Still alive!

Ok. It’s been a while since my last post (as always) and a lot has happened. Actually, that’s a lie. We’re on Africa time. However, enough has happened to merit a blog update.

In mid-September, 8 fellow Tamba Volunteers and I embarked on a 4-day “tourney”. The purpose of this one was to educate villagers about the causes of diarrhea, how to prevent it, and how to treat it. Due to a lack of basic knowledge about proper hygiene and sanitation, diarrhea is extremely common, especially among children. And although it is easily treated, parents often wait so long to take their sick child to the health hut - many times because they cannot or do not want to pay the small fee – that by the time the child IS seen by a health worker, it’s too late. This is actually one of the biggest health-related problems I’ve seen, and it frustrates me beyond belief.

Anyway – three teams of three (each team speaking a different local language, depending on the village) performed educational skits and demonstrations. Using a flavored drink powder, we were able to demonstrate how germs are spread, and the importance of using soap while washing your hands. Once damp, the powder (representing germs) stained a village volunteer’s hand. Shaking hands with others showed how it was passed easily from person to person. And afterwards, the only way to get it off was with soap – water alone didn’t cut it. After that, we showed them how to make ORS – Oral Rehydration Solution – by mixing certain quantities of sugar and salt with clean water, and explained how to use it. Simple, cheap, and enormously effective.

Side note: Every PCV is supplied with ORS in their med kit, and we have a large supply here at the regional house. Great for intestinal distress, also good for quick rehydration after a wild night. It’s said that if your ORS tastes like candy, you know you’re in trouble.

Over the four days, we visited 12 villages, five of which were Jaxanke speaking, including my own. It was a great experience. It gave me some new vocab, more confidence speaking the language, and it allowed me to see friends’ sites, which was really fun. It was also exhausting. The best part, though, has been catching my villagers reciting lines from the skits to each other, or the ORS recipe, or how important soap is – even weeks after the tourney. Talk about a warm, fuzzy feeling. I can’t wait to do another one – we’re thinking family planning would be a good topic (but really, the possibilities are endless – nutrition, malaria, the American boy band phenomenon, etc).

I also just finished a proposal to fund a latrine project in my village. Quite a few people in Bira don’t have access to a pit toilet, which means they’re doing their thing outside, near living and cooking areas. No good, for obvious reasons (see above). So we’re planning on constructing ten new latrines around the outskirts of the community, where most of these bush-poopers (sorry, latrine-deprived) people live. Hopefully this plan goes off without a hitch. That’s too much to hope for, maybe, but this project is meant to gauge the enthusiasm of my community, and single out people who may be good work partners in the future.

Quick story about my dog, whom I haven’t mentioned before: In August, I really wanted a puppy. I bought one off some kids, spur of the moment, in the street for the equivalent of two dollars. I named him Tigo, which means “peanut” in Jaxanke. Tigo was adorable, but quite a handful. When I took him back to Bira, I led him around on a leash for a couple days so he could get his bearings, then set him free. He immediately ran into my host family’s backyard and ate a baby chicken. This is not good, especially in a place where every baby chicken represents possible future food and money. I was mortified. A couple days later, he ate another baby chicken – this time it had pretty much wandered into his vicious, adorable puppy face while Tigo was tied up. Two strikes.  I had to keep him on-leash and under surveillance at all times, which was stressful for both of us, I’m sure. So many other Volunteers have dogs that wander the village happily, managing to avoid killing anything. My only explanation was that since Tigo lived his first 8 weeks in Tamba, perhaps away from small animals, he never learned to leave them alone, as village dogs do. Anyway, after casting about wildly for another solution, my friend Pheobe (my savior) offered to take him. She works with a Master Farmer in a field right outside Tamba. Tigo would have 1,000 square meters of space to roam, and people working there almost all the time to keep him company. And best of all, if any small animals wandered into the field – a demonstration farm, basically – they’d be pests and, therefore, fair game. I’m not sure if Tigo is actually still honing his hunting techniques, but I do know that he is fat, happy, and I had to pull a mango fly larvae out of his tail. You can look it up. Keep in mind that this also afflicts PCVs. Constant vigilance!

