A Hard Day's Night

“You know you've really done it well when you're just emotionally drained at the end of the experience, because you've really reached in and you've transferred some emotion from another part of yourself, and put a different set of clothes on it.” - Randy Goodrum

Over the last few weeks, life in village has been pleasantly broken up by the unusual influx of visitors and hut guests who have been passing through. Since it's the hot season, work is at a minimum for most volunteers, so traveling around to other sites is finally a possibility. Unless you're me, in which case, projects that have been in the works for the last year are finally getting moving at a startlingly rapid pace.

One of the hardest things to adjust to in Peace Corps, for myself as well as for most other volunteers, is the drastic reduction in the pace of life in Senegal. I think it's especially difficult for volunteers in my age group, 22-30, who are accustomed to constant stimulation in the US, whether it be work, school, social, or the mere fact that we're constantly plugged-in and overachieving to the best of our abilities.  The lack of input, combined with the fact that you're pretty much constantly off the grid and on your own in village, tends to make you a little stir crazy anyway. Which of course leads to the need to develop seemingly inordinate amounts of patience and the ability to stare blankly at the wall of your hut for hours on end.

Personally, my biggest challenge in Senegal has been to remain objective about the work that I can actually get done, without feeling completely stagnant and ineffective. Again, it's the little things that account for most of what you accomplish as a PCV, and being able to recognize the difference between harrying yourself with busy-work just to feel like you're doing something and actually accomplishing something, albeit at a much slower pace. Much slower. When it comes to getting work done, you find yourself more often than not waiting for months on end before seeing the results of all of your planning and frustration. Prime example, I've been working on the same community garden project in my village since my first week in village, over a year ago. Due to the seasonal community work calendar in my village, the project needed to wait until after the harvest, once the rains had ended - last October. After a series of meetings, delays, promises, etc, we're finally breaking ground on the project - a year after the project was originally discussed, six months after submitting the budget for the project. Among other things, the lack of community organization has proven to be the most consistent obstacle in the way of the project's progress. I constantly find myself torn between wanting to scoop the project up and do it all myself and actually doing what I'm supposed to be doing, which is to facilitate the project's implementation and allow the village to take ownership of the project. Swooping in and taking control is so tempting... SO tempting... but it's completely counterproductive in the long run. So, as your average volunteer, I end up struggling with what to do when everything seems to be going wrong. But when so many things don't go according to plan, you're completely beside yourself with joy when things finally start coming together. Which is where I am right about now :)

So this month's note to self and the void: development is gradual and a group effort. It also has to start from the bottom up. Once you get the village behind a project, all of the little pieces start falling into place, and it's only because you've been consistently, tirelessly, patiently lining things up for months, explaining the details to people in the village, reiterating the fact that it's not your pet project, it belongs to the community - if they don't want it, it won't happen. If it matters enough to them, you'll be surprised at the enthusiasm that the mere mention of the project can bring. Yesterday, my host dad and I marked out and measured the fence line for the community women's garden. Tomorrow, we start digging two new, desperately needed wells in my village. Yettaare Allah, things are finally coming together....

A Tale of Two Pregnancies

Once upon a time, there were two Senegalese village girls. Outgoing, vivacious, confident - at every soiree, every wedding, they would deck themselves out in their finest outfits and dance the night away. The primary difference between the two friends was that one had moved to my village from the Gambia for the sole purpose of learning French in school, while the other had never been to school a day in her life.

Then, about nine months ago, they were both frequently absent from the family compound, much to our family’s annoyance, and a few months later they were both trying to hide their very own, very obvious baby bumps. Maimouna, the one who was going to school, was kicked out of our house, pulled out of school and sent back to live with her father, who promptly beat her. The second, Binta, suffered few repercussions, with the possible exception of now being the butt of every dirty joke and sly comment at the village well.

Months went by, Maimouna's father continued to beat her on a regular basis and then did himself one worse by refusing to let her go to the health post for prenatal checkups. Binta's family, on the other hand, pumped her full of vitamins and monthly visits and took the situation in stride. They were both 15 years old.

So after returning to village after the holidays, waves of gossip started hitting me in rapid succession. A day apart from each other, they had each had a baby boy. Now, regardless of the outcome and the children's survival, in the eyes of their families and community they're both damaged goods. The most that they can hope for now is to marry some old man as a 3rd or 4th wife. But while both girls had survived the delivery without any complications, which was a relief given the high maternal mortality rate in Senegal, one of the babies was small and in poor health. You can probably guess which one it was.

The next morning, the news broke. Maimouna's baby had died in the night. She won't stop crying. She's alone, in pain, miserable, ostracized, and worst of all, her baby just died. And all her family has to say is that she should have known better, that it's better that it died. She needs to shut up and stop crying. Meanwhile, Binta is two houses down the street, walking around and feeling pretty good about her life, basking in the attention that a healthy baby boy brings. For Binta, her family’s attitude had made every possible difference.

One thing that I can say about my family is that they're very understanding people. When we realized that Binta was pregnant, we wished that it hadn't happened, given the cultural implications. We talked about what a problem teen pregnancy is in the village, but happily, nobody felt that attacking her with a bamboo stick would have resolved the situation or done anyone any material good. It happened, it was an unfortunate choice, but she still needed to go in for her prenatal visits and get her prenatal vitamins. As my host mom said, it's a problem in our village. These things happen. It's sad. But we still need to be understanding.

