Latrines!!!

Ok all you lovely readers have probably been wondering over the last couple of months, ‘is Eric actually doing any work anymore or is he just traveling around and living it up in Senegal and West Africa?’ well…yes and no…but we won’t delve into that because with just a little over one month left at site before I’m done with my service, WORK!!! It has finally happened; the latrine project that I’ve been trying to get off the ground since November is finally happening. Thanks to the wonderful people over at Appropriate Projects (the Peace Corps partner that funds clean water projects for PCVs around the world and which also funded my well for the women’s group garden last year) has given me some money (several other local NGOs failed to come through, hence the several months of waiting). So it’s only $500, which will hopefully build about 10-15 latrines and the list of people who want latrines in Pelel is much more, but it’s a start!

The other great part about Appropriate Projects is that they pre-fund all the grants for Peace Corps Volunteers, so that way we can get started immediately without having to wait months to gather funding. This is where the cool part comes in for all of you; you can donate now while I’m already getting the work started and the project is underway in village. So if you’re interested and feeling charitable and want to donate towards a cause that prevent people from pooping in the woods and the spread of diarrhea, check out my project page! Click Here!

When in Mali

The second week in February my friend Jennie and I traveled to Mali, this is the tale. So we left Kedougou and made it all the way to Bamako in the same day (it’s a pretty far trip and we only managed it thanks to a lucky hitchhike from some Moroccans working near the Senegal-Mali border town of Kenieba, which our guidebook described as ‘the dog’s breakfast’ whatever the hell that means).

me hitchhiking in Kenieba with the beautiful escarpments in the background

We spent the next day buying our next bus tickets and roaming around Bamako, the national capital. We couldn’t really find anything that amazing in Bamako except for a ridiculous amount of public gardens (both ornamental and vegetable) and a disturbing lack of bars (we eventually found one, alhamdulillah).

this garden even had a train which I couldn't resist taking a photo with

 We also found the Peace Corps house and some volunteers who helped us plan some of the logistics for the rest of our trip. The next morning we left on an 9-hour bus ride to Mopti, a nice little town on the banks of the Bani and Niger rivers, which also boasts a pretty fantastic looking mosque built in the Sudanese style (out of mud, no cement), which is the basis for a lot of the local architecture throughout Mali and especially the Dogon Country.

the Great Mopti Mosque

Oh yeah and there were brochettes de capitaine, or fish skewers, soooo delicious! The next day we took a shared taxi about 12km away to Severe where we met our Dogon Country guide Hassimi. Hassimi is the best; he’s really awesome, extremely knowledgeable about the Dogon region and its’ peoples (because he is one himself), very funny, and oh yeah speaks English too. We left Severe that same afternoon, just Jennie, me and Hassimi in his car, and drove through Bandiagara to the beginning of the Dogon Country. 

an onion field on the road into Dogon Country

the same landscape literally 100 meters down the road from that onion field, amazing what one can accomplish with proper watering during dry-season gardening!

It’s an area in Central-South-Eastern Mali, near Burkina Faso (that description was terribly confusing, so if you are indeed still confused, that’s why god gave us the google, bismillah). The area consists of a high rocky plateau that extends for about 150km, South of it is a wide sandy plain that extends into Burkina Faso (seriously if you’re still that interested google it!). Either way, the Dogon people are (or mostly were) Animist which means they have a pretty cool culture, and to protect it from the incoming Fulani (ancestors of my ethnic group here in Senegal) who were spreading their new-found Islamic faith fast and hard. The Dogon people fled to this region and made their towns high up in the rock face of the edge of the plateau.

the cliff town of Teli

beautiful, nestled into the rock face

these tall structures are the graineries where the Dogon people store their grains, most usually millet

me and some graineries, and that's a Dogon ladder behind me

They were actually taking after an earlier group called the Tellem who made their mud huts even higher up (you can see them as the smaller, more ridiculously higher up structures on the rock face), but I digress and you’re not here for a history lesson…so back to our trip. We spent 3 days and 2 nights and trekked starting from Teli, slept in Ende, through Bagrou, had lunch in Yabatalou, through a local market in Doundouru, climbed up the rock escarpment (our word of the trip!) where we encountered this amazing green valley of onion fields (the Malians seem to have taken 1^st place on their ability to dry-season garden, whereas the Senegalese like their tea, aka they’re a bit lazier…)

it was like stepping into a valley-garden of eden

We then spent the night in the town of Begnimato on the edge of the rock plateau, with an extremely beautiful sunset. The next morning we met a local hunter there where I just had to get a photo…

me and a Dogon hunter, he actually sold Hassimi the roasted pig leg that we ate for dinner the night before

We continued along the edge of the plateau through Indelu where we finally climbed down the rock face through a crack, literally through a crack.

