Thanksgiving in Kaolack, Senegal!

Well we had quite a Thanksgiving feast here (on the day before Thanksgiving because there is a big Islamic celebration on Friday/Saturday [i.e. “Black Friday” and the day after it] so we all wanted extra time to travel back to our respective villages for that). Our meal consisted of 3 turkeys (2 grilled on a big enclosed charcoal grill [see picture below] and one deep fat fried), mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potato mash (we have a different kind of sweet potato/yam here, but it was still just as delicious!), squash soup/mash (it was kind of thick soup), home-made rolls, cranberry sauce (from a can, but good nonetheless), deviled eggs, macaroni and cheese, cucumber, tomato, and carrot salad with home-made balsamic vinaigrette, lentil and veggie soup, and millet bread (instead of cornbread, which was sooooooo delicious and Kenny totally just made the recipe up as he went since we couldn’t find corn meal/flour). Everything was incredibly delicious – we’re pretty sure we had the best Thanksgiving meal in Senegal, even better than the thanksgiving dinner at the Ambassador’s house (where some PCVs ate). :)

Dessert consisted of several different options, all of which were pretty untraditional Thanksgiving Day desserts except for the pumpkin log (and Teresa actually used a squash, not a pumpkin) and apple crisp (since it’s easier to make in a large quantity than apple pie and just as tasty). Teresa made the pumpkin log, pineapple upside-down cake, and apple crisp. I made snickerdoodle cookies and peanut butter brownies with chocolate butter-cream frosting and chocolate sprinkles. The brownies were a huge hit – I am definitely going to be making them again!!

It was quite challenging cooking for 35+ people in such a small kitchen, but we made it work by planning ahead, making a schedule, starting the night before, and cooking all night. We were right on schedule, though – we started eating just a little bit after 5 (the turkey carving is what held us up at the end and you can only have so many people around a turkey with sharp knives…). :)

We were all so full after dinner – as is supposed to be the case after Thanksgiving dinner – that we couldn’t clean at all, but just had to sit/lay around and chat. What was so great about our dinner above and beyond the tastiness of it all, was that, after all the expenses, it still only cost each of us 3,200 cfa, which is about $7. I think that’s saying something about our creativity and resourcefulness that we were able to make a genuine American meal here so cheaply (and quickly for that matter – though about 5 people were cooking all day and anywhere from 5-10 more people were helping out with various things, like chopping, stirring, doing dishes, etc.). But creativity and resourcefulness are qualities a PCV must have – and if he/she doesn’t have them, he/she learns them very quickly! :)

Bissap – tea and sorbet!!!

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the girls in the girls group in Kayemor I’m working with have just started harvesting their (beautiful) red bissap flowers. Last year it was transformed into tea and sold in the States and Europe, which will happen again this year, too. Also, though (I just found this out!), Ben and Jerry’s just made a deal with the NGO the helps guide the girls group to buy some of the bissap, too, to make bissap sorbet! I have no idea when this product will actually hit the market, but keep your eyes open because I’m sure it will be amazing!

CORRECTION: I was misinformed earlier – Ben and Jerry’s is interested in making bissap sorbet, but they have yet to make any sort of formal deal.

Here’s a close-up of these beautiful (and tasty – when boiled or soaked in water with sugar) flower:




The girls’ bissap field:

Giving Thanks for Food: Food Security and Seed Storage

It’s almost Thanksgiving and ‘tis the season to be thankful. And, as I think about all the great food we PCVs are pulling together for our Thanksgiving feast here in Kaolack, I can’t help but be thankful for food – and not just for the food itself (for how tasty it is and for how it sustains us), but also for the people that work so hard to grow it and transport it and sell it, for the sun and the soil that support the plants that become our food (directly or, as is increasingly the case in the States, indirectly), for the researchers and educators who help improve and adapt agricultural activities, and for the ways in which communities (large and small, local and international) can be built and strengthened through food. As an ag volunteer here in Senegal, the main part of my job is helping people grow better food – better in terms of increasing yields, increasing diversity, and increasing sustainability. This is essentially what is meant by the term “food security” – the ability to grow enough food for yourself (whether that “self” is a single individual, a family, a community, or a nation) to sustain yourself all year round. This concept focuses are the ability to literally grow the food yourself, rather than growing something else to sell to have money to buy other food, but it certainly does not exclude the possibility of trade and specialization (as is the current trend throughout the world). One way to help ensure food security is to improve farmers’ ability to store their seed from year to year during the dry season in a community-based seed storage facility. Seed storage in and of itself is helpful for food security because it allows farmers to have seed from the previous year to plant without having to worry about having money to buy seed (since the time right before the rainy season is usually when people are shortest on money) nor worry about if there will be seed available (based on many different factors that could affect this, like the government, seed companies, and roads and other infrastructure issues). And having a community-based seed storage facility helps farmers because it is a safer, more secure, better place to store seed than the average seed storage location for an individual family because it’s a actual separate building with (in theory) secure walls, ceiling, and doors so animals (and people) can’t get in and eat or steal seed. Having a common building for seed storage also means that farmers are less likely to eat their seed (if they are getting low on money and food), and it means seed is usually properly stored (in terms of using the correct chemical treatments if necessary) since everyone is storing their seed together. All in all, a seed storage facility is one of many ways to improve food security in a community. The PCV before me in Kayemor, Kate, met with farmers, community leaders, and a local NGO when she first got to Kayemor to determine what the community saw was their primary need/desire. They determined that a community seed storage facility was it – so she applied for a Peace Corps Partnership to raise money for the building: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=685-104 She has raised quite a bit of money already, and the community is contributing 25% of the total funds, but we still need to raise a little under $4,000. We would really like to have the money raised by January so construction of the building can begin during the cool, dry season, and be done before the start of the rainy season. Check out the website and let me know what you think of it! Part of what I want to do through this Peace Corps Partnership and building is not just to raise the money itself, but to create an ongoing relationship between people in the States and people in Kayemor, so everyone involved can learn and grow.
On another note related to food security, Peace Corps Senegal and USAID are working together on a new project focused on food security in Senegal, which will helpfully pull together the benefits of Peace Corps’ grassroots focus with the additional funding USAID can provide. I don’t know a whole lot about it right now, but as things develop I will do my best to post updates as I learn about them. For right now, check out this article from The Economist: http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14926122

