Dindefelo Summer Camp and Joal Summit

Wow, it’s been a long time since I last posted. That’s most likely due to one of two things, I’ve either been busy with work, or just too lazy to post (in truth it’s been a little of both). I think the best way to recap everything that’s gone on in the last month or so is with a couple tiny blurbs and occasional photos. So here we go.

Dindefelo Summer Camp

Shortly after Ramadan ended the Dindefelo Summer Camp started up. The camp was 2 weeks long and there were just over 70 high school aged kids from the Kedougou Region. Since the camp was in its 3^rd or 4^th year, the Senegalese counselors have been taking over more and more of the responsibilities each year. Consequentially, the Peace Corps’ role this year was more of background support, although half the time we felt like we were doing so much more, just with no decision making power. Either way the 2 weeks went well. I got to teach basic First Aid sessions to all the campers, you’d be surprised that all of them thought a tourniquet was the first thing to do to stop bleeding…they know better now. We also went over broken bones, dehydration and heat exhaustion (which I actually had to treat one camper for later in the week), and choking. It was a lot of fun to teach those skills to the local kids, and I got to do it in French which was good practice, and fun.

(splinting...good enough)

In addition to that we had a bunch of other sessions like nutritional porridge preparation and techniques on how you could effectively sell items like that at the weekly market. During the camp I stayed at my friend Lili’s hut. Lili is a chimpanzee researcher from the Spanish Jane Goodall Institute, so she gave a few talks about local chimpanzee populations and did a nature hike.

In addition, during the 2 weeks there were some really amazing storms that rolled through in the evenings.

TOMATOES and eggplants too

During the summer camp, I biked back to my house in Pellel every 4 or 5 days, and the best part of that was getting to eat the tomatoes I’ve grown in my garden. On the last day I was there to pick them before I knew I’d be leaving site for the next 2 weeks, I think I ate nearly 20 of them.

Dakar and Joal Summit

After camp ended we took the car back to Kedougou so we could catch the overnight bus to Dakar. The overnight bus was the best! I watched 2 movies on my iPod, took 2 benadryl and fell asleep until we arrived in Dakar at 5am…sure beats waiting around in garages all day and a crowded, sweaty sept-place. We traveled to Dakar for our sector’s Health and Environmental Education Summit, which was held in Joal, a coastal town a little south of Dakar. The date of the summit got pushed back a few days after we had already bought our bus tickets, so naturally we spent way too much money running around and having fun in Dakar. The day before summit was made a trip back to Popenguine (see my previous post) and stayed in the same house. While we were there, we went swimming in the ocean at night again, although this time there was bioluminescence, or tiny planktons that glow when you touch them. So basically we swam around in the dark ocean looking like magical wizards for nearly 45 minutes, it was a lot of fun. Unfortunately there’s no pictures of that, but if you’re curious I’m sure a quick google or youtube search will show you how cool it is. After Popenguine we traveled to Joal for our 2-day summit. The one house we were in had no water, which was miserable, so the next night they moved us into a really awesome beach-side hotel (thanks American tax-payers, PCVs love the beach!). That hotel was supposed to have water, which it did, for the first 2 hours, then not again until we left…oh well the pool and bar made up for it. Summit was ok, I think it just seemed repetitive to my stage because we had just recently had our in-service-training a few months ago. I did get my grant written so it wasn’t a waste of time. After summit we went back to Dakar for one night, had a going-away bar night for some friends who have completed their service, and we traveled back to Kedougou the next morning.

That pretty much brings us to now. There’s a bunch of work on my plate for now through the end of the month. Trying to get my grant passed for a 6 month training stipend for my counterpart’s matrone (mid-wife) training, school building in my town, and more stuff with the med hut…I’ll keep you posted. Thanks again for reading despite the fact that my English skills deteriorate month by month…

and just a picture of my awesome cat Mawni, because look at what she caught!

Ramadan Recap

So the month of Ramadan ended on Friday, the celebration here is called Korite. It was a long day of prayer at the mosque and (finally!) FOOD! and lots of it. I really love food, and I think the people of Pellel do too. We definitely ate well to celebrate the end of the month of fasting. Although I didn't actually fast the whole month (I had secret meals in my hut) I definitely ate a lot less than I normally would have. In addition to all the not eating, I got some work started on a couple of future projects, I'll have more info on those as things start to come together over the next month or so now that everyone is up and running again.

I was in at the regional house this weekend to greet the new stage volunteers who came for site visits. They're a fun group and we're all looking forward to the 9 of them moving in with us here in Kedougou after they swear in at the end of October, I can't believe I'm no longer one of the freshmen here.

Tomorrow morning I head back to Dindefelo, where I'll be spending most of the next two weeks for the Kedougou Summer Camp. Its a leadership camp for students in the area. I'll have more on that after its done. But a busy two weeks coming up, and then I get to go to the Dakar region for a week or so. There's some new photos on Picasa, so enjoy those, sorry I don't have any other interesting stories for now, until next time.

My dad (he's the town Imam) and some guy I call Grandfather Time, in their Korite best!
(they never smile...my dad is really the nicest person, he just looks a little serious here)

Pellel Waterfall again (this time with pictures)

Hello all, I'm going to try to keep this post short, it's late and I need to get to bed soon, heading back to village tomorrow. I was back at the regional house for some organizational meetings for the Dindefelo summer camp that's coming up. Also met with the head of the local hospital with some other volunteers to discus implementing a permanent condom distribution system for the region. Not too much work, but things are starting to pick up, I'll definitely have more work and stories after Ramadan finished, right now everyone is fasting so not much work gets done.

