Catching up... [Part 3]

Still going strong with these posts where I'm catching up from activities last year.

Trouvez votre inspiration! 

The PCVs in the Kaolack region hosted our second annual girls camp last summer - and the overall theme was "Trouvez votre inspiration" (Find your inspiration).  About 12 PCVs (including me) selected 2-4 girls from their communities to attend the week-long camp.  Each day involved a different theme from health to environment to careers.  We had local female teachers there all week to act as small group leaders and assist with discussions and other activities.  There were more serious/educational sessions, such as ones on how to start a tree nursery, career options for women in Senegal, sexual health, and eating healthy, as well as more fun sessions, such as daily yoga, various sporting games (ex., kickball, softball and swimming), spa night, movie night, skits and a game show the last night.  Everyone (girls, PCVs and teachers) learned a lot and had a great time - plans are already in place for another camp this year!

Korite!

Last year marked my third Korite in Senegal.  Unlike the other Muslim holidays that I had celebrated in Kayemor, I didn't have my host mom buy fabric and get my outfit made - I bought my outfit myself.  In good Senegalese fashion, I also had my hair braided by my namesake's daughter and had my right hand and feet decorated by my friend Yassay.

Yassay showing off her Korite outfit.

My host mom, Soukaye, looking very fancy in her new clothes!

Two girls in my family who also wanted to show off their new clothes - and their modeling skills! - for the camera.  :)

Other kids in my family all dressed up!

Yassay even wrote my Senegalese name, "Ndeye Diaw", down the ring toe on my right foot.

Puddles!

Whenever there is a big rain, the area between my hut and the rest of my family's compound floods, which provides a fun traipsing ground for the kids in my family.

Sine Saloum 96.4 FM Radio Communautaire


Starting about 8 months into my service through the end of my time in Kayemor, I made a radio show for the first Monday of every month for the local community radio station in Kaolack, 96.4 FM.  I always pre-recorded the show since that allowed me to interview agricultural technicians, farmers, development workers or other people involved in work related to agriculture and/or development in my area.  These interviews were much more effective than me talking for a whole hour because the people I interviewed were always native Wolof speakers.  Even though I worked really hard (and still work hard!) to perfect my Wolof, I am still far from sounding like a native speaker, especially on the radio.  Peace Corps Senegal bought some digital audio recorders for all the PCVs who make radi shows, so I used one of those to record my interviews and then edited them with Audacity, free audio editing software, throwing in some fun American music in the pauses in the interviews.  Then I would convert the show to an MP4 file, which the radio station would play during my radio show hour.


These photos were taken one day when I went to drop off my radio show for the next week. These are just a handful of the many people who volunteer at the radio station - either working the controls or hosting weekly shows.

Volunteer Visit:


Last September, as my 2 years in Kayemor were coming to an end, I hosted my replacement (who was still just a Trainee then) and another Trainee for a few days in Kayemor.  Many PCVs, when their 2 year service is over, leave their village or town just as another PCV is arriving, with the goal that the projects that the leaving PCV started will be continued by the just-arriving PCV.  So, just as I replaced another PCV, someone else replaced me in Kayemor.  During those 3 days in Kayemor, I gave Tom (my replacement) and Amanda (who is stationed in a village just 6km away from Kayemor - a new site for a PCV) a tour of Kayemor and the surrounding area.  We met tons of people and had fun wandering around seeing the sites of Kayemor: goats climbing on the broken school wall, the marabou's mosque, millet silhouetted by the setting sun, baobob fruit on the tree, rice, a donkey, goats playing soccer, my backyard, the road and river between Tom and Amanda's villages, a fisherman, and the "bridge of death".  It was a whirlwind tour, but I think it helped give them a better idea of what Volunteer life and work in the village is like.

Catching up... [Part 2]

Here's the second of what looks to be several posts devoted solely to catching up...

One of my host father's older sisters lives in our compound in Kayemor, but she has a daughter, Uma, who lives in Dakar with her husband and son.  She came back and spent several months in Kayemor with her mom after her son, Mohammet, was born, which is very common here.  That's when I first met Mohammet, but then I didn't see him again for several months - until she came back toward the end of the rainy season to visit.  I have had many women offer to give me their sons to take back to America, which is a cultural way to say that they trust and like me, so I usually respond with sure, of course, perhaps once the child is done breast feeding, or whatever excuse I can come up with that is applicable.  After just a couple hours with Mohammet, I couldn't wait for the time with Uma would ask me to take him back to the States with me - he is soooooo cute, so quiet and calm, loves sitting in my lap or being tied to my back, and has eyes that would melt anyone's heart.  Uma would have to ask me at some point, right?  She is my host cousin after all!  Alas, Uma never once asked me if I wanted to take Mohammet - so finally I had to ask her myself: "Could I take Mohammet back to the States with me when I go home?"  And guess what her response was? "Ummmm....no."  What?  That was never an answer I had encountered before!  So I had to content myself with holding Mohammet and playing with him and walking around with him tied to my back as much as I could.  I even made sure I spent time with him when he and Uma were in a nearby town visiting other relatives and I happened to go there for work, which is where the following 2 photos were taken.

Mohammet, as always, was content to simply be tied to my back and observe the world from there.

