I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could learn what they had to teach; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." - Henry David Thoreau
I purposefully wrote this quote on the first page of my journal well in advance of departing for Africa. I thought that it would be better to see this piece of wisdom each time I open it rather than the terrified ramblings of my first day, sleep deprived, homesick self. Today is day 13 in Africa and I can’t begin to explain how long that feels. Thus far I have laughed, cried, danced, spoken various amounts of 4 languages, read 1 book, received an African Name (Mbay Ngome), used a squat toilet, taken a bucket bath, been yelled at for not greeting my home stay aunt, received 5 vaccines, and… etc… Suffice it to say there has been a lot of activity these past two weeks.
Now for some specifics: I am studying Seereer which is a native African language spoken mostly in the river delta area of Senegal. Contrary to what you may read on some Pular’s blogs the Seereers are not slaves to the Pulars. They are our slaves and we are their kings. Trust me this exchange in quite common in Senegal and not the least bit racist. I am living in the small village of Ngoudiane, which is about 45 min outside of Thies. I live in a compound with 4 families and about 30 people. Things are busy as you might guess. I have my own room with a lock and bars on my window, which is nice for the security of my stuff, although I feel a bit like an animal in a cage sometimes. My mother’s name is Y Nogoye and my father’s name is Ba Mordu. I have three brothers and three sisters and sooo many cousins and aunts and uncles. My fellow PCT Lauren lives in the same compound and by Senegalese definitions of family, she is my sister. Family in Senegal is big, very big. Beyond the fact that men can have up to four wives, the restrictions of who can be considered family are much looser than in the states so families are huge. Also in Senegalese culture the children of my brothers are technically my children, so I believe some congratulations are in order. Yep that’s right I’m a baby daddy in Senegal.
As for the day to day, most of my days start at 5am with a wake up call from my friendly neighborhood Mosque: I stash some earplugs under my pillow, which I pop in when the call to prayer starts so I can sleep another couple hours. I finally get up at around 7:45 and take a very refreshing bucket bath. Don’t feel sorry for me with this one, bucket baths are great. Basically it’s just a really efficient way to take a bath. Breakfast consists of bread with butter and Nescafe with powdered milk and sugar. My family is fasting for Ramadan so I hide in my room and eat by myself. After breakfast its language class with my LCF (Language and cross cultural facilitator) Asan. Three hours later it is too hot to think so we go home for lunch (leftover’s from dinner) and then I take a very sweaty nap. At around three thirty its time for more language and by 5:30 our brains are exhausted so we go home to sit around until we break the fast at sundown. Breaking the fast is one of my favorite times of the day. Everyone is happy and the food is usually great. One day we had egg sandwiches and dates. Mmmm… Dinner is almost always malo for lip: rice with fish. If you’ve been reading carefully you will realize that this means I also eat rice with fish for lunch too. I’m kinda over the rice with fish. After dinner we sit and talk (talking by my definition means saying anything successfully in Seereer) and then I go to bed. I usually don’t really go to bed. I go into my room and enjoy some solitude with text messages from home and a book. Then sleep. That’s my typical day at my home stay site.
There are too many other random things to talk about; I already have more than I can possibly explain here. We started building a community garden to practice our technical training and I sweated more than I thought was physically possible: I watched my brother kill two chickens by slowly cutting their necks with a sickeningly dull knife which, while sad, made for a delicious dinner that night: I experienced pure and utter joy when I returned to Thies and was able to speak English and have a cold beer, and I had the high point of my two weeks here, a 30 min video skype conversation with Hannah.
Lets see I was meaning to write something profound in this post… well here’s my two cents. I’ve been having a hard time with many things here, mostly the homesickness and the weight of this two-year commitment. In many ways I feel like I’m not the right person to do this work. I feel like I’ll always be focused elsewhere and looking forward to the end of this experience. Right now I want the results of service: knowing the language, having had an adventure, and going home to my life and loved ones in America, and that isn’t going to cut it. These two years are going to be miserable if I’m only looking forward to the end. I need to find a way to live in the moment and place my happiness here rather than there. Thank you Buddhism. That’s the profound thought I’ve been having. As hard as everything is I need to start enjoying my life now instead of putting off enjoyment until, the end of PST, or once I’m fluent in the language, or once I’ve made a difference, or when I get back. Life can only be lived now. Speaking of making a difference, there is so much work to be done in this country. If I can put my personal problems aside and focus on the work, I might be able to accomplish something after all. It’s hard to describe how intimidating that is though. The amount of work that I have to do and the lists of things I need to learn seem endless. One step at a time. That’s all I can do.
Thanks for all the letters and emails. They help a lot. Keep um comin! :-) By the way I am keeping track, and Grandma is way in the lead.
I have been in Senegal for less than 48 hours and it already feels like I've been here a week. People who I only met four days ago feel like old friends, and slowly but surely routine is already setting in. Yesterday was the big travel day. I count yesterday and the day before as one day since I never really went to sleep for more than a few minutes. Firstly South African Airways is the nicest airline I have ever traveled on. The flight crew was nice and sociable and really helpful. The plane was also quite new and impeccably clean. I officially endorse this airline for all your African travel needs :-).
Arrival in Dakar was overwhelming to say the least. I knew that I was going to Africa, but I didn't really understand the level of poverty they have here. To be fair its not that the people in Dakar live without anything. The route we traveled is apparently not the best view of the city. In any case though infrastructure seemed to be not very developed, although there was an encouraging amount of construction. We arrived at the training center, and after a brief breakfast of baguettes with jam and chocolate sauce, we hit the hay. 3 hours later it was time to get up and I begrudgingly got up and tried to figure out what was going on, which took a good 5 min.