Enough of work talk...Hannah and I made a trip out to the Pellel waterfall last week. It was beautiful, well worth the 1h15m walk out there. I won't go into too many details of the waterfall, the pictures say it all, and you can always refer back to my earlier post about the first time I visited out there, this time luckily I brought my camera. Enjoy the photo below (plenty more on my picasa account)

The Pellel Waterfall

and just because I want to share a couple more photos...

my tomatoes (i know spacing is terrible)

the amazing bridge we need to cross to get from site back to the regional house....

The Senegalese Post Office, a Case Study & some hilarious travel drama

Like most gems the French left behind after their colony days with Senegal, such as the inability to form and wait in a lines, a write-and-study-only-what-you-see-written-on-the-board-and-the-teacher-is-never-wrong-so-don’t-ask-anything-in-class educational system, the Senegalese Post Office deserves to be shared with those of you reading along at home in the comfy US. You see, in the United States we have the luxury of being able to walk into a post office and buy stamps along with other people who are also just buying stamps (or something similar, packages, etc.). I first noticed this very odd phenomenon while studying abroad in Paris during the fall of 2007. La Poste as they call it there and here, is not only just a post office, but also, and even more so a bank… Try to stick with me here, I was confused too. I didn’t mind it too much in Paris because most French don’t spend all day hawking the counters at their banks, but here in Senegal that is exactly what they do (think the DMV but worse). To my best understanding the group of Senegalese waiting at the Post Office’s counter, which all day long numbers around 20 or so, is there waiting for money wire transfers. I’m supposing that most of these people are there trying to access some of the money sent to them by family member who has made it off to the magical and fabled land of Dakar, where money is a plenty (but not as abundant as it is in the US where Obama gives it to us by the bucket load, daily, according to many Senegalese I’ve talked to). This is a good thing. Oldest son leaves the poor, humble Pulaar farm in South Kedougou to make the big franc CFAs up in Dakar in order to help support the family. It’s great. Except for when I want to write one of you a letter or a post card, or get postage for a package, or pick up a package…That’s when I get to wait in the endless line that is the La Poste bank…Which brings me to why the Post Office should not be a bank. Combined with the aforementioned genetic incapability to queue up and wait, this line can be and always is miserable. There are other banks that exist here that also have Western Union wire transfer counters…but I still haven’t figured out why the Post Office is the place of choice. Perhaps it’s the Restaurante La Poste, which doesn’t actually exist here in Kedougou (we’re too far out in the sticks) but there’s one in Tambacounda, lunch 7 days a week. I’m guessing some savvy cook noticed that there’s a lot of Senegalese getting hungry while waiting in line (a figurative line) for hours to shout at the assorted glacialy slow-moving tellers, as if they were placing bets with a bookie at a horse race, cheers to them. All joking aside though, this is the reality here, so cherish our American way of separation of Bank and Post, I can’t wait for it when I return in two years.

-------------------------------------------------------

A funny thing happened on the way back to Kedougou…After my Dakar trip I spent a couple days with my friend Mikael in Tambacounda, the last major city before you get to Kedougou. When it came time to head back to the Gou (as we call it here, we’re the Gou Crew) we went to the garage to find me a sept-place. The garage can be a scary and hectic place. Hundreds of cars, taxis, sept-places, and alhums all of which would never pass inspection in the United States, are waiting around with their drivers trying to shuffle you off into them for your trip. Despite the lack of a ticket counter or schedule as you’d expect at most large public transportation depots back in the States such as a train or bus station, it’s remarkably quite efficient. Taking a sept-place, which is French for a station wagon that can hold 7 passengers (don’t ask how we fit in, it’s miserable), can be the fastest way to travel long distances in Senegal. The only problem is these cars will not leave until all 7 seats are filled. Up until then I had always traveled with a large group of volunteers, and had the luxury of group bargaining and a speedy departure. I think I was one of the first people to buy a seat in my sept-place, which meant I spent nearly an hour and a half waiting to leave. While waiting, I noticed they were cramming all the luggage into the tiny space behind the third row of seats. This made more sense when they threw the first goat up on top. This is common here so I didn’t mind it, until there were seven goats on top of the sept-place (which apparently means 7 seats for people and 7 animals).

seven goats tied in rice sacks ready for a 3-4 hour drive...

there were seven of them I promise, some are hiding

I got stuck with the worst seat in the car, the middle furthest back seat, and considering that the two back windows wouldn’t roll down, it was pretty bad. About an hour into the ride the one guy next to one of the non-functioning windows figured out how to open it, the wind was amazing…for 5 minutes, then one of the goats peed and it started to pour in the window on the man. The window went promptly went up. This happened three more times, luckily my seat was far enough away from any of the windows for me to get peed on, crisis averted, until the car broke down…The driver fixed it after we sat in the shade on the side of the road for an hour. By then two of the people in the car had flagged down another car and left us behind, this meant I got the back bench seat all to myself, which was great, until the car broke down again…This time there was no fixing it, it just wouldn’t work. The driver flagged down this 1960s charter bus that was passing by. You don’t travel in these things, it’s just a rule, they’re miserable and crowded…but there I was. Another two hours, and the realization that my seat and subsequently my pants were wet, I was back in Kedougou, hope the goats were ok...No public transportation for me for awhile.