Some exciting news: my amazing friend Becky is going to visit me for two weeks right after Christmas! I’m very excited to A) see her, and B) show someone around this country that is now, somehow, my home. Honestly, there are some people to whom I would hesitate to recommend an African trip, but after many travels with her I know she can handle it easily. Maybe there should be a warning on airlines’ websites…

Side effects of prolonged exposure to West Africa may include: excessive use of Imodium, refusal to pay more than 40 cents for a baguette, increased rate of arguing with vendors and taxi drivers, increased incidence of sass (related), redefined definition of ‘shopping,’ ‘heat,’ ‘public transportation,’ and ‘balanced meal,’ sudden desire to spend all your money on fabric, admiration of fake hair and complex cornrows, speaking African French, thinking that African French is what French actually sounds like, decrease in vegetarianism, increase in tolerance for strange meats, increased chance of wearing jelly sandals, intimate knowledge of both tropical afflictions and donkeys’ social habits, thinking SPAM, canned cheese, and fish mash are delicious, strong opinions on international development and NGO work, disdain for money-tossing tourists, indignation when people assume you’re a tourist, increased incidence of hiding money on your person, thinking all of the above is normal, increase of cross-cultural understanding, and of course a huge increase in BADASSNESS.

Til next time!

Cultural Lessons

August is Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. The faithful fast completely from sunrise to sundown – that means no food, no water. They are also supposed to abstain from any other practices that may distract them from worship – nothing pleasurable, basically.  Children are excused from fasting, as are pregnant and breastfeeding women (though many times they do, despite our pleas to think of their babies’ health), as well as the very old or sick. What about Peace Corps Volunteers? Our host villages’ opinions seem to vary, from what I’ve heard. Some of us were told “you must fast!” and others, “why would you fast? You aren’t Muslim.”  Ultimately, of course, it was an individual choice – it’s easy to stock up on “Ramadan food” and retire stealthily to your hut to snack. I did a bit of everything. For a couple days, I breakfasted with my host family at 5 a.m. on bread and coffee, then didn’t eat again until 7:30 p.m. For most of the time, I ate my own breakfast later in the morning, then waited again until sundown. Some days, I did snack around lunchtime. For a couple days at the end of the month, I fasted out of necessity – I ran out of money to buy food! But I always drank water. I wasn’t prepared for that extreme (and unwise) of a discomfort; also, we’d had a discussion about kidney stones during PST that left me with a healthy regard for proper hydration.

How did my village cope during Ramadan? Everyone still worked in the fields in the morning, but by 11 or noon they were all back, lounging in the shade, napping or doing small chores. The kids, (unfortunately) fully fueled, ran screaming circles around their exhausted and grumpy older relatives. Come evening, everyone waited for the call from the mosque, the sign that one more day’s deprivation was behind them. We all broke fast with mono, or monoo, or whatever (Jaxanke isn’t a written language, so I get to invent spellings) It’s a type of weird porridge – their customary breakfast – made with flour, water, and sugar. Easy on the stomach. Later on, a proper dinner was also consumed. My counterpart liked to tell me how he would get up each morning at 2 a.m. to eat more. He was also very fond of shouting at a daughter to bring him water, gulping the entire liter-size cup in one go (reminded me of my brother drinking milk as a child) then setting the cup down with loud emphasis and proudly telling me with his fingers how many liters he’d downed so far that evening.

