Looking back on my recent entries I realized that I havent really made any real update on what is going on in Louly right now.
So the harvests are finishing up now. The millet was tons of itchy fun. Peanuts are tons of all kinds of work but worth it. The beans are pretty much done and now people are waiting on bissap. The sorghum is also getting all cut down now and we have been eating that most nights.
With the kids finished with that I hope that we can actually have some legit afterschool ee club meetings. We had a couple little things, and one of them was actually kinda cool. Mostly we transplanted some mango trees. A mango that sits protected in a big garden had tons of seeds strewn about it that have turned into a tiny forest of little saplings. We moved a bunch into the school garden in plastic sacks that we are watering for a couple weeks to outplant in peoples fields or wherever the kids want them.
The teachers love to string me along but they say they would love to do some environmental lessons with their usual topics. So, maybe that will happen soon, inchallah.
I am trying to get some good stuf going with the college in Sandiara. The English teachers there say they can really use some help, the students get used to their accent and expressions and could use a native speaker. They are as slow to get going as the primary school though and only slightly less frustrating with strikes. At least they are genuinaly interested and communicating.
Something good going on now though- I have been pestering the heads of household a lot recently. The latrine project, yes that project that I am so honored to have gotten funding for from friends and strangers back home that I thank you all so much for, well it is still getting itself started. This is Africa, as they say, eh? Well, so we were waiting for the rainy season to end so we could start building. Then all the men and boys were busy with the millet and peanut harvest. Now that is wañing, err English... work is finishing, so we can start now. And so I have been telling them. We should start now, ndiiki, ndiiki ndiiki, now now, like yesterday would be better. The thing holding us back is that we decided that a family needs to contribute their full amount before they can get a latrine and that we would build them in groups. So now, eight families of the fifty have given the full amount but all but three are pretty scattered around. So we decided to start with those and the mason, my counterpart and I went and marked off where they should dig their pit.
This little activity sparked some good interest and people came up and after some discussion my counterpart and the mason agreed to mark off everyones pit dimentions so they can start digging. The beauty of doing it at the end of the rainy season is that the ground is softer, but its getting dry pretty quick and people would rather do less work in the short term than wait and have more to do. Thats good there, its a kind of planning ahead I think which is not often seen here.
Anyway, so now they are busy going from area to area in the village when they have time, marking off where the pit will be. They are nearly finished now and several people are nearly finished digging too. I will definitly get pictures of the process as it goes so you all can see how amazing this is to them and how much they want this.
So thats the main stuff going down. I am mostly pestering husbands and wives to give the money that remains for them to give. With the harvests being sold off, this is the exact time of year that people actually have money to spare and will more than likely throw it away at tea and sugar if i dont gently nudge them...
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Future in Progress
Ok, so I have been doing a lot of thinking of what i will do post-Senegal. For all the same reasons that I liked the Peace Corps, selfish reasons, I still want to see the world, learn about new cultures, maybe learn a new language or two, live in a place and do things that will be expensive and hard if not impossible when I am older, settled and working a real job. Then it is just a question of where I want to go and what I want to do.
Earlier this year I gave some thought to trying to learn Arabic and after PC I could get a job with an development organization or other work in a Mid-Eastern Arabic speaking country. This seemed rather bold and I hadnt really narrowed anything down. This summer I started to drift from the idea of Arabic, at least right now, though I do hear it is a very logical and interesting language. Senegal is not so bad, but I could always go somewhere with a different majority religion for a change.
So then I started to think about where else I could work, what other language would be challenging and amazing to learn, what I could do. Then I started to think about China. It is a really interesting place to me and is diverse and undergoing many changes. It is a growing sprawling industrial power with vast and growing environmental problems. And hey, I am an environmental volunteer, right? Not that what I do here would qualify for much there, but maybe it would be an in with some NGO. I have some friends of friends who have or are teaching English in China. That certainly is a possiblility but I wanted to see if there would be other options that could get me a toe in otherwise. I would love to learn Mandarin. I realize it is one of the hardest languages for a speaker of a European language to learn, it being tonal and all. But I studied linguistics and that certainly helped with my Seereer.
So then, three months ago now, I was talking to a couple volunteers from the north of Senegal and explaining my thought process and how after PC I could find away to move to and work in China. They mentioned the fact that there was at least one Mauritanian volunteer who, this past spring extended his service with PC China.
I had not even concidered this possiblility. I had thought of extending in Senegal. And even now I go back and forth on it. The problem is probably my own perceptions on a justification. I dont hate Senegal now, I could do another year here I think, but I would rather go somewhere new. Also my village could totally use a new volunteer, not many EEs extend in their own sites and do the same work here. So that would mean a Seereer town. My French has deterioated to mostly useless. My Wolof isnt good enough for anything more elaborate. And I dont know what I could do in a Seereer town but work with a college and that would need to be a new site and I am not sure if I could do that or could justify it here, or if there would even be such a site avaliable and wanting a volunteer.
I had emailed PC Senegal's country director soon after but it was right when the new trainees were coming in and he was far to busy and overlooked or forgot about my email. Since then I have been trying to corner him whenever I come to Dakar, which has not been that frequent really. The day before yesterday I did finally get an appointment with him. I had prepared for him to ask a dozen complex questions and appeals for me to at least extend my service in Senegal and I wasnt sure how to be articulate when I am so easily intimidated. Anyway, so as usual all tension was just in my head. He was surprisingly easy about it. I just need to update my resume and write a letter of intent that would get forwarded from him to Washington and that would be it.
