Hut Tour

Tax Season

Well seeing as how this is tax season and that can be a bit stressful, I thought that I would take a few minutes to ease the pain and make parting ways with that hard earned cash a little easier.  The US Government is indeed massive and truth be told there are all manner of things nasty and vile that it does with our tax money.  This is not news though however much the national networks may like to spin it to the left or right.  The propaganda can be enough to make you break out your NRA card and call up the old militia buddies for a nice tea party, or depending on your inclination brush up on your communist manifesto before a peace and freedom party rally against the evils of cutting down a single tree on public property.  I don't care if you're a Democrat, Republican, Communist, or Fascist, the government will use your money for things that you don't like and that can indeed be a hard pill to swallow.  

But just wait!  I'm here to remind you that despite all the bickering and propaganda, your tax dollars also go to some pretty great things.  Many Americans have never even heard of USAID but I see them all the time here and I am so incredibly proud every time I see their logo "USAID From the American People".  They're in Senegal, they're in my local community, and they're funded by you. 

 

I bet you didn't know that you built a fully equipped school with wifi and computers in a rural village outside Kaolack.

 

Or that now its being used to hold health training to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS in Senegal.  And while that's all well and good your money is also going to support something even more amazing and innovative and quite good looking I might add....

Me!  Peace Corps is a government agency and we only exist because of you all and your lovely lovely money.  Seeing as how you're paying me let me justify my existence just a bit. 

I am standing behind one of David Campbell's rope pumps and I'm about to install it in my village. 

First things first I have to cast a half well cap in cement for the pump to sit on. 

Almost done...

And there she is.  The cement needs about a week before we can finish the install and then my village will have a lovely rope pump.  Hmmm... one rope pump is nice... I guess.... but it doesn't really solve anything and certainly won't last forever. 

Let me introduce Lamine Gin.  He is a welder in Toubacouta who will be helping me to make a lot more rope pumps.  26 to be exact.  My friend Marcie down in Kolda is also doing 26 pumps so together we will be doing a total of 52 pumps.  We've partnered with Appropriate Projects, and NGO back in the states, to purchase all the pumps and install one every week for the next year.  We officially kick off the project on May 1st Inshaallah.  We'll be keeping a blog as we go, with entries every week about the villages and people benefiting from the pumps and how you can help!  I'll post more on that as the date approaches. 

We went to my neighboring village to check out some pumps that an NGO had brought in.  They're good but they're really expensive and not made locally.  Thus they are useful for a while but not sustainable. 

This is Lamine with the beginnings of his pump.  It will be much simpler and cheaper and a whole lot more sustainable since he will be around as a pump producer and technician long after I'm gone.  This project "52 Pumps in 52 Weeks" will probably be one of the biggest of my service.  I'm sure that it will cause me a lot of headaches but hopefully with enough Advil I'll make it through the year and then I'll have finally done something worthy of the insane things people say in regards to my good character and whatnot.  Joining the Peace Corps is like getting a huge credit line increase on your strength of character.  You can keep raking up the charges even if you ain't got the goods.  Well time to dig my heals in and pay my debts.  I suggest y'all do the same and get those taxes done so, you know, I don't starve over here or something.  And also so that the US Government never has to consider cutting foreign aide for development even in this tough economy. 

Cheers,
Garrison

Paradigm Shift

Peace Corps Volunteers are strange.  Let me elaborate.  As you have no doubt heard we go to the ends of the earth to parasite and disease infested lands where we learn tribal languages and talk about bodily functions far too openly regardless of the circumstances, and constantly fantasize about all things food and drink related.  But this isn’t why we’re strange.  I could just as easily have been describing the peculiarities of fraternity life.  No Peace Corps Volunteers are strange for an even more bizarre reason but I’ll get to that in a minute.  First a story.