As for me, I learned that not eating for 14 hours is hard, but doable. Sure, by 7:30 I was listening as hard as everyone else for the mosque’s permission, but I discovered that (temporary) hunger itself is – I don’t really know how to put it – not so dire. While after 8 hours back in the States I would have probably declared that I was “starvinggggg” and gone to the fridge, here that milestone passed without me really acknowledging it, and I went about another 6 hours or so without suffering too much. Of course, the fact that eating was simply not an option probably had something to do with my mental (and physical?) fortitude. Nevertheless: on August 30^th at around 7 p.m., the slightest slice of a moon was sighted over the village, a drum was sounded, and everyone was suddenly very happy. Ramadan was over! It took me a while to actually locate the moon myself, and my family made sure that I saw it with my own eyes before they let me alone – after all, if the moon hadn’t been sighted that night, there would have been another day of fasting. Thank God it was a clear night. “Tomorrow, eat only! Eat and drink only!” my host mothers gleefully told me.

Korite is the day following Ramadan. Every woman undid their cornrows and then had them rebraided, some with luxurious fake extensions. Littler girls had so much black yarn weaved into their short braids that after everything was done it looked like life-size dolls come alive were running around the compound. The women bent over their cooking fires all day, and the food was delicious – bread and sweet potatoes and macaroni and onions and meat. The cow they had killed, distributed, and cooked several days prior, so the meat was tough, but meat is so rare in my village (despite the feeling that I’m living in a petting zoo) that it was indeed a joyful holiday. I privately dreamed of my dad’s barbequed tri-tip. In the afternoon packs of kids roamed around the village, dressed to the nines in brand new clothes and, in the girls’ case, makeup, glitter, and sassy attitudes. The women looked stately and beautiful in their new complets and braids, while I just looked like I was at a questionable costume party. Yes, I did wear a traditional outfit and let them cornrow my hair. I’d had one previous traumatic experience with this, at the hands of a sadistic teenager, and it took many, many assurances of painlessness for me to submit again. But it was fine. I guess my own host sister doesn’t feel the need to test the limits of my pain tolerance. While this was going on, girls kept coming up to stroke my hair, so different from their own.  Later in the night, there was music and dancing. I went to bed at 9:30, a good hour past my usual bedtime. Impressed? I was.  

In other news…

A girl died a couple days ago. This isn’t big news in itself; at least two or three children have died in my village since May, but this was the first death that exposed me to the rural Senegalese attitudes about it. She lived in the house directly across from my hut, so ever since I installed she’d been, along with the other 17 kids, a daily fixture in my compound. She was one of my favorites – three or four years old, the smaller of a pair of twins, very quiet and shy. I was just starting to make social inroads with her; she liked high-fives.

At 5:30 one morning, I woke to the sounds of crying. It sounded like one woman, and one older child. The crying sounded anguished, and it scared me. I’ve never witnessed a grown Senegalese woman expressing grief before. I lay in the dark, eyes wide open, wondering if someone had really died. I’d heard that the women set up an eerie wailing in the occasion of a death, but this sounded like natural, bitter grieving. No wailing. The sounds died down soon after, and I went back to sleep, thinking that for a death there probably would have been more commotion.

Later, ducking out of my hut, everything looked normal except for a couple extra people sitting silently outside the house. I walked the 20 yards to my host family’s door. “The girl died this morning,” my counterpart told me. The verb one uses is “xa ban,” which is also used in the context of “There’s no more water” or “The water is finished.” “Jio banta.” Who? I asked. “The twin, the small twin.” Why? “She was sick,” with a shrug. Did they take her to the health post? “Yes, but the doctor was not there.” I’m going for a walk. “But nobody is going to the fields today!” I’m still going for a walk.

A surreal experience. Not twelve hours before her death, I’d seen the girl sitting on the concrete bed outside with her siblings and neighbors, swinging her legs and eating with great relish a bit of meat. She looked like herself – quiet, but very much alive. What sickness killed her? Malaria? Some random fever? I’ll never know. When I got back from my walk, a man was carrying the tiny body out of the compound, wrapped in a mat, the father and a couple other men in tow. A little while later they returned, mat empty, and women started filing by to greet and console the mother. By midday everything seemed back to normal. The women joked and laughed and did their chores. The father fanned himself and greeted passers-by. The lone twin came over to play with the other kids, smiling and chewing on some meat. Is she too young to understand what had happened to her sister? Business as usual. The only sign that a child had died that morning was the sadness of her mother, imperfectly concealed. Dry-eyed most of the day, in the afternoon she briefly lost her composure and was quickly escorted, sobbing, into the house. I asked my counterpart why nobody was crying. “They did cry, at 5 a.m.” 5 a.m. only! “Well, 5 to maybe 6 a.m.” In America, when a child dies, everyone cries for a long time. “But it is because God wills it! If the mother cries, everyone says, shush! Calm down! It is God’s will” It’s because God wills it, or because the only doctor skipped town?

