Explore. Dream. Discover.
This blog started as a randomly updated yet lovingly written examination of my Peace Corps service from October 2010 to December 2013 in Niger and Senegal. After December 2013, my boyfriend and I will be traveling across Western Europe, and this will then turn into a travel blog covering a little more territory. If any prospective PCVs find this, feel free to contact me!
Monday, March 3, 2014
Saturday, November 16, 2013
"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it" -Ghandi
Before I went to bed last night, my host mom and I were
laying on the bamboo bed outside her house looking up at the stars. My favorite
time of day is right after dinner before going to bed, when everyone is back from the fields and my mom and I would sit and talk for hours. Whenever the moon
was out, we would joke that it was the “kuran Fouladou” or “Pulaar
electricity,” as it was the only time we had light at night. The kids always
run around and play in the moonlight, and everyone sits outside their huts and
gossips late into the night. Back in the day, my mom asked me if the American
moon and the Senegalese moon were the same. She was convinced that they
couldn’t be, but I assured her that they were, in fact, the same moon. Last
night, she asked me again if this was the same moon that I could see from
America. When I told her yes, she paused for a minute, then told me that when I
get to America I should look up at the moon and call her. And she could look up
at the moon and know that even though we couldn’t see each other, we were both
looking up at the same moon, and that would be enough.
Hugging people isn’t really a thing in my village. I wish it were. At that moment, it was all I could do not to give my mom the biggest bear hug in the world and cry on her shoulder. From the very beginning, my little Pulaar mom accepted me as one of her own and has been my strongest advocate through thick and thin. She’s a force of nature in her own right, even though she only weighs about 90 lbs and is about 5 feet tall. She is my best friend in village. My dad (pictured) is a sweet, caring, and understanding man. He can bring his community together through the most difficult moments with remarkable thoughtfulness and diplomacy. Neither of my parents can read or write, they only speak Pulaar, no French or Wolof. Sitting here in my village for the last time, it’s easy to forget about how difficult things have been over the course of the last three years. Between the evacuation from Niger and the transfer to Senegal, my Peace Corps service certainly got off to a rocky start. In all honesty, I’m surprised that I made it this far. But as I sit here with my family, aware of the fact that this may be the last time that I ever sit here with them in this lifetime, I’m so thankful for the time that I’ve had here. Despite everything, I dread the coming of tomorrow when we say goodbye for the foreseeable future. With all this in mind, I can’t help but remember how I would count the days until I could leave site, only to count the days until I was back there again. I remember how frustrated I became with the combination of apathy and intractability that would prove such an obstacle to my best laid plans and intentions.
Hugging people isn’t really a thing in my village. I wish it were. At that moment, it was all I could do not to give my mom the biggest bear hug in the world and cry on her shoulder. From the very beginning, my little Pulaar mom accepted me as one of her own and has been my strongest advocate through thick and thin. She’s a force of nature in her own right, even though she only weighs about 90 lbs and is about 5 feet tall. She is my best friend in village. My dad (pictured) is a sweet, caring, and understanding man. He can bring his community together through the most difficult moments with remarkable thoughtfulness and diplomacy. Neither of my parents can read or write, they only speak Pulaar, no French or Wolof. Sitting here in my village for the last time, it’s easy to forget about how difficult things have been over the course of the last three years. Between the evacuation from Niger and the transfer to Senegal, my Peace Corps service certainly got off to a rocky start. In all honesty, I’m surprised that I made it this far. But as I sit here with my family, aware of the fact that this may be the last time that I ever sit here with them in this lifetime, I’m so thankful for the time that I’ve had here. Despite everything, I dread the coming of tomorrow when we say goodbye for the foreseeable future. With all this in mind, I can’t help but remember how I would count the days until I could leave site, only to count the days until I was back there again. I remember how frustrated I became with the combination of apathy and intractability that would prove such an obstacle to my best laid plans and intentions.
I didn’t accomplish any of the things I thought I would when
I joined the Peace Corps. It’s impossible to gauge where you’ll be going and
what your life will look like once you arrive at your site. As a result, most
of my big ideals fell by the wayside. But this experience has made a bigger impact
on me personally than I made on my village as a whole. As an applicant, I
always thought that there should be more concrete information on what to expect
and what your work would be like, rather than the plethora of vague references
to “the toughest job you’ll ever love” and “sustainability.” Now that I’m on
the other side of things, I realize that it’s impossible for anyone to say what
your experience will be like. Even in the same site, one volunteer may have an
incredibly fulfilling experience, while another volunteer might hate every
minute of it. And you can never effectively explain what things are like to a
new volunteer, they have to figure it out at their own pace. In my own site, my
replacement and I have completely different friends, completely different
interactions with the same people. Her overall experience will be nothing like
mine. Sure, there will be certain similarities and shared experiences, but there
are so many variations between sites, personalities, experience and interests
that you could never say upfront to a new volunteer, this is what your life
will be like for the next two years.