Once upon a time this bright young lad named Garrison went to study with the Nobel Peace Prize nominated Theatre visionary Augusto Boal.  Garrison was intrigued by Boal’s techniques for using theatre for third world development work so he thought that, as a natural step after college, he might join the Peace Corps to give it a try.  Now after several grant projects investigating Boal’s techniques and a show at the SF Fringe Festival in his style, Garrison felt fairly qualified to do this… Welcome to the Peace Corps Garrison. “Wow this is really going to happen,” he thought.  You will be studying a minority language called Serere spoken only in rural villages in the delta region.  “Okay this shouldn’t hinder me doing theatre locally right?” He hoped.  We’re having a girls’ camp in the region and we would love to have some help doing skits “Fantastic let me talk to everyone putting this on and show them that theatre can be so much more than skits” He pleaded.  Well there are too many people helping at the camp so how about you just work with the girls for an hour on the first day and then for an hour right before they present their skits on the last day.  Oh yeah and you can’t lead the sessions in Serere.  Does that sound good?  Meanwhile the girls will be working every day for an hour and a half on their skits.  “Well I guess I can do some games or something” he sighed.  Perfect people love theatre games; they’re so fun and won’t get in the way and take time away from the important work.

… cringe…

I don’t really know what I expected.  It’s hard enough getting theatre people to understand the benefits of Boal’s work let alone PCV’s with every background under the sun.  I was still more than a little disappointed though when the planning meeting for the girl’s camp made it quite clear that my skills were neither wanted nor necessary.  As strange as it sounds to me I don’t know that I will be doing any theatre whatsoever during my service in the Peace Corps. 

So get to the point, why are PCV’s so strange?  Hold up, more about me first.  My service is shifting.  I see now that the things that got me into the Peace Corps aren’t necessarily going to be the things that keep me here.  My service is simply not lending itself to exploring Theatre for development work.  I am overwhelmed by projects, all of which are too legitimately needed for me to justify taking away my attention to pursue something else out of personal curiosity.  There is certainly a part of me that’s just avoiding the work because it’s hard.  Excuses are wonderful express routes to the easy track.  Even so I stand by the work that I am doing and I simply can’t justify going out of my way to pursue something else… even if it’s pure gold for grad school applications… 

This is how we are weird.  Not only are we in the most absurd situations, but every decision we make comes down to trying to get the most, not for ourselves but for someone else.  Everything is about how much impact I can have on my village, how much I can increase their food security, how much I can help reduce the labor for the women’s group how much I can increase their overall level of sanitation etc… It’s quite a paradigm shift.  Now let me stop you before you start thinking that we’re little altruistic angels, cause we’re not.  This shift is a normal product of our situation.  The Peace Corps yardstick by which we measure our self worth and success just happens to be based on how much we help other people.  Different situation different yardstick.  So don’t go comparing apples and oranges saying we’re so delicious and you’re so bitter, although we are rather delicious, but that a topic for another time.    Still though it is a strange shift to have one’s sense of self worth so completely wrapped up in other people’s wellbeing and success.  Maybe this is what it feels like to be a parent… or a grown up…  or a human… or a walrus… I don’t know. 

The point is things are shifting for me and it’s making me think about all those pesky big life questions.  Should I pursue international development work after PC?  Can I justify just becoming a professional actor? Where am I really going to be able to have an impact?  Luckily I’m also reading the Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s series right now so I know not to take any of these questions too seriously.  The Earth will probably end up blowing up regardless of what I think. 

Living up to the title of this blog, this post took on some serious thoughts of one PCV in such a way that hopefully you walk away with only a slight feeling of discomfort, which will ultimately turn out to be completely unrelated and will go away shortly after a few more hours of digestion. 

…see what I mean?  Way too much Douglas Adams right now :-)

Cheers,

Garrison 

P.S. In the spirit of non-bitterness here is the link to the girls’ leadership camp fundraising page.  It is still going to be a really valuable experience for all involved, so do chip in if you have a few bucks to spare. 

https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=685-163

Welcome to Peace Corps Senegal!

This one's for you new stage.  Welcome to the wonderful land we call Senegal.  Before you get your hopes up too much let me give you some bad news: no zebras, no giraffes, no wildebeests, no cheetahs, no elephants.  If you're in the delta region we have hyenas but you will never see them.  If you're down in Kedougou apparently there are lions... but no one ever sees them either.  But if you're in Kolda you might see a hippo.  Yes you are going to Africa but it is not the Africa that most people think of.  Welcome to Senegal's Africa

Here in Senegal you can buy the latest appliances from all over the world, including top of the line plasma flat screen televisions. 