My HUT!

In as few words as possible, my hut is amazing. It is big and spacious, has a light bulb and an outlet, has two doors (though unfortunately no windows), gets good air flow (which also means it gets really dusty – but what doesn’t here?!?!), has a nice backyard (with basil and mint and 2 young papaya trees that will hopefully produce fruit next year!) with an outdoor bathroom and “shower” area (for my bucket baths), is in the back corner of my family’s compound so I can feel part of the family but still can escape if I need to, is decorated with a world map and Senegal map and postcards and pictures already (and will be even more so with time – and I hope to paint a small mural of sorts, too!), has a nice bed and “desk” and dresser and bookshelf, is clean and organized, and feels like my home for the next 2 years (which is good, since it is my home for the next 2 years). Here are some pictures to help elaborate on the coolness of my hut:

My desk and front door (on the right):

Just to the right of my front door - my bike, world map, postcards, second chair, trunks, etc:

My backdoor, bookshelf, seed storage containers (yellow buckets and big water jugs), the mat for the kids to sit and play on, and the side of my dresser (with fabric hanging over the front):

Essentially the same stuff, with a slightly different angle (my water filter is featured prominently in the center there), and the Senegal map is off to the left:

My bed, mosquito net (yellow-ish thing hanging down from the ceiling), top of my dresser, desk, and front door:

My bathing area to the left (with my bucket of water and pan in the back to collect any extra water that I then use to water my basil, mint, and papaya trees) and my "toilet" to the right:

My backyard - nothing planted in it yet, but I might plant some stuff...or use it for my tree nursery area in the spring:

It’s getting’ chilly!

It now is getting chilly at night here – down in the low 60s. All the Senegalese people think it’s really cold here now – the women bundle up in shawls and the boys and men wear pants for sure (the men regardless pretty much always wear pants, though boys/teenagers often wear shorts), and jackets, too, if they have them. I’ve started sleeping in pants and a long sleeve shirt at night – and usually end up pulling up my sheet over me by morning. It is so amazing. Literally AMAZING. I still get hot and sweaty (a bit) during the day – the sun is still hot for sure (weather.com claims it gets in the mid-90s here still…but it really doesn’t seem that hot!), but it cools off nicely by evening. If I don’t get a chance to take my (often second) bucket bath of the day until after the sun has set, I can almost get the goose-bumps. Almost. :) The guys in my compound run back to their room after their bucket baths at night with their “towel” (i.e. a big cut of fabric) wrapped around them tightly because they’re so cold. I can’t wait to be able to wear pants all day and feel comfortable in them (i.e. not really get hot at all, or at least not too much). I think that should happen pretty soon – certainly by January at least. I can’t wait. Everyone here thinks I’m crazy when I say that it feels so nice now that it’s so “cold” – I tell them it really is not cold here, it’s cold in my home in the States right now. I tell them to imagine being surrounded by ice (since many people don’t understand the word for snow, nor what it means/looks or feels like) – and that is what Minnesota is like now (not really, but it will be soon, and the word for “now” and “soon” are the same in Wolof, so it works). When I told Suckeye this, she just looked at me and said, “If I went to Minnesota, I would die.” And I said, “Yeah, well, you might, but you’d learn to just wear a lot of layers of clothes like we do, and then you’d be fine.” (Or I more or less said that in my somewhat broken Wolof. I think she got the idea, though.)