Joining the Peace Corps is a huge leap of faith, one that
many people might not understand or have any interest in pursuing themselves.
On a personal level, not many people at home thought that this was a great
idea, especially when I decided to extend for an extra year. But in the end,
I’m glad that I followed this path. I've loved my work, both in village, and as the volunteer coordinator in Kolda. From start to finish, this has been so incredibly fulfilling, engaging, and mind blowing awesome. My family here in Senegal have been so incredible, and mean so much to me. They have guided me through the
last few years with so much patience and compassion. I could thank them every
day for the rest of my life and it would never be enough.
The last few years have been simultaneously nothing that I expected, yet everything I could have hoped for. I’ve learned how far I can push myself. I’ve
learned not to be afraid, intimidated, or reserved. I've also learned how to maintain some semblance of self control under the most frustrating of circumstances. It’s amazing how
much you can do without. People often think of electricity and running water as
the key conveniences that you miss out on here. I don’t even think of that
anymore. Electricity and running water aren’t really that difficult to live
without. Some volunteers miss their toothpaste, others miss take-out Chinese
food and Chipotle burritos. For some reason, I really missed spinach and fruit
smoothies. But after three years of bean sandwiches once a week and lallo in the meantime, the lack of fruit smoothies and spinach
didn’t kill me.
In the last year, I’ve had two surgeries, one while at
home on vacation, and the other a medevac. I’ve changed my site in the last 2
months of my service, and have been in a state of transition for the last 5
months at least. My Peace Corps experience was not unusual in it’s radical ups and downs. There were times when I felt that everyone in my village was a lost cause, only to be blown away a few hours later by an interaction with a family member or work partner who would restore my faith in humanity as a whole through the simplest of actions. As I spend these last few days with my village, I forget about
everything else that’s happened. I only wish that I had more time to be here
with them. My host mom was shocked that I wouldn’t be able to spend my final
month in Senegal with her in the village. I wish I could have. Unfortunately, I
only had these few days to spare before getting back to work. Here in this
moment, it’s hard to believe that I might not have a chance to come back to
Kolda. Even should I come back five or ten years from now, it will be a
different house, a different family. People come and go, sons marry and bring
new wives into the house, and the daughters move away with their husbands. The
babies all grow up, as babies do. But maybe it’s better this way, to leave with
this perfect blend of imperfections sealed in a bubble that I can take with me
throughout the rest of my life. I can
leave with all of the pictures of my family and the people that I left behind,
choosing to remember only the best of my experiences, and learn from the
difficult ones.
In short, the major life lesson that I have learned in the
Peace Corps was summed up very well by Earl Nightingale, “We
are at our very best, and we are happiest, when we are fully engaged in work we
enjoy on the journey toward the goal we’ve established for ourselves. It gives
meaning to our time off and comfort to our sleep. It makes everything else in
life so wonderful, so worthwhile.”
And on that note, I say goodbye to my
village, to Senegal, and thank you to everyone who has shown so much care
and support over the last three years. I could never have done this without
you.
Saturday, June 23, 2012
The beginning is the end is the beginning...
"Is it bright where you are,
Have the people changed,
Does it make you happy you're so strange"
Even though there are volunteers who don't happen to be Smashing Pumpkins devotees, those lyrics have a certain poignancy as you head into the final stretch of your service that we all feel to a certain extent. We're strangers in a village for two years, leaving everything we knew behind and joining a new community of host country nationals, volunteers, expats, the whole shebang. And you realize that you are definitely not the same person that you were when you packed up your two 50lb bags and set off into the unknown two years ago.
After about 10 months without rainfall, the worst part of hot season is over and rainy season has finally returned to Kolda and the land of endless summer - thank god. I can finally put my buckets out at night and wake up in the morning to miraculously full buckets of water. I can stop going to the well 4 times a day just to water my tree nursery.
With the advent of the rains, work has accelerated at a drastic pace as my village scrambles to wrap up everything that needs to be done before the rains become too frequent and steady. And of course, the moderate amount of rain that we've already had means that all of the projects that have to be established during the rainy season have to be started at the same time. Immediately. And as I find myself approaching the last few months of my service in village, the reality of how much I still wish that I could do at my site is hitting me full force while the time is rapidly slipping away. It's ironic, you start your service with the idea that you have all of this time stretching out in front of you - two years seems like such a long time when you're on the front end of things. And then you suddenly turn around and it's almost over. Unless you're me, in which case you decide that two years isn't nearly long enough. So although I only have four months left at my village, I've decided to extend my Peace Corps service in the city of Kolda for an extra year as the regional volunteer leader, which is a job that I'm ridiculously excited about starting.