Jennie using a Dogon ladder as we began our descent down the crack (she's not wearing any shoes because she didn't want her boutique flip-flops to break, Hassimi thought she was crazy, she kind of is)

And back out to our guide Hassimi’s car. Sorry for all the details of towns’ names, etc. it’s mostly so I don’t forget it. I also picked up this pretty neat Malian lock that they put on their grainerie doors. At first I thought it was a simple wood slide but it actually has an ingenious little locking mechanism on the back that requires a key to open it. I discovered this after being locked out of our room the first morning for 15 minutes before Hassimi came over chuckling and told me there was a key (of course you fool). After all that I just had to buy one.

the Dogon door lock that I bought in Yabatalou

the key slides in behind the wooden slide (here the key is coming in from the top, blogger won't let me flip this photo) and where you see the 3 metal pins on the key, they push up 3 corresponding metal pins that drop down and lock the slide when it's lined up

After Dogon Country we spent a night back in Severe at Hassimi’s house complete with a dinner of capitaine fish and fried plantains. (Jennie and I must have consumed at least a kilo each of fried plantains during the trip; they just don’t exist in Senegal…) We continued on to the city of Segou which was in the midst of hosting the 8^th annual Festival Sur Le Niger, or the West African Music Festival on the Niger River. We stayed with some of our new Malian Peace Corps friends (a big thanks to Devon and Jason again) and wound up watching that night’s performances from the seats of a lifeboat upon a larger cruise boat that was moored next to the stage which was also on a barge…confusing to explain yes, but it was totally awesome and we got to watch the show for free (sorry no photos of this).

The next day we traveled back to Bamako and slept until the day after that when we marathoned it all the way back to Kedougou. Overall it was an amazing trip. Mali is definitely a cool country; unfortunately we couldn’t go to Timbuktu in Northern Mali because of the recent Tuareg rebellions (see here) I hope it all calms down soon, it’s too nice of a country for it to fall into turmoil.

Harmattan Winds

The weather has been very strange here this year, the rainy season was dismal and the cold season seems to have just ended, barely. It’s still cold some nights…by the first week in January last year I was sleeping outside of my hut on my stick bed because it was so hot whereas last night I was still wrapped up in a sleeping bag (then again I'm not really complaining about that). Along with this bizarre weather has been a terrible case of the Harmattan winds. I didn't even notice them last year, but take a look at this photo below that I took two weeks ago during the worst of it. We had endless dust for nearly two weeks; it was pretty terrible for breathing and biking.

this is the view of the hills in my village, I took this photo around midday, mind you the humidity was probably near  nothing, so that's not fog or clouds you see

a photo of the same hill from my village during regular weather (granted yes this was during rainy season but still...)

A Big Fat Senegalese-American Wedding

On February 2^nd, 2012 one of my best friends here in the Peace Corps, Jessica, got ‘married’ to her American boyfriend who was visiting on vacation. About 30 of us Peace Corps Volunteers traveled across the country to her village of Keur Madiabel in the region of Kaolack. Of course the wedding had to be done right, so we all donned our finest of Senegalese apparel and with typical Senegalese wedding gifts in hand: 2 chickens, a duck, and a set of nesting bowls filled with rice, onions and bouillon cubes (the bowls were my gift, she swore she’d kill me if I ever bought her nesting bowls, so of course I did), we took an Alhum from the regional capital out to Jessica’s village to share in the celebration. We danced and drank attayah (Senegalese tea) for hours. The lunch was ridiculously delicious thanks to Jessica who sprang for the high-end 50,000 fCFA (or about $100) sheep, and the women in her family who helped cook and prepare all the food. Keeping with the 2^nd Peace Corps Goal of sharing American traditions with our host country nationals and in keeping with the Jewish tradition of Jessica’s family (she’s half-Jewish) we had her boyfriend Armand perform the “Breaking of the Glass,” followed by a terrible rendition “Hava Nagila” while hosting Jessica up and down in the air in the chair she was sitting in. It was pretty amazing and hilarious, and it confused the hell out of all the Senegalese guests (check out a video of it here).

the ladies of Jessica's family preparing the food

there's the blushing bride in the background

Jessica had her make-up done up in true Senegalese-Wolof Wedding fashion (think Drag Queen...) oh and she got a weave too

the Bride and Groom, Jessica and Armand

the dance party that ensued for hours

Armand, Me and Jessica

Me and Ari & Jennie, two of the Bridesmaids, just look at their amazing Chiquita Banana inspired dresses!

