So I have been at site for a month. I installed in Thianguey on November tenth, and now, sitting at the regional house (a peace-corps owned house for volunteers in the Kedougou area to use) I decided it's about to try to collect my thoughts, and maybe try to summarise how my life has been for the past 30 days.
Now is the harvest time. Every day, I wake up after a night of Methloquin (my malaria medicine) induced dreams, which are incredibly vivid. I usually wake up to the sound of cows mooing, donkeys braying, chickens crowing, sheep bah'ing (and yes, all of these strange animal nose verbs have pulaar equivalents) around 6:30. I wake up, and walk through my family compound (the collection of huts in which all my extended family lives, about 20 huts scattered over an acre or so, along with all the animals too) and I greet everyone, asking people if they slept well, assuring them that evil did not wake them up, asking if they became sick during the night, and so on. The answer to all of these questions is "peace only." Then I have breakfast, usually last night's dinner of couscous and sauce, sometimes with a side of mbouri (corn balls in a syrup) or laro, a corn peanut oatmeal kind of thing. Then, I go to the field!
I'm a food security volunteer here, so now being harvest time, I've been going with lots of different farmers to their field to help out, see farming techniques, and see, generally, the state of agriculture in my village. So, I've picked cotton, "broken" corn and sorgum, dug up peanuts, cut rice and funio (a protein-rich grain) and then processed them-- with corn and peanuts, that means hitting them to knock the nuts off the plants or to "crack" it. We also do a fair amount of fence building, transport of crops, and so on. It's about two months of constant work, usually from early in the morning (7 or so) until lunch time (some people come home, some people have lunch at the field) then a couple hours of break during the hot hot hot afternoon, (maybe 12-4) then work until the sun goes down. (around 7.)
Then I go home, go to the pump and fill up a container with water, take a bucket bath (no explanation necessary) have dinner (usually couscous and some kind of sauce), people drink tea (that is, a tiny cup of tea and a lotttt of sugar) then, I usually go to bed pretty soon. While I read in my hut and relax, everyone else puts on their nicest clothes, and walks around the village, greeting everyone, sharing food and tea, and eventually going to one house with electricity and watching television in a huge group. Needless to say, when it's dark and I have no electricity and have been working in the field all day, got up at 6ish, and have been thinking as hard as I can to try to speak Pulaar, I am in no mood to walk around or watch bizarre American movies dubbed into French at 9 at night. I'm in bed by 8:15, almost every night, fast asleep by 9.
So that is what I do every day. But I guess it's more interesting to think about how I actually feel about living my day-to-day life, because literally billions of people live basically just what I wrote, every day, although most of them do not keep blogs. Living in a village of 500ish people, about an hour away from even a small town, and 40km from a town where I can, for example withdraw money, is very different even from my earlier homestay in suburban Dakar. Also, of course, I'm the only white person for quite a ways, and most of the kids in my village (maybe 1/3 of the population) have never seen a white person (called a Toubob, or a Tubaco, or a Porto.) So, everyone is very very interested in everything I do. Most people, having only seen white people/Americans on TV, think that all Americans are beautiful, rich, never work, all have guns, and generally never have problems. This makes me the item of significant attention. People think I (or, all white people) can't farm, work, don't get hurt or sick, and that life is just generally easy for me. All of this leads to people paying me considerable attention: kids follow me around in groups chanting my name, everyone wants to greet me, people consider it an honor to have me come to their field, people offer me their children to take to America, and people are fascinated by the cuts on my hands from working in the field.
In America, I'm a little bit shy, vocal about my opinions but definitely not a person who is constantly social. Here, as a white person and living in a tiny village, I don't have that option. That, of course, is stressful. If I want to read by myself in the afternoon, I can go into my dark hut, or sit outside, but kids will usually come up to me, and ask "why is their hair on your arms?," "why is there a cut on your hand?," "can I borrow your bike pump?," or "can you take me to America?" I want to be by myself a little (a very important aspect of American life, if you think about it, especially with "computer time") but that is unheard of here. People think it's bizarre I read by myself at night, and will knock on my door after I've "gone to bed" to ask why my light is on, or if I've seen their chicken, or why I don't want to come have tea rather than sleeping.