Once my time is up in village at the end of the rainy season (October), I should be moving to Kolda and starting my new position, which is a combination of volunteer support, site development, and networking between local NGOs and Peace Corps volunteers in the Kolda region. It's going to be a very different situation and work environment than what I've been used to for the last two years. But as I'm wrapping things up in my village, the garden is finally coming together, the well project is almost completed, the kids have finally stopped calling me "toubako," and my host family is getting nostalgic. And as I look back over what I've done so far and what I'll finish up before I move on, the main focus of what I've been doing as the first volunteer in my village is to prepare enough projects and lay the groundwork for my replacement to come in and have an easier time of it than I did. By now, my village is pretty well used to having an American living and working with them - and once my replacement arrives, my village will have learned how to speak to someone who has no idea what they're saying in Pulaar and can help them learn in a much more constructive fashion without getting frustrated with the volunteer. They've already gotten their frustration out with me and have realized that I eventually was able to figure it all out and become relatively intelligible. And all of the meetings and networking and tea drinking and projects that I've done are going to pay off with whoever the new guy/gal is - they can start working pretty much immediately and expand on the things that I've already done/started, which will be a huge help in terms of not feeling like you're not doing anything early on, and will enable them to come up with some really interesting projects and trainings for the village.
So no, everything that I wanted to do will not be done before I leave village. But the foundation will be there for the next volunteer. And the best part of it all is that I can keep coming back to haunt them when I come back to visit the village :) That's one of the most interesting aspects of this extension - I'll be able to do what very few volunteers have an opportunity of doing, which is to go back and see what happens in the village once you're no longer the volunteer there. Did your projects hang together? Did they pick up and continue any of the things that you were obsessing about during your service? It's a crazy concept, but life in your village continues after you leave, and I'm excited to see what that looks like. This is going to be so much fun...
Have the people changed,
Does it make you happy you're so strange"
Even though there are volunteers who don't happen to be Smashing Pumpkins devotees, those lyrics have a certain poignancy as you head into the final stretch of your service that we all feel to a certain extent. We're strangers in a village for two years, leaving everything we knew behind and joining a new community of host country nationals, volunteers, expats, the whole shebang. And you realize that you are definitely not the same person that you were when you packed up your two 50lb bags and set off into the unknown two years ago.
After about 10 months without rainfall, the worst part of hot season is over and rainy season has finally returned to Kolda and the land of endless summer - thank god. I can finally put my buckets out at night and wake up in the morning to miraculously full buckets of water. I can stop going to the well 4 times a day just to water my tree nursery.
With the advent of the rains, work has accelerated at a drastic pace as my village scrambles to wrap up everything that needs to be done before the rains become too frequent and steady. And of course, the moderate amount of rain that we've already had means that all of the projects that have to be established during the rainy season have to be started at the same time. Immediately. And as I find myself approaching the last few months of my service in village, the reality of how much I still wish that I could do at my site is hitting me full force while the time is rapidly slipping away. It's ironic, you start your service with the idea that you have all of this time stretching out in front of you - two years seems like such a long time when you're on the front end of things. And then you suddenly turn around and it's almost over. Unless you're me, in which case you decide that two years isn't nearly long enough. So although I only have four months left at my village, I've decided to extend my Peace Corps service in the city of Kolda for an extra year as the regional volunteer leader, which is a job that I'm ridiculously excited about starting.
Once my time is up in village at the end of the rainy season (October), I should be moving to Kolda and starting my new position, which is a combination of volunteer support, site development, and networking between local NGOs and Peace Corps volunteers in the Kolda region. It's going to be a very different situation and work environment than what I've been used to for the last two years. But as I'm wrapping things up in my village, the garden is finally coming together, the well project is almost completed, the kids have finally stopped calling me "toubako," and my host family is getting nostalgic. And as I look back over what I've done so far and what I'll finish up before I move on, the main focus of what I've been doing as the first volunteer in my village is to prepare enough projects and lay the groundwork for my replacement to come in and have an easier time of it than I did. By now, my village is pretty well used to having an American living and working with them - and once my replacement arrives, my village will have learned how to speak to someone who has no idea what they're saying in Pulaar and can help them learn in a much more constructive fashion without getting frustrated with the volunteer. They've already gotten their frustration out with me and have realized that I eventually was able to figure it all out and become relatively intelligible. And all of the meetings and networking and tea drinking and projects that I've done are going to pay off with whoever the new guy/gal is - they can start working pretty much immediately and expand on the things that I've already done/started, which will be a huge help in terms of not feeling like you're not doing anything early on, and will enable them to come up with some really interesting projects and trainings for the village.