More things I’ve done

- Plucked chickens out of a tree (do that almost every night now for my mom since we have 2 that like to chill in a tree in our courtyard, while the rest are dutiful and go to the chicken coop each night)
- Biked to Ndiba (a town about 20 km away from Kayemor from the main road), went to the weekly market there (called a "lumma"), and swam in the Bao Bolon River (pronounced very similar to “Babylon”) with 2 other PCVs
- Shelled more peanuts (thank goodness for athletic tape – my fingers would be raw if I hadn’t had it!) and also dropped them in the air from one big plastic bin to another to separate out the shells from the actual nuts
- Cooked millet at 6am with my mom

- Cooked peanuts in the evening with my mom and other women

- Played soccer with boys (mostly 10-15 year olds), and run around the field with older guys (while the younger boys just messed around with the ball)
- Actually made tea (I learned how to in TawaFall, but couldn’t quite get the technique down of pouring the tea from cup to cup to cool it down and get a foam on top, but now I can!) [Side note: my nickname among my family and a few other people like Yassa is “Xiim” which is the verb “to make tea” because the people in TawaFall would sometimes use that for when they were actually making tea, so I said it one of my first days in Kayemor and they all got a kick out of it because no one in Kayemor really uses that word…oh nicknames. :) Gotta love ‘em.]
- Went to Kayemor’s daily vegetable market, bought the vegetables for lunch, and then peeled and cut them as they should be (according to Senegalese cooking techniques) – all by myself! (I’ve done all that before, but with my mom, never by myself.)
- Learned how to open, fill (that’s easy!), and tie (quite challenging at first, but once I got it down, I got in quite a bit of a rhythm) the little plastic bags my mom (and the other kids in my compound) fill every day with bisaap juice to freeze and make “radi” (that my aunt then sells the next day, mostly to kids, for 25 cfa, which is about 5-10 cents)
- Made a garden in the fenced in area in my compound where my mom grows corn, cassava, and millet during the rainy season, has a couple papaya trees, and has a vegetable garden during the dry/cold season
- Locked myself in my hut and worked on my computer a few mornings, mainly to read past documents the PCV before me in Kayemor had emailed to me and to write up stuff for my blog (like this!)
- Had bisaap harvesting training with the girls in my girls group, and harvested a little of the bisaap flowers (and cut my fingers in a few places while doing so because my knife was so sharp and I am so used to dull knives)
- Started reading “A Short History of Nearly Everything” by Bill Bryson; still have yet to finish “Huckleberry Finn” (the first book I started here) but decided a wanted a little more intellectual stimulation one day, so pulled that book off my shelf [I am probably the only PCV in Senegal right now that has not read an entire book yet during our service so far…as much as I love reading, I just think that sitting and chatting as best I can with my family and friends is better for me right now in terms of community integration, learning Wolof, getting to know my family, etc. etc. – and I still have plenty of time to read all the books I want to]

Observations

[Disclaimer: Below is a list of observations I have made regarding life in Senegal as I see and interpret it. In no way is it meant to reflect everyone’s life nor their view of life in Senegal.]


There is an enormous gap in education levels among people here. For example, my mom, Suckeye, never went to school and is illiterate. Most of the children here go to school, but that’s because Kayemor is a “wealthier” village (it’s all a matter of perspective since they would still be considered extremely poor in the states) – and because we actually have a school (children come from all the surrounding villages to go to school here). A couple weeks ago I met a man who studied at the university in Dakar and at a university in Brazil, knows several languages, has travelled around South America and Europe a bit – and now lives in Nioro and works with women who are largely illiterate, never went to school, and have never even been to Dakar let alone another country (besides maybe the Gambia since we’re so close to it). While we have a similar gap in the US, it isn’t as extreme as here. The average American can read and write, knows generally about the world (ex. how many continents there are, that the ocean is salty, what snow and sand are), can do basic math, has general knowledge about the human body and other animals, can name a handful of famous people (other than just Barack Obama) and what they’re famous for, and knows generally about current events and what’s going on in the world. I’m not sure if the average Senegalese person could do these things – certainly if they’ve had anything beyond a primary school education they could, but many people (especially adult women right now – since widespread education is still in the process of spreading to the rural areas and there has been less of an emphasis on educating women in the past) haven’t even had that and it can make life much more challenging for these people for many reasons. For example, Suckeye has a cell phone but since she can’t read, she can’t save anyone’s number in her phone (I’ve saved other peoples numbers in her phone for her several times already – though that’s often largely useless since she usually ends up memorizing the numbers because she can’t read the names of the people in her address book…) or set the alarm on her phone if she, for example, wants to get up really early (like 5 am) to cook the millet so she doesn’t have to do it when it’s hot during the day. Also, when I’ve pointed at various places on the world map in my room (ex. Minnesota is where my parents and brother and his fiancée live, while Colorado is where my sister lives; and Europe is north and east of Senegal), she doesn’t really understand. I’m not sure if anyone has ever explained to her what the world is like, but maybe when my Wolof is better I will be able to.


