This blog I actually wrote a couple weeks ago, so the timing is a bit off. Indeed it is now july 6th, which means I've been at site for about seven weeks. We just had a fantastic fourth of July party. All of the volunteers in Senegal came down to Kedougou to celebrate. We cooked 4 pigs (two of them in banana leaves in the ground), danced all day, and sent fourth great big joyful shouts of love towards ol' Amerique. Twas such a time! Now back to my out of date blog post-
Two cute little girls from my compound, both named Fanta!
June 22nd, 2011: I am back in Kedougou now, celebrating the end of my first five weeks at site. We were challenged to spend these five weeks without coming in to the regional house. Forsaking the big city charms of the house here (a kind of commune-esque series of huts actually) is supposed to make us all better volunteers in the long run, tougher and better equipped to deal with the slings and arrows of outrageous village life fortune. For now, though, it seems like the Kedougou house itself is the true arrow slinger. Volunteers are fallin’ ill left and right, besieged by stomache issues and fevers and whathaveyous. I thankfully got my bout of sickness out of the way before coming here- spent four or five days lying around my hut with a high fever. But I maintain that it was not me that brought this plague to everybody else, for I had (mbe Allah tantoula) nary and intestinal problem during fevery days.
Overall things have been very good for me. With each passing week I find myself more and more comfortable in my village. I have been makin’ friends with folks and slowly learning the vocabularly to hold my own in absurd, loving and good natured insult matches: ‘You’re greedy and without manners!’ ‘Yeah? Well you lie and you are a perpetually joking woman’. ‘yeah, well ibe hoohoorin!’ I’m not exactly sure what hoohoorin is, but I think it has something to do with eating a lot (or my villagers just taught me a made up word cause it sounds so funny). I explained to them Santa Clause, how he’s jolly and eats a whole bunch and says Ho Ho all the time. We concluded he must be hoohoorin as well.
I am slowly beginning to get a sense of the health situation of my village and opportunities for future projects. Of course, malaria is one of the most immediate, grave problems. It is particularly prevalent in our region of Kedougou, and will be coming in full force now that the rains are here. Thanks to the recent volunteers Kedougou pioneered a universal bed-net distribution, so everyone should have a net to sleep under. There is still a lot of work to be done though, as many people use them improperly, claim they never got them, or refuse to use them at all. We also have a big push to teach people how to make and use neem lotion. Neem is a miracle plant that proliferates around here, the leaves of which can be used to make, among other things, a very effective bug repellent. Soon I will help conduct a big neem tourney in or Saraya region where we’ll be going from village to village teaching how to make the stuff.
Aerial view of Misirah Dantila, taken while repairing one of the roofs after a huge storm knocked off all the straw
Maternal and Child health is another huge focus of our work around here. Senegal, while blessed to have some really positive health indicators like a <1% HIV rate, has an extremely high maternal mortality rate. Too there are lots of opportunities and need to do childhood nutrition work. In Misirah Dantila and some of the surrounding villages I have been helping do baby weighing and vaccinations. Some kids are severely malnourished and every single one could use more vitamins and protein in their diets. Apart from that, I have begun to notice an inordinately high prevalence of cataracts in my village. So many old men shuffle around in their crappy flip flops (everyone in Senegal wears those cheap plastic beach flip flops), led around by a kindly child who acts as their eyes. I’ve heard stories of an eye clinic being set up here in Kedougou last year- Doctor’s from the U.S. actually came to work it. So I’ve told them I’ll do some snooping around and figure out if it’d be feasible to set up a traveling clinic in Misirah or another fairly central but way out in the bush town.
I should say that, though I’ve certainly been brainstorming and helpin’ out where I can, for the most part I’ve just been settlin’ in and hanging out these past weeks. At first it could be a source of stress, feelin’ like I’m not doing anything but chattin’ day in and day out when I should be working. But these first couple months are really meant for learning the language and the people and starting any serious projects is discouraged. So I’ve embraced the slow days and hanging out. I get up at 6:30, drink my mono corn porridge and go on my traditional round of greetings. I force myself to pass this one populated block of old, friendly, heckling women whose names are impossible to remember. And slowly I’m mixing up their last names less often, but I still get a few wrong or have to sidestep my forgetfulness by claiming I’m in a hurry to greet my father. After I make it to his compound and greet him and all the old, friendly, heckling men I am free. I hang out for a while and then take my leave. I slip back on my shoes (you have to take off your shoes to go into any important person’s house), point them in a direction, and see where the day takes me.
I almost always find some sort of adventure for my day- some folks will beckon me over to help them plant corn or a family will be repairing a hut and I lend my new found palm-rope making skills. This is cool, cause I always end up with new friends afterwards, and usually tea and invitations for lunch. I also spend a lot of time with the kids. We go on big searches through the bush for Saba’s- a green fruit whose yellow seeds taste incredibly like warheads. I also love to ask them about the animals around here. They will tell me a name of something- a Maloo for instance- that I have no idea. Then we will shift and maneuver language till we arrive at an understanding: ‘ it’s a huge, huge animal’ ‘An elephant?’ ‘No No- it lives in the river. It’s terrifying and dangerous’ ‘A crocodile? Does it eat people?’ ‘No it eats plants. And the smallest one is the size of a cow’ ‘Ah!! A Hippo!’. And so all of our conversations go about porcupines and hyenas and all manner of crazy sounding things that live around me.
I have also gone on a couple lovely trips whilst at site. Here is a picture of a trip to the waterfalls of Kafouri. My buddy Ben came off of his fungolimbi mountain and we met a current volunteer Jess there. So beautiful! I also have gone to see Marielle in Nafadji a couple of times. The last time I found a guy who claimed to play the djembe. After much goading he finally agreed to let me go get it, and pretty soon we had a big ol’ dance party going and kids were running in from everywhere. The coolest part, though, was to wake up the next morning and find all the little kids in her village making drums out of rusty coffee cans and scraps of cement bag paper.
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