So, every day is stressful. I am adjusting, but I know actually "integrating," like everyone talks about, is a myth. I am going to stick out forever, people will always think I am somehow different or better, and my skin is always going to be different. I am going to want to read at night, I'll want to go walk in the woods, and sometimes I'll prefer a food that isn't couscous. It's been a month on site, and I'm learning a lot of Pulaar, a lot about agriculture, making a lot of connections with NGOS and hard-workers in towns around here, and generally just trying. Life is hard, and intense, and everyday leaves me exhausted, my head hurting, my hands blistered, and constantly thirsty. I also, however, feel like I'm learning a lot, figuring out possible projects (A new water pump at the school to make a garden there? A room for storing seed? A program to make bathrooms for the village?) and that I am adjusting, life is good, and I am having a great time. Every day is still a physical (farming) mental (learning Pulaar) and emotional (being stared at like a TV) rollar coaster. It's pretty good. The honeymoon is over (thanks Tristan!) but now I'm figuring out how my next two years will be.
Okay, tired now. Hope this update clears up why I haven't posted in a month!
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Sorry it's been a while
Okay so I've been here two months, and realise my last entry was a month ago. So I just wanted to say hi, I swore in as an official volunteer a few days ago, and now I am back in Kedougou and will be installing as an official volunteer tomorrow, in my village, Thianguey. I've had my last language exam, did well, and now it's time to put my 2 months of training to the test, and my real training and work till start. So, super excited. I'll post a real update in a week or so and talk about how my first week of two years in Thianguey is. Miss and love everyone!
Friday, September 30, 2011
A MONTH IN!
Hi again! Finally got around to writing a blog post. Sorry for lack of updates...life here is incredibly busy. It's either farming all day or 7 hours of language class and then trying to speak Pula Futa all the time I'm home.For the past two weeks, then, I've been living with my host family in Sangal Kam. Day by day, it is somewhat repetitive, but thinking about everything that happened in the past two weeks makes me realize how intense it is. So I think I'll share tidbits.
One day, I stayed up late at night with my host brother, Bubakar, (actually, my Goreejo, that is, my agemate? contemporary? something like that.) He's a tailor, he's awesome, we hang out and drink tea all the time and have a good time. So since I've gotten there, I've always admired the pants my little brother wears. They're made of long stript of fabric, maybe 8 or 10 different patterns on each leg. Then one night, we (as in 15 or so people, the family) were watching a super low budget (like, handheld camera lowbudget) Pula Futa sitcom show on TV (set in Guinea, my family constantly reminded me, because everything is beautiful and wonderful there.) The main character had the same type of pants, and the shirt. I said I liked his clothes, and my brother said "Well alright already, let's just make you some!" So I sat in his tailor shop, he found scraps from all different projects he had done over the past long while, and he started at it with his foot-pumped sewing machine. Then, about 15 minutes in, the power went out. The lights turn off, it got super dark, and everything in the town kinda stopped. The power goes out all the time, however. So when I told Bubakar that we should go sit with the family, who was out cooking by the fire. He looked at me like I was crazy: "how will you wear these pants then??" Then he took out his cellphone, turned on its flashlight, held it in his mouth, and kept at it with the sewing machine as if nothing had happened. So I ended up holding the phone over the machine as he sewed for 3 or 4 hours, me speaking my broken Pula Futa, trying to fill it in with my French, and him at work, with occasional tea breaks. Now, I have a patchwork shirt and pants, a total Guinean Senegalias outfit, which I'll be saving for Tubaski, the upcoming gigantic Muslium holiday, which will coincidentally be my 4th day on site. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eid_al-Adha)
