Volunteer Visit and Popenguine Beach Weekend

So a few weeks ago the Peace Corps sent all of us stagiers out to our respective regional houses. Considering the 12 hour drive our group was lucky to get one of the large PC buses which allowed us to spread out and sleep most of the way, the rest of the trip was spent doing my other favorite activity, snacking…(considering that I'm only now 2 weeks away from the long awaited 'Africa Diet' which will be never again getting to eat meat, being lucky if I ever see rice and….well I'll explain what we ate at my future home a little further in)

We arrived at the Kedougou Regional house pretty late after dark and thanks to all the wonderful volunteers who had just finished making us some awesome BBQ chicken pizza, a couple Gazelles (the natty lite of Senegal) later and we were in bed. The next morning an SUV was hired to take Meera, one of my good friends and fellow stagiers, and I out to Pellel Kindessa for the next couple days. The last paved road is few km from the regional house and from there on out the dirt road or sandy path that people use is basically restricted to 4WD, insane Senegalese on motorcycles (think about driving a motorcycle through random patched of foot deep loose sand…), and plenty of people on regular old fashioned bicycles. It takes almost 2 hours to get to Dindefellow, which is the only major town along the route and is 40km away from that last paved road. Dindefellow is a big tourist attraction due to the awesome waterfall there, which we visited twice (see the photos), so it has a nice mountain town feel, but seriously it's still very isolated. Hiring an SUV to take you out there is quite expensive and when you mention you need to go another 7km further to my town the rates bump up to I think something like 80USD.

We finally arrived at my future family's compound and met my ancienne, Kay, at the gate. She introduced us to the family who is amazing. They were all extremely friendly, funny, and excited to talk with us the entire trip. By the way, new family means a new name…I'm now Aamadou Souare, which still kind of sounds like Hamadou so that's not that bad, and I think the new last name is pretty fun, it's pronounced 'Souar-ray' as if it were French. We also got to see and stay in my future hut for a couple days during this visit. My new hut is awesome, I have my own fenced off yard, with a rocky front yard that's completely covered by an amazing shade structure, the hut is so cool, although you do have to crouch down to get inside. Living there with no electricity and the nearest water source being a pit well nearly 500yards away is going to take some getting used to. But I'm really excited because I have tons of room to start some gardens and a tree nursery when we move in (a requirement by the PC), oh and I also have a papaya tree growing next to my latrine, which I hope will start making fruit soon (thanks Kay for helping fertilize it for the last 2 years). The typical meals at the home are ground corn and wet ground corn with a covering of leaf sauce…sound appetizing? I'm anticipating a big weight loss, I'll be making lots of supplemental meals as well. Overall I was extremely pleased with the entire family, I was very relieved to see that I'll be living in such a great place to do my work the next 2 years, which made Kay very happy about me as her replacement.

Over the few days there we got to tour the town of Pellel Kindessa, which is split into 4 quartiers which themselves are quite spread out. I was told that it'll be more like working with 4 tiny and very close villages that seemed very true! I love my quartier which is called Jam Weli, which means 'Peace Good' in pulaar futa. I met my two counterparts Mariama Souare who is called Neene Galle (mama of the house) by everyone in town, and Daby. They're both extremely nice and extremely motivated to help the people of their little mountain town. Daby has already built (with his own money which is hard to come by in a town like this) a health hut and is almost finished with a second that will be used as a delivery room for the pregnant women of the town. I know they will both be extremely helpful over the next 2 years. We also town water tower and pump room which is a definite future project, the last 2 volunteers have tried to get it up and running again but couldn't. Seeing the town and talking with Kay and my counterparts gave me a bunch of ideas for things to do during my service. The town basically has nothing for doing anything for them is greatly appreciated there.

After leaving Pellel we spend a day and a half in Dindefellow where we got to visit the beautiful waterfall that's below in the photos. It was amazing and I'm very excited that I get to live so close to this during my service. Kay also told me that there are 2 waterfalls right next to my town which no one goes to so I'm excited to go exploring and find them. After making 2 trips to the amazing waterfall we biked back to the regional house the rest of the 40km, it was a lot of fun despite my bout of explosive diarrhea, yay living in Africa, at least I got medicated enough to stop it for the 12 hour trip back to Thies the next day. In the end, the visit was great and I can't wait to get back there.

The front of my future hut!

the back of my hut (caution low entrance)

Me and Kay (my ancienne)

Pellel Kindessa and some mountain from on top the water forage

an awesome chameleon Ifound at the Dindefellow waterfall

us at the Dindefellow waterfall

We had a counterpart workshop at the training center, which was long and all business. Neene Galle came and it was good to get to talk to her more about the next two years and the PC Senegal Health Project plan called PROSPERE. Either way as soon as it was done, Saturday morning we arranged for 2 alhums to pick all of us up and bring us to Popenguine, a ridiculously pretty beach town. There are some pictures below. We had a great time relaxing, swimming, eating, and drinking a little bit….suffice it to say it was an extremely fun and relaxing weekend for all of us despite the fact that the towns water supply was turned off the entire time (this happens often in a lot of places in Senegal) but 40 people and no running water meant running to the ocean for a bucket of water to flush the toilet every time…it was probably good we were there only 1 night.

Counterpart workshop in Thies

Views from the house in Popenguine

I'm writing this post at my homestay in Sangalkam during my last week here with the Ba family, which is sad, but there are important things ahead, 2 weeks to install ceremony on May 14^th. This post will be up online after I'm back at the center so excuse the time discrepancy.