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!