The Gang and Rat Trap Sandwiches

For New Year’s Eve I traveled up to Kaolack to hang out with my best friend Jessica. Over the next week we traveled out to her Wolof village called Keur Madiabel and spent some time there. We also took a boat ride through the mangroves near the Sine Saloum Delta area and camped out near the beach. 

Eric and Jessica on the pirogue boat

'The Gang' on the beach trip, Jessica, Kourtney, and Eric

Afterwards we visited our friend Jennie’s Seerer village for a Sabaar, or a drum party. There’s always lots of dancing at a Senegalese drum party such as these, but the ethnic group of Jennie’s village Keur Soce, are Seerers, and they are known for being particularly risqué dancers. Jennie tells me that at wedding ceremonies the women tie a wooden penis to the inside of their skirt and flash it while dancing, unfortunately this was not a wedding party so the photos below (and on my picasa link) are mostly tame.

Jennie dancing at her Sabaar

some of the Keur Soce girls

me and Jessica in our Senegalese clothes and classic Senegalese photo taking fashion

In the middle of January, we had our annual All-Volunteers Conference in Thies, which is held for all of Senegal and other volunteers from all over West Africa where we share ideas about work; it was uneventful for me since I’m leaving so soon. Immediately afterwards we were bussed off to Dakar for WAIST (the West African Invitational Softball Tournament) was held, our team’s theme was ‘baseball’ which I thought was a little boring and didn’t lend easily to an awesome costume such as mine the previous year (refer to that earlier blog post to see the Hamburglar in action), so I went as a hotdog, that was baseball enough I suppose. Afterwards they bussed us back to Thies for my stage’s (or training group) COS (Close of Service) Conference. That was a very sad affair since it was the last time our entire group would be together at once here in Senegal, only a few months left…

Sad things aside, during all that bussing around to-and-from Dakar and Thies, we were able to photo-document the making of something we call “Rat Trap Sandwiches.” My friends Eric, Kourtney, Jessica and I (who we dubbed ourselves ‘the Gang’ because we’ve been watching too much ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’, lately) made this sandwich during most of our beach camping trip which I mentioned earlier. Either way it’s called a Rat Trap Sandwich because you make it with pretty much everything you’d put in a trap to catch a rat. Oh, and they’re delicious too!

Start by cutting your bread and spreading cheap "La Vache Qui Rit" cheese,  open the can of Chicken Spam (disclaimer, real Spam is like caviar compared to this stuff)

add the slices to the sandwich, with optional mustard if you're feeling fancy

and enjoy! Rat Trap Sandwiches! (also this is the bus that we were on back and forth  like 90 times from Thies to Dakar)

and this photo is here just because I like it and wanted to end with something interesting, it's a field where all the grass has seemed to pull pull together like a field of buried trolls. it's actually being prepared to be cut for roofing thatch

2011 Wrap-Up

Well I know this is a few weeks late but I guess that’s been the running theme of the blog the past couple of months.  I finally got back to site after my short (but wonderful) vacation to the States in early December. This is a photo of how much stuff I packed on the back of my bike for my first trip back to site.

all my baggage, thank god for Senegalese used inner tube bike straps

I had probably about 30 or so articles of baby clothes and assorted t-shirts for the children and the adults of my family that I brought back as gifts, along with a bunch of American candy and toys for the kids as well.  The family definitely appreciated them.  Snapped this photo along the side of the Dindefelo road on my bike ride back, cotton season is back!

they make these HUGE baskets out of stripped bamboo and then fill them with their cotton until the local cotton company comes to pick it up, it's one of the biggest industries in this area

But seriously the weather here is certainly unique this time of year. It’s really hot during the days, chilly to the point of needing to use a sleeping bag at night, and everything is extremely dry. Thanks to the 0% humidity or as it seems, there’s a ton of dust, and that leads to the ever famous Jersey-Shore-esque/John-Bohner-Spray-on-Laterite-Road-Tan (see my friend LaRocha’s well documented on-going battle with that tan here, here or here). But yeah, this was what my ankle tan line looked like afterwards.

ignore how ugly Senegal has made my feet and direct your attention to that beautiful tan line at my ankles

In other news my counterpart, Neene Galle, gave birth to a baby girl the last week in December, her name is Salematou.

Neene Galle and her new-born baby Salematu

And I’ll leave you with a few of my favorite photos from the end of 2011 here in Senegal.

this is a chicken on a goat...unlikely perhaps...amazing yes! my neighbors got a kick out of this one 

a version of a Senegalese scarecrow, that silo-like basket is where they keep their corn, similar construction to the cotton basket

well 2011, that's a WRAP (sorry for the pun, I just had to) (also this is me wearing my Mauritanian  head wrap to keep the dust out of my face, super effective)