This is just one more incident in a long string of incidents and conversations that frustrates me beyond belief about A) the medical care available, and mostly B) the Senegalese attitude towards seeking care. It’s too big of a subject, and I have way too much to say, to include it in this post. I tend to get exasperated and angry just thinking about it. So, I’ll deal with it later.

Also, for those of you who are wondering when I’m going to do some “actual” work: coming up soon, I promise. 

America, Senegal

I love your dress! Where’d you get it?

I love your dress! Which tailor did you use?

I’m kinda craving M&Ms. I think I’ll drag myself to the store.

My mom is sending me M&Ms in a package in a couple weeks… BEGIN THE COUNTDOWN!

It’s 100 degrees today? WHY GOD, WHY?

100 degrees today? Thank God.

I mean, that’s pretty expensive for a cup of coffee, but okay.

WHAT? You’re giving me the white person price. PREPARE TO FIGHT.

I’ve worn this shirt twice. I should probably throw it in the wash.

I can’t really smell this shirt when held at arm’s length. All good!

I can see your butt in that skirt. Scandalous!

I can see your knees in that skirt… you may be a prostitute.

This taxi looks dirty. Gross.

I can’t see the road through the bottom of this taxi! Fancy.

She killed a chicken?!  Awwww, poor thing.

She killed a chicken? Delicious!

Look at the cute fluffy sheep!

Can someone please eat this mangy loud annoying animal already?

Put on your shoes. Your feet are getting dirty.

Put on your shoes. You’re getting parasites.

OMGOMGOMG he proposed!

You’re proposing again? For the fifth time this week, NO.

The mosquitoes here are killer, man.

The mosquitoes here will literally kill you.

There’s a cockroach in my bathroom! Call the exterminators!

If you shine your headlamp at the cockroaches that live inside your pit toilet, they’ll usually stay away from your feet while you’re using it.

Don’t walk alone after dark. You never know what creeps are lurking out there.

Don’t walk alone after dark. You never know what creeps or hyenas are lurking out there.

My puppy ate my shoes.

Rats ate my shoes.

There’s only rice here… where’s the chow mein?

Plain rice again? Lame.

The garbage trucks woke me up soooo early this morning.

I was woken by roosters, then the call to prayer, then donkeys fighting.

She got married at 20? That’s way too young.

She got married at 20? I’m so glad she could wait!

Let’s have a wine and cheese party!

Someone got Cheez Whiz in a package. PARTY TIME.

This rain is making traffic pretty bad.

This rain prevents me from leaving my village.

Ewwww, why do I have a rash? Google it!

You don’t have staph yet? How’d you manage that?

Hitting children is wrong, so wrong, totally morally inexcusable.

…Undecided.  (just kidding!...)

Village life

Imagine yourself in a rural Senegalese village. It’s 3 p.m., the hottest part of the day, and the family is hanging out in the shade, both adults and kids relaxing in a sweaty, post-lunch haze. The women and girls are busily cracking peanuts (all day, every day) and, being a girl yourself, you’re helping out. You’ve become rather good at it, actually, which is probably not a cause for celebration, but it helps pass the time. The man of the house is lounging in one of the only plastic chairs, fanning himself. He takes a handful of peanuts, and for a second you think he might- just maybe – for the first time ever – help out, but instead he pops them into his mouth. Of course. One of his sons is busy making tea, which in Senegal is superstrong, supersweet, and served in shot glasses three times a day. The younger children are nursing or playing on the ground with whatever comes to hand – peanut shells, a piece of string. Three horses stroll past single-file on their way to the well. Goats and sheep hang around nonchalantly, looking for their chance to steal in and snatch a couple peanuts. A chicken, with a blue piece of fabric tied around a wing denoting ownership, pecks at ants around your feet. Everything is peaceful.