Students here have a much more casual relationship with their teachers here. I say this slightly hesitantly, because I’m sure it’s not always the case and I’m not sure “casual” is the right word, but I’ve noticed it in several different aspects and scenarios, which I will try to explain. First, for example, my friend Yassa washes her French teacher’s clothes. This would be strange in the States because men do laundry there, but here men generally don’t wash clothes (they know how to, but it is part of the women’s job to do laundry, so if a man isn’t married yet but not living at home or with other family members, he finds some other girl/woman to do his laundry – and in this case, it’s Yassa, one of his students, whom he pays to wash his clothes). (I was glad to find out that he pays her because it’s hard work and takes a long time – all morning, or longer if she’s washing her own clothes and the clothes of other people in her family, too). I went with Yassa to go get his clothes one evening, and when we got to his room (he lives at the peñc mi, which translates as “public place”, along with many other teachers – so that means that it is one large compound with several buildings that consist of a row of rooms that act as bedrooms, living rooms, etc. with a door out to the central area of the compound) he was in the middle of praying, so we just went into his room and sat down on his bed and waited for him to finish. Then when we were done we had a nice conversation about me and my work here, and what I used to do in the States, and other stuff like that before Yassa’s teacher gathered up his clothes, wrapped them in a big towel (which I carried on my head back to Yassa’s house because I wanted to help out), and gave money to Yassa.
Another evening I went with Yassa to invite the doctor at the hospital in Kayemor over for lunch the next day because he was interested in getting to know me and learn more about my work here [this isn’t creepy like it kind of sounds – it is not uncommon here at all for people to be invited over or to just go to someone else’s house for the day to sit and eat lunch and drink tea and talk], but when we got to his house, we learned he was traveling for several days so we couldn’t talk with him. Instead, though, Yassa’s math and biology teacher was there reading and watching TV along with another young man, so we stayed and talked for quite a while about lots of different things. While Yassa may not have normally stayed there and chatted for such a long time with her teachers if I hadn’t been there, the thing I find most interesting is that it’s not uncommon or strange for her to sit and chat with her teachers outside of school in their homes or other places. This is just an extension of the fact that community is such an important and ever-present aspect of life here. Students are often related to their teachers (even if very remotely, it still counts) and interact with their teachers in many ways outside of class because the community is so small (by American standards). I guess this is probably very similar to life in a small rural town in the States, though I still think the emphasis on community here is more prevalent than even in a small town in the US. I wish I could have spent more time with my teachers growing up. I continue to keep in touch with several teachers (from elementary school, middle school, high school, and college) and I am still learning from them. As children and young adults I think we tend to greatly under-appreciate the wealth of knowledge, guidance, and direction teachers can offer if we are willing to be open to them and have the opportunity to learn from them not only in the classroom but outside the classroom as well. [I refrained from saying “out in the real world” because I think the classroom is the real world – it certainly has been real to me for the past 19+ years I’ve spent in a classroom.] Anyway, I’m not sure if students here take advantage of this opportunity to interact with and learn from their teachers outside the classroom, but at least it is easier for them to do so here than it usually is in the US. And not only can students learn from their teachers, but teachers can learn from their students – about what life is like for them now (because invariably it is different from when they were growing up, no matter how young the teacher is), what activities they’re involved in, what their families are like, what they like and dislike, what they think about school/the town/the world/life, etc. etc.


The topic of community is so important I think it deserves its own section. I’m not sure the best way to go about talking about it, so I’ll just give examples of ways the strength of the community is expressed. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this before or not, but kids just roam freely here and parents don’t worry because they know older kids and other adults will watch out for them and keep them safe. If a person has a problem, family and friends (which is essentially almost everyone) are quick to help out. Families are very large and fluid – my mom’s brother’s wife’s step sister’s niece, for example, would be considered family and could come stay with us for any amount of time without any problems. We do, in fact, have 3 students staying at our house right now (and another one across the street staying with my aunt and uncle) who are related to me in some way (through my mom – have yet to figure out the details…but I know none of them have the same last name as my mom). They sometimes go back to their homes on the weekends, but not always. They act and are treated almost like Suckeye’s (my mom) children – the girl helps with the cooking, sweeping, dishes, laundry, etc., while the boys run errands and do manual labor activities (like building millet-stalk fences), and, in return, they get beds (the boys share one bed and the girl shares a bed with my brother who’s 6 – not at all uncommon) and meals here. I’m not exactly sure if their parents give them money to give to Suckeye or if they give her other things (ex. milk, bisaap, fabric, etc.) or if they don’t give her anything directly but all involved just know that they will help her out whenever she needs it (or just give her things they know she’ll like or want). In any case, community is an incredibly important aspect of life here and I’m sure I will be writing about many more examples of how community is expressed here in the months and years to come.


