Peanuts, parties, and prevention

Peanut harvest season is upon us, and the people of Doundodji are busy in their fields. Personally, I spent half a day in the field separating nuts from plants and let's say I have yet to achieve proficiency. The process goes like this: The men pull up all the peanut plants and rake them into huge piles. Once they're dry, they smack the piles with a rake to break apart nuts from plants. Next, the women come out and spend day after day pouring bowl after bowl of peanuts from over their head to the ground. If the wind is just right, it blows the lighter plant matter away from the heaver nuts. The nuts are brought in to the house, then the broken plant pieces and few remaining nuts, which are fed to the horse and donkey. 

Muslim new year, Tamkharite, broke up the endless field work. I spent the day at my neighbor Ami's house learning to cook the traditional meal: millet couscous with beef and vegetable sauce. After dinner came the part that has made me deem Tamkharite the best of all Senegalese holidays: trick-or-treating. The kids cross-dress and carry buckets around the neighborhood singing and dancing, asking for donations of rice, beans, millet, peanuts, or money. Ami and I went around our neighborhood together. She sang the trick-or-treating "Taajeboon" song, I sang the refrain "Woolaay". Even though we weren't dressed like boys, everyone got a real kick out of me coming and we made out pretty well. The next morning was just like the day after halloween: all the kids separated and compared their winnings. Ami took our rice and beans to the market, sold them, and bought the ingredients for beignets- less practical, more delicious. We made a lovely batch of beignets that evening. 

All of team Linguere has been real busy these days. December 1st was World Aids Day- we showed a series of short films in Linguere about AIDS in Africa. About 200 people showed up, and Linguere's doctors and hospital staff did a great job involving the audience with the films. The next week, a few 2nd-year volunteers held a 4-day AIDS training for area health workers; I played outfield. 

Enthusiastically painting a mural for the Linguere AIDS training with Abby

Emily got real excited about the training; I hadn't had any coffee yet. 

Health workers from 13 local villages getting ready for training day 1

Thanks to a fire at the St. Louis power station, Linguere had lots of power cuts, which meant no water. It seemed like a miracle when we could all finally shower. Ann Marie was really dirty, and thus really happy when the spigot finally started to trickle. 

After the first couple days of the AIDS training, Mac and I went back to Doundodji for yet another festival, Gamou. My dad was president, so our compound was the center of the day's events. There was media, officials, guests, meetings, eating, and extremely loud all-night dancing/singing/chanting/learning.

Papa Talla being interviewed by the local radio station

Gamou party at the compound

Mac and I all decked out for the festivities

With my neighbor Ami and some of her guests

Leftover dinner for breakfast; somehow we were still compelled to eat it. 

Death thorn- it stabbed through my bike tire, tire liner, and tube. 

Now that most people are done in the fields, I've been doing a lot of work with women's groups getting vegetables and moringa trees growing. The school's environmental club is also planting, and I'm helping my wonderful neighbor Seyni, who cooks for the teachers, start a kitchen garden at the school.

Take a bike to the turkey

After Tabaski, I got started with some gardening with women's groups and helped out with a government AIDS testing event that came to town. There was a good turnout for the testing, and no one has AIDS! After Adji from Peace Corps came to chat with Doundodji's VIP's about my action plan for work, I went in to Linguere then started off on a bike trip up to the north for a turkey party with some other volunteers. It was the kind of adventure that makes you giddy with happiness, restores your faith in humanity, lets you soak in the scenery, and helps you forget about all the problems in the world. We biked about 130k through some beautiful Senegal wilderness to the first civilization, took a scenic but bumpy bush car ride to Ourrousougi, then a long bus ride to Ndioum where we finally got to chow down. The northerners put on an impressive spread, complete with deep-fried turkey and game hens, taters and gravy, green bean casserole, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, macaroni and cheese, cranberry sauce, biscuits, stuffing, pumpkin pie, apple pie, pecan pie, brownies, and lots of delicious drinks. We ate it all. 

We headed home via St. Louis and now it's back to the village. 

Into the sunrise on the road to Ourrousougi

The bush