So no, everything that I wanted to do will not be done before I leave village. But the foundation will be there for the next volunteer. And the best part of it all is that I can keep coming back to haunt them when I come back to visit the village :) That's one of the most interesting aspects of this extension - I'll be able to do what very few volunteers have an opportunity of doing, which is to go back and see what happens in the village once you're no longer the volunteer there. Did your projects hang together? Did they pick up and continue any of the things that you were obsessing about during your service? It's a crazy concept, but life in your village continues after you leave, and I'm excited to see what that looks like. This is going to be so much fun...
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Water harvesting + heat exhaustion = Awesomeness
The whole group in Fodé Bayo, the third site on the tour |
As wonderfully and conscientiously trained as we all are, there are times when the work that we do depends on the expertise of another volunteer or a Peace Corps training guru - in this case, third-year volunteer Austin and PC staff member Youssupha. This training tour would never have happened without their help - Austin leading the training in English (he's Wolof, which is almost useless in Pulaar-country), and then being translated into Pulaar by Youssupha. Also, we would have all melted without the women who dedicated themselves to providing us with constant access to drinking water - it's the hottest part of the hot season in Kolda right now, which means that it's averaging about 115-120 in the afternoons and doesn't cool down much during the rest of the day. Not necessarily ideal conditions for a week-long field-training and work in the field with a pickaxe all day, but vital in terms of the upcoming rainy season. Everyone in village is prepping their fields for planting about a month from now, so this was the perfect time to go out and install contour berms, water catchment basins, etc.
The demo terrace - compost will be added during the rainy season |
Next up, Fodé Bayo, which is Mary's Mandinka village about 20k north of my site - we crammed all 13 of us into the back of the Peace Corps car and onward we went. Unlike Ruth and I, who are both the first volunteers in our villages, Mary is the third volunteer at her site, so her village was primed and ready to get some serious work done. And once again, the counterparts jumped in and took the lead, determining the contour of the land with homemade A-frames, demonstrating the new techniques, and explaining the entire process to anyone who showed up to help. Her village also has a lot of energy, far more than the other sites we visited - the women started a dance line along the tops of the contour berms to pack down the soil, which went on until we finally broke for lunch and headed on to the next site, Sinchian Sirin.
Soil erosion in Sinchian Sirin - the whole village is washing out |
The final stop on the tour was in the city of Kolda itself, where we met with an urban agriculture volunteer, Jordan, to install spillways in the rice paddies that were built in her urban garden site. The problem with that particular site was that they built the garden in an area that is typically flooded to about knee-height every rainy season due to a drainage pipe that empties into a dip in the landscape. Without the spillways, the rice paddies will overflow and the garden beds will be completely submerged.
Whitney & her counterpart, Abdoulaye |
We're already planning to adapt this model to other types of trainings, and hope to start a community garden training tour based along similar lines in July, working primarily on alley cropping, permagardening, live fencing, and the chance to check up on the work that we did during this tour and do some minor repair work once the rains have started. In the end, this tour turned into an incredible experience that, not only resulted in getting a large amount of serious work done that we might not otherwise have been able to do, but sent us back to our sites all with a lot of positive feedback, great energy, and some wonderful moments. I can't wait to start planning the next one...
Youssupha explaining the next steps for maintaining the boomerang berms - also, Mary, Seini, Samba, & Abdoulaye |
Me, Samba, Abdoulaye, Youssupha, and various village helper-outers working on the terraces in my village |
Mary and the ladies from my garden group, digging along an erosion channel to install the catchment basins. |
My counterpart, Samba, leveling-up the dirt along the top of the terrace. Accompanied by my dog, George Michael. |
Mary's village and her counterparts, Seini and Fanta |
Austin and Ruth - Peace Corps Gothic |
Starting the catchment basins at Ruth's site |
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Flashbacks and Reality checks
First, a few thrilling updates!
Thrilling update #1 - After much trepidation building up to the final vote, the Presidential elections in Senegal went through peacefully and we have a new president, Macky Sal. My best friend in village, Nyuko, had a baby boy on election day.... Macky Sal Balde :) Had he been a girl, they were going to name him after me, but you can't have everything...