China has a program that is excusively English education, and from what I understand, all teaching at the university level. An extension of this kind is not just out of the country, but the region, Africa, and out of my sector. He explained that it would probably not be a problem for me. China is looking for extending 3rd years, they are safe bets for stable volunteers. Also I was initially invited as an English education volunteer, I volunteered at my university's center for English as a second language, tutoring study abroad students. Here I also worked a week of English camp at a highschool in Dakar and I have made plans to work more formally with the nearby college in the next town, helping in thier English classes and maybe facilitating an afterschool club. Our country director said that all that would probably qualify me enough for this program.
I was shocked at how simple it was put. Just update my resume, type up an intention statement, email those off and there I am. Instead of haveing to look for a different NGO in the states, apply when I get home, probably fly myself out and find a place to live, PC will get me out there, where I need to be. They will get me the training nessesary, resources, money and housing. Plus, if I could manage to spend some time on Mandarin, what better way to learn a language than with PC and its resources? They provide basically free medical everything for as long as I am with them. It almost seems crazy not to try and stay on with them when I have had such a good service thus far.
So thats where I am now. I got my old resume out and boy does it look simplex and silly. I understand that China's program starts in June. Six months before countries generally send out all their invitations. So I would like to get these out as soon as possible and get a slot early. In talking to some extending volunteers here in Dakar I have some idea of what to expect and what I still need to figure out.
I know that PC has extending volunteers take a month-ish, i think, vacation before extending. I guess from a mental health standpoint they dont want us to be away from the rest of the world for so long we lose sight of it or otherwise flip out. So, for all you out there who ask me one and only one question, I should be back in America sometime if not for all of May. There is that wrestling tournament May 7-11 in Louly that I would kinda like to be at again, but I could stand to miss it.
So, ok, there it is. English education in China in 2010. That has a nice ring to it.
Earlier this year I gave some thought to trying to learn Arabic and after PC I could get a job with an development organization or other work in a Mid-Eastern Arabic speaking country. This seemed rather bold and I hadnt really narrowed anything down. This summer I started to drift from the idea of Arabic, at least right now, though I do hear it is a very logical and interesting language. Senegal is not so bad, but I could always go somewhere with a different majority religion for a change.
So then I started to think about where else I could work, what other language would be challenging and amazing to learn, what I could do. Then I started to think about China. It is a really interesting place to me and is diverse and undergoing many changes. It is a growing sprawling industrial power with vast and growing environmental problems. And hey, I am an environmental volunteer, right? Not that what I do here would qualify for much there, but maybe it would be an in with some NGO. I have some friends of friends who have or are teaching English in China. That certainly is a possiblility but I wanted to see if there would be other options that could get me a toe in otherwise. I would love to learn Mandarin. I realize it is one of the hardest languages for a speaker of a European language to learn, it being tonal and all. But I studied linguistics and that certainly helped with my Seereer.
So then, three months ago now, I was talking to a couple volunteers from the north of Senegal and explaining my thought process and how after PC I could find away to move to and work in China. They mentioned the fact that there was at least one Mauritanian volunteer who, this past spring extended his service with PC China.
I had not even concidered this possiblility. I had thought of extending in Senegal. And even now I go back and forth on it. The problem is probably my own perceptions on a justification. I dont hate Senegal now, I could do another year here I think, but I would rather go somewhere new. Also my village could totally use a new volunteer, not many EEs extend in their own sites and do the same work here. So that would mean a Seereer town. My French has deterioated to mostly useless. My Wolof isnt good enough for anything more elaborate. And I dont know what I could do in a Seereer town but work with a college and that would need to be a new site and I am not sure if I could do that or could justify it here, or if there would even be such a site avaliable and wanting a volunteer.
I had emailed PC Senegal's country director soon after but it was right when the new trainees were coming in and he was far to busy and overlooked or forgot about my email. Since then I have been trying to corner him whenever I come to Dakar, which has not been that frequent really. The day before yesterday I did finally get an appointment with him. I had prepared for him to ask a dozen complex questions and appeals for me to at least extend my service in Senegal and I wasnt sure how to be articulate when I am so easily intimidated. Anyway, so as usual all tension was just in my head. He was surprisingly easy about it. I just need to update my resume and write a letter of intent that would get forwarded from him to Washington and that would be it.
China has a program that is excusively English education, and from what I understand, all teaching at the university level. An extension of this kind is not just out of the country, but the region, Africa, and out of my sector. He explained that it would probably not be a problem for me. China is looking for extending 3rd years, they are safe bets for stable volunteers. Also I was initially invited as an English education volunteer, I volunteered at my university's center for English as a second language, tutoring study abroad students. Here I also worked a week of English camp at a highschool in Dakar and I have made plans to work more formally with the nearby college in the next town, helping in thier English classes and maybe facilitating an afterschool club. Our country director said that all that would probably qualify me enough for this program.
I was shocked at how simple it was put. Just update my resume, type up an intention statement, email those off and there I am. Instead of haveing to look for a different NGO in the states, apply when I get home, probably fly myself out and find a place to live, PC will get me out there, where I need to be. They will get me the training nessesary, resources, money and housing. Plus, if I could manage to spend some time on Mandarin, what better way to learn a language than with PC and its resources? They provide basically free medical everything for as long as I am with them. It almost seems crazy not to try and stay on with them when I have had such a good service thus far.
So thats where I am now. I got my old resume out and boy does it look simplex and silly. I understand that China's program starts in June. Six months before countries generally send out all their invitations. So I would like to get these out as soon as possible and get a slot early. In talking to some extending volunteers here in Dakar I have some idea of what to expect and what I still need to figure out.