My sister and I went to visit Maimouna the day after her baby died, and her father was just sitting outside of their house - he wouldn't even acknowledge our arrival, which is a heinous offence in Pulaar culture, where greetings and hospitality are paramount. He just didn't care. He was making a point, especially to me. I’m a twenty-something educated white woman with no husband who does whatever she wants. I just don’t understand. Meanwhile, Maimouna is curled up in a ball in her room, sobbing, while her relatives and the women in the village cluster into her room to berate her. And there was nothing I could say. My only comment before I left was to tell her to keep crying. It's painful, it's sad, it sucks. She needed to acknowledge that pain. What she really needed was a hug, which I gave her. But that's all that I could do.

So my reaction to this situation.... yesterday morning, in cooperation with Peace Corps training staff, we held a training at my village school with students and parents to address girl's education, gender roles and respect. As I said, teen pregnancy is a huge problem in the village setting, and is frequently the result of rape or coercion. It typically results in girls dropping out of school and losing out on their only opportunity to obtain any kind of education or exposure to anything other than pounding millet and pulling water with a baby on their back all day. Hence, the push to increase community awareness of the importance of communicating with their children, keeping girls in school, and promoting women’s reproductive healthcare

Three weeks after going to visit Maimouna, we finally have some good news. She passed the exam to continue on to middle school last term, and now she's going to move to our road town and continue her education. In brutal honesty, if the baby had survived, this would not have been possible. But at least now she has the opportunity to move on with her life and get beyond this whole experience. And at least now, we’ve created a semi-open discussion in my village about women’s health and access to care and education. It's a bittersweet ending to an all too common story, but it's something. 

Episode 1 - Tali kulu si meets djam tan

After a year in Peace Corps, it finally occurred to me that the time has come for me to start blogging about it.

So here we go, starting with a little bit of background info...

As I said, I've been in Peace Corps for about a year. But unlike most volunteers in Senegal, I started my service in another country - Niger. Unfortunately, the Peace Corps program in Niger was closed early in my service and all of the volunteers in-country were evacuated due to security concerns. So here I am in Senegal. And I love it here.

Like most Americans, I knew little or nothing about it before arriving in country, and after three weeks of language training and a crash course in local culture, I was on my way to my new site. In all honesty, timing was an important component in me not freaking out about leaving Niger and switching my service to Senegal.

When you start off in a new country, you start psyching yourself up to the expectation that, barring any unforeseen circumstances, this is where you’re spending the next two years of your life. Once you finish training, you’re going to go to a village/town/city that will in all probability comprise your family, your workplace, and your primary social network for the next two years of your existence. Life as you know it has effectively ceased to exist.

So that’s what I did, and after going through all of that I went to my new site in Niger and was pulled out shortly thereafter and evacuated to Morocco, where I had the option to either go home to the US or apply for a new post in a new country. And that decision ultimately led me to Senegal. 

One thing, however, has remained the same. Yes, I had to learn a new language and yes, my sector changed slightly from generic agriculture and natural resource management to the more specific heading of "Agroforestry," but the concept of living and working in village has remained pretty much the same. My village is stashed away in one of the more remote areas of Senegal in the Kolda region, about 7k off the main road. We have two primary wells in my village, about 1500 people, two small "boutiques" where you can get matches, soap or maggi cubes, a school, a health hut, and a broken deep bore well. As is the custom for most Peace Corps sites, I'm the only volunteer in my site-  my closest PC neighbor (Dave Glovsky) is in my road town, which as I mentioned before, is 7k away. 

Unless I bike out of my village to go hang-out/ work with other volunteers, it's all on me in my ville, which leads to a lot of cross-sector work for most volunteers. So with the broader category of "agfo" (ie: planting lots of trees) set aside, a lot of my work in village is done with the local school, the health hut, the women's group, or simply with individual community members, and frequently has nothing whatever to do with planting trees at all. Example: About 36 hours after the Peace Corps car dropped me off at my site with all of my worldly possessions and drove off into the sunset, people in my village started telling me how badly they needed to start a community garden. Since the timing was off and it takes a significant period of time to a) coordinate the village around a project plan and b) raise enough money to make the project actually happen, we're only just starting to prepare the site now, nine months later. Things take time. In the interim, I work with the health hut to educate the community about nutrition and a fascinating superfood megaplant called Moringa, practice math and English with the kids in my village, work in my personal demo-garden in my backyard, study for the GRE, work with the kids on their school garden, and plant trees whenever the opportunity presents itself. 

All things considered, I manage to stay busy but still have a surprising amount of downtime. I do, after all, live in a village in West Africa, which is a thought that still has the potential to blow my mind on any given day when I actually think about what that means. But more on that later....

For more information about the Peace Corps program in Senegal, check out their website http://pcsenegal.org/.

First day of work on the community garden - October 2011

Mahmadou, Yero, and Souleymane - 3 of my host brothers in my hut

A side street in St. Louis, Senegal - formerly the capitol under French colonial rule

My host mom, Mariama, and one of her daughters in her rice field - September 2011

My little sister Maimouna, helping me pound cow manure for the school tree nursery - March 2011

Starting the school tree nursery - May 2011

Collecting rainwater during the rainy season - October 2011

Inside my hut sweet home

Traveling by cow cart in Sabula, Niger - December 2010

The pat toward the market in Sabula, Niger - December 2010

Women pounding millet in Niger - January 2011- It's done exactly the same way every day in Senegal as well