So most days, me and the 3 other Pula Futa volunteers in my homestay town have langauge class all day. But the day before our big language exam, we got the day off. So me and two other volunteers, Jubal and Ilana, who'll be close to me in actual site as well, went on a little adventure. Ilana's host dad, Ibrahim, took us for a walk, ostensibly to get hit shirt ironed, in another town, about an hour or so walk. Not too sure about that. But it was a great chance to get out of our sandy little town and see around the area, We walked down a path, asll of us working together tp try to make normal/good sentences in Pula Futa and talk with Ibraham, a tigi tigi (real) Pula Futa. We asked what every plant was, where every road led, everything that could be asked with 10 words or less and knowledge of only a couple hundred words anyway. We got to the little town, where we were greeted as heroes, perhaps the first white people to step there in who knows how long. Kids chased all around us, asking where we're from, pulling out chairs from their houses and bringing them to the road for us to sit in and just getting really excited that such strange and exotic people were in their town. We walked around, got a tour of the town, then a tour of an amazing mango orchard, where we relaxed after the long walk and shared a couple mangoes. Then we saw the entire sky was rapidly turning black. The rains, the first one we had seen at our homestay (you would not believe how dry it is there, everything is beachsand,) started fast. So we went to Ilana's dad's cousins house (everyone has a cousin everywhere) and had an amazing lunch. We all got around a giant bowl, had a huge amount of rice and fish, as the rain (which quickly died down to a sprinkle) came down around the outdoor patio-thing area. While we were eating the man of the house asked us if we had seen Lac Rose yet, a local apparently pink rose, which we had all seen signs for. We said no, so he immediately offered to take us there on his donkey cart after lunch.How could we say no? First, Ibrahim said we needed to say hi to his other cousin, who had apparently also invited us for lunch. We said hi to them, and they demanded we have lunch with them, we looked so hungry. We were all stuffed (eating a lot means you enjoy your host's company and appreciate their generosity here, so any random meal with someone leads to some serious stuffing.) But they wouldn't take no for an answer, so we sat down and has another bowl of rice and fish. We joked afterwards, trying to say "I had lunch two times" in Pulaar. We all hopped on right the donkey cart after and had a surprisingly smooth ride to a kind of dirty and salt-filled lake. It was wonderful. We walked home, passing through tiny 30, 50 person towns, greeting everyone, stopping for tea here and there, and just walking around peanut fields, baobab trees, and vague paths.
But most days aren't quite this kind of adventure. Most are long, arduous language lessons which start at 6:30am ish when I wake up (the mosque rings for first prayer call around 5:30 and it's hard to sleep more after that) and don't end till 11 or 12 when my family lets me stop drinking tea and just go to bed. Pula Futa, as a Fula language, is very very diferent in almost every way from Romance or Germanic languages. Pulaar is verb-based, so virtually all sentences are only pronouns, nouns, and verbs, and adjectives and adverbs and others hardly exist. Even a lot of nouns are just forms of verbs. So "I am happy" is "I <to be happy.>" "I haven't seen you in a long time!" is "I <to have been a long time> <to have not seen> < possessive you.> It's easy with small sentences, it gets super complicated with more verbs and tense. And the tenses aren't traditional past/present/future. Present and future tense are the same, and past really means started in the past but continuing now, so you always say "I thought..." and never "I think." Finally, verbs are divided into ugol, egol, and agol, meaning action, reflexive, and reciprocal. But "to weed (a field)" is reflexive, and statements of emotion are always in past reflexive, and who know's what an action word anyway-- apparently "to be" is an action in Pulaar. Oh, and very few prepositions, most of the time you change the verb root (but not the ending, so its a chance in the middle of the verb, that is, not a suffix or a prefix but an "infix.") So "I ate with my family" is "I <to eat, with "id" added to say to do something with> <family> <mine.>" And there's a solid 15 infixes know so far. And everything is a verb, so even "I'm happy," "I'm sad," "I am curious," "We need to go fast, night is coming" or whatever are all verbs to be conjugated. It's totally new, I love it, and man, is it hard. But it's great. It makes my mind think in totally different ways (two different sets of numbers for people and things,) is exceedingly difficult (I still find it much easier to write down a sentence and then attempt to say it,) but that all makes it completely worth it.
