A jaraama Senegal!: COS: Close Of Service

About a week into April I said goodbye to my family and friends for two years, packed up my hut, gave my last gifts, handed my key to my Baba and I biked out of Pellel Kindessa. It was a sad experience, and the short ride to Dindefelo alone was bittersweet, I know I’ll go back again to visit sometime, I hope that it is sooner than later.

I didn’t leave Kedougou right away though. I spent the next week traveling around Segou, Dindefelo and Dande with some PCV friends from the Gambia who I had met at WAIST a few months earlier. It was nice to do the touristy thing one last time, even though the touristy thing for us volunteers was always way more rugged and backwoods. I had said goodbye to my counterparts, family and neighbors in Pellel, and now I got a chance to say goodbye to the waterfalls and hiking trails that I had loved so much during my two years there. At the end of that week I said goodbye to everyone I knew in Dindefelo (my market town). Saying goodbye to Badji (the ICP or head of the poste de santé) and his nurses Wori and Hawaa was the hardest part. Of course I had forgotten my camera that week and couldn’t get a photo with them but I think Badji got one on his camera.

Earlier that week when hiking out to the Dindefelo waterfall for one of the last times, I finally saw the chimpanzees! I had gone out en brousse with Lili so many times and spend so much time hiking and walking around in the woods around Dindefelo, but after two years I had always managed to miss them, finally I got to see the whole group in person just near the falls; I thought that was a fitting moment for one of my last trips there as a PCV. I also said goodbye to Lili’s family, Yaya, Diba and their mother Toure, and finally to Lili, which was sad, having her as my closest neighbor during my service was a huge joy whenever I needed it. Luckily I got to see her a few weeks later back in the States in NYC.

Packing up at the Kedougou house was sad. I had to say goodbye to my beloved cat Joseph, so I fed him one last egg. We all got together to take a photo with Mary-Christine and her son.

Joseph, the most bad-ass amazing cat I will have ever had, eating the last hard boiled egg I gave him

My Peace Corps issued items, all packed up, labeled and ready to head back to Dakar

Me, Mary-Christine, Meera, David, Leah and Marek in front of our Kedougou house kitchen hut

One of the first stops on my Senegal portion of my COS mini-trips was Warang to visit the Liquors de Warang place. Jennie, Eduardo from the Gambia, Eric and Jessica all joined and it was a ton of fun, and I bought 6 bottles of that delicious liquor to bring back with me to the US.

Jessica and I, the lost Toubab tourists, help us, call SOS Toubabs...

Jennie and Eduardo

Me and Eric sipping our Warang tastings (we probably each had over a quarter of a bottle)

Eduardo and I took a side trip to see Popenguine for one last time and I finally got to climb the mountain of the south end of the beach. It was beautiful as always.

I finally climbed that mountain/hill/cliff, beautiful Popenguine Beach behind me

Back in Dakar I finally made a trip to see Goree Island, the area where most of the slave trade of Senegal was operated through back in colonial times. And I followed that up with a quick last visit to the Monument for the African Renaissance and got a last photo with that ridiculous statue as I finished up my seemingly never ending paperwork for COSing. After I finally got my ‘R’ and became an RPCV (Returned Peace Corps Volunteer) a few of us took a week-long trip to Sierra Leone (see the next blog post for that).