Moringa Tournee


During the rainy season several PCVs in the Kaolack region organized a Moringa tournee - which essentially involved going around to as many PCVs sites as possible and starting Moringa intensive beds in school compounds or community gardens and then having a training on the importance of moringa (it's called "the miracle tree" because it's so nutritious and easy to grow), how to propagate it and how to incorporate it into foods to improve nutrition (especially for children and pregnant/breast-feeding women).  I helped organize the activities in Kayemor.  We planted 2 intensive beds at the elementary school (both of which got eaten by goats...as happens to so many trees and gardens here!) and had a talk about moringa - which is where these photos were taken.  The drawing I'm holding up is showing how to make moringa leaf powder, which can be added to any food, such as a mixture of peanut butter, millet, milk and sugar for young children (which is what is in the 2 bowls in the 2nd photo below).

Visual aid showing how to make moringa powder.

All the kids and women listening to our discussion about moringa- with moringa porridge (with rice, peanut butter, sugar, oil and powdered milk) in front of them).

The girls pounding dried moringa leaves to turn it into powder.

School Gardening!!!

I've blogged about school gardening before, but here are some photos I haven't posted.  

We started a vegetable nursery with the students in a nearby town and here I am explaining to them the importance of labeling the rows and ho to properly care for your nursery.

The students and teachers in Kayemor dug garden beds of several different shapes: square (shown here), rectangle (shown later), triangle (also shown later) and circle.

The vegetable nursery was looking great here!

These kids were weeding the vegetable nursery and making sure that the walls around it were strong enough to keep the water in when they watered.

This is my host cousin, Ndiaga, showed off his strength by digging lots of the garden beds and then stood back to assess his work.

Another Senegalese outfit:

I had a small amount of fabric left over from something so I had a skirt made out of it, with a matching top.  The first day I wore it, I went to visit my counterpart and a young guy at his house liked the outfit so much that he wanted a photo of himself with me...or maybe that was just his excuse to get a picture taken of himself with the American?  :)

Collaboration with the Farmer to Farmer program:


About 9 months into my service I got connected with a USDA-funded program called Farmer to Farmer, which works to connect American farmers with specific skill sets with other farmers around the world who have a need/desire to learn one or some of these skill sets.  These American farmers volunteer (and are hence called Volunteers) to travel to a country to provide trainings or other technical sessions to share their needed/desired technical knowledge.  I don't even really remember exactly how I first learned about the program here in Senegal, but several different Volunteers came to Kayemor to have small trainings with the local farmers about composting, millet seed storage and other topics.  I worked with the Farmer to Farmer facilitator in Kaolack (who works in the Kaolack region as well as the Kaffrine and Fatick regions) to organize these events, assisted the Volunteers with information about farming in Senegal prior to their arrival (since some of them don't have much experience with farming in Africa, though others have extensive experience in international agriculture), and helped answer their questions while they were here about culture and life here (among many other things).   I was also able to help the farmers here if they had follow-up questions since I could obviously contact the Volunteers via email to ask them the farmers' questions.  After one year, the program expanded and added another facilitator to the Tambacounda region (who also travels out to the Matam and Kedougou regions).  My host uncle actually ended up getting the job, so it's been fun staying in contact with him and also meeting some of his Volunteers here in Dakar (typically as they are getting ready to leave the country).


The pictures below are from when the facilitator in Kaolack, Yaguemar, was training in the new facilitator in Tambacounda, Abibou.  Yaguemar had a Volunteer, Ken, who lead small discussions with farmers in several different villages in the Kaolack region about how to control a very noxious weed, striga.  This weed is particularly detrimental to millet here, but it also attacks sorghum and corn (though a different variety of striga attacks each crop).  Ken brought small pamphlets with good drawings of what striga is, it's life cycle, and how to control it (ex. pull it up before it goes to seed and implement crop rotation).  

Tired? Just have some cow leg soup!


Every day provided a new experience for me - and one day last August or September, I came out to the middle of my compound to find my host mom, Soukaye, and the girls in my family boiling and de-skinning the bottom quarter of 4 cow legs.  When I inquired as to why she was doing that, she explained that if your body is tired, you can make a soup of sorts out of cow legs and drink that and you'll feel as good as new.  Since she was feeling particularly worn out, she decided to buy some cow legs and make this soup for dinner.  I wasn't feeling tired enough at the time to be confident that I could turn this into an effective experiment so I graciously declined her offer to try some of the soup.  While I'm quite certain this recipe turns out to work because of the placebo effect, it still would be interesting to test it out sometime...

It's a boy!!


Last August my namesake's son's wife had a baby boy.  This was their second child, but first son, so it was a big deal.  In solid Muslim tradition, the baby was named and baptized a week after he was born.  As always seems to be the case with these events here, I got the impression that it's a more important day for the mom than for the baby: she got her hair and make-up done, got a fancy new outfit for the event and was more or less the star of the day - guests wanted photos taken with her more than with the baby!

The local religious leaders, including my host uncle who is an imam, shaved the baby's head and gave him a blessing.

My host aunt, the sister of my namesake (the baby's grandmother), carried him back to the group of guests after his blessing.

The older sister of the new baby threw several temper tantrums throughout the day - hopefully it's not an indication that she'll prove to be a jealous older sister rather than a helpful one!

The proud parents!

What a beautiful family!