No one says “please”, and “thank yous” are limited. It is part of the culture here to not really say “please” ever (I don’t even know what the word for “please” is in Wolof), and to not say “thank you” very much (though people certainly do say it). Instead, people just make demands. For example, instead of saying “Can I have some water, please?” people say “Give me water.” And instead of saying “Will you help me shell my peanuts, please?” people say “Shell peanuts for me.” These demands have gotten on my nerves a bit at times because I am so used to being very polite, asking very nicely for things I need or want, and saying “please” and “thank you” all the time. However, I am gradually getting used to this fact of life here. I think part of the reason people don’t say “please” and “thank you” that much is because of the community culture here – since everyone shares everything so much, it is not strange or rude by any means to say “Give me some water” or “Shell peanuts for me” because the other person will most definitely say the same thing (or something similar) sometime later. What I think I will struggle with the most is figuring out if I want to change my habit of being polite and saying “please” and “thank you” to fit into the culture better here, or if I want to maintain that aspect of myself/American culture. I mean, I already stand out since I’m the only white person in Kayemor (except when other Peace Corps people come to visit), and they already think I’m a bit strange because I wear different clothes, can’t talk in Wolof very well, wear a helmet when I ride my bike, etc. etc., so it wouldn’t really make a difference if I continued to ask politely for things and say “thank you” a lot. I’m not sure if it would help people feel more comfortable with me if I acted like everyone else in this respect or not. I do think, though, that by saying “thank you” a lot and being polite I can help teach Senegalese people about American culture, which is one of the three goals of the Peace Corps, so perhaps that’s what I’ll continue to do.


Money is a tricky issue here, just like it is in the US. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard the phrase “Amul xaalis fii” which means “There is no money here [in the village, in Senegal, in Africa, etc.]”. Since people have so little money here, they are always concerned about how much money they have, how much they’re spending, etc. One way I’ve seen this concern expressed very clearly is at baptisms. When women go to a baptism (and they go to them all the time since people are constantly having babies and since essentially everyone is invited to a baptism), they are expected to give money to the new mother (and her family). Usually the women all gather at some point late in the afternoon after lunch and after the dishes are done (and after those that were cooking/doing dishes have changed into their really nice clothes) to give/collect the money and record the amount of money given. The women have notebooks with lists of people’s baptisms, the people who attended each baptism, and how much money each woman gave. This is because when a woman attends another woman’s baby’s baptism she is expected to give the same amount of money (if not more) to that woman as that woman had given her when her baby had a baptism. As an American, where money is important but not exactly put on display quite as much and quite as regularly, this tradition seems a bit bizarre and condescending (in that it seems like the women don’t trust each other to give them money at their babies’ baptisms so they must record it), but it isn’t bizarre or condescending here – it is just a fact of their culture and another way community is strengthened because they are able to show how much they’ve been able to support and provide for other families.


Education is a major issue everywhere, and especially in developing countries. I was told here earlier in September that school should start early to mid October provided the teachers don’t go on strike because the government hasn’t gotten their act together to pay them. As far as I know, school started on time this year. But I have noticed (mainly through conversations with my friend Yassa and the students that live at my house) that classes are cancelled all day for the days when the teachers need to go into the nearest big town (Nioro) to get paid, which has happened at least once (and is maybe a monthly or bimonthly event) – there isn’t a direct deposit system for them as far as I know so they have to go to the bank (I assume…?) to get their paychecks. Also, there are no substitute teachers; if teachers are sick, traveling, at a baptism/wedding/funeral (which happens a lot), or whatever, then there just isn’t class. This is just one of many complicating factors that makes going to school/learning here so much harder than it (generally) is for students in the States. Another factor is the fact that students travel from all around Kayemor to go to school here. I’m sure it’s more like situations in really remote, rural places in the US. But I think there are definitely more schools in the States than here. And there is an actual school bus system in the US, whereas here the students have to walk, ride a bike (rare), ride a horse (even more rare), take a charette, or take the big alhams into to Kayemor everyday (or, like the students in my compound, once a week and stay over at a relative’s house). This obviously takes time and can become expensive over the extent of the school year (paying for the charette and/or alham every day or every week), plus since students are in school they can’t work in the fields as much, or do other money-gaining work. Students do definitely work, though – they go to the fields in the later afternoons/evenings before the sun sets around 7pm; they do the laundry; they help cook; they do the dishes; they sweep and clean; they build fences and repair tools; etc etc. This obviously takes time away from when the students could be studying and is very tiring (since most of this work is physically-demanding), which is another factor that makes learning more challenging here. (I definitely recognize that students in the States work, too – both for their families like students here, and for pay, in restaurants, stores, etc., but the work here really isn’t an option like it is for many students in the states – they choose to work because they want to have personal spending money, for example.) All in all, I am very impressed by the dedication and desire that I have seen in students here (not all, but many) to learn and improve their lives through education.

Jumping right in

Ever since getting to Senegal I’ve tried to not hesitate and be shy about trying new things, and I made sure to continue this trend when I got to Kaymore. My first evening in Kaymore my friend Tomsir came over to say hello and talk about me continuing to teach him English since that’s what the PCV in Kaymore before me did. I said I’d be happy to, so we made a plan for him to come over at least 3 evenings a week during which I would teach him English and he would help me with my Wolof. It works out very well since it gives me something to practice and prepare for each day. And we have a lot of fun – several times we’ve had long laughing fits because, for example, Tomsir will say something and I will have no idea if what he is saying, not even if it is Wolof or English. Good times for sure. And it’s nice that we have each other to complain to about how hard it is to learn another language – but usually we focus on providing each other support and encouragement since we both recognize that complaining isn’t going to help anything.

