Mosquito Nets!!!

Last week I finally did some work! We started off the 2010 Universal Net Coverage campaign for Senegal. There are a couple NGOs involved including Malaria No More, Netlife, and PNLP (the Senegalese government org against malaria). We started last Monday with the training of the local health workers at the Health Post in Dindefelo. The training was to teach them how to do an effective census of the people in the surrounding towns, find out how many beds in each household, and how many nets were needed.

I spent the next 3 days going around with my counterpart Nene Galle and my other counterpart’s wife, Sadio, (he was out of town). We went compound to compound all over my Pellel’s 5 quartiers...it was a long 3 days, but good because I got to meet everyone and also introduce myself as the new volunteer, one guy was so excited to meet me he gave me 6 bananas.

Then on Friday we did an early net distribution in Dindefelo, the touristy town 7k from mine. I won’t be distributing the nets in Pellel until the 2^nd or 3^rd of July but this happened so early on because the NGO who paid for the nets wanted to do a big press event. So, of course, they flew in some American celebrities...most notable was the actor who play Andy from the Office, who was also in the Hangover. There were some comedians I had seen randomly before on TV, and then some others who have done some smaller roles. Either way, it was nice to have them there and the net distribution went quickly and smoothly. Afterwards they filmed some stuff for some malaria awareness clips that will be out on the internet later this fall. I’ll post a link to that site once they’re done with it and have it up.

Labeling the nets so no one tries to resell them, organising them into households for pickup

Some of the crowd, waiting to get their nets

Meera, Hannah & I and the celebrities

Aside from that, we had 3 days of language training in Dindefelo, our teacher drove in. Back at the regional house for a day or two to email, blog & photo post, and buy a new bike rack because mine snapped; these roads out here are rough! Looking forward to net distributions at the end of this month and then the big Kedougou 4^th of July party!

first week at site

So I’ve had about my first week at site. My family is extremely nice and the village is great. I kind of mentioned both back in my volunteer visit post. I’m going to stop trying to give the play by play of everything that’s been going on here with me in Senegal and from now on the posts will be more targeted entries, specific events, etc.

The Pellel Kindessa Falls

Last week I got my host brother, Yousuphu, to head out with me in search of the Pellel Kindessa Waterfall (the Dindefelo one is great but it’s a bit touristy and I was positive my town had a more exclusive and better set of falls). We were supposed to leave immediately after lunch, but Hannah, my closest neighbor was supposed to be making her first visit to my family, of course I had no phone credit to find out when she’d actually show up. I convinced Yousuphu to wait until after the first cup of attaaya (the extremely sugary tea the Senegalese drink in shot form, imagine 12 sugar cubes in about 8oz of tea….), we drank, and magically Hannah showed up just as I had hoped. She and her host dad stayed awhile so we still got an even later start and by that point an obvious thunderstorm was coming over the mountains where we were headed. Despite my family suggesting that it might not be a good idea to go, I looked at 15 year old Yousuphu who said, yeah let’s go. Walking through open fields with my new machete in hand, as the lightning approached us, I decided that I should maybe not blindly follow the suggestions of a 15 year old in the future... Luckily I was not struck by lightning. The walk took a little over an hour and all along the way Yousuphu had to yell at the top of his lungs to scare off the troops of baboons that weren’t very afraid of us and were following us through the valley. We continued along making our own path at many points since one doesn’t really exist, as the mountains on either side of us closed in on each other. We reached a point where Yousuphu said he hadn’t been past before because he had been too afraid, we decided to continue despite the fact that it started to rain and the rock faces of the mountains on either side drowned out most of the light. This place was amazing. The rock faces on both sides went up as steep steps and there were trees that had managed to grow in them with their roots cascading down reminiscent of something from the legends of the hidden temple, or some Indiana Jones movie. We arrived at the main pool, and found that there are a number of different falls all in this one area, all on different levels. We decided to climb to the furthest point back; the view from there was wonderful. At this point I was thankful for the rain because since its still dry season here, there wouldn’t have been any water at these falls. The rain that had been pouring for about 20 minutes started to make its way down the rock front; I watched as it start cascading from 50 or 60 feet up. It was absolutely beautiful. We stood there for almost 20 minutes until we decided to climb down to where the first pool was, now we found the main waterfall pouring from the rocks that hadn’t yet started when we arrived. It was definitely an awesome sight. Judging by the rocks and where the water was dripping from just this one short afternoon thundershower I can only imagine how great this area looks during rainy/wet season. I’ll definitely be going back when that happens next month, and with a camera if I can (so no pictures this time around…).

Install tomorrow

Hey everyone, this will be a short post. Been in Kedougou for the last few days buying things for my hut, got all packed up today, we leave for my village tomorrow at 7:30am. Pretty exhausted from all the running around, and I want to be up early tomorrow. Probably won't have access to the internet for the next 2-3weeks, so I'll try to update you then. Oh and I'm now the proud owner of my very first machete! I'll try to be careful.

guess who's an official PCV

Despite my alarm not going off this morning (set it but it didn't save as 'on') and me and my roommate missing the 7am PC bus to Dakar (i woke up on my own at 7:30 and though wow it's pretty light outside for before 6am, looked at my cell phone and saw that it was 7:35 and sure enough everyone had left without us….the guards here called us a taxi and 16,000CFA (about 32$) we were in Dakar with an hour to spare before the ceremony.) It was a nice ceremony held at the US Ambassador's house, complete with lots of soda and finger foods afterwards (probably my favorite part). Either way I am now officially a Peace Corps Volunteer!!!!! After the ceremony we got our bank cards from the PC HQ and went over to the American Club, a place with a really nice pool that we get access to for free as PCVs…and it has a cheap bar. Back in Thies now, tomorrow will be a long day of shopping in the market, want to pick up a decent hammock if I can find one. And then very early Sunday morning we're leaving super early to head to Kedougou. I'll be there until I install at site on the 19^th, so I'll have some time to put up some photos and post again.

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.