I know that PC has extending volunteers take a month-ish, i think, vacation before extending. I guess from a mental health standpoint they dont want us to be away from the rest of the world for so long we lose sight of it or otherwise flip out. So, for all you out there who ask me one and only one question, I should be back in America sometime if not for all of May. There is that wrestling tournament May 7-11 in Louly that I would kinda like to be at again, but I could stand to miss it.
So, ok, there it is. English education in China in 2010. That has a nice ring to it.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Fishing and CIEE Students Visit
Every six months or so volunteers get asked if they are interested in hosting one or two American study abroad students who are studying in Dakar for the semester. Last November I hosted two, I am sure I prolly blogged about it, I should check, but it was full of things like peanut shelling and staying up all night in my hut listening to the bbc on my shortwave to hear about the election results.
In the spring I think I had stuff going on or meetings or something and I wasnt free to host anyone for that whole week. And then when I saw the email about them wanting volunteer volunteers to host, well I didnt see the email till the thurs before the monday they would come, so I decided not to make a big deal out of it, they probably had enough other sites and hosts and I wouldnt change my plans.
That Sunday I left to Popenguine for some fishing with the volunteer there, Ankith. It is a really nice beach town and when I got there I played a little bocce ball before we went and got drinks at this bar that is right near his house and then we had a huge amazing chicken dinner. We then slept on his roof where it was actually nice and cool and in the morning we all woke up dewy. Yay, changing seasons!
Then we went out to the beach. There was a nice little group of us. Jen my close neighbor was also there with her friend from the states, the new volunteer from Mbour, Alex came too.
Oh, I never announced this. Mbour Has A New Volunteer! My "site mate" has been given a real site mate!! :( But, seriously, he is cool, he lives on the other side of town from Jen and has connections to an amazing campement on the beach. I guessit doesnt really change too much for me but I have more neighbors, the petit cote is full of beach side volunteers and i am the only silly inlander.
Anyway, also a couple extending volunteers were down from Dakar and another volunteer from the sand-locked land of Linguere. So the eight of us got taken out in a pirogue by two Senegalese fishermen, we went out a few kms from shore and fished all morning. There are pictures on facebook, (i didnt bring my camera, i know, i am brilliant), we used fishing line with two hooks and a sinker tied around random bits of wood. The fish that we used for bait, yep, you guessed it, the very fish that is the only fish that we see in my village. Awesome.
So the fishing was cool. Pretty different in some ways and similar in some ways to the first time that I went sea fishing years and years ago. On this little boat though, i did become unexpectantly minorly sea sick. I didnt think I would, but i am not often on rocking boats out in the ocean like that. It wasnt so bad that I would throw up but it was annoying that I couldnt really enjoy myself that much and on top of that I didnt catch anything. Plenty of fish got some nice chunks of my bait though.
After all that and a great lunch I went back to site. My host dad had called and said there was a toubab there or something. I figured it was just some micro-finance person or, more likely, another WWOOF volunteer that needed my help translating.
Oh, I should probably explain that WWOOF thing, see there are so many things that happen here that I dont get to blog about. Ok, i will write something on that soon, I swear.
So anyway, big surprise when I get home to see there are two young women at my house and they are CIEE exchange students from Dakar that got placed in my village anyway, regardless if I responded to them or not. They were very laid back and said they could follow me around or just do their own thing for the week they would spend in Louly. I did have a couple things planned to do that I still needed to get done but there was no reason that they couldnt follow me around and I could accompany them out for field work stuff and help translate. Also, cause I thought it would be simpler for everyone, I told them they could stay in my hut and use my douche instead of trying to work out a thing with my oft crazy family. We also shared breakfast and ate lunch together and dinner with my dad.
It was unexpected but it was a good week. The first day we walked 5km to Sandiara, my nearest town to talk to the English teachers there. I think some things that I was doing for my work was pretty boring for them but they were really cool about it. Also as often happens when around English speakers, I suffer from a kind of verbal vomiting, I just talk and talk about everything and nothing, just happy to be talking with ease and being understood. I think I talked way more that week than I have in a long time and more than is probably good for anyone. Later in the week we also went to the kindergarten for a little and worked in various segments of the peanut harvest. We beat the peanut piles with sticks to get them off the plants and get the plants broken into smallish pieces, we sifted the peanuts from the plants, we shelled peanuts, we ate peanuts, roasted peanuts and had them in sauces.
I think they had a pretty decent week. My family and neighbors liked them. My three year old brother Abdou was offered as husband to one of them, Victoria, who was from New York and had been at school in Vermont. My equally toddlering cousin Bass was offered to Jocelyn, a student from California. Most of my pictures and most of the week felt like it was spent sifting peanuts. It really is amazing how much work goes into those little things, and I couldnt help thinking how there was probably a single complex machine that does all that we did that whole week in a few seconds in America.
Thanks for coming over you two, come back anytime! And anyone else who wants to visit, come on over! I have sorghum couscous!
In the spring I think I had stuff going on or meetings or something and I wasnt free to host anyone for that whole week. And then when I saw the email about them wanting volunteer volunteers to host, well I didnt see the email till the thurs before the monday they would come, so I decided not to make a big deal out of it, they probably had enough other sites and hosts and I wouldnt change my plans.
That Sunday I left to Popenguine for some fishing with the volunteer there, Ankith. It is a really nice beach town and when I got there I played a little bocce ball before we went and got drinks at this bar that is right near his house and then we had a huge amazing chicken dinner. We then slept on his roof where it was actually nice and cool and in the morning we all woke up dewy. Yay, changing seasons!