My first morning in Kaymore I went out to my uncle’s field with my mom (Soukeye), brothers, and several other women and young boys to gather the peanut plants into piles after they were uprooted by a young man (who works for my uncles) driving a team of oxen pulling a plow. It’s not that difficult of work – more straining on the back and hamstrings than physically exhausting. And the dust (because it’s such sandy soil) was annoying – it wasn’t long before my arms and feet had turned a light red because they were covered with soil. This part of the peanut harvesting was soon finished and this past week we’ve been picking up the remaining peanuts in the soil – even more tedious work but no one complains too much. In the afternoons we shell the peanuts. I got massive blisters on my index finger and thumb on my right hand from shelling peanuts the first day, but taped them after that and it was much better. I think the saving grace about all this tedious work is that the women (and girls and boys if they’re not in school) all do it together so they can chat the whole time. My Wolof is decent enough that I can sometimes follow their conversations and even participate, especially when Soukeye talks with me (or repeats what other people are asking/saying to me) because she is really good about talking slowly, using simple phrases, and acting things out which the other women haven’t totally caught on to yet.

Other mornings I’ve gone to the daily market in Kaymore with Soukeye to buy vegetables and fish for lunch and dinner. Then I’ve helped Soukeye (and my aunts on other days) cook lunch. They were impressed with the knowledge I already had about cooking here so I can thank my family in TawaFall for that! :) I am still continually amazed at how different cooking is here compared to the States…that topic probably deserves its own post at some point…

Almost every afternoon or evening my friend Yassa comes over to my house or I go to her house to hang out and chat, even if it’s for just 20 minutes. We talk in Wolof and English since she knows a fair amount of English. She is just a super outgoing friendly girl (17 years old) and is also very patient with the language barrier. I’m sure we’ll be good friends – in fact I’m already not looking forward to when she leaves Kaymore next October to start “lysée” (high school) in Kaolack for 3 years before university. It is also really nice that she lives right next door and her (much older) step brother is my counterpart, Moustapha. (They have the same dad, who passed away a few years ago, but different mothers – a common occurrence in Senegal since men can have up to 4 wives in Islam.) I went to school with Yassa one morning to see what school was like here. Elementary school is confined to a group of cement buildings around a shady area, but classes for “college” (middle school/junior high) are scattered all over Kaymore, much like college is often in the States. The two classes Yassa had that day were math and biology, which worked out well for me since math involves numbers so the language barrier is minimized and I love biology and many biologically-related words in French are very similar to their English counterparts so I could follow what was being taught in class relatively easily. In math we learned about solving complicated square root problems – something I haven’t done in years so I was struggling with it more than everyone else I think. After the teacher, Mousier Fall, taught for a while, he had the students come up as they wished to do practice problems in their book on the blackboard. He invited me to come up toward the end of class, which was quite nerve-wracking (I was back in high school – only now it was worse because I could barely speak the language!), but I solved the problem (incorrectly at first) so it was fun in the end. Yassa has Mousier Fall for math and biology, so it was nice that I didn’t have to explain who I was and why I was there twice. In biology we learned about the nervous system – how the central nervous system is different from the peripheral nervous system and how messages are transmitted through the nervous system. It is such a fascinating topic (and I took a class at St. Olaf on the nervous system so I’ve studied it a bit) that it was hard for me to not want to explain things in more detail than Mousier Fall was teaching. All in all it was a great morning and made me actually miss school and formal learning. Yes, I’m a nerd and proud of it. :) Yassa and I have also had short dance parties in her room with one of her friends, Marem, which are obviously fun. We biked out to the field that the girls’ group Yassa is vice president of has bisaab (aka hibiscus), sesame, millet, and cashew trees. And when I say “we biked” I mean I biked and Yassa sat on the back metal storage place above my rear tire (is there an actual name for that?) – even though I had put my towel down as padding her butt was pretty sore by the time we got back since it’s not exactly the most comfortable place to sit on for 4-5 km. Everyone we passed really enjoyed watching us go by – not only is a toubob going by, but it’s a toubob on a bike with a Senegalese girl sitting on back. I’ll have to have someone take a picture of us like that sometime. For now, here’s a picture of Yassa in the bisaab field – rafett na! (Very nice!)

My first Monday in Kaymore I had my first Wolof lesson with Malik. Mostly we talked about how things were going so far and I asked him questions about words I had heard but didn’t know and words I wanted or phrases to know. I anticipate these to be very productive classes, though slightly more disorganized than the Wolof classes I had during training since Malik isn’t an actual Wolof language teacher (though he is an elementary school teacher).