So, finally, after all of us volunteers finished a seemingly endless 2 week homestay, we returned to the training center, and were walked out to the giant map of Senegal painted on the basket ball court. All 55 of us were blindfolded and taken 1 by 1 to stand on our approximate site placement. We all took off our blindfolds and saw where we'll be, for 2 years, once training ends in 4ish more weeks. We had been in suspense since we got here, so it was a pretty intense experience. So! I'll be in the state of Kedougou, in a town called Chiange / Thiange. It's a town of about 500, about 35k from the state capital, about 6K from any paved road, and about 5K from the border with Guinea. My town is 100% Pula Futa, most of whom are probably Guinean immigrants. Talking to volunteers, Kedougou sounds amazing and like the best place in all of Senegal. It's got lush forests, avocados, monkeys, waterfalls, peanut sauce always on the menu, lots of bikeable terrain, and a great set of volunteers already there. There was a volunteer at my site ten years ago, and several community gardens were started, so I'll be jumping back in to work with local farmers to increase food security. 10 years is a long time, so it'll be interesting to see what traces of see of past volunteers are there, and to see how people react to a new volunteer after so long. 4K from me is Kyle, another Pula Futa volunteer starting now, and two other volunteers are about 30K west of me. My good friend Frank, a Jaxonke speaker, will be about 80K east, almost on the border with Mali. Needless to say, this will be a different Senegal than on the coast, or north of the Gambia, or inland, more surrounded by other Senegalese towns. Rather, my site will be very Guinean, with not as much Wolof (the more "national" language) spoken. It should be amazing. I don't know a whole lot, but I'll be visiting Monday, going with a current volunteer to Kedagou city, then biking to my site, spending a night there and meeting my host family, with whom I'll be living with (though in my own hut) for two years. Not much else to say! Can't wait! Next update with pictures of my site-to-be!
PS. Next homestay, I'm cooking American style spaghetti with my family. Spaghetti here is cooked in oil and salt, then served on sandwiches. I'm looking forward to eating spaghetti with 15 people out of one gigantic bowl, some people eating with spoons, others with their hands. Can't wait!
One day, I stayed up late at night with my host brother, Bubakar, (actually, my Goreejo, that is, my agemate? contemporary? something like that.) He's a tailor, he's awesome, we hang out and drink tea all the time and have a good time. So since I've gotten there, I've always admired the pants my little brother wears. They're made of long stript of fabric, maybe 8 or 10 different patterns on each leg. Then one night, we (as in 15 or so people, the family) were watching a super low budget (like, handheld camera lowbudget) Pula Futa sitcom show on TV (set in Guinea, my family constantly reminded me, because everything is beautiful and wonderful there.) The main character had the same type of pants, and the shirt. I said I liked his clothes, and my brother said "Well alright already, let's just make you some!" So I sat in his tailor shop, he found scraps from all different projects he had done over the past long while, and he started at it with his foot-pumped sewing machine. Then, about 15 minutes in, the power went out. The lights turn off, it got super dark, and everything in the town kinda stopped. The power goes out all the time, however. So when I told Bubakar that we should go sit with the family, who was out cooking by the fire. He looked at me like I was crazy: "how will you wear these pants then??" Then he took out his cellphone, turned on its flashlight, held it in his mouth, and kept at it with the sewing machine as if nothing had happened. So I ended up holding the phone over the machine as he sewed for 3 or 4 hours, me speaking my broken Pula Futa, trying to fill it in with my French, and him at work, with occasional tea breaks. Now, I have a patchwork shirt and pants, a total Guinean Senegalias outfit, which I'll be saving for Tubaski, the upcoming gigantic Muslium holiday, which will coincidentally be my 4th day on site. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eid_al-Adha)
So most days, me and the 3 other Pula Futa volunteers in my homestay town have langauge class all day. But the day before our big language exam, we got the day off. So me and two other volunteers, Jubal and Ilana, who'll be close to me in actual site as well, went on a little adventure. Ilana's host dad, Ibrahim, took us for a walk, ostensibly to get hit shirt ironed, in another town, about an hour or so walk. Not too sure about that. But it was a great chance to get out of our sandy little town and see around the area, We walked down a path, asll of us working together tp try to make normal/good sentences in Pula Futa and talk with Ibraham, a tigi tigi (real) Pula Futa. We asked what every plant was, where every road led, everything that could be asked with 10 words or less and knowledge of only a couple hundred words anyway. We got to the little town, where we were greeted as heroes, perhaps the first white people to step there in who knows how long. Kids chased all around us, asking where we're from, pulling out chairs from their houses and bringing them to the road for us to sit in and just getting really excited that such strange and exotic people were in their town. We walked around, got a tour of the town, then a tour of an amazing mango orchard, where we relaxed after the long walk and shared a couple mangoes. Then we saw the entire sky was rapidly turning black. The rains, the first one we had seen at our homestay (you would not believe how dry it is there, everything is beachsand,) started fast. So we went to Ilana's dad's cousins house (everyone has a cousin everywhere) and had an amazing lunch. We all got around a giant bowl, had a huge amount of rice and fish, as the rain (which quickly died down to a sprinkle) came down around the outdoor patio-thing area. While we were eating the man of the house asked us if we had seen Lac Rose yet, a local apparently pink rose, which we had all seen signs for. We said no, so he immediately offered to take us there on his donkey cart after lunch.How could we say no? First, Ibrahim said we needed to say hi to his other cousin, who had apparently also invited us for lunch. We said hi to them, and they demanded we have lunch with them, we looked so hungry. We were all stuffed (eating a lot means you enjoy your host's company and appreciate their generosity here, so any random meal with someone leads to some serious stuffing.) But they wouldn't take no for an answer, so we sat down and has another bowl of rice and fish. We joked afterwards, trying to say "I had lunch two times" in Pulaar. We all hopped on right the donkey cart after and had a surprisingly smooth ride to a kind of dirty and salt-filled lake. It was wonderful. We walked home, passing through tiny 30, 50 person towns, greeting everyone, stopping for tea here and there, and just walking around peanut fields, baobab trees, and vague paths.