Suddenly, a kid hits a smaller companion and steals her piece of torn-up paper. An older sister punches the perpetrator. A mother swipes at all three of them with a stick.  The baby on her back screams. The three kids wail. A quartet of wild-eyed donkeys stampede past, kicking at each other and braying, while other adults snatch children from their path, yelling. The tranquil afternoon has dissolved into typical village chaos. You retreat back to your room to nurse your burgeoning headache and raw fingertips (peanut cracking ain’t easy!) and open a book, trying to ignore the flies buzzing around your head and the screeches still echoing around the compound.

So, village life. How to describe it? Village-y, say some of my peers, and that’s about as accurate as you can get. It’s slow. It’s strange that even though most people are continuously working (peanut cracking, cooking, working in the fields) the pace of life just seems… slooooow. Of course, I don’t do much of the work myself, which contributes. I do a lot of sitting around, listening to conversations and trying to respond if any Jaxanke is directed at me. I read, a lot. Thanks, Dad, for building up my library – a sanity saver. I pull my own water. One bucket per day, used for filtering, showering, brushing my teeth, etc. I use unfiltered water for everything except straight drinking – figure that if I’m going to get a parasite from brushing my teeth with well water, I’ll just learn my lesson that way. I do my laundry out by the well, with the rest of the women, while they laugh and ask me over and over again “Kuuro ke? I kusanta!? I kusanta?!” Laundry? You can do it?!  “Mkusanta!” I tell them repeatedly, shooing away the cow trying to drink from my laundry basin. I go to bed early, usually by 9 or 9:30 every night. This is for a couple reasons – there’s not much to do after dinner, so after a bit of sitting around in the dark I excuse myself. Also, reading or doing anything else with my flashlight just attracts bugs of all kinds. Therefore, it seems like the most reasonable and safe decision is to go straight to bed. I sleep outside every night because of the heat – when it rains I have a fancy shmancy shade structure with plastic to keep the rain off my cement bed, which I can hook my mosquito net to. I realize that rain AND wind together will be a problem; I’ll deal with that when I come to it. Maybe I’ll retreat inside. I don’t like the idea of sleeping inside, though. I’ve only done it once or twice, and besides the heat, there’s the constant scurrying and scratching that tells you there are unwelcome creatures sharing your hut/bed. Not very conducive to a peaceful sleep. But then, neither are the nighttime village sounds, inside or out. One night, I woke from a Jurassic Park-themed nightmare, half-convinced that the donkeys’ wheezes were really velociraptors on the hunt, and I’m pretty sure my mosquito net was not made for dinosaur repelling.

Ok, honestly, village life at this point, still the settling-in period, is pretty boring. Sometimes the days stretch on impossibly. But IST starts in a couple days, and afterwards I hope to begin some projects, and at the very least give myself a small task every day. I know that once I start feeling productive, and less like a participant in some strange social experiment, I’ll be happier. Thank you to everyone for your support so far!

Until next time!

Hello, Bira

I was installed in my village almost a month ago. I would like to say time has flown by, but in reality it seems to be crawling. One month down, 23 to go. Daunting. Honestly, it’s been harder than I anticipated. It’s not the lack of water or electricity that I’m finding hard to deal with, but rather the feeling of isolation. The people in my village are nice, and my counterpart especially has tried hard to make me feel at home, but it doesn’t change the fact that I am the only white person in the vicinity, definitely not yet capable of having real conversations with anybody in Jaxanke (very few speak French, and many of the ones that do, like my counterpart, speak it even worse than me), and cut off from the outside world by a lack of cell phone reception – although I can find it if I climb a hill a short walk from the village. Another thing that is getting to me is the lack of work. I know we’re supposed to be “integrating” these first couple months, and not starting any big projects, but I feel fairly useless sitting around all day, every day. When I go back to site tomorrow I’ll be bringing paint with me so I can start a couple murals around, just to do something productive (Considering painting some maps, since nobody I talked to can locate Senegal on the world map I brought from home, or even identify Africa. Some people were holding the map upside down). I know from talking to other Volunteers that feeling like this isn’t abnormal, especially in the first couple months, and that it does get better.  It’s a tough transition, but certainly an adventure, and I’m also hoping for a lot of character building!

