Still here

Real quick plug: it's Malaria Month! Check out STOMP out Malaria facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/STOMPsenegal?fref=ts

Hello, world! I must admit, I have been avoiding writing you for a few months now. Summarizing my experience can feel daunting. So instead, I’ll write a few one-liners.

Passing by compounds, especially within 1 hour of any meal or tea time (so 60% of the day), is comparable to the Candy Mountain skit about Charlie the Unicorn (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsGYh8AacgY ). Everyone wants to lure you into eating or drinking with them, popping out from behind walls and telling you they got good stuff in the back.  “Kaay añ! Kaay attaya!” So far I have not gotten my kidney stolen, but sometimes I wonder about the damage the sugar and oil are doing to my organs.

I have probably consumed nearly a full cup of sand that has blown into my food and drink.

My most common fantasies are about water hoses, sprinklers, and ice.

At least every other day, a woman congratulates me on my large taat or wan (butt). The larger it is, the more I’ve integrated.

My 2-year-old brother looks more gangster with a large stick and oversized t-shirt than any rapper I've seen, and his name is Bur.

I have been called the “N”-word in Africa. ??

Apparently asking for 40 cows isn’t too high for some marriage proposals.

In terms of agriculture work, my village is starting tree nurseries (mostly for fruit trees but also moringa and some live fencing species which have thorns that keep out some obnoxious animals from destroying everything). Now we’re  “cleaning” the fields (aka slash and burn) and will plant some field crops come June/July, the really hot and scary time of Ramadan...dun dun dunnn! To Be Continued…

Happy New Year! My first month

Alas, I have passed the one-month mark at my permanent site - really, just one month? - and mungi dox (it's going). Currently, I'm in Toubacouta with my AmeriCorps friend Sydney Davis(!) relaxing among the mangroves before she heads off to another volunteer's site tomorrow. She's doing a bit of tournee of PC-Senegal after having done the same thing in Morocco with her PC friend there. So, if you have questions about the Peace Corps, feel free to ask her about her range of impressions!

Happy to report: I have received letters and a few packages! I danced. I ate. I will have an exorbitant amount of nutrition and German baked goods for the next two weeks. Shout out to my mother - you and your lebkuchen are the best!

Sunset behind my compound

Happy New Years! Fatayas (fried dough) with the family, some with onion sauce and some with cinnamon and sugar (I insisted). 

 

 

 

 

 

Highlights:
Riding a horse bare back
Riding a horse charette for an hour at night, dodging some seriously thorny live-fencing species
Spilling less and less water from carrying buckets on my head
Chaff (roasted peanuts and salt my mom makes every week)
Having a bike
Cute kids
Whenever I'm complimented on my language or efforts

Challenges:
Learing Wolof in a Sereer village
Constantly explaining: why I'm learning Wolof, that I'm not the previous volunteer, and why I don't have a husband (which is only a challenge if it's the third time that day)
Dealing with the bank (5-hour wait was my most recent)
Low variety of food, limited fruits and veggies

Charette ride with my family and Sydney to the Louma (weekly market)

Rocking our matching pants

New Wolof word I learned this week: emb. It means pregnant, and it refers to my cat. I thought she was just getting fat, until she seemed unnaturally moody and my host sister says she must have a night-time husband. I also figured out that even if I lock my room, it gets in through the roof. My roof will be raining kitties soon!

New contact info

New phone number:
77-132-3526
(+221 = Senegal's country code from the US)
Apparently there's a cheap calling card you can get at Costco that costs 3 cents/minute...not sure of the name.

New address for letters and packages:
PCV Lisa Bruckner
BP 325
Kaolack, Senegal
West Africa

See this blog post for suggestions on how to send things to better ensure reception of these items: http://simplysenegal.wordpress.com/wish-list/

I apologize to those who already sent some items to the other Kaolack address I gave; that is the physical address of our regional house, but that house has no mailbox. So tomorrow, I will befriend the lovely package and letter workers and ask for them to hold those things for me if they see them. 

Swear-In & Beachgiving

As of Wednesday, I am officially a Peace Corps Volunteer! After two months of full class days and language trainings at our home stays, two months of vegetable-filled prepared meals, two months of 55 Americans raiding one ice cream place, we are now off on our own adventures, ready or not!

The whole crew in our completes.

We had our Swear-In ceremony at the Chambre de Commerce in Thies. Honestly, the actual ceremony was pretty uneventful - a lot of speeches in French, Wolof, and some English, then we got a piece of paper in a water proof folder with our name on it. But afterwards, there were two Senegalese bands, delicious hibiscus or baobab tree juice ("buy"), and what looked like delicious catered food that several of us did not get to try.

