to the store or the health clinic. He is good at walking with me. He gets let out of my yard in the evening and early morning and then he often finds something dead to eat to feed is need for protein. So far he is a good dog. I would say he is only about 9 weeks old right now. This is Fatu, my baby sis and Hendu in my hut.

Thats all for now.