So, about Bira. I don’t really remember what I’ve written about it so far, so I’ll start again with the basics. It’s located 7k off the main paved road that runs from Tambacounda to Kedougou, and is home to around 1,500 people. Most of them speak Jaxanke, and about 30% speak Pulaar. French is rare among older people, although students learn it in school. There is a school that will educate children until they are ready for high school, at which point they can travel to Tamba for further education or, as is almost always the case, especially for girls, drop out. There is a health post, with a doctor that goes back and forth between Bira and Tamba. It is a farming community, and they eat what they grow – millet or couscous with peanut sauce is the usual fare. Besides an onion here or there, I haven’t seen a single vegetable appear in meals, and I can count the number of times I’ve seen meat or fish on one hand. Although there are a surprising number of villagers working in Spain, and some pretty big cement houses built with the money they send back, the large majority of people are very poor and uneducated. I was talking to the women in my compound, and I learned that the great majority of them hadn’t left Bira in years, not even to travel to Tamba, the fare of $2.50 being too expensive. Some of them had never even been further than 25k from their village in their entire lives! Men travel more frequently, but the women are working 24/7, nonstop, and as it is their husbands who make all the decisions for the family, many of them simply never leave. By this point, discoveries like this hardly surprise me, but the thought of being stuck in this tiny village for 40 years straight fills me with claustrophobia and the urge to run away. But, different cultures, different lives, right? This is their life, and they accept it. If I can’t throw money in the air and yell to them “Go! Travel! Explore! Learn!” then I can at least try to improve their lives right here. That’s my job, after all.

I’ve already got a couple ideas for projects, but won’t be starting anything until after IST (In Service Training) at the end of July. I’ll do a post about my own village life sometime soon. Until then – I miss you all. Send happy thoughts my way!

New address

Ok, here is my address for the next two years, Inshallah:

Anne Schier, PCV
Corps de la Paix
B.P. 320
Tambacounda, Senegal
West Africa

As for things I would love to receive - anything. Really. Seriously, getting a letter or a package here is extremely exciting for everyone involved. Howeverrr, if you need some suggestions, I would be happy to provide.

-Pictures of you, to put on my wall and/or show off how hot my friends are
-A good book/magazines
-Pita chips
-Candy
-Protein bars/powder.
-Those boyfriend Ts from Target, you know, the ones that have a little pocket on the chest and are 5-8 bucks... whatever colors, M or L. I should have brought 10.
-Nail polish/remover
-TEA! good English breakfast tea.
-Northern California weather, if they've figured out how to package that up yet
-Pre-addressed envelopes/stamps!

If you do send something, let me know so I can keep my eyes open for it. I think you have to check at the post office to see if you've received anything. Thank you thank you thank you!

Big long post, then off to Tamba

Hey guys. Big things are happening. As of yesterday, I’m done with PST. Tomorrow, we’re swearing in  at the American ambassador’s house in Dakar, dressed in our Senegalese finest. From now on, we're PCVs, not PCTs. Woo! On Saturday, many of us ship out to our new regions. On Sunday, the rest of us do, including me. This Wednesday at exactly noon, I will be installed in my site, presumably to much fanfare on the part of the village since I’m their first ever Volunteer (but we’ll see).

I thought I would do a slightly more detailed post on my life in Mbour, my training village, since I had just left for good. Then I had the crazy idea to write in the third person just for fun. So I did. Then I read back through it and thought writing in the third person was kind of stupid. Here it is anyway.