Main lesson: if you ever want to eat food at an event with Senegalese people, RUN. Run to the front of the line and get your hands on anything you can, because before you know it, several Senegalese will have very heavy plates and you will have been patiently waiting to witness that everything is gone. To give a little credit, though, some of them share that food with their families.

That afternoon, we were shipped off to a beautiful beach house for two nights in Toubab Dialow where we were to spend our Thanksgiving. The host is very nice, very chill, and has a good relationship with the Peace Corps, so we stayed there for $2 each! (Note to those visiting: this is an option for us). Every hour I was there I had to remind myself I wasn't dreaming - such beautiful sunsets, yummy restaurants on the shore, and what can beat being able to swim in your backyard?

Photo courtesy of Tina Verilli

For our meal, we slaughtered two turkeys and roasted them for 5 hours over a charcoal fire; mashed garlic potatoes in a mortar and pestle, cooked stuffing and spicy squash soup we drank out of cups, and had pumpkin spice beignets (fried dough mixed with American-shipped pumpkin spice can) for dessert. We put it all in a communal bowl and ate on mats. The best combination of American-Senegalese tradition for Thanksgiving!

The day after we got back from the beach, we were sept-palaced (a rusty volvo) off to our respective regional houses for install, where you take a few days to buy your living items and obsess over internet, cold things like soh and cherrie (yogurt and millet) and possibly a pizza. Everything whizzed by and suddenly I'm here. I don't exactly feel prepared, particularly with the language and my energy levels for meeting a lot of people, but I'm ready to try this thing out; ready to be living out of a stationary instead of constantly moving suitcase, to have my own backyard and bathroom space, and to start to belong to a family and space.

 

Saying goodbye to my temporary home stay. We shook left (dirty) hands as a way of saying, "now I have to come back to visit you because we both shared germs."

Goat slaughtering and milk drinking

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 10/11/14
Tabaski

I was at my temporary home stay site, Ndoomor (No-more), for the week of Tabaski. Tabaski is a Muslim holiday that is as important as Christmas is to Christians. It comes from the story of Abraham who, right before following God’s order to sacrifice his son, Ismael, was given a goat to sacrifice instead. It is a day more full of cooking, eating, greeting, and dressing nice than usual. In the morning, the men go to prey and come back to slaughter the male sheep. It all happens very quickly. The holes are dug for their blood and guts, they are cut quick and humanely, hung and skinned, and in no time they are being grilled by the women. The women are peeling and cutting about 50 onions and potatoes each for French fries and onion sauce. My mom had me put on a velvety pink dress with sparkles and flowers to cook in. Later, I wore a fitted wax “complète” with headdress, top and skirt and oversized sparkly sandals lent to me by my friend.
I live with two moms, 6(?) kids, and a father in a pretty wealthy compound. The kids in my family go to school, one of my mom’s is a French teacher, and my father is an engineer, realtor, activist and probably more. They have electricity, a TV and a fridge, and I have my own room with a fan so I’m very lucky!

My tabaski dress and mom!



          Half of my home stay family around Maffe (peanut sauce with rice)

What Drinking Milk (“Naan meoh”) Means

One of my host sisters is a hip, model-looking teenage girl named Fatou. Fatou and her friend, Binta, invite me to drink milk. I curiously accompany them. After about 1.5 hours of stopping by people’s houses to greet and eat (Senegalese “terranga,” or hospitality), we arrive at the house of the wedding the night before (which reminded me of a rave with flashing pink hearts and palm tree lights). It’s a moonlit night and I hear voices coming from the sky. Turns out there’s a large roof (where a lot of families sleep since it’s 10 degrees cooler) filled with teenagers and some younger kids around a gas tank. The girls are sitting on a mat gossiping and showing each other selfies on their phones while the men are sitting in chairs off to the side. I shine a flashlight on Binta’s ingredients: 2 bottles of Gloria milk (looks kind of brown and is non-refrigerated), half a bag of powdered milk, a bag of mint bon-bons, and 1/3 cup of sugar for a liter tea pot. She adds the sugary conglomeration together and stirs it over the gas tank.
I knew Senegalese loved sugar when I saw them make attaya, a traditional green tea where my family adds at least 6 cubes of sugar for a little less than a cup of tea and then pours it at great heights into tiny tea cups to make it foamy. But when I saw this milk being made after a full day of eating, I was already planning how I could discreetly only drink a few sips.
I got handed the biggest and first cup. I smiled and took the tiniest of sips while my mouth and intestines screamed diabetes. After about half an hour of sitting and sort of chatting, I managed to take two sips. I put my cup back on the tray and, of course, they shined a flash light into it and were shocked that I wouldn’t want to finish their specialty milk.

