Owe Ñaayaa

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...

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.

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!

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...

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