But most days aren't quite this kind of adventure. Most are long, arduous language lessons which start at 6:30am ish when I wake up (the mosque rings for first prayer call around 5:30 and it's hard to sleep more after that) and don't end till 11 or 12 when my family lets me stop drinking tea and just go to bed. Pula Futa, as a Fula language, is very very diferent in almost every way from Romance or Germanic languages. Pulaar is verb-based, so virtually all sentences are only pronouns, nouns, and verbs, and adjectives and adverbs and others hardly exist. Even a lot of nouns are just forms of verbs. So "I am happy" is "I <to be happy.>" "I haven't seen you in a long time!" is "I <to have been a long time> <to have not seen> < possessive you.> It's easy with small sentences, it gets super complicated with more verbs and tense. And the tenses aren't traditional past/present/future. Present and future tense are the same, and past really means started in the past but continuing now, so you always say "I thought..." and never "I think." Finally, verbs are divided into ugol, egol, and agol, meaning action, reflexive, and reciprocal. But "to weed (a field)" is reflexive, and statements of emotion are always in past reflexive, and who know's what an action word anyway-- apparently "to be" is an action in Pulaar. Oh, and very few prepositions, most of the time you change the verb root (but not the ending, so its a chance in the middle of the verb, that is, not a suffix or a prefix but an "infix.") So "I ate with my family" is "I <to eat, with "id" added to say to do something with> <family> <mine.>" And there's a solid 15 infixes know so far. And everything is a verb, so even "I'm happy," "I'm sad," "I am curious," "We need to go fast, night is coming" or whatever are all verbs to be conjugated. It's totally new, I love it, and man, is it hard. But it's great. It makes my mind think in totally different ways (two different sets of numbers for people and things,) is exceedingly difficult (I still find it much easier to write down a sentence and then attempt to say it,) but that all makes it completely worth it.
So, finally, after all of us volunteers finished a seemingly endless 2 week homestay, we returned to the training center, and were walked out to the giant map of Senegal painted on the basket ball court. All 55 of us were blindfolded and taken 1 by 1 to stand on our approximate site placement. We all took off our blindfolds and saw where we'll be, for 2 years, once training ends in 4ish more weeks. We had been in suspense since we got here, so it was a pretty intense experience. So! I'll be in the state of Kedougou, in a town called Chiange / Thiange. It's a town of about 500, about 35k from the state capital, about 6K from any paved road, and about 5K from the border with Guinea. My town is 100% Pula Futa, most of whom are probably Guinean immigrants. Talking to volunteers, Kedougou sounds amazing and like the best place in all of Senegal. It's got lush forests, avocados, monkeys, waterfalls, peanut sauce always on the menu, lots of bikeable terrain, and a great set of volunteers already there. There was a volunteer at my site ten years ago, and several community gardens were started, so I'll be jumping back in to work with local farmers to increase food security. 10 years is a long time, so it'll be interesting to see what traces of see of past volunteers are there, and to see how people react to a new volunteer after so long. 4K from me is Kyle, another Pula Futa volunteer starting now, and two other volunteers are about 30K west of me. My good friend Frank, a Jaxonke speaker, will be about 80K east, almost on the border with Mali. Needless to say, this will be a different Senegal than on the coast, or north of the Gambia, or inland, more surrounded by other Senegalese towns. Rather, my site will be very Guinean, with not as much Wolof (the more "national" language) spoken. It should be amazing. I don't know a whole lot, but I'll be visiting Monday, going with a current volunteer to Kedagou city, then biking to my site, spending a night there and meeting my host family, with whom I'll be living with (though in my own hut) for two years. Not much else to say! Can't wait! Next update with pictures of my site-to-be!