After lunch we had our first introduction session... which lasted a really long time for having not slept the night before. With all the new information and being very tired I started to kinda freak out a little... I take that back, I was freaking out a lot. Its hard to explain how homesick I was. Here's a sample of my inner monologue: What the hell have I gotten myself into this isn't fun and I don't know if I can do this for the next two years everyone else is doing fine and I'm freaking out I want to go home but I shouldn't because I made a commitment but I miss Hannah and this is really hard and I don't like it! Yeah that about sums it up. Put that on repeat and play it in your head for a few hours and you'll feel pretty crappy too :-)
Ah the magic of some communication home and a good night's sleep. I woke up to the sounds of a beautiful jungle. Hundreds of birds chirping and singing in a quiet but spectacular symphony. The morning was also cool, which is really a treat here. I don't know if I've said this yet, but Senegal is hot and VERY humid. The morning was great and the day turned out to be even better. I found out that I'm actually a rural ag volunteer meaning that I'll be in a small village rather than a city. This made me very happy. I also got to interview to share my experience, and the APCD for agriculture said that I have a good French accent. That put a little pep in my step. Then that pep was squashed a little by my french test where I probably sounded like a 5 year old. But that's fine.
The afternoon also included 2 more vaccines. Apparently only 5 more... yay... Mostly though the afternoon consisted of sitting around the disco hut and chatting, skyping, lounging, reading, or buying a cold drink from the guards. It was wonderful :-). Hard to believe how much we did today actually. It feels like we've been here for a week. The country director was here today chatting, we had a health seminar where we talked about inevitable diarrhea and got out ceramic water filters... oh and we had baked chicken with fried potatoes and ketchup. Overall things are pretty good. Inevitably that view will change once we start learning the languages and staying in the villages, but today was good. Bird by bird. Day by Day. That's all we can do right? Bon nuit tout le monde!
P.S. I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow. I need to do it when other people aren't taking up bandwidth.
Today was the first day of staging in Arlington VA and our last full day in the States. I suppose it was a little bit like the first day of summer camp. At first it was a awkward with everyone asking the same questions and consistently forgetting names... well I was consistently forgetting names anyways. As the day went on though it was amazing how close we started to get. Our coordinators reminded us that in a very short time all the people around us would become our best friends. Sorry everyone at home but you just got replaced so there! I'm just kidding you could never be replaced. Remember that time that we (insert sentimental memory here) and how we almost (insert amusing anecdote about something going wrong). All kidding aside though I'm really amazed at how much we've connected and I'm really excited to get to know everyone. It's really an awesome group.
At the end of the day a bunch of us went out to dinner at the Rock Bottom Brewery... strange name... It was great though! The beer was fantastic and the food was delicious. I had a margarita pizza to start, which I shared with the table. I then had a salad with blue cheese and a Pale Ale... sadly not Sierra Nevada, but good. For my entree I had a juicy medium rare New York steak with a great glaze and topped with Gorgonzola cheese. For dessert I had a chocolate sundae. It was the perfect final dinner in the States before eating mostly rice and fish for the next two years.
After dinner a small group of us went to tour the national mall to look at all the monuments. I had never been there before, and it was really quite stunning. Very strange to reflect on monuments of war as I'm about to join the Peace Corps. You hope that organizations like the Peace Corps will lead to less of a need for war. I know its a lofty goal and my service isn't likely to make a huge difference on that front, but hopefully I can spread a positive image of Americans and add to the overall tone of peace. Surely the attempt is noble anyways.
I oficially have 1 min left of battery so I will end here. Tomorrow morning it's vaccinations and then off to the airport. 5:40pm flight to Dakar Senegal. Wish me luck! Ok it died before I finished. Now I'm off!
Well it's finally actually happening. As much as my brain tries to deny it, I will be leaving for the Peace Corps for two years of service in Senegal in exactly one week. This begs the question, how did I get here? Well that deceptively simple question is one that I have been trying to wrap my head around lately. Somewhere between annoying my friends and family with activist clubs, volunteering for various things, and oh yeah going to school 12 hours a day as a theatre major, I decided it might be fun to go into the Peace Corps after college, to take some time and do something meaningful and good for the world... so I applied... and low and behold they took me. One might think that the logical progression from application to acceptance would thus culminate in departure oversees... yes one might think that, but my brain is exceedingly stubborn and will certainly not believe any of this is actually happening until I land in Dakar, Senegal on August 11th.
Denial or no denial, there is packing to be done! It amazes me actually how fully I have engaged with American consumerism before supposedly living a simpler life in Africa. I have been shopping non stop, and frankly will be perfectly happy if I never enter another Wall-Mart again in my life. Thanks to my dad and his connections in the outdoor industry I have gotten some pretty spectacular gear. I feel a bit like MacGyver with all of my gadgets: a solar panel, a storage battery, rechargeable AA's and AAA's, adapters, cables for everything, medical supplies, a 4 band world phone, a dry bag for my laptop, 2 UV water purifiers, 2 ceramic water filters capable of filtering enough water for 40 people per day, and a digital camera waterproof down to 33ft deep. That's just the tip of the iceberg. Here are the most recent pictures of my piles of stuff.
And my solar panel and battery. I'm pretty sure this will come in handy :-)
Without a doubt this transition is going to be hard. I will miss friends and family and most of all Hannah, but hopefully she will wait for me. It's only two years honey ;-). Sorry to get corny, I won't do it too often, I promise. Hopefully this blog will help everyone to feel connected to me and me to them during this time. I promise to be as interesting and funny as possible, and if all goes well I may get a few poignant or profound moments... we'll see :-). Thanks for reading and I hope to see you back here soon!
