Dear French People: Go Home.

The more time I spend in village, the more entrenched I get in my routine of waking up, pulling water, sitting around talking to people all day, going to bed soon after the sun goes down, and showering out of a bucket. It becomes easy to forget the fact that I live on the national road, and am only a 30 minute car ride away from a major tourist destination.

Enter tourist season. And the subsequent bursting of my happy village bubble. I sensed that my quiet life was about to change drastically when I saw the first unnaturally tanned woman fly by my site on an ATV wearing platform sandals and short shorts (keep in mind, this is a predominately Muslim country. The only short shorts here come directly from France).

As the days pass, more and more white people (toubabs) are popping up all over the place. When I go to check my mail in Mbour, I see carfulls of them in their safari hats and sweat wicking fabric. The most recent development has been the daily tour groups who get carted straight to my village where they get to see the "real" Senegal. They come in groups of 10-20 to hang out at the kindergarten, walk around the village, and stare at me (random toubab) doing weird things and speaking the local language.

The latest incident...I was planting a papaya tree with my headphones on, and back turned to the Kindergarten. When I looked up, there were 4 French families (kids and all) staring at me. I was wearing my typical Peace Corps uniform of dirty capri pants and the same shirt I've had on for the past few days. Needless to say, I felt awkward. Then, yesterday, I was hanging out with the kindergarten teachers, when the tourists showed up. They all stood around, dispensing random health advice in French (there are only like 5 people in the village who speak French btw) in condescending tones to the women who I have come to know as my friends. I know the tourists just see them as...you know...uneducated African villagers. Anyways, I was holding a baby, when it started spitting up on me. No big deal, except two of the French guys started videotaping it. Really?? One of the women in my village then asked me, in Serere, if babies in the US spit up too. I told her that all babies in the world spit up. She had a fit of giggles over that comment. There are some parts of Senegalese humor that I will just never understand. Somewhere in the world, that interaction is recorded on videotape for a guy's family to watch as he narrates his trip to Africa.

The worst, though, is their incessant need to hand out candy. This is why we volunteers get harassed by kids for gifts, candy, money, etc. You know those signs that say, "please don't feed the birds?" Same thing. Candy is bad for kids, who are generally malnourished anyways, and it makes my life significantly less pleasant. So, if you are a French tourist reading this, and you want to do some real good in Africa...search for the random dirty white person in the rural village you are visiting and give them copious amounts of nice French wine and cheese. It will go a long way. And we thank you.

Just for the record, I have nothing against the French. Just tourists. Even in Hawaii, the aloha shirt wearing tourists insisted on getting in the way of any and all work projects. I know you're on vacation, but the world is not your personal Disneyland. It may be hard to believe, but when you see a coned off area on the edge of a volcanic crater, with rappelling gear set up over the side of a 500 ft. cliff...the person dangling in the air below is NOT going to appreciate your walking into the whole operation, grabbing the rope and asking, "So! What are you guys doing?"

Jeez. I wish I had a camera. I would dearly love to take pictures back at them.

IM GOING HOME FOR CHRISTMAS!

YAYAYAYAY. I hope this doesnt lead you to think that Im not enjoying it here, Im just really excited to spend Christmas at home. Last year I spent Chrismas out in Victoria, changing blackberry branches in a tank of giant stickbugs, before watching movies with my boyfriend's japanese room mate. It was actually pretty fun, but it will be nice to go home...and see SNOW. Also, I have a six hour layover in DC, ahem...CLAIRE, which means lots of time to drink Starbucks and contemplate life or something.

Ill be there on the tenth :) I have absolutely nothing planned. Its going to be wonderful.

Anyways, life here has been especially fun lately. Ive been spending time with my family, playing with the kids, harvesting peanuts along with the whole village, hanging out with Steve and Jen in Mbour, practicing french at the Poste de Sante, and actually getting work done. I dont know what happened, I think maybe hanging out with my family in the fields more, but I feel a lot more involved in life here now. Rainy season ended, and its really pretty right now. Kindergarten also started, and now that I know who all the kids are, its really fun to hang out there.

Not much else to report :) I accidentally made all of the new volunteers dip their carrot sticks in a pot of cookie dough because I thought it was hummus. They were too polite to say anything. Oops...welcome to Peace Corps. And I thought it was pretty good, anyways.

These next few months are going to be nice, I have some exciting projects planned. Then Thanksgiving, a week of causaries at the health post, All Volunteer conference, Dakar, and then....Home!

Im not a baby anymore!

About 60 new volunteers just installed at their new sites all over Senegal, officially promoting my group from our position as the newest volunteers in country, to something more like...sophomores. It feels kind of nice.