Bottom right hand corner!
PS. Next homestay, I'm cooking American style spaghetti with my family. Spaghetti here is cooked in oil and salt, then served on sandwiches. I'm looking forward to eating spaghetti with 15 people out of one gigantic bowl, some people eating with spoons, others with their hands. Can't wait!
Sunday, September 11, 2011
A real blog post!
Ok, so I'm in Senegal, just got back from staying with a family for a few days. So here's a rundown of what's been going on here:
All 55 of us volunteers arrived a little over a week ago. (jeeze. seems like aeons.) We had (French) language completancy interviews, site placements interviews, and health interviews. 2 days after, we were assigned a language which we'll be studying. Senegal has about 6 major languages, as well as numerous minor ones, so although most volunteers learn Wolof, almost half learn other languages. I'm learning Pula Futa, a dialect of Pulaar, a Fulani language. Fulani languages are spoken in parts of everywhere between here and Sudan, a whoppin 27 nations. As I want to work in development, I specifically requested to learn a Fulani language! All trainees also get "survival" Wolof classes, as that's the major market/public transport language. After some rudimentary language classes and some agriculture training, we were divided up by language group and sent to towns that speak our language for homestays. Me and 3 other volunteers went to a town called Sangal Kam, a dusty little town about an hour from Thies, where the trainee compound is. I stayed with a huge family-- when I arrived there was a solid 14 people there (5 kids, 2 men, 7 women) and by the time I left there was almost 20. Each day of the homestay went something like this:
8am wake up, take a bucket bath, have a bean sandwich for breakfast, go to langauge class with my LCF (langauge and culture facilitator) and the 3 others for 3, 3.5 hours. These are intense classes, small, and each day is paradigm-shifting, due to how little Pula Futa we speak. My LCF is named Houssey, she speaks Pulaar and Wolof and like 5 other languages (most Senegalese people speak atleast a couple and know greetings in most) and is an amazing and amazingly patient teacher. The classes are under a big tree, and mostly involve us asking questions and learning grammar.
Around 1230, we go home to our families. The men I live with are tailors, and they have a little shop at the front of the house. The back has a field with corn, an outdoor kitchen, and all the action, meaning 7 or so women cooking, doing laundry, bathing the kids, etc etc. I usually sit under a mango tree in the back yard, practice my vocab with the kids (who also speak French) and try to make silly little sentences, each day a little more complicated than before. Needless to say, my Pulaar is still at child level. I greet everyone, each day learn a couple more greetings (How are you, howd you sleep, hows the family, hows the kids, hows the work, hows the mosquitos, etc) and make tiny sentences (I like the shade of the mango tree.) It's great, and totally different than any other language Ive learned-- it has a solid 15 sounds that don't really exist in English. I understand my family members at varying levels, so nene ang (my mom) is the hardest to understand. The matriarch of the house, she speaks loud, fast, and constantly. She usually yells at me, I look at her confusedly, then the kids tell me in French what she said and she laughs. We all eat lunch together around 3, all sharing from one gigantic bowl and eating with our hands. Lunch is usually some combination of rice, sauce, and fish. Pretty much always amazing. Then around 4, we go back to class, usually with a list of the random words we heard, so our LCF can help us figure out what the heck is going on. ("Oh, that means 'to roll food into a ball!'") Cause we are sustainable agriculture volunteers, we are making a community garden as well, so we often go work on that for a while when the sun is going down. We've got 3 beds, a pepinere, and a couple massive compost heaps.
Afterwards, I go home, study a little, have dinner, then sit around and drink hot sweet tea in tiny cups (ataya.) Right now I understand about 5% of what people say, which is a lot better than 0% 4 days ago. Each day, I understand more and more, and over the next 3 months, we'll be back and forth between the training compund and our homestay sites, learning Pula Futa, experimenting with our garden, and generally getting ready for our real site assignments.Based on my language assignment, I can tell I will prolly be on the Guinea-Senegal border, as the Pula Futa population in Senegal is largely Guinean immigrants.