It was a dark and noisy morning.

Well, dark because it was only 4:30 a.m., and noisy because noise is what you get when you live in Senegal.  Anne groaned. She had just been dreaming about something nice for a change, couldn’t quite remember what, but it had a distinctly comfortable American feel to it. But no use fighting the inevitable - it was time for the second or third wake-up call of the night. The mosques were yelling about Allah knows what. There were cats fighting outside her window, and a donkey was screaming somewhere in close proximity.  Anne fumbled around for the iPod that she had misplaced somewhere in her sheets, ignoring the mosquitoes that buzzed threateningly just outside her mosquito net (hope they don’t find the holes) and searched for loud yet relaxing music. Three more hours, she told herself as she settled back, let’s try to make the most of it.

Every day in Mbour starts pretty much the same. In fact, as she’ll bemoan quite frequently, every day is alarmingly similar. Shortly before 8, after changing into something more appropriate (knees are generally frowned upon in Muslim countries) she tiptoes out of her room and around her host sister, who is mopping the floor. This always makes her feel a bit guilty because A) this sister has been cleaning the house for an hour already, and B) walking through the just-mopped area is unavoidable, and everyone knows how annoying that is to the mopper. Some things transcend cultures.

“Fatumata,” says her sister, looking up. It’s a statement. Oh, Anne is not Anne here, she is Fatumata, and she is still not sure how she feels about that name. She rattles off the basic morning greetings that have been drilled into her since day 1: “I saaxoma. Heera sita. I siinoxota kende? Heera doron.” Sometimes, when she’s really just not in the mood for obscure African languages (you know how it goes) she’ll greet her confused family with a defiantly American “Heyyyyy, good moooorning!”  Breakfast consists of enough bread to drown a duck, and enough sugar to send even the most mild-mannered child into a fit. Anne/Fatumata watches as her host mother spreads watery chocolate (Nutella’s ugly cousin) on half a baguette and dumps sugar cubes into her tea/coffee/sweet powdered milk combination, and worries that this no longer seems abnormal.

Anne and Nicky (Nandin), living closest to the training garden, have been elected to water it every morning, which neither of them really minds since it gets them out of the house a little earlier. Plus, pulling water is one of the easiest forms of exercise to be found, and can be done even in a pagne (long wrap skirt). On the way out of the schoolyard, they converse briefly with a middle-aged man, dressed in a suit. Encounters like this are familiar, and the conversing is, familiarly, heavily one-sided. “Hello, you speak-a de English? I love you. Are you married?” Anne and Nicky continue walking. Honestly, no creativity. Marriage propositions are becoming positively tedious these days, even when aimed towards two girls at once.

Language class starts at 9. Anne has learned enough Jaxanke to satisfy Peace Corps’ training requirements, but somehow still leaves each class feeling a bit dumb. Along with her LCF (Language and Culture Facilitator) and three other Trainees/would-be Jaxanke talents, she learns vocab, structure, unnecessarily long greeting sequences, and how to say things like “I don’t eat mystery meat.” Recently, one of the sample phrases in class was “He talks to me every day about beating children.” Some things don’t transcend cultures.

After class, the Trainees part ways, and head back to their respective compounds for lunch. Imagine a streetlight, and the swarms of insects drawn to it at night. In Senegal, foreigners are that streetlight, and the insects are children. Night AND day. This makes walking anywhere a process. One must greet all the adults on the street, and deal with the insects, I mean kids. Common greetings from the children include simply screaming TOUBAB! over and over,  “give me a present,” or most often asking your name repeatedly in bad French. Before Anne became jaded, which didn’t really take all that long, she would usually try to explain to the kids that no, she was not TOUBAB!, her name was Fatumata Cissokho and she in fact lived here, and no, she didn’t have presents for them. After, she resorted to mental health survival mode, which means either ignoring them or telling them outright lies for the sake of entertainment (“My name is Michelle Obama/Britney Spears/ Your Worst Nightmare”) Granted, there are cute and polite kids on the streets (these receive smiles and handshakes), but many of the rest run in unsupervised packs, creating chaos wherever they go. As Anne rounds the corner, nearly to the safety of her host family, a boy wearing a pink sequined “Playboy in da House” t-shirt runs up to her and sticks out his hand. She shakes it. He then pokes her in the crotch and scampers towards the rest of his pack, laughing madly. Anne sighs. She wouldn’t hit him, but he doesn’t know that, right? She reaches up and breaks a small branch off the nearest tree, making sure to look like she means it. The pack scatters. Success!