Can't live without the latest iPod or Macbook?  Well you're in luck we've got um :-)

You've probably heard horror stories about eating bland meals of rice and fish for your entire service.  Fear not, just pick up a box of name brand cereal at your local mega grocery store.

Ah yes but you're getting here right before the hot season so food isn't really the biggest part of your worries.  When that mercury hits 120 degrees just swing by the American club for a dip in their fabulous pool.

As you can see we are also really up tight here and have zero fun whatsoever. 

And we are always one hundred percent integrated.  No afternoons of softball with pulled pork sandwiches, beer, and relaxing under a giant American Flag tent.  Nope not for us Peace Corps Volunteers.

Is he serious you may ask? Well yes and no.  Dakar will be Dakar but you've caught me being flippant, and while we can vacation to the land of the nice, the reality of life here, much like the latrine above, is a little shittier.  I'm telling you this for two reasons.  First to assuage your parents' and your fears that you may be going to an utterly desolate and poverty stricken third world country.  We always have Dakar!  And also to prepare you for the utter bizarreness of living in a country with such a disparity between the haves and the have-nots. 

Senegal is poor don't get me wrong, but you are not going to a country where people die of starvation or where the population is devastated by AIDS.  The majority of the country functions fairly well.  Albeit usually without the most basic of amenities, but Dakar is a good sign.  You probably won't agree when you get off the plane and drive through Rufisque to Thies, but things here are on the up and up and there is great potential for Senegal to break into a prosperous period of sustained economic growth.  There are cell phone networks all over the country, internet cafes are numerous and reliable, roads are improving, electricity is spotty but expanding none the less, and most importantly more and more people are going to school meaning that Senegal's workforce will soon be able to tackle bigger and better things.  This ain't the Peace Corps of the 70's so fear not parents or significant others, your PCV will not disappear off the face of the earth for two years. 

I've only been in country for about 7 months but this arrival stuff is still fresh in my head so let me offer a few words of advice.  Everyone's experience is different though so take this with a grain of salt.  My first couple of weeks in country were really difficult.  Read my first blog entries, they were down right neurotic.  I missed home like crazy, felt like I would never be able to learn the language, was absolutely terrified of Thies and Dakar and just wanted to go home to my girlfriend.  Top it all off with a feeling that everyone else was adjusting better than I was and I developed a wee bit of a sense of inadequacy.  So first piece of advice: PST is hard so don't make it harder by being hard on yourself.  Cut yourself some extra slack and realize that even if people keep it together on the outside, they all freak out at some point.  Freaking out is beyond perfectly normal.  Talk to your fellow PCT's if you're having a hard time with something, chances are they're going through it too.  We're a family here, don't forget that.  Second piece of advice: the language will come.  Every single person in Peace Corps Senegal passes their language exam by the end of PST.  Study but don't stress about it.  Third piece of advice: Your CBT site family is not your family for the rest of your service.  You are allowed to make mistakes with them.  Most of them have had volunteers before and they have seen it all believe me.  Go ahead and butcher their language, forget their names, hide in your room because you don't want to talk to them, cross some unspoken cultural boundary, do it all.  This is the one time here where you truly get a free pass.  You get to make the right first impression with your real family so don't worry about this one. 

Now let's talk about something taboo... ETing (Early Terminating).  Yes if things get too much you can call it quits at any time, pack up and go back to America.  Three people did it in my stage during PST.  Yes it is an option, but please don't do it.  You may feel like you can't do this, that two years is just too much.  I am here to tell you though that yes you can do it.  I have never met you but I know that this is the truth.  Peace Corps selected you so trust that you are qualified enough even when, inevitably, you feel like they made a mistake and that you are absolutely incompetent.  You can do this!  We are a family and we will support you through thick and thin.  This is a two way street though and we need you.  Many times current volunteers fill out requests to set up new sites so that they will have a Health or EE volunteer with whom to collaborate.  I can't tell you how disappointed my sub region would be if our health volunteer never showed up.  Magnify that by 10 and that's how the village will feel if they never get the volunteer they've prepared for.  I don't mean to put extra pressure on y'all, but we need you.  I'm not going to lie, I wanted to go home during PST, but I made a promise to myself that I would stick it out until I got to my real village and now here I am.  PST life is NOT what your life is going to be like for the rest of your service. 