All of which brings me to my last night. After 5 days at my homestay, I started to not feel great yesterday afternoon. When I started to not feel great, I saw a car pulling up to our house ( a rare site in Sangal Kam.) It ended up being the husbands of all the women at my house, all home from visiting family in Guinea! They had been gone for months, and came with lots of gifts (Coke, blown up family pictures, new prayer mats) and were ready for a big party. I, unfortunently, was in no mood for festivities. I laid down for a nap around 5, and by 6 or 7 I was throwing up. I called the PC doctor, he told me to take some medicine and some oral re-hydration salts. I ended up spending the whole night vomiting up salt water. My host mom, her husband, and her son all stayed up with my all night as a I spewed fluids all night. Baba ang (my dad) even gave me the benediction prayer, which involved a long recessitation and blowing on me. That and a can of Coke ended up helping enough for me to get to bed. Unfortunately, I ended up coming back to the training compound early this morning because although the vomiting stopped the... well, you know, didn't. I'm feeling better now, just weathering sickness, getting used to new microbes here. Everyone else gets back tomorrow morning, so I just slept all day, read Flanney O Connor short stories, passed a lot of fluids, and am trying to get back into good health.
Phew, that was exhausting just typing all that. Needless to say, I am still totally lost here in Senegal. First I was whelmed, then overwhelmed, but whatever. My language skills are eh, my stomach is unhappy, and it is very very hot. Luckily, I know I'll get used to it all, and am already falling in love with Pula Futa, my host family, Senegalese food, and lots of the other bright-eyes volunteers. And this is still just training. Lots more adventures, projects, sicknesses, bike rides (I'll be biking atleast 10k a day!) to come.
PS Yes, I already miss everyone and think about you all the time. Specials thanks to Lauren for being such an incredible inspiration. <3
All 55 of us volunteers arrived a little over a week ago. (jeeze. seems like aeons.) We had (French) language completancy interviews, site placements interviews, and health interviews. 2 days after, we were assigned a language which we'll be studying. Senegal has about 6 major languages, as well as numerous minor ones, so although most volunteers learn Wolof, almost half learn other languages. I'm learning Pula Futa, a dialect of Pulaar, a Fulani language. Fulani languages are spoken in parts of everywhere between here and Sudan, a whoppin 27 nations. As I want to work in development, I specifically requested to learn a Fulani language! All trainees also get "survival" Wolof classes, as that's the major market/public transport language. After some rudimentary language classes and some agriculture training, we were divided up by language group and sent to towns that speak our language for homestays. Me and 3 other volunteers went to a town called Sangal Kam, a dusty little town about an hour from Thies, where the trainee compound is. I stayed with a huge family-- when I arrived there was a solid 14 people there (5 kids, 2 men, 7 women) and by the time I left there was almost 20. Each day of the homestay went something like this:
8am wake up, take a bucket bath, have a bean sandwich for breakfast, go to langauge class with my LCF (langauge and culture facilitator) and the 3 others for 3, 3.5 hours. These are intense classes, small, and each day is paradigm-shifting, due to how little Pula Futa we speak. My LCF is named Houssey, she speaks Pulaar and Wolof and like 5 other languages (most Senegalese people speak atleast a couple and know greetings in most) and is an amazing and amazingly patient teacher. The classes are under a big tree, and mostly involve us asking questions and learning grammar.
Around 1230, we go home to our families. The men I live with are tailors, and they have a little shop at the front of the house. The back has a field with corn, an outdoor kitchen, and all the action, meaning 7 or so women cooking, doing laundry, bathing the kids, etc etc. I usually sit under a mango tree in the back yard, practice my vocab with the kids (who also speak French) and try to make silly little sentences, each day a little more complicated than before. Needless to say, my Pulaar is still at child level. I greet everyone, each day learn a couple more greetings (How are you, howd you sleep, hows the family, hows the kids, hows the work, hows the mosquitos, etc) and make tiny sentences (I like the shade of the mango tree.) It's great, and totally different than any other language Ive learned-- it has a solid 15 sounds that don't really exist in English. I understand my family members at varying levels, so nene ang (my mom) is the hardest to understand. The matriarch of the house, she speaks loud, fast, and constantly. She usually yells at me, I look at her confusedly, then the kids tell me in French what she said and she laughs. We all eat lunch together around 3, all sharing from one gigantic bowl and eating with our hands. Lunch is usually some combination of rice, sauce, and fish. Pretty much always amazing. Then around 4, we go back to class, usually with a list of the random words we heard, so our LCF can help us figure out what the heck is going on. ("Oh, that means 'to roll food into a ball!'") Cause we are sustainable agriculture volunteers, we are making a community garden as well, so we often go work on that for a while when the sun is going down. We've got 3 beds, a pepinere, and a couple massive compost heaps.