Then we went out to the beach. There was a nice little group of us. Jen my close neighbor was also there with her friend from the states, the new volunteer from Mbour, Alex came too.
Oh, I never announced this. Mbour Has A New Volunteer! My "site mate" has been given a real site mate!! :( But, seriously, he is cool, he lives on the other side of town from Jen and has connections to an amazing campement on the beach. I guessit doesnt really change too much for me but I have more neighbors, the petit cote is full of beach side volunteers and i am the only silly inlander.
Anyway, also a couple extending volunteers were down from Dakar and another volunteer from the sand-locked land of Linguere. So the eight of us got taken out in a pirogue by two Senegalese fishermen, we went out a few kms from shore and fished all morning. There are pictures on facebook, (i didnt bring my camera, i know, i am brilliant), we used fishing line with two hooks and a sinker tied around random bits of wood. The fish that we used for bait, yep, you guessed it, the very fish that is the only fish that we see in my village. Awesome.
So the fishing was cool. Pretty different in some ways and similar in some ways to the first time that I went sea fishing years and years ago. On this little boat though, i did become unexpectantly minorly sea sick. I didnt think I would, but i am not often on rocking boats out in the ocean like that. It wasnt so bad that I would throw up but it was annoying that I couldnt really enjoy myself that much and on top of that I didnt catch anything. Plenty of fish got some nice chunks of my bait though.
After all that and a great lunch I went back to site. My host dad had called and said there was a toubab there or something. I figured it was just some micro-finance person or, more likely, another WWOOF volunteer that needed my help translating.
Oh, I should probably explain that WWOOF thing, see there are so many things that happen here that I dont get to blog about. Ok, i will write something on that soon, I swear.
So anyway, big surprise when I get home to see there are two young women at my house and they are CIEE exchange students from Dakar that got placed in my village anyway, regardless if I responded to them or not. They were very laid back and said they could follow me around or just do their own thing for the week they would spend in Louly. I did have a couple things planned to do that I still needed to get done but there was no reason that they couldnt follow me around and I could accompany them out for field work stuff and help translate. Also, cause I thought it would be simpler for everyone, I told them they could stay in my hut and use my douche instead of trying to work out a thing with my oft crazy family. We also shared breakfast and ate lunch together and dinner with my dad.
It was unexpected but it was a good week. The first day we walked 5km to Sandiara, my nearest town to talk to the English teachers there. I think some things that I was doing for my work was pretty boring for them but they were really cool about it. Also as often happens when around English speakers, I suffer from a kind of verbal vomiting, I just talk and talk about everything and nothing, just happy to be talking with ease and being understood. I think I talked way more that week than I have in a long time and more than is probably good for anyone. Later in the week we also went to the kindergarten for a little and worked in various segments of the peanut harvest. We beat the peanut piles with sticks to get them off the plants and get the plants broken into smallish pieces, we sifted the peanuts from the plants, we shelled peanuts, we ate peanuts, roasted peanuts and had them in sauces.
I think they had a pretty decent week. My family and neighbors liked them. My three year old brother Abdou was offered as husband to one of them, Victoria, who was from New York and had been at school in Vermont. My equally toddlering cousin Bass was offered to Jocelyn, a student from California. Most of my pictures and most of the week felt like it was spent sifting peanuts. It really is amazing how much work goes into those little things, and I couldnt help thinking how there was probably a single complex machine that does all that we did that whole week in a few seconds in America.
Thanks for coming over you two, come back anytime! And anyone else who wants to visit, come on over! I have sorghum couscous!
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Yeah Progress
Ok, so I should do a legit post but, well, heres what you get-
I am in the midst of a massive picture upload, so... check them out!!!
They are pictures from rainy season, pictures from bike trip, from harvest and more!!
I am in Dakar right now with some lovely connection avaliable. I also hope, in the next few days, to decide some of my future fate, but that can be explained later...
I am in the midst of a massive picture upload, so... check them out!!!
They are pictures from rainy season, pictures from bike trip, from harvest and more!!
I am in Dakar right now with some lovely connection avaliable. I also hope, in the next few days, to decide some of my future fate, but that can be explained later...
Monday, November 2, 2009
Ndang o Ndang
So I think I should have mentioned it on this at some point that I am doing a dictionary with Bethany another Seereer PCV. Together we had enough personability, boldness, linguistic background, and sheer insanity during PST to make us think that we could attempt to put one together during our service. It has taken a lot of work, a great deal more work than we had previously thought, but we are nearing what may look like something of a half-decent first edition draft of a legitimate Seereer dictionary.
It has been a lot of our own work, words that we have heard, gotten our own definition of and written down as best we could. We also have gotten some from other volunteers, particularly one who just COSed, go Guy! Through formatting issues and problems with different interpretations, different spellings, different, dialects, different roots, all kinds of mess, we are finally getting together something.
I just felt like I should write something about that, since it is what I have put a good deal of work into. Seereer is a difficult language and I should do a much more involved post just on how interesting it is and the different facets and amazing aspects of it.
word of the day- niangeniang: rainbow
It has been a lot of our own work, words that we have heard, gotten our own definition of and written down as best we could. We also have gotten some from other volunteers, particularly one who just COSed, go Guy! Through formatting issues and problems with different interpretations, different spellings, different, dialects, different roots, all kinds of mess, we are finally getting together something.