There is a light at the end of the tunnel, and its not death, its a village with a family and an incredible two year adventure that will change you for the rest of your life.  Welcome to Senegal my friends.  You're going to do great!

The last day at my CBT site.  You will make it there too!

P.S.  I made the mistake of staying awake on the drive from the airport to Thies.  It's really not worth it.  There is just two much to process and it really isn't the most flattering view of Dakar.  Trust me you are better off sleeping than trying to take it all in and inevitably freaking out.  You'll see Dakar again soon don't worry.  

WAIST - The West African Invitational Softball Tournament

Check out the brand new collection of photos and videos at the right.  They're from this last weekend where Garrison joined virtually every PCV in the region for some good fun, food and softball.  I was on a business trip and was actually able to "drop in" for the weekend.  This picture is of all the Kaolack region PCV's complete with their Tu Tu uniforms.

Bandwidth is precious in Senegal so Garrison asked me to post these for him.

Enjoy, Randy (Dad)

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

The Magical land of Kedougou

This past week I traveled to Africa.  Well I already live in Africa, but this was like "real" Africa with baboons, and warthogs, and jungle and waterfalls.  Kedougou city is approximately 585 kilometers from my site.  It took us two days to get there (we stopped off in Tambacounda to spend the night at the regional house there) and even with the cramped sept-place it was totally worth it.  The Kedougou regional house for those of you who have never been there is much less like a house and more like a camp ground.  It's made of lots of different huts rather than one big building.  Its really pretty sweet.  So why you may ask did I venture to this strange far away land?  I came to learn how to move water.  Not on the Moses scale but on a much more manageable from well to surface and from surface to plant kinda way.  Yes this was a water pump formation (training for those who are frenchily challenged).  We learned how to contstruct and install two different water pumps.  First a rope pump that pulls water up from a well by using little plastic washers tied to a rope to pull water up a pcv pipe. 

Yes that well cap will do just fine

And here is the pump in action.  It gets great flow on shallow wells

The second pump is the Rocker Water Pump designed by the Full Belly Project.  Check out their website, its a great organization.  http://www.thefullbellyproject.org/ 

Here's the main mold.  The hoses create the channels for water to travel to each piston and then to the outlet on the right.

Just add concrete and a little steel for reinforcement and pop it in the oven to bake for 48hrs.

So what do you do in Kedougou when you have to wait for concrete to dry for two days... Waterfall!!!

The hike through the jungle to get to the falls.

Waterfall!

Waterfall with friends!

Through the wondrous magic of my blog it's now 48hrs later and the concrete is ready! 

Isn't she pretty :-).  water comes in from that tube on the bottom of the picture and goes either left or right depending on which piston is down and then goes to the front chamber and out into the world to grow wonderful nutritious veggies.

Pistons, and rubber seals to prevent leakage and back-flow.

The finished product.  You stand on the board and shift you weight back and forth and that works the pistons. 

Thanks David Campbell for bringing these technologies to Senegal and for putting on this formation.  Kaolack now has molds for the rocker pump and I cast one up myself two days ago.  It's out of the molds and looking fabulous.  I brought back a rope pump as well which I'm going to try to get copied by a metal worker in Toubacouta.  Needless to say I'm really excited to start working on both these technologies.  I contacted the Full Belly Project and they're going to send another set of molds for the Kolda region and then we should really be cookin.  Speaking of cooking...

David Campbell's wood fire pizza oven.

David making pizza.

Yeah I am so making one of these in my back yard.  This was our last night in Kedougou and it was a fabulous way to finish out our little trip down south.  I have a feeling these technologies may become a big part of my service so be prepared for lots more on the rocker and rope pumps.  Do check out the the Full Belly Project too they really are doing some amazing work.  Also to the Chico State engineers without borders club (if you're reading that is) Peace Corps is a great organization to partner with to get experimental new technologies out into the field.  I would love to test something new anyways.  Just a thought. 

Cheers
Garrison