What’s on the wall above your desk?

Above my (incredibly simple wooden) desk is this:

I think it’s a nice combination to look at when I’m sitting at my desk working on my computer or studying Wolof or ag stuff: our Stoermer family calendar (made by my amazing twin sister), most of my bestest friends from St. Olaf, the beautiful wedding invitation for my brother and his fiancée’s wedding in October (which I am going home for and super excited about), my family after my last basketball game my senior year at St. Olaf (as much as I love soccer, I miss playing basketball tons), and an inspirational quote by Minor Myers, Jr. on a card my aunt sent me last year when I was still at Cornell:

"Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good."

If you think there’s anything I should add to my little “above-the-desk” section of the wall, let me know or send me something to tape up there! :)

Chow Time!

I figured it was time to post some pictures of something I do every day: eat lunch. I eat lunch with the other adult women in my family: my host mom, 2 of my aunts, the 2 teenage women that live with my family so they can go to school in Kayemor, and any other random women that happen to be at our house that day. My host mom and 2 of my aunts rotate who cooks lunch and dinner for the family – one woman cooks for 2 days, then another woman, then another woman, etc. The day I took this picture my host mom made lunch, and she made my favorite lunch dish (and the official national dish of Senegal): ceebu jen (aka rice and fish). Whenever my mom cooks, we’re guaranteed a good meal because she always puts tons of veggies in her ceebu jen (and she’s just an awesome cook), as you can see from the picture below: there’s carrots, cabbage, turnip, bitter tomato (classic Senegalese vegetable that I started out hating but now like), eggplant, bissap leaf sauce (the green piles of deliciousness – no, really, it looks nasty but this bissap leaf sauce is so delicious AND packed full of the vitamins and minerals that our diet in the village usually really lacks), and cassava, with a couple fish in the middle (acting as our desperately-needed source of protein).

As you can see from the photos below, we all just sit around the lunch bowl and eat with our hands. Most of the women sit on little metal or wooden stools, but I sit on a plastic chair (as my host mom or other women sometime do, too) because my legs are so long.

Going from left to right in the pics below: Tida (17-year old girl that lives across the street with a couple of my aunts and uncles and goes to school in Kayemor), Souckeye Ba (one of my aunts), Fatu Mata (14-year-old girl that lives in our compound to go to school here), and my host mom, Souckeye.

My aunt, Areme Diop, was gone the day I took this picture, so I included the pic below of her and Souckeye Ba. Areme is what we call a “ceeb mama” – i.e., she eats a lot of ceeb and is (therefore) a large woman, but most women want to be like that here because it means that her husband is wealthy enough to buy a lot of rice for his family.

It’s a-cruisin’…!

Construction on the seed storage facility is cruising – just need to put the floor in, the roof to come from Dakar, and put on the door and windows.








Looking from the inside out through the door:




Three pictures that I think go well together as a series:

Tennis Balls and Teddy Bears

My (AMAZING) aunt sent me many used tennis balls and Valentine’s Day teddy bears for all the kids in my family, and here are some of the pictures of the kids with their new gifts.

MamBabo (short for Maam [pronounced like “mom”, but the Wolof word for grandfather and grandmother] Babacar – he’s named after his grandfather): He is sooooo cute, rarely wears pants, loves eating – who could turn this cutey away from the lunch or dinner bowl? – and looks so much like his mother (my aunt).

Seekh Ohmar: He is my youngest “real” brother (son of my host father and host mother), spoiled rotten by his father, stubborn, and incredibly cunning (and sometimes not in a good way).
Most of the boys, from left to right: Seekh Ohmar, MamBabo, Ndari (son of a another aunt), Seekh Tidjan (older brother of MamBabo), Moussa (one of the three young Talibe boys that live and work with us), and Moussa (my other “real” brother and super sweet). I had to include this photo because I loved how cute they all looked getting themselves pulled together for the “photo shoot”. :)
Most of the boys again, with their formal faces on (smiling for a picture is a rare oddity here, if you haven’t noticed from my other photos of Senegalese people).

The boys again, plus Amadou #1 (standing behind MamBabo) and Amadou #2 (tallest, red t-shirt): these boys are the other two Talibe that live with us.