I just felt like I should write something about that, since it is what I have put a good deal of work into. Seereer is a difficult language and I should do a much more involved post just on how interesting it is and the different facets and amazing aspects of it.
word of the day- niangeniang: rainbow
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Mold take 2, Bring in the Macaroni
Ok, no, there is no moldy macaroni. So I am not good at titleing.
Ok, so where was I, oh yeah, so trying to pull myself together from terrible day. Eventually it did stop raining and my pants at least dried as I wore them. Eventually night fell and one of my other shirts I had hanging up in my room was dry enough to put on for the evening. I sat with my family while they broke the fast, they asked concerend questions and neighbors shook their head and gave the usual 'the rainy season is very hard'. I slept on a mat on the floor that night, it was hot and humid enough anyway not to want to sleep on a matress even if they wernt so wet and piled with papers.
Anyway, so the next couple days were more of just getting things fixed and getting things dry. I put everything back out again the next morning, cemented part of the floor, gave all my clothes bed sheets and my sister (keeping pants I was wearing and two shirts, one with a huge tear in the back). I cleaned up everything as best I could, the cameras seem rather deceased though. Then over the next couple days I went to reasembling everything better than it was. I hung up my bags and sleeping bag. put the trunks up on tin can legs, put the surviving three boxes with semi drying papers up on cans too under the bed. I fixed up my water filter in a nex brick stand and threw out everything that looked gross or i realized was not important enough to keep.
A couple days after my cleanup began we had a hard rain that didnt last long but dumped a lot of water. When I went out in the afternoon I noticed all the men from the neighboring compounds were all gathered over near the boutique. There was a well there that hadnt been used in a while but, low bricked with crumbling cement. In three-quarters of the way around the ground had split and sunk a couple inches in a neat circle a couple feet out from the well walls. The men were tsking about how much rain there has been this year, something I thought was generally a good thing, but they were saying how full all the wells are and how they hoped that none of the other ones fell in. then with poles they pushed in the top bricks as best they could then filled the full well, it had water maybe two meters down, with dirt and rocks so no one would fall in it and it wouldnt collapse anymore.
I remembered my family had chicked last year and so I was excited that we might have that again. Still sitting with people in the village center, girls started bringing bowl after bowl of lunch and set them for everyone in the neighborhood to eat. I was surprised to see we all were having cow meat with our macaroni and onion sauce and potato chunks . It wasnt bad and I actually was pleasantly full at the end and not wavering on mildly ill.
Dinner that night was just leftovers from dinner, but I was excited the next day to have millet again for dinner. We did indeed have chicken at my house and somehow those leftovers lasted a couple days after.
In the last throws of the rainy season, we have been having really hard rains and really hot nights, with the icing on the cake of tons of mosquitos. They should be on their way out soon though, when the rains end my area is not usually so buggy.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Living in the Mold
Yes, unfortunately that is a pun... all too true...
...or wait, maybe it is not a pun at all since I really just mean it in the moldy sense... oh dear.
Maybe a good title could have been Mold, Maccaroni and Mosquitos...
To start with, the bike trip finished well. It was a good break from site and one of my longest times away from site at one time and it was only a week and a half! The Kolda house was very nice to me and I had a fair amount of food and recovered well from being sore and broken from my trip recovering back to my usual uselessly feeble self.
After a few days to get back on my feet, wash some clothes, realize I had forgotten several items of clothing along my trip, eat my weight in pasta, and listen to some quality music, it was back to my own region. This involved a 4am car up through the Gambia, across river and borders. The garage in Kolda was one of the most frustrating experiences ever, and I wont go into that, we did leave, near around 5, but we left, bike on the roof and all, bloody rediculous thing. I had deliberated riding all the way back home, actually do part of a whole leg of this big curcuit with just biking. But alas, I am not strong enough for that, have never crossed the border before even in a car for a reference, didnt really know the way, and there werent any pcvs to stay with for a good chunk of the way and would have had a long haul all the way to kaolack. Anyway, so I am a wimp, and took a car up to Mbour instead.
Jen was hosting some PC trainees at her apartment so that they could see wha a volunteers life is like and get some good first hand knowledge stuff. I came over to scare them with my village wisdom and my crazy self. They seem good sports, much more understanding and less culture shocked than I recall being all the time. The next day I had a great big package at the post office. I was super excited but had planned to ride back home on my bike. I shoved the box under everything, but only had one rope long enough to go around everything, once in one direction and once in the other. It was a miricle that it didnt explode all over, or throw me to the ground infront of a speeding truck, or fly off the back and get run over on its own. I got back home, back to the village, back to my hut, feeling accomplished and worn out, and ready to get things going again, fasting and all that leading up to Korite. Ready to get school and projects going after a nice little break. Then I walked into my hut...
So yeah, just to clarify- I often hate going on long trips, if for no other reason than for the fact that my backyard is under constant attack from curious goats and chickens tearing down and puncturing the fences, weeds are stubborn, geckos poop all over my room adding to the layer of sand that is sure to blow in through the window and the beetles that are drilling into my roof beams keep leaving absurd amounts of sawdust all over everything. So thats what I expected when I came home. Instead, in the dwindling light of dusk, I saw the backyard looked ok, but the floor of my hut was covered in a weird film, and my bed felt gross. That night I slept on my cot with the mosquito net pulled over. The next morning was the revelation.