On another note, I am going to be Ziggy Stardust for Halloween. Hopefully somebody with a camera will be around, and I can steal their pictures. Until then, I am going back to site to have a huge community meeting that will hopefully set the agenda for the next year and a half. Ive been here almost 8 months, which is hard to grasp. It often feels like I just arrived, but I have enough freckles these days to prove that's not the case. I spent this past week visiting some other volunteers at their sites, which has become one of my favorite things to do. I love hearing other languages, seeing how they interact with their families, helping out where I can, and seeing the projects everyone has been working on. Its a great way to see the country, and get ideas. And its fun.

Now that it's mid October, my absolute favorite time of the year back at home, all I can think about is wanting to drink hot apple cider on a cold day, go hiking in color changing woods, buy fresh apples at the farmers market, buy bulk candy, and eat pumpkin doughnuts from washtenaw dairy. mmmm.

Oh well. Pictures coming soon! Probably in November. Have a good Halloween!!

Somebody Pickpocketed My Hamburger.

Im serious. Last week, during my BEST BIRTHDAY EVER (besides the fact that I missed family and friends at home) I was dancing around in a dress with large pockets. Somebody had bought me a hamburger, and I was saving it for later in one of those pockets. Then, as I left the restaurant where we had been dancing, I noticed it was no longer there. A sketchy senegalese man was sitting off to the side eating it and staring at me. I let it go. I pick my battles...but I really wanted that hamburger.

Anyways, last week all of the Health and Environmental Ed volunteers had a summit. We were staying in a huge house that didnt have water, was really hot, and had nowhere to hang mosquito nets. It was pretty miserable, so on my birthday our boss announced that we were being moved to an incredibly fancy beachfront hotel that was originally out of the price range, but had agreed to give us a deal if we promised to buy drinks with our increased daily allowance. OKAY. I was surrounded by all of my favorite people here, and wearing the flashing light up crown that Nana sent me in the mail, along with the plastic beads and stickers she sent (THANK YOU!). Everyone bought me whatever I wanted from the bar which means I had Baileys and Espresso all evening while swimming around in a pool on the beach underneath gorgeous palm trees. Then we went to a really good restaurant where some of the other volunteers had baked me a cake from scratch. it tasted more like a big doughnut than a cake, which was great : ) Then 50's music randomly began playing and we had a big swing dance party. Afterwards, I went back to my nice hotel room with a fan and running water, and peacefully slept my way into being 24 years old.

On another note, it is harvest season here in Senegal! Before coming here I never really understood how peanuts worked/grew, but I was imagining some kind of bush with peanuts hanging off of it. In reality, though, they are pretty amazing plants because they literally plant themselves. The flower is pollinated, then the soon-to-be-seed drops down to the root, and the seed (peanut) grows down there underground. Each plant has like 20 peanuts on it. So, for the past week or so everyone has been walking out into the fields, pulling up peanut plants, and popping the peanuts off to eat right there. I like walking the super cute 2 yr old twins at my house out into the field and collecting peanuts with them. I also taught them you can eat greenbeans raw (ie. not boiled in oil). Score one for nutrition.

Here is a stolen image of a peanut plant:





And one last thing, school was supposed to start the other day, but the houses that were built for the new teachers to come and live in are currently being occupied by a guy and his family. He refuses to move. School turned into a major shouting match between him and the rest of the village leaders (and a random french woman who showed up out of nowhere with a catholic nun, and disappeared after the meeting). I think they agreed to let his family stay in the houses (no idea why, or what that means for school ever starting) but they decided that he owes the village leaders 2 liters of wine and a cooler of beer for ruining their day. I love sereres. And am endlessly frustrated by them. Whatever.

What I Do Here.

It occurred to me that in my relentless praising of Dakar, I have neglected to write about my actual job/project/etc. So, first of all, my position is as an Environmental Education Volunteer. With that title, you would think that I have specific hours and work in a school, but that's not the case. I have zero structure to my job, meaning I am totally in charge of deciding what I want to do and when. In trainings, we are provided with language, a history of the area and natural environment, and tools to work with the community to meet environmental and health needs.

So, basically, I spend my time getting to know the language and the village. I hang out with eveyone, talk about what is important to them, what they want to see change, and what their ideas are. I take those ideas, hold meetings, identify needs and wants, along with what is feasible, and try and put it all into action. So far, that has basically been me just wandering around and helping people plant trees in their compounds, while taking the excuse to sit and get to know them. 500 people in a village sounds small, but when it comes to establishing personal connections...that's like my entire high school class. I didn't know them all. Im sure that had everything to do with sheer numbers, and not the fact that I had braces, bangs, enormous glasses, a puffy yellow jacket, loved biology, was some kind of french club officer and...enjoyed Star Wars more than your average person.

Anyways, thats my job! I plant trees, am turning into one big freckle, am getting ready for the school year when I will have an EE club, and probably a lot more to do. For now, though, here's an account of my last day in village before coming here to Dakar where I will enjoy a week of air conditioning, eating good food, and speaking english (sorry,I cant help it, Dakar is paradise. Tonight we are playing ultimate frisbee with ex-pats and then going to happy hour).