More boys: Ndaiga (son of my uncle and half brother of MamBabo and Seekh Tidjan; he is such a crazy fun kid) is holding MamBabo and standing next to a boy (one of the millions that roam around our compound when they get bored of studying in my uncles Islamic school – where kids go to learn Arabic and study the Koran, Islam’s religious text) and the other MamBabo in my compound (he is the son of another aunt who is staying with us now because she has two young twins and that is a standard Senegalese thing to do – to go back and live with your mom for several months when you have twins, or even just one child, because that way you can spend all your time taking care of your kids and don’t have to worry about cooking or cleaning or anything else).

Some girls and their bears, from left to right: Indu (this little girl already has a mind of her own and is left-handed, which causes problems when she tries to eat at the lunch or dinner bowl because the left hand is considered the “dirty” hand in this culture), Ami (the older sister of Indu and Ndari, she is super helpful and takes care of her younger siblings, even if she does boss Ndari around every once in a while), and Ndeye Khady (the granddaughter of the woman I am named after – hence she shares my name, too [Ndeye]).

Ndeye Khady and Souleyman (the son of family friends; his older sister often comes and helps my host mother cook lunch, do dishes, etc. when she’s not in school).

Souleyman and his older sister Swadda.

Me with Mama (or Ndeye, since Ndeye is one of the several words for “Mom” in Wolof and Mama is “Mom” in French) Khady, the daughter of my friend and Wolof teacher Malick.

Around Town

Here are a few pictures I have of various things/places in Kayemor.

Kayemor has a daily vegetable (and fish) market. This open-air market (like every other market in Senegal) is really nice (see, for example, the pictures of the weekly market in Kayemor below); apparently it was built several years ago with funds from the NGO Symbiose (the same NGO that my host dad and I, among other people, are working with to build the seed storage facility).

Every morning numerous women sell vegetables at this daily market, and even more women (and girls) come to the market to buy the vegetables they will cook for lunch (and possibly dinner, though vegetables with dinner are relatively rare). The vast majority of the women buy the vegetables they are selling in other, larger villages or in towns, such as Nioro or Kaolack, and then bring the vegetables to Kayemor to sell; a few women, though, like the president of the women’s group in Passy Kayemor (nearby village) that I work with, sells the vegetables she grows in their garden in the market in Kayemor, as well as other markets in other villages.

If the car that sells fish comes to Kayemor then there are a couple women who also sell fish. The car comes most days, but apparently whenever it’s really windy off the coast of Dakar (which is where the car comes from) the fishermen there either don’t catch any fish or just not a lot of them, so then the car doesn’t come to Kayemor because there aren’t any fish to sell here. The “fish car” (as everyone calls it) that comes to Kayemor leaves Dakar very early in the morning (ex. 3am) and sells fish in Kayemor as well as many other villages in the area. There are several guys that switch off driving the car throughout the day because they are literally driving for 18-20 hours. Once they are done selling all their fish, they make their way back through the villages to pick up any people that want a ride to any of the villages/towns on their route, and then sleep for a few hours either in Kaolack or Dakar before starting the trip all over again the next day. I don’t envy them at all.

Here is the standard array of vegetables (and other food) sold at the market (starting from the front and working back): peanut butter (in the plastic bag and yellow container), cherry tomatoes, (small) heads of cabbage, okra (sliced up in this case), small bags of dried hot pepper as well as pepper and garlic, seed pods from a local tree, carrots (in the woman’s hand), fresh hot pepper, bitter tomato (I really did not like this vegetable when I first got to Senegal, but it’s definitely growing on me), little packets of spices, onions, turnips, cassava (aka manioc), and more spices, onions, tomatoes, etc.

Every Tuesday is the weekly market in Kayemor. People come from all the surrounding villages to sell and buy stuff. You can find just about anything in Kayemor’s “lumma” (the Wolof word for weekly market) that you can find in the larger towns; it is probably more expensive in Kayemor, though. This is a really quick snapshot of the market so it really doesn’t do it justice – and the picture was taken right in the middle of the day, so many people had already gone to relatives or friends houses to escape the sun/heat and to have lunch; thus, there aren’t nearly as many people out and about shopping and/or selling things in this picture as there is normally in the morning and late afternoon.