To cut to the chase, it must have rained when I was gone. Quite a bit too. If it rains really hard, for a long or short time there is a decent chance that in front of my front door becomes a lake mesa above the larger lake that forms a few meters out from my hut. This water threatens to leak into my room sometimes and so i have cleverly dug a small trench, placed even with where the roof drips down, sloped so that the water can run into my backyard, which is also at a lower level than my hut. In fact, there is no reason water should be up by my hut at all, the ground it is on is higher than whats around it, its just that there is an inconvenient build up in front of my hut making a big mound even bigger around the edges. Anywho, so water falls from the sky, the ground is inundated, it puddles, the lip on both my doors is about another inch and a half above the door jam itself and above my interior floor. The water was enough to spill over this. And keep spilling over this.
From what I figure, with water stains and whatnot, this must have leaked in to capasity. Nearly two inches of water on my floor with enough time to soak into everything or else evaporate before I get back to find my floor covered in a layer of mold.
So, well, that day was fun. First was pulling out the matress and getting at under the bed stuff. I kept a few boxes from care packages and had, well mostly just papers and stuff in them. Nothing super important- notes from training, a bunch of pamphlets and handbooks from the former volunteer, various odds and ends and visual aids for different activities. Also a couple novels. Those all were wet and gross but salvageable, I start laying them out on the matress outside, and start to worry about how one could ever get the floor clean. Other things under the bed- shoes not worn since swear-in if ever in this country, along with a pair of nice-ish leather sandals I got a while ago are growing some funky blue fuzz all over. My canvas messenger bag and army bag are both soaked and fuzzy too. My sleeping bag, dripping wet, doesnt seem moldy though. All that goes out into the sun.
Then I see the box that I use as a nightstand, it is soaked like a sponge and I realize I kept 'valuable things' in it. My passport is all curled and funky but ok. My film camera is home to several forms of life and when I open it, water poars, it literally poars out. The old digital camera my brother gave me before I came to country is no better, somehow also full of water. The camera straps and bags for both have long hairy white mold that makes me want to throw up when I touch it. Thats awsome. Out in the sun too.
Just when I think the worst is that, those are the only things coming in direcct contact with the floor, or in a cardboad box that was. I realize my clothes trunk is dripping. Sure it sits on little runners and is nearly an inch off the ground, but alas, not enough. I fling open the lid as my stomache drops, this seems rather more serious than I had thought. The top layer of clothes seems ok, moist, but ok. then the middle layers, bright, cheerfully colorful mold erupts from all corners and folds. The lowest layer, of course, had the all too likely just-bought-bright-red-fabric. So several items are horribly stained and splotchy. The bottom of the trunk had time to form large rust spots over several items and leave a big permenant rust stain on the floor.
I heave the trunk outside, i start, pulling things out. Maybe, i say to myself, if i just leave them in the sun, it will all be better. I start to mutter to myself, have to stop, sit down, get up, go find my sister. My sister and aunt are cleaning some fish when I walk over. They all asked me last night if the water went in my room. I said my usual responce, as i had always said, and as I then hoped, 'no, its dry, dirty but dry'. Well, that was wrong.
'Water. Water went in my room. Water is in my room. It broke... It broke... My clothes are broken.' I think that is all I get out to them. They look at each other with raised eyebrows before getting up and following me back to my hut. After much tsk-ing, they saw to my clothes. My cot was set up outside, they start piling stuff on it. This pile is washable, this pile we need to go get re-dyed, this pile is ruined so throw it out. Great. Now keep in mind I am still wearing my clothes from yesterday, the clothes I slept in, the clothes I biked in from mbour in. I have some other clothes with me, that I had on the bike trip, not clean but not molded. And that is all my clothes.
Then my sister gets to helping my clean everything else up. We pull the bed frame outside. The water filter and the other trunk and my shoes and everything outside. I put my big basin to the side and throw the things in it that are not messed up- my notes and drawing pad, my spare sheets, my clothes from the bike trip. The dresser is ok, it sits up pretty high so water couldnt get into anything, the wood soaked up a bit and I am not sure about underneath it or behind, but that can wait. We sweep first, and sweep and sweep. Then pull up the flooring sheets and sweep some more. Then we replace the flooring sheets and mop them with a couple of my shirts that fell into the ruined pile. Then she leaves and I start laying out all the papers and notebooks in the sun. The clothes are a big mess I can get to later, but the paper needs to get dry.
Oh, my brothers care package that I got included a random handful of bite-size airheads, I ate all of those that morning. That was nice.
It wasnt really a sunny day, still technically the rainy season of course, but I was too flustered to care except that the books would take forever to dry. With the floor swept and cleaner, I could tell some obvious places that needed cement repairs- the floor had caved in in a couple places and along the wall there is always issues with the cement being helped in crumbling my bugs and wildlife and those all needed to be sealed. Luckily I had some cement left over from a different hut improvement episode so I got to work on that too. The floor needed to dry so I couldnt begin right away and had to do it in stages. Sometime that day, afternoon, its hard to tell cause it is still Ramadan and so no lunch to give reference, The skys darkened and a storm suddenly and violently rolled in. I went to work as fast as I could, trying to prioritize what can get wet and what cannot.
Cameras went in first, then the mattresses rolled around the papers and books. The bike can stay out and my plastic shoes but not the leather ones. The bed frame should come in, and my water filter and canvas bags. The sleeping bag can stay out, its the best wash it will get. The clothes on the cot can stay out, they are already wet and moldy, they cant get worse in a couple hours of rain. The cardboard boxes should come in, as wet as most are, some may be salvagable at least. My pillow and towel and my most recent care package of course need to come in. By this time it is pouring. Like, step outside for a second and you are soaked to the skin. And I have to keep running back and forth, trying not to spash things or drip on the things already inside. I notice the water is rising again at the front door. Great, I forgot to scoop out that trench again so the water will go the other way. As I go out to the back to get my shovel, I realize I forgot my big basin. I run over grab that, dash back inside. I have to pour out more than a leter of water thats already collected at the bottom through all of my other clothes. So, a quick update, now all of my clothes, including what I am wearing and had brought on the bike trip, now all of them are at least soaking wet, if not filthy with dirt or mold or rust stains. This is awesome. Shovel, run back out to the front and start shoveling away. The water is at the lip of the door frame and some is slopping in as I shovel. My younger mom walks by. 'You should not let the water go inside,' she adds helpfully. I glare at her, 'I know!' I yell above the rain dumming down on both of us. I felt bad for yelling at her like that, but seriously, I coulda figured that one out.