Another morning I went over and met with Moustapha, my counterpart (my female counterpart, Marem, is currently in Dakar), to talk about what I wanted to do for my first 3 months in Kaymore before I go back to Thiès for 2 weeks for IST (inter-service training) in late January. It was a slow conversation because of my poor Wolof, but he was patient and used French phrases when I really didn’t understand. I have lots of things I want to do in the next 3 months – some things I really need to do and some I would like to do if I have time and the resources. Here are the must-do’s first:
- Learn Wolof so I am fluent (or nearly fluent)
- Collect the seeds farmers in and around Kaymore owe me (since Kate, the PCV in Kaymore before me, extended many farmers improved seed varieties last year for corn, rice, millet, and cowpeas and as part of this Peace Corps program the farmers reimburse me twice the amount Kate gave them – which was 2 kg of seed in most cases)
- Finish raising the money for a seed storage building for Kaymore (about $4,000 left to raise) so farmers in and around Kaymore can have a reliable and safe place to store their seeds for the next year [I’m sure I will be writing more about this soon]
- Make demonstration cold-season garden plots in Soukeye’s garden (which is in my compound – so it will act as my personal demo plot) and in the fields of 2 women’s groups in nearby villages (I made one garden in one women’s field last week)
- Meet with the girls in the girls group I will be working with (I’ve already done this a couple times) and help them harvest their bisaab
- Continue formalizing the “village captain plan” Kate started to create last year – it is essentially that each village around Kaymore will have a “village captain” who I (with the help of my counterpart and a few others) will train regarding the improved seed varieties (ex. how best to plant them, when to weed, when and how much compost/manure/fertilizer to use, integrated pest management techniques, etc.) and then this village captain will go back to his/her village and train the other farmers there that are getting the improved seeds. This way these farmers can act as the go-to person in their villages and other farmers can ask them questions first before coming to me. This will help me/Peace Corps accomplish our goals of capacity building, self-sufficiency, and sustainability.

Things I want to do if and when I have time (I have already started doing several of these things):
- Teach English to Tomsir
- Hang out with and get to know everyone in my (large extended) family, the girls in “my” girls group, and other women, men, and kids in Kaymore and the other villages I’ll be working with
- Play soccer with the kids and possibly teach/coach in some capacity
- Participate in Peace Corps’ World Wise School’s Program and communicate with students in the middle school I went to
- Help out at the maternity clinic
- Learn French better (I’ve forgotten so much since I’ve been learning Wolof) and Pulaar (another local language in West Africa)
- Read, write, sketch, and explore as much as I can

My first Wednesday in Kaymore I went to a village very close to Kaymore (called Passy Kaymore) with several guys who work for 2 different NGOs (non-governmental organizations) in Senegal (ENDA Santé and Symbiosis) because they were working on a drip irrigation project with the women’s group in Passy for medicinal plants and they thought it would be a good time for me to meet the women, see their field, and learn more about their group and what they do. In the morning we finished getting the irrigation system hooked up and I talked with the women about how I wanted to do a garden plot in their field – they were really enthusiastic about it and said I should come back the following Monday in the late afternoon and we could start the garden. One of the guys that was there, Dioum, (and who Kate worked with quite a bit when she was in Kaymore) said he was going to be coming back on Monday, too, so we could go together. The next few days I reread the gardening info we had received from the Peace Corps and put together a plan for the garden. Monday morning Dioum stopped by my house and said he had to go to Passy that morning but his son would come by my house at 3 that day to take me to Passy. I decided to bike there instead of walking with Dioum’s son, so I just had him show me which road to take and I was off. We didn’t end up planting the garden that day because the women had a meeting to talk about their group – they’re thinking about slightly restructuring it so they were meeting to discuss their options (or at least I’m pretty sure that’s what it was about – obviously I couldn’t follow their conversation completely). But I went back again Wednesday morning planted the garden. We didn’t exactly follow the garden plan I wanted to because I couldn’t explain everything I wanted to do in Wolof, but I think what we did will be just fine. That afternoon I went back to Passy because the women were having another meeting about their group. This was an even more heated discussion – these women are passionate about working hard and making money and, as you can imagine, it’s hard for 40-50 women to all agree on what, when, and where to plant, what is being planted for the group to share (in labor and income) and what will be planted individually, how best to distribute the workload of watering, weeding, harvesting, selling, etc., and how to resolve the conflicts that will inevitably happen. The meeting ended because dusk was drawing near not because they had finished their discussions so I will keep you posted on how things turn out when I can. I’ll be heading back to Passy in a few days to check on the garden and visit with the women.

Last Thursday I biked to Nioro (the largest town closest to me – about 25km away) because I wanted to check my email. But when I got to Nioro I soon learned that the electricity was out and would be out all day because they’re doing some sort of construction in town and need to turn the power off every Tuesday and Thursday for the next month or so. This was a bit disappointing to say the least, but I was still able to do some work on my computer and hang out with the volunteer who lives in Nioro, her family, and 2 other PCVs who were in Nioro that day, too.

Last Friday I went to the maternity clinic in Kaymore to see what it’s like and help out in any way I could. A woman had just had a baby boy that morning, so I spent a little time with him, and then helped out the nurses who were taking the weights of the pregnant women, checking their blood pressure, etc. I didn’t do a whole lot but it was fun to see the place and see who mothers and children are taken care of here.

