The Year Mark

Such a long time since a good entry, eh?

I have been here in Senegal for over a year now. It doesnt really feel like it has been that long, but then again, it feels like I have been here ages and have learned way more than I had thought possible.

It really has been a good, interesting, stressful and life changing year. I have taken a long, long weekend in Dakar, seeing friends and relaxing in a place with hot showers before I head back to my little hut. The latrine project that I am sponsoring in the village is now in the phase where we all wait expectantly and hope magic happens. The proposal was completed and sent off to Washington last friday and now PC is chewing on it before it can appear up on their website. Once it is up there I will, definetly, let everyone know it. I am really excited, it is an expensive project and the world economy is what it is, but i think if only some of the people I know give jsut a little, it can really add up. Not to mention, that it can change the lives of some 600+ people, making their days healthier, easier, and I think, just a little happier.

That being said, I feel like this project may be the most I do durring my service. The most of anything that can last at least. My environmental club has met a few times now. We have played a couple games, talked about what the environment is and how we can affect it, looked at national geographic pictures of other ecosystems and the like. But then still, I am not sure that they really follow me that much. Slowly slowly I guess. i also know that this year I am going to try and do a really big tree nursury and do a big outplanting at the start of the rainy season (with the help of the club). I have been colecting seeds from many different local species that people use for mostly for feul-wood, fence making and feeding animals, and also other varieties that have medicinal value, fruit or other edibles, and some that are just good shade trees. People generally like to have trees in their gardens and even in their fields and some varieties can be very benificial to the surrounding soil. The village seems very excited about it and have given me suggestions and seeds for planting and right now I am preparing a large area of sacks in my back yard and will, if i can get it protection, do another large area behind the school. I know that many of these probably wont survive a year, some will be eaten by goats or cows or get trampled or simply dry up and die, but i feel like it is one of those great classic PC type ways to make a modest lasting impact. I could maybe come back years from now, sit under a tree and eat a mango from a tree i helped plant. That would be way cool.

I really am very excited for this coming year. I really cant believe I only will have another year of this. Lots of volunteers have had different feelings about their service and PC life and all. Lots of volunteers come with different expectations and perspectives and with different goals and understandings of our purpose and take different ideas from similar situations. I could not be more thoroughly satisfied with my decision to come here and have the greatest job on the planet. I get to live in a totally new environment, learn a new language and do things that I could only dream of back at home.

The work here is hard, to be sure, but i dont think i would rather be doing anything else. The Peace Corps is not perfect and sometimes i do feel sometimes as if nothing i do could ever come to any good. I feel like i do so much time learning language and integrating that when it comes down to getting things done, half my service has flown by. Being a volunteer also means, usually, well for me at least, being rather independent. I have a 'boss' but i dont really have anyone telling me what i should work on or what i should be experimenting with or what would be most fulfilling. I have general guidelines for the type of volunteer that I am (Environmental education), but i am free to delve into most anything i can imagine, including work that other sectors do (latrines are health, and tree plantings are agro-forestry). I often have to be a little creative for getting certain things done or deciding what i could best spend my time on (working with another volunteer on an excellent Seereer dictionary). As short of a time that I have here I do hope that I am making it worth it for my village and myself.

Before I came here I had never really given sufficient thought to any philosophies of development work. I had just thought, there are good things you can do for people in need, these things can be done, people will be helped. period. Now i am begining to see the bigger, much more complex and often frustrating problems. I think the PC program has a great approach to developement, not that it can do everything, or hit every area of the problem. But it is unique, and connects cultures and people in amazing ways. Important PC goals in fact, involve, and I think properly, the cross-cultural exchange. There is so much I could say about all of this, but i will save it for a speech later.

As independent as we volunteers are, I also feel that I big part of getting me through this year has been our support system. Care-packages are amazing, the food and the magazines are like nothing else. Hearing from people back home lets me know the rest of the world really is still out there and that there are people who have not forgotten me to the other side of the globe. But also there is nothing that can substitute the friends I have made over here, both close neighbors and volunteers from around the country. That we can get together and actually breathe for a little while every now and then has probably played a good role in keeping me level, motivated and positive over an oftentimes very stressful job.

I really do love it here. It has taken its time to grow on me, but i really love my village. And, if I havent emphasized this already, I have the best language too (as long as you dont count most useful or prettiest sounding under 'best'). I am so excited for this next year. I am excited for this next month and for all of the potential that I see in my village and in the people there. I only hope that at the very least I can continue to entertain those in my village, yoona fo mi?

I leave this with a good quote that I was sent just the other day:

-You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. It took the madmen of yesterday for us to act with extreme clarity today. I want to be one of those madmen. We must dare to invent the future. - Thomas Sankara