When I am done, I go back inside to wait out the storm. I am dripping a large puddle over where the floor was just finally drying. For lack of a better option, i just stand there in the middle of the floor. I pull of my shirt, heavy and wet, and tear a huge hole in the back of it. Sigh. Even better. The bed frame is in the middle of the room on its side. I pull out a book Ive borrowed from the volunteer library, a book on science and spirituality, specifically Buddhism, by the Dalai Lama. I tie my dripping hair back and try to read. Or rather, I try not to go tottally crazy at my utter helplessness.
+As this is turning into the longest journal entry in my life, I should stop here for a breather and make a new one with the wrap up to this pointless story and maybe talk about the Korite and other relevent things that have been going on...
...or wait, maybe it is not a pun at all since I really just mean it in the moldy sense... oh dear.
Maybe a good title could have been Mold, Maccaroni and Mosquitos...
To start with, the bike trip finished well. It was a good break from site and one of my longest times away from site at one time and it was only a week and a half! The Kolda house was very nice to me and I had a fair amount of food and recovered well from being sore and broken from my trip recovering back to my usual uselessly feeble self.
After a few days to get back on my feet, wash some clothes, realize I had forgotten several items of clothing along my trip, eat my weight in pasta, and listen to some quality music, it was back to my own region. This involved a 4am car up through the Gambia, across river and borders. The garage in Kolda was one of the most frustrating experiences ever, and I wont go into that, we did leave, near around 5, but we left, bike on the roof and all, bloody rediculous thing. I had deliberated riding all the way back home, actually do part of a whole leg of this big curcuit with just biking. But alas, I am not strong enough for that, have never crossed the border before even in a car for a reference, didnt really know the way, and there werent any pcvs to stay with for a good chunk of the way and would have had a long haul all the way to kaolack. Anyway, so I am a wimp, and took a car up to Mbour instead.
Jen was hosting some PC trainees at her apartment so that they could see wha a volunteers life is like and get some good first hand knowledge stuff. I came over to scare them with my village wisdom and my crazy self. They seem good sports, much more understanding and less culture shocked than I recall being all the time. The next day I had a great big package at the post office. I was super excited but had planned to ride back home on my bike. I shoved the box under everything, but only had one rope long enough to go around everything, once in one direction and once in the other. It was a miricle that it didnt explode all over, or throw me to the ground infront of a speeding truck, or fly off the back and get run over on its own. I got back home, back to the village, back to my hut, feeling accomplished and worn out, and ready to get things going again, fasting and all that leading up to Korite. Ready to get school and projects going after a nice little break. Then I walked into my hut...
So yeah, just to clarify- I often hate going on long trips, if for no other reason than for the fact that my backyard is under constant attack from curious goats and chickens tearing down and puncturing the fences, weeds are stubborn, geckos poop all over my room adding to the layer of sand that is sure to blow in through the window and the beetles that are drilling into my roof beams keep leaving absurd amounts of sawdust all over everything. So thats what I expected when I came home. Instead, in the dwindling light of dusk, I saw the backyard looked ok, but the floor of my hut was covered in a weird film, and my bed felt gross. That night I slept on my cot with the mosquito net pulled over. The next morning was the revelation.
To cut to the chase, it must have rained when I was gone. Quite a bit too. If it rains really hard, for a long or short time there is a decent chance that in front of my front door becomes a lake mesa above the larger lake that forms a few meters out from my hut. This water threatens to leak into my room sometimes and so i have cleverly dug a small trench, placed even with where the roof drips down, sloped so that the water can run into my backyard, which is also at a lower level than my hut. In fact, there is no reason water should be up by my hut at all, the ground it is on is higher than whats around it, its just that there is an inconvenient build up in front of my hut making a big mound even bigger around the edges. Anywho, so water falls from the sky, the ground is inundated, it puddles, the lip on both my doors is about another inch and a half above the door jam itself and above my interior floor. The water was enough to spill over this. And keep spilling over this.
From what I figure, with water stains and whatnot, this must have leaked in to capasity. Nearly two inches of water on my floor with enough time to soak into everything or else evaporate before I get back to find my floor covered in a layer of mold.
So, well, that day was fun. First was pulling out the matress and getting at under the bed stuff. I kept a few boxes from care packages and had, well mostly just papers and stuff in them. Nothing super important- notes from training, a bunch of pamphlets and handbooks from the former volunteer, various odds and ends and visual aids for different activities. Also a couple novels. Those all were wet and gross but salvageable, I start laying them out on the matress outside, and start to worry about how one could ever get the floor clean. Other things under the bed- shoes not worn since swear-in if ever in this country, along with a pair of nice-ish leather sandals I got a while ago are growing some funky blue fuzz all over. My canvas messenger bag and army bag are both soaked and fuzzy too. My sleeping bag, dripping wet, doesnt seem moldy though. All that goes out into the sun.