                       
                   Pinkies up for attaya! (Add another foot in the air and that's how the pro's pour)

Everyone Knows

There is no such thing as being discreet here. Unless you lock the door to your room (which they think is all Americans want to do, even if you just do it for an hour a day to change or study), the whole village will know. For instance, I found out that my village knows the English word for poop when I asked, “where’s the bathroom?” and the woman asked, “what are you going to do there?” I thought, “seriously, I have to tell them?” and she goes “Poop? Poop?” When I reappeared many minutes later, women down the street were saying, “Xadi was pooping. It was that dish she ate for lunch.” Nice to meet you, too.

Xadi Diop (x= hard ‘ch”) is my first Senegalese name (I will get a new one at permanent site). I was named after my grandmother and I have a younger sister named Xadi, too. I met at least 20 other Xadis and 30 other Diop’s in the village. While in the US, people make up names or try to find the most unique ones, uniqueness of names is not important here. What’s more important is familial association.

I've arrived!

This blog is solely my opinion and does not represent the opinions of Peace Corps or the American government

To get logistics out of the way...

Training Center Mailing Address (for letters, no packages), where I will be until November 28, the date of swearing in:

Lisa Bruckner/Corps de la Paix Americain/B.P. 299, Thies/SENEGAL

Phone number until November 28 (if calling from US): +221 28 290 5784

(I receive texts and calls for free. No one knows how to set up voice mail here, so if you really need to reach me, send me a text if it’s possible).

I have been with the Peace Corps for a week and it feels like two. I arrived in New York for “Staging,” which is 1.5 days of “meeting” 59 other volunteers, filling out documents, and feeling anxious. Our airport shuttles were then 2 hours late, so we got to our international flight 30 minutes before departure (!) and hardly slept for one more night. But man, after we got to the training center, were greeted by dancing volunteers, ate amazing food and had a brief orientation, we slept like babies to the crazy rainy season storms!

It feels much better to actually be here; the buildup has dissipated and my mind is clearer. Not surprisingly, there are several yogis and healthy people here, so I’ve been doing yoga some mornings in a place called the Disco Hut!

  

Yes, our central meeting place at the Thies (“Chess”) Training Center is called the Disco Hut because someone hung a disco ball in the center of the roof. We take our shoes off before entering (as is custom) and sit on the mats to learn about how to slurp tea, eat from a communal bowl, contact important Peace Corps people, etc. We also have a couple small air conditioned (!) buildings where we learn with power point presentations, until sometimes the power goes off and then it’s learning in the dark time!

Our County Director says that Senegal has “thee best” training team and staff of all of Peace Corps. I heard highly of the team even before arriving, and meeting the people here gives me confidence in her statement. The people here are very nice and helpful, and there are a lot of smart, motivated, friendly fellow trainees from all over the US. And, North Carolina represents – we have five NC trainees here, and one of the current volunteers was on my high school field hockey team! The world can be so small sometimes.

A typical training day goes from 8:15am-6:30pm with breaks for tea and meals. During our down time, people play bocci ball, basketball, soccer (the most popular sport here), cards, hackie sack, or several musical instruments (we could probably make a Peace Corps band – “Toubab Krewe Numero Deux”). We sweat all the time. I have decided to not even bother with deodorant and to get to know what the Lisa smell really means. Luckily we have arrived in the “cooler” rainy season. My theory is that the Peace Corps lures you into thinking “it’s hot, but manageable” and then the really hot, dry season hits and you just have to deal. Many volunteers sleep in their nets or tents outside most of the year anyway.

Starting Monday, we will be at our temporary host family’s site, learning the local language of where our permanent site will be (Wolof, Bambara, Pulaar, etc). This is something the Peace Corps is doing differently, where they have you oscillate between the training center and your home stay instead of just being at your training site for two-three months. The idea is that this will speed up your integration process, which sounds great to me!

It’s very exciting to look through the training handbook and imagine that I will develop all these agriculture skills. However, we are encouraged to not start any projects until our more intensive technical training in late February. Peace Corps heavily focuses on integrating into the community for the first six months. I can’t imagine feeling capable of starting projects before this time, but I also anticipate that I will have to struggle through not “work working” in the pace that I’m used to for that long. Like with many things, only time will tell!

Internet is spotty and unreliable here, but until December, I will try to connect once a week.

Hope you all are well and I am thinking about you!