6 Months in Senegal!

As hard as it is to believe today marks six months in country for me.  I was planning to write this big profound wonderful thoughtful post to mark the occasion but I'm not exactly sure I have it in me.  So instead I'm going to share a few things I've learned from my half year of life in Africa.  Ideological purists with fantasies of the noble native lifestyle beware. 

Firstly Peace Corps life is not as noble and profound as people think it is.  For reals everyone stop telling me I'm doing amazing work and saving the world cause one of these days you're gonna find out its not true and I don't want to have to say I told you so.  Initially things seemed this black and white though; I would join the Peace Corps and help people in need, but once I got past the initial shock and awe and novelty of living in Africa things got complicated.  The profoundness of this experience is still here, but most of the time, at the village level anyways, things are a lot more gritty and frustrating.  Development work is hard, harder than I ever imagined before getting here.  The questions are so much more complicated and there are no simple answers.  Before coming to Senegal I thought the simple solution was just to give more aid.  These people are poor they need more money, more budgetary assistance for social programs, more cheap drugs, more schools, more wells, more hospitals, more more more.  Hundreds of Billions of dollars have been spent on development projects throughout the world over the past 3 decades and yet we see very little meaningful change. 

I feel like I'm ideologically off balance.  I'm your quintessential California Liberal... and yet I'm starting to see that globalization with all its evil corporations and greedy CEO's is actually one of the only things that really helps developing countries sustain long term growth allowing them to break out of the poverty trap. I'm also finding myself much more skeptical of giving handouts.  I refuse to do a project now if there is no village contribution.  If people don't pay for what they get then they have no appreciation for it's value and just let it fall apart, because of course there will always be another aid organization waiting to give them something else.  Life here is hard and these people have so much less opportunity, but even so Senegal is never going to succeed without its own citizens taking some initiative to improve their own lives instead of just asking for handouts.  When I first got to country I thought the current volunteers were rather callous when they made fun of the kids who asked them for money.  Now I do the same thing.  Yes when I am in a particularly bad mood and small poor African children say "Donnez moi l'argent" or "Donnez moi cadeau" I say it right back to them and hold out my hand.  I can't say that I am always proud of how I interact with people who ask me for things, but the lack of appreciation for what I'm trying to do and the utter sense of entitlement to being given things gets really old. 

I almost wrote about this subject a few weeks ago after a particularly frustrating day but luckily I waited to cool off a bit.  That day I was riding my bike down to Karang to pick up some packages from the post office and was braving the usual cat calls of "Toubab toubab toubab" and "Donnez moi l'argent" when things got seriously offensive.  I rode past a group of teenagers and one gestured for me to go around them and when I did he hit me with a stick on my leg.  No it was not a big stick but it was a huge insult and I was not about to take that.  I slammed on my breaks, flipped my bike around and chased after him.  He went off the road into his village so I yelled at his friends who turned out to be Serere.  I told them to find his father and tell him what he did and have him beat him.  If you would have told me six months ago that I would be encouraging corporal punishment I would never have believed you but things have changed.  Did I think his father would really beat him, no.  Did his father probably even find out, no.  The point is I wanted them to know how offended I was and for them to know that what he did was really really not ok.  

Like I said I'm ideologically off balance.  On the one hand I can't blame the kid.  If I saw white tourists and NGO workers constantly running around telling everyone what to do, acting utterly superior to them and carrying tons of money and technology without ever really sharing it, I might resent them too and try take them down in any way I could.  Yes my wonderful liberal arts education has taught me that I cant judge him... but gosh darn it I'm judging him.  All I want is to be respected for what I'm trying to do rather than being harassed constantly for being white.  I can't even begin to pretend that I understand race in America, but this is certainly giving me an appreciation for what its like to be a minority.  You can never be anonymous. 

Alright enough of the bad hard things I've learned, time for some good stuff.  Sure development is hard and there are lots of unmotivated people here but there are also some of the smartest, hardest working people I have ever met.  Take Usmaan for example.  Usmaan lives in my village for half the year and spends the other half working as a driver in Banjul.  He has built himself about a 1/2 hectare garden plot with his own water pump and elevated tank.  He told me the other day that he uses chemical fertilizer right now but in the future he only wants to use manure and compost because the fertilizer is bad for microbes in the soil.  He actually said the word microbes.  Then there's Lamine Demba who speaks 4 languages fluently and is working on English now.  He's in his early twenties and works at a campament in Toubacouta and is absolutely going to make something of his life.  Also I can't forget my neighbor Cail's host dad Ibu in Toubacouta who started his own campament and is now working with me to do an organic garden there.  My favorite people in village though are the middle aged and older women.  I guarantee you've never seen someone work so hard in your entire life.  They are up in the morning pulling water, then making breakfast, then out in the fields watering the gardens, then back home cooking lunch, then back in the fields watering and weeding, then back home to cook dinner and then its time to sleep and do it all over again maybe next time with massive amounts of laundry too.  Women here are amazing and I so so so admire them. 

Let's see I've complained about what's hard here, I've said a few things that inspire me, now how about the things I've learned here that are just funny.  For example I have learned that you can announce that you are leaving a room to squeeze puss out of your armpit without anyone thinking twice (that just happened).  I've learned that diarrhea is only something to be worried about if it lasts more than a week.  I've learned that you really only need about a half bucket of water to take a bath.  I've learned that millet with moringa sauce is both scrumptious and nutritious.  I’ve learned that it is possible to simply tie sheep and goats to the top of a car if you want to take them somewhere.  I’ve learned that it is utterly absurd to travel anywhere without a completely full car.  I’ve learned that you need to be careful when picking a taxi from Toubacouta to Sokone because you might inadvertently pick one that is smuggling sugar from the Gambia and then have to nervously stand there while they ditch it on the side of the road because they got a tip that the police are coming (yeah true story).  I’ve learned that it’s perfectly acceptable to have discussions at length about whose baby is the ugliest.  I’ve learned that America is my favorite place in the world (IT HAS EVERYTHING!) I’ve learned that it is perfectly acceptable to ride as a passenger on a moto with a baby loosely tied to your back by a towel while precariously balancing a bowl of millet on your head as the driver balances a sheep between his knees and talks on his cell phone.  I’ve learned that mefloquine really does cause vivid dreams, memory loss, balance issues, and numbness in extremities, all of which I have experienced. I’ve learned that it is possible to video skype from a remote village in Africa.  And finally I’ve learned that no matter how much I try to integrate and learn the language and contribute, I will still always be the strange American who they never really understand.  

There we are.  I guess I did have some things to say.  6 months down 21 to go.  Bring it on Senegal!

Cheers,
Garrison