Then I see the box that I use as a nightstand, it is soaked like a sponge and I realize I kept 'valuable things' in it. My passport is all curled and funky but ok. My film camera is home to several forms of life and when I open it, water poars, it literally poars out. The old digital camera my brother gave me before I came to country is no better, somehow also full of water. The camera straps and bags for both have long hairy white mold that makes me want to throw up when I touch it. Thats awsome. Out in the sun too.
Just when I think the worst is that, those are the only things coming in direcct contact with the floor, or in a cardboad box that was. I realize my clothes trunk is dripping. Sure it sits on little runners and is nearly an inch off the ground, but alas, not enough. I fling open the lid as my stomache drops, this seems rather more serious than I had thought. The top layer of clothes seems ok, moist, but ok. then the middle layers, bright, cheerfully colorful mold erupts from all corners and folds. The lowest layer, of course, had the all too likely just-bought-bright-red-fabric. So several items are horribly stained and splotchy. The bottom of the trunk had time to form large rust spots over several items and leave a big permenant rust stain on the floor.
I heave the trunk outside, i start, pulling things out. Maybe, i say to myself, if i just leave them in the sun, it will all be better. I start to mutter to myself, have to stop, sit down, get up, go find my sister. My sister and aunt are cleaning some fish when I walk over. They all asked me last night if the water went in my room. I said my usual responce, as i had always said, and as I then hoped, 'no, its dry, dirty but dry'. Well, that was wrong.
'Water. Water went in my room. Water is in my room. It broke... It broke... My clothes are broken.' I think that is all I get out to them. They look at each other with raised eyebrows before getting up and following me back to my hut. After much tsk-ing, they saw to my clothes. My cot was set up outside, they start piling stuff on it. This pile is washable, this pile we need to go get re-dyed, this pile is ruined so throw it out. Great. Now keep in mind I am still wearing my clothes from yesterday, the clothes I slept in, the clothes I biked in from mbour in. I have some other clothes with me, that I had on the bike trip, not clean but not molded. And that is all my clothes.
Then my sister gets to helping my clean everything else up. We pull the bed frame outside. The water filter and the other trunk and my shoes and everything outside. I put my big basin to the side and throw the things in it that are not messed up- my notes and drawing pad, my spare sheets, my clothes from the bike trip. The dresser is ok, it sits up pretty high so water couldnt get into anything, the wood soaked up a bit and I am not sure about underneath it or behind, but that can wait. We sweep first, and sweep and sweep. Then pull up the flooring sheets and sweep some more. Then we replace the flooring sheets and mop them with a couple of my shirts that fell into the ruined pile. Then she leaves and I start laying out all the papers and notebooks in the sun. The clothes are a big mess I can get to later, but the paper needs to get dry.
Oh, my brothers care package that I got included a random handful of bite-size airheads, I ate all of those that morning. That was nice.
It wasnt really a sunny day, still technically the rainy season of course, but I was too flustered to care except that the books would take forever to dry. With the floor swept and cleaner, I could tell some obvious places that needed cement repairs- the floor had caved in in a couple places and along the wall there is always issues with the cement being helped in crumbling my bugs and wildlife and those all needed to be sealed. Luckily I had some cement left over from a different hut improvement episode so I got to work on that too. The floor needed to dry so I couldnt begin right away and had to do it in stages. Sometime that day, afternoon, its hard to tell cause it is still Ramadan and so no lunch to give reference, The skys darkened and a storm suddenly and violently rolled in. I went to work as fast as I could, trying to prioritize what can get wet and what cannot.
Cameras went in first, then the mattresses rolled around the papers and books. The bike can stay out and my plastic shoes but not the leather ones. The bed frame should come in, and my water filter and canvas bags. The sleeping bag can stay out, its the best wash it will get. The clothes on the cot can stay out, they are already wet and moldy, they cant get worse in a couple hours of rain. The cardboard boxes should come in, as wet as most are, some may be salvagable at least. My pillow and towel and my most recent care package of course need to come in. By this time it is pouring. Like, step outside for a second and you are soaked to the skin. And I have to keep running back and forth, trying not to spash things or drip on the things already inside. I notice the water is rising again at the front door. Great, I forgot to scoop out that trench again so the water will go the other way. As I go out to the back to get my shovel, I realize I forgot my big basin. I run over grab that, dash back inside. I have to pour out more than a leter of water thats already collected at the bottom through all of my other clothes. So, a quick update, now all of my clothes, including what I am wearing and had brought on the bike trip, now all of them are at least soaking wet, if not filthy with dirt or mold or rust stains. This is awesome. Shovel, run back out to the front and start shoveling away. The water is at the lip of the door frame and some is slopping in as I shovel. My younger mom walks by. 'You should not let the water go inside,' she adds helpfully. I glare at her, 'I know!' I yell above the rain dumming down on both of us. I felt bad for yelling at her like that, but seriously, I coulda figured that one out.
When I am done, I go back inside to wait out the storm. I am dripping a large puddle over where the floor was just finally drying. For lack of a better option, i just stand there in the middle of the floor. I pull of my shirt, heavy and wet, and tear a huge hole in the back of it. Sigh. Even better. The bed frame is in the middle of the room on its side. I pull out a book Ive borrowed from the volunteer library, a book on science and spirituality, specifically Buddhism, by the Dalai Lama. I tie my dripping hair back and try to read. Or rather, I try not to go tottally crazy at my utter helplessness.
+As this is turning into the longest journal entry in my life, I should stop here for a breather and make a new one with the wrap up to this pointless story and maybe talk about the Korite and other relevent things that have been going on...
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