A few days ago I woke up and pulled water at the well, and then sat down to make coffee and read. By 10am it felt like an oven, so I just laid around in the shade with my family, picking apart leaves for leaf sauce that night. Luckily, around 1pm the sky split open and a massive storm ensued. It got cold enough to function, so after the deulge, I went over to a friend's house because she had offered to teach me how to cook bean sandwiches and make mayonnaise. I had bought the supplies days before, and was waiting to get the energy to actually go over there. So, we spent the evening in her little shack of a kitchen, cutting up onions, cooking the beans (that I had picked from my garden a few days before) and talking. By the time the sun was setting, she and her sister had wrapped up the finished beans and mayonnaise in bowls,and tied it with a cloth for me to carry home. All of the women were making comments about how im senegalese now, and can cook, and were being really fun and friendly. I have been at site for a while now and am starting to understand most of whats going on around me, and much to everyone's surprise, I wedged my way into a conversation and made a joke...and thought they were all gong to die from laughing so much. I was SO PROUD of myself. I would translate it, but its not funny in english.

Basically the point of the story is that as I walked home in the setting sun along the road, looking out over the baobab trees lit up in the evening light, carrying my little sandwich bundle in my arms...I couldn't stop smiling. I learned to cook my favorite food, I spent a whole day hanging out with the women and having fun, and even reached an understanding of the language enough to let my personality come through for a second. I am not here to make any environmental waves, or to "save the world" as it were, but to learn how to be happy no matter where I am, to relate to people across any barrier, and to generally try to make everyone around me's life a little bit better, or make them a little bit happier. That's not exactly a job, persay, or something you could put on a resume and get paid for...but thats why Im a volunteer : ) And thats why I think Peace Corps works. You have freedom to make it your own, and do the best you can, whether its through building personal reltionships, informal education, or developing large scale projects to help make everyone's life just a little bit better.

On a different note, Ive read 17 books so far. 10 of those were in the past 2 weeks. Its hot. I have been slacking off. Here are some really good ones I recommend!

The Help-Kathryn Stockett
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle-Barbara Kingsolver
Zorro-Isabel Allende
Snow Falling on Cedars-David Guterson
East of Eden-John Steinbeck

OK. Have a good day!

I have internet now!!

Not at site, but im in Dakar : ) It has been miserably hot for the past month. Too hot to travel. Except for a 5 minute window of internet a few days ago at the cyber cafe...I havent checked email or left my village for three weeks. I'll do a real blog post tomorrow, but for now the laptop is dying so i will leave you with a quick anecdote. Last night my 2 year old sister was playing with a new "toy" that one of the other kids had scrounged up. It was a heavy duty chain with a padlock attached to the end. Someone has managed to attach a knife blade to the padlock...which my sister was happily sucking on. I didn't intervene. She was fine. But, I dont think Louly is ready for electricity...god knows what would happen if electric outlets were introduced into daily life.

I'll write soon! Things are going really well!

My darling sister and I will soon be the same age!

Today I went to the bank to pick up a money order, and along with the cash the attendant pushed a box of fresh dates through the hole in the bulletproof window. She told me it was a gift from the bank, a promotion if you will, where customers get free dates for doing money orders with them. Sometimes....I really love Senegal. Between things like that, and people getting into heated debates about how many times is the correct number to chew a certain brand of candy before swallowing it...it's hard to imagine that this country could ever get into serious conflict or break out into any sort of mass violence. They would get stuck making fun of each other for looking ridiculous in their army uniforms. Or over what the uniforms should look like in the first place. Or what is the proper angle at which to hold a gun. Even the ethnic groups just jokingly make fun of each other and go on their way laughing.

Anyways, I have spent the past few days visiting another volunteer under the pretense of painting a mural. But, she has one of the few other Sereer sites, and it's been rainy and slow lately, so mostly we were just hanging out, practicing language, and swimming. However, at some point we realized we would get stuck there, because the rain was flooding the hour long walk to her road town, so we trudged our way out to a bus in water up to our knees, and came back to Kaolack (the regional house). I spent all day buying gifts in the marketplace, which is an all out jungle of bright fabrics, jewelry, people shouting and bargaining, and shoving random things you could never need into your face. It's fun when you're in the right mood.

Korite, the end of Ramadan (one month of fasting) is coming up and everybody is preparing for huge parties where countless sheep and goats will meet their untimely death. I however, am taking a day off with a couple of other volunteers before heading back to site, to watch the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy , projected on a wall. Extended editions. This is only possible when a few select people are in the house.

Once back at site, I have been given money by Associated projects (http://appropriateprojects.com/node/323) to start building well covers. Between that, planting all of the trees Ive grown, language learning, and compound gardens, this month will go by quickly bringing us to...my 24th birthday!! All Health and Environmental Education volunteers have a summit October 5th and 6th, followed by three days of birthdays. We're all headed to Dakar for Ice Cream and fun. I cant wait. Can you tell I love Dakar? I do.