Here are all the horse- and donkey-pulled charrettes that brought people (and things) to Kayemor for the lumma, and will bring them home again.

Back behind the daily/weekly market area is a (relatively) new agriculture store. The guy who owns/runs the store studied agriculture for several years in Dakar. He sells chemical fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, and seeds (according to the writing on the front of his store anyway – I saw the chemical fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides the one time I’ve been inside the store, but no seeds; maybe he only has seeds right before the rainy season…).

This is the main entrance to Kayemor’s peñc mi. The building on the right (inside the fence) is where Kayemor’s small bank is, and the building on the left is where a few of the middle school teachers live. Just visible through the bars of the door is the cement block which is where the robiné (i.e., spicket for running water) is, which the teachers use to get water from to drink and take baths in and which anyone uses to drink from whenever they are there. Just to the right of the robiné (behind the bank building) is the big neem tree where meetings for school, various NGOs, or other community activities are often held.

Here is the big sign out front of the peñc mi that describes the structure of the development program the Communauté Rurale de Kayemor is involved in with the NGO Symbiose. Half the writing isn’t legible any more, but I can read that Symbiose is involved in the development methodology and technique, while Peñc Mi (the satellite branch of Symbiose in Kayemor) is responsible for the execution of the development programs.

This is not a very exciting picture, but it shows one of the (several) cell phone towers in Kayemor, as well as a boy driving a charette, the big baobab trees that are all over Senegal (their big fruit makes a tasty treat when it’s dried and mixed with water and sugar and then frozen), and the side of (one of the many) new buildings that is being built in Kayemor. I was standing close to the new seed storage facility when I took this photo. This is on the very western side of town.

Breakfast, for many people in Kayemor, involves going to one of the many breakfast stalls throughout Kayemor and eating half a loaf of bread (or a whole loaf if you’re really hungry) filled with tuna and an onion sauce or a couple hard-boiled eggs and mayonnaise or beans (my personal favorite), with a cup of “coffee” (they only use instant coffee here – I’m not really a fan of it at all…) and a ton of powdered milk (or sometimes just powdered milk and no coffee at all) or another kind of coffee (which I really liked at first but now don’t really like at all). I really like this bread; it is made in a mud oven, so (translated literally from Wolof) it is called “bread mud”. The other main type of bread in Senegal is baked in an electric oven so it is called “machine bread”; this type of bread can only be found in larger towns or cities, such as Nioro, Kaolack, and Dakar. The women who sell breakfast in these stalls hang up sheets to keep dust from blowing in (though they’re really not that effective at preventing that…) and to provide a little more privacy for those eating breakfast. (I don’t usually go to one of these stalls for breakfast, and neither do my host parents. I usually have oatmeal in my hut, or I send one of my younger brother’s to buy a bean sandwich for me. My host parents send my younger brothers to buy breakfast for them, too.)

Here’s the butcher’s stall in Kayemor. I walk buy it all the time but never think to take a picture – until I took this one, that is. Meat is pretty expensive so most people only eat it on special occasions, such as various Islamic holidays (ex. Tabaski). I’ve eaten meat a few times when I’ve attended big meetings that are funded by NGOs – the promise of a good lunch is (to be perfectly honest) one reason why people attend these meetings. I much prefer it, though, when we have chicken or fish with lunch instead of sheep or goat because when we have sheep/goat everyone only gets a tiny portion of the meat (because it is so expensive) and most of what we eat is not really what I would consider meat – it’s mostly bone or cartilage. While it is normal to eat an 8 oz. steak in the States, to say that I even share an 8 oz. steak with 4 other people at these meetings would be vast overstatement.

This is the biggest mosque in Kayemor. There are a handful of other smaller mosques that look like this, as well as even smaller mosques that are just small, square huts. I have never been inside one of these mosques (because girls and women of child-bearing age typically cannot go in them), but I have looked inside. Unlike churches, there are no pews since everyone who goes there to pray just kneels/stands on a mat when they pray. The mosque (that looks like this but is smaller) that is right next to my hut wakes me up almost every morning around 5am – well, the mosque itself doesn’t wake me up, the imam who is saying the call to prayer and his prayers over the loudspeaker is the one who wakes me up. The only times I am not woken up are when the electricity is cut off when he is doing the call to prayer because then his loudspeaker doesn’t work.