I’ve already been to 2 baptism parties and could have gone to 2 others but had other plans for those days already. It seems like there is a baptism or some sort of party almost every day here. One of the baptisms I went to was in a village a ways away, so we took a charette there – let’s just say my butt hurt by the time we finally got home later that evening; it wasn’t exactly the smooth charette ride I had experienced in TawaFall/Thiès. :)

With such a long post, it seems like I’ve been super busy the past few weeks. I have been, but I’ve also spent a lot of time just sitting, studying my Wolof, chatting with family and friends, drinking tea, etc. That is the way of life here – work hard in the morning, take the early afternoons off when it’s the hottest, and then work again in the late afternoons and evenings if necessary/possible. I’ve definitely gotten used to the rhythm of the day here and I like it.

Installation

After 2 months of training in Thiès and TawaFall and a few days of preparation (i.e., buying stuff for my hut) in Kaolack, the day finally rolled around for me to be “installed” – i.e., officially move to my permanent site (Kaymore) with all my stuff. I was the third of three PCVs to be installed on Wednesday, October 21, in the Nioro du Rip region (many others installed that day in other regions). The Peace Corps had arranged for a sept place (car with lots of trunk space) to come along with the Peace Corps car since the PC car wasn’t big enough to hold all 5 of us (2 PC staff people and 3 PCVs) plus all of our stuff, so we packed the sept place full of our stuff, threw the rest in (and on top of) the PC car, and took off from the Kaolack regional house around 9am. The morning involved meeting all the “important” people in and around Nioro, like the government officials there (since it’s a friendly formality for all of us to meet), the police chief (since the PC is legitimately concerned about keeping us safe and healthy, and the police department can help with that), the forestry department workers (since another PCV and I will be working with them), and the parents of the PCV living in Nioro (since Nioro will be our closest escape from village life if we should need it, though if things continue as they are right now, I don’t anticipate needing to “escape” from Kaymore very often). Then the other PCV was installed in the early afternoon, and I stayed at the PCVs house in Nioro because there wasn’t room in the PC car for both of our stuff. We took off from Nioro for Kaymore around 3pm knowing that there was still water covering the road to Kaymore (it had actually risen since my demyst) so we would have to take back roads – i.e., sandy paths for horse/donkey-pulled charettes through fields. Luckily there was a village every 15 minutes or so, so we were able to stop and ask to make sure we were going the right way. At one point I thought the car might tip over sideways because the road was that uneven, but luckily we didn’t. :) When we got to Kaymore I didn’t even realize it because we came in on a side road that I had only walked down once during my demyst, but I quickly got my bearings and directed the car to my home. My mom, Soukeye, younger brothers, Moussa and Cheikh Omar, counterpart, Moustapha, friend, Yassa (aka Yassa Poulet – more on her later for sure), friend and teacher, Malik, and others were gathered out front of my compound with many chairs and a large matt waiting to welcome me to Kaymore. We chitchatted for a bit, and then unloaded the car with all my stuff (my original baggage from the States had more than doubled with the stuff I had bought in Kaolack for my hut). When that was done (it didn’t take long with so many people helping), we waited for the chief of the village to finish his prayers – and while we were waiting some of the local music women beat on plastic buckets and metal bowls and sang, and women would periodically get up and dance (and then give the women singing a small amount of money) – including Yassa, my mom and I.

My mom dancing.

Yassa dancing.

When the chief came, he gave a speech welcoming me to Kaymore and blessing my time here. Then my counterpart gave a short speech explaining my work in Kaymore and blessing my time here (I have gotten better at recognizing when people are saying a blessing/prayer and now know when to say “Amiin” [aka Amen] and when to put out my hands with my palms up in front of me [to show you’re open and receptive to the prayer] and when to move my hands over my face like I’m pretending to rinse my face with water [as a way to emphasize reception of the prayer]. Then the “president” of the women’s group in Kaymore gave a short speech welcoming me and blessing me. Then one of the Peace Corps staff members gave a short speech talking about what I’ve been doing for the past 2 months, what I’ll be doing for the next 2 years, how everyone in the village can help me (ex. speak slowly to me until I understand Wolof really well), and (duh) blessing my time here. (Malik, my friend and Wolof teacher, sat next to me the whole time and summarized/translated for me, which I was really thankful for – it would be more than slightly anticlimactic to not know what anyone was saying about me during all these speeches!) When I was thanking Malik for translating for me, he kept repeating “It’s no problem, no problem at all.” And then he said, “You left your home and family in America to come to Senegal for more than 2 years to help us, the least I can do is help you in small ways like this.” All I can say is that I am extremely thankful to know that he and his family are right across the street from me. Then there was more singing and dancing for a short while before everyone dispersed and the PC car took off. I had anticipated feeling quite sad and nervous when the PC car pulled away but I wasn’t sad and only a little nervous – Kaymore was already starting to feel like home.