Lunch is the most important meal of the day. Like nearly all Senegalese dishes, rice or millet is the main component, with a sauce or meat or fish and veggies over it. It’s usually very enjoyable, except when it’s intestine or when the fish bones are so small or numerous that half the meal is spent ensuring that none of them wind up in one’s throat, but the trainees joke that even then one can just attribute it to the “conditions of hardship” Peace Corps warns about. What doesn’t kill me (or lead to severe discomfort) makes me stronger, Anne reflects as the lid is lifted off the communal bowl. Sweet! Ceeb u jen, my fave! I love this family. Early on in training, Anne started taking long naps after lunch. Now, if she doesn’t immediately head towards her room, she gets questions like “You will not sleep?” or statements like “You will sleep now.” Fo naato, later, she says today. Instead, hanging out with her family seems like the better option. A mat is laid down in the shade in front of the house, and a couple chairs dragged over. Everyone lounges – mom, sisters, a couple brothers, whoever happens to be visiting at that time. While her host mom begins to prepare a type of porridge for the next morning – sifting flour with her hands in a well-worn calabash, tossing in water a bit at a time as the flour forms into balls – Anne amuses herself by chatting with one of her host brothers, age 21. He tells her that she’s old, and should get married immediately upon her return to the US. Waiting any longer is just inviting disaster. Anne tells him that it’s not uncommon for women in America to get married later than age twenty-five, and slyly suggests that maybe she’ll wait until she’s thirty, or forty. Who knows, maybe even later! He looks scandalized. “No, no, nonono! You can’t do that, it’s not possible! You will get married at twenty-five, no later. Who will marry you if you’re old? How will you have many kids otherwise?” “I only want two kids. Three at most.” His jaw drops and he emits a shrill, disbelieving noise. Cross-cultural education: shock and awe, Anne decides, as her host sisters laugh.

The afternoons in Mbour seem to drag on forever, broken up only by brief forays to the garden with the rest of the Jaxanke/Mandinka trainees to water, work on outside assignments, or simply hang out and exchange stories of strange encounters or awkward conversations. Back at home, Anne’s evening consists of watching horribly yet hilariously scripted Indian soap operas with the family, or, if the power is out, sitting and talking. Or not. Lots of sitting happens here, for hours on end, and Anne appreciates that the speaking is optional. The Senegalese are comfortable with silence (although nobody has informed the Senegalese animals) and it’s enough to just sit outside and enjoy the company of other people. Being a sporadically shy person herself, Anne is ok with this arrangement. Also, her Jaxanke is still at the level of a three-year-old, and the serenity of the evening is easily shattered by an embarrassing mix-up between “kanoo” and “kaano” (love and hot pepper)

Dinner is at 9, and as usual, is much more simple than lunch – tonight it’s rice and a single chunk of dried fish lurking in the middle of the bowl, origins uncertain. Anne claims fullness a bit earlier than usual, and retreats to the couch, where a brother is taking out his ADD on the remote: bad Senegalese music videos, bad soap operas, talk shows in Wolof, and footage of Libya flash across the TV screen. She excuses herself at 10:30 and heads to her room, where she can change into comparatively skimpy pajamas without fear of moral reprehension. Collapsing into bed, she doesn’t know yet that she will in fact wake up four times during the night for various annoying reasons. 

But given past experience, she has a pretty good idea.