It’s not just people who use the mosque – sheep do too! :)

Swimming, Dancing, and Laughing

A couple weeks ago it was my friend Cora’s birthday so we and a couple other friends, Jen, Mollie, and Carla, decided to go to a French campement near Jen’s village. This campement, like most of the others in Senegal, is a resort-type place (as much of a resort as it can be out in the bush) where French men come to go hunting (for birds mostly but also warthogs and squirrel-type animals), relax, and experience a new culture (to limited extent since they’re somewhat sheltered from what we would consider the “real Senegal”). Jen goes to this campement relatively often to charge her cell phone and iPod (she is like most rural ag volunteers and doesn’t have electricity in her village), relax by the pool and work on reports or letters home or just read. This was the first time the rest of us had been there, though. It was a great afternoon. We shared a bottle of wine and chatted with the French guys that were there (they had just gotten back from their morning hunt when we got there) and with the Senegalese men and women working there (they really liked speaking in Wolof with us since they always just have to speak in French with the French guys).

The shortest French guy (who we nicknamed Hedgehog) wanted to dance with Cora for her birthday:


We had a delicious lunch of steak and veggies, and then it was time to hit the pool! There really is nothing like a cool pool to jump into when it is over 100 degrees F and the equatorial sun (well, almost equatorial – the sun is much closer to equatorial here than in Minnesota anyway) is beating down on you. Cora, Jen, Carla, and I tried our hand at synchronized swimming (Mollie was the designated judge and photographer) – this picture is after one of our (very short) “shows”. We also had a hand-stand contest in the pool.

All five of us enjoying another glass of wine in the pool:

One of the staff members jumped in the pool for a little while to cool off, too, since we were the only ones around (all the French guys had gone off for their late afternoon hunt).

After chilling in the pool for a while – yes, I actually did get goosebumps! – we decided it was time to head back to Jen’s village since it was about a 5-6 km hike there.

Long story short, we got picked up later that evening and went back to the campement since they were having Senegalese drummers and dancers there to entertain the French guys (and us apparently!). When we got back to the campement the women were so dressed up – and we were so NOT dressed up, as is evident in the photos; it was so obvious that the five of us live in rural villages (well, except Mollie) while these women live in Dakar and Thiès when they’re not at the campement. Some of the women’s high heels even came from Italy (we had to ask because they looked so nice). Soon after the drummers got to the campement, the women pulled us into their room and told us to change into the extra wrap skirts they had because they’re much better to dance in. So all of us (including the Senegalese women, too) changed into skirts to dance in – and we got a quick dance lesson at the same time. We were continually blown away all evening at how these women could move their butts – I’ve noticed this before (ex. my host mom!), but I swear these women have way more muscles in their butts than we do, or at least they know how to use their muscles there way more than we do. Once the drumming started at least half the villagers from the nearby town came to watch. It was great! And then, to top things off, the (French) owners of the campement had the French guys put on traditional Senegalese women’s clothes and dance with the Senegalese women!

(A lot of these pictures are blurry because the settings on Cora’s camera got messed up and she didn’t realize it until later in the night - and it was dark out.)

Mollie just after getting changed: (yes that is Bob Marley on the skirt)

We’re all set to hit the dance floor!

Oh but first, we need a quick dance lesson.

Jen and I warming up:

Walking from the changing room to the dance floor (which was right next to the pool):

Carla dancing:

Jen:

Me:

Mollie:

(No one got a picture of Cora dancing since Cora was the only one who brought a camera, but she definitely danced, too!)

A couple of the French guys in the traditional outfits, dancing and having a grand ol’ time:

They’re still dancing – and all the Senegalese people looking on were loving it!

But they loved it even more when this woman danced, because she could really move!

Cora and Hedgehog:

Jen helping Mollie untie her wrap skirt when we were all done dancing:

Whew, we’re tired, but, as Carla’s double thumbs up indicates, we sure had a great time!

The next morning Cora whipped out some stuff to do with the kids in Jen’s family – I entertained them by blowing bubbles. Not sure when the last time was that I did that, but it sure was fun! And I managed to only get a little soap in my eyes… :)