Afterwards, I go home, study a little, have dinner, then sit around and drink hot sweet tea in tiny cups (ataya.) Right now I understand about 5% of what people say, which is a lot better than 0% 4 days ago. Each day, I understand more and more, and over the next 3 months, we'll be back and forth between the training compund and our homestay sites, learning Pula Futa, experimenting with our garden, and generally getting ready for our real site assignments.Based on my language assignment, I can tell I will prolly be on the Guinea-Senegal border, as the Pula Futa population in Senegal is largely Guinean immigrants.
All of which brings me to my last night. After 5 days at my homestay, I started to not feel great yesterday afternoon. When I started to not feel great, I saw a car pulling up to our house ( a rare site in Sangal Kam.) It ended up being the husbands of all the women at my house, all home from visiting family in Guinea! They had been gone for months, and came with lots of gifts (Coke, blown up family pictures, new prayer mats) and were ready for a big party. I, unfortunently, was in no mood for festivities. I laid down for a nap around 5, and by 6 or 7 I was throwing up. I called the PC doctor, he told me to take some medicine and some oral re-hydration salts. I ended up spending the whole night vomiting up salt water. My host mom, her husband, and her son all stayed up with my all night as a I spewed fluids all night. Baba ang (my dad) even gave me the benediction prayer, which involved a long recessitation and blowing on me. That and a can of Coke ended up helping enough for me to get to bed. Unfortunately, I ended up coming back to the training compound early this morning because although the vomiting stopped the... well, you know, didn't. I'm feeling better now, just weathering sickness, getting used to new microbes here. Everyone else gets back tomorrow morning, so I just slept all day, read Flanney O Connor short stories, passed a lot of fluids, and am trying to get back into good health.
Phew, that was exhausting just typing all that. Needless to say, I am still totally lost here in Senegal. First I was whelmed, then overwhelmed, but whatever. My language skills are eh, my stomach is unhappy, and it is very very hot. Luckily, I know I'll get used to it all, and am already falling in love with Pula Futa, my host family, Senegalese food, and lots of the other bright-eyes volunteers. And this is still just training. Lots more adventures, projects, sicknesses, bike rides (I'll be biking atleast 10k a day!) to come.
PS Yes, I already miss everyone and think about you all the time. Specials thanks to Lauren for being such an incredible inspiration. <3
Saturday, September 3, 2011
My Address
Hey everyone! I am in Senegal, life is good, but nothing blog-worthy has really happened yet. I've been locked in a training compound for a few days, doing Wolof lessons, basic agriculture plans, eating Senegalese food, and meeting the 55 other volunteers. I am leaving Tuesday to a homestay for a while, to live with a Senegalese family and see what that life is like. I'll post a real update after that! Anyway, I just wanted to tell y'all my address, just in case anyone wants it for anything!
PCT Cameron Colliersmith
Corps de la Paix
B.P. 299
Thiès, Senegal
West Africa
Substantial updates later, I promise. Now just gotta avoid the incredible heat and try to pay attention in class. If anyone alllllllready wants to send a package, I would love a battery operated fan!
PCT Cameron Colliersmith
Corps de la Paix
B.P. 299
Thiès, Senegal
West Africa
Substantial updates later, I promise. Now just gotta avoid the incredible heat and try to pay attention in class. If anyone alllllllready wants to send a package, I would love a battery operated fan!
Monday, August 29, 2011
and here's my address
Leaving tomorrow morning to Senegal. I'll have pictures n all in a few days! Here's my mailing address for anyone who wants to send anything!!!
PCT Cameron Colliersmith
Corps de la Paix
B.P. 299
Thiès, Senegal
West Africa
PCT Cameron Colliersmith
Corps de la Paix
B.P. 299
Thiès, Senegal
West Africa
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