Thrilling update #2 - We've hit water on the first of two wells being dug in the village! Not quite finished yet, but it's a huge step - pictured, fellow PCV Dan Hodson, swinging into the second well on a rope to the amusement of several villagers....
It's always a wonderful feeling - you've been hard at work in village for a few months, and you finally leave village for a week or two to participate in a couple of trainings or to work on some other project. A few weeks later, you roll back into village after an exhausting 17 hour car trip back from the coast and wander into your backyard -- only the find out that your mango trees have been dug up by chickens and your entire tree nursery has been decimated by a few particularly sadistic sheep.
As I mentioned in my last post, I've had a seemingly constant stream of visitors coming through my village. Earlier this month, I hosted two American college students who are studying abroad in Dakar for a few months. As part of their curriculum, the students in this particular program (CIEE) are required to go out on a "rural visit," which in most instances means that there's a good chance that they'll be staying with a Peace Corps volunteer. Obviously, it's a great chance for them to get out of the city and get a feel for what the rest of the country is like, but it was also a rare chance for me to have a little bit of a reality check. After you've been in village for a certain period of time, I feel like you tend to become slightly complacent. You're so used to pulling water and camping out and eating corn every day in the dark that you begin to lose your perspective on how radically your life has changed. Which was why it was so interesting to have these two students come out for a few days. You start to lose your sense of what is and isn't normal for your life as you've always known it, and end up normalizing so much of your experience that you no longer really appreciate all of the quirky and fascinating aspects of your life as you're now living it. Which is why it's so important to inject a certain amount of fresh perspective and naivete into your life at various points along the way. I would hate to think that I've become too complacent, getting lost in the daily routine of village and the stresses of language, communication, and the disappointments that inevitably come when projects and plans go awry.
One of the nicest things about the visit was my greater appreciation of how my interactions with people in village have developed the longer I've been at site. I arrived in my village over a year ago, barely able to greet people and with no contacts, friends, or concept of how the village interacted as a cohesive unit. Finally, while there are still people that I don't really know and plenty of people whose names I can't remember, I have my set of close friends in village who I visit every day, and I finally feel like a member of the community. It's something that you need to see in contrast to other situations in order to fully appreciate how much progress you've made, and it was so much fun to be able to show these students around the village, introduce them to people, translate (especially translating), and to actually be able to show a fellow American who is non-Peace Corps a little bit about what my life is like in village and what it's like to work in this kind of scenario.
The notion that a PCV can ever really describe their experience in a way that accurately reflects how it has impacted their life is virtually impossible. Be it family, friends or random strangers, we're all very aware of the fact that no matter how close you are to someone and how much you tell them about your life here, that unless they've been here and physically witnessed some aspect of what you're trying to describe to them, that a huge piece of the puzzle will always be missing. For most volunteers, I feel that the positives of this experience far outweigh the negatives, with the low moments making the highs so much more powerful and memorable. The things that most people think would be difficult (like pulling your own water and living without electricity on a diet of rice, rice and more rice for two years) are actually the things that you acclimate to the fastest and that make the least amount of difference. If anything, you're more worried about telling people about all the little things that nag at and frustrate you on a daily basis -- people are already worried enough simply by virtue of the fact that they know nothing about where you are and what it's like to actually live there. The fact that it's such a foreign concept to most people leads you to become more concerned about perpetuating misconceptions and reinforcing concerns for your safety and well-being that are really non-issues. Which leads to a certain hesitance in being completely honest about stressors in village, like coordinating village projects when only certain people can do certain specific things (ex: women can only cut 2in wide fence posts, a 3in fencepost has to be cut by a man... just because, well, that's the way it always goes. and the men can't do it today because it's 11 am and they're resting right now. So we can't do any work until next Friday, even though today is Thursday, because Friday's are the acknowledged day to do community work and we need to give them a week's notice, and we really don't know if they'll be able to do it anyway because yadda yadda...).
Nevertheless, one of the most beautiful things about my village is their willingness to accept you as one of their own. As other volunteers are now coming to the end of their service and about to go back to the US, I've realized how much a part of my life my host family and my village has become, and as my family hears about other volunteers going back home, they've started talking more and more about and getting more and more upset about he idea of me leaving in six months. As they said the other day, they're my family now. They protect me when they feel that I need protection, they help me out when I need support, and they take care of me in the best way that they know how. And as this last stage of volunteers packs up and says goodbye, I'm becoming more aware of how hard it's going to be to say goodbye to my own family. To my brothers, my mom, my best friend, my work partners, my sister - especially knowing that chances are, I'll never see them again. It just makes you appreciate the time that you've had so much more.
Friday, March 9, 2012
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....
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....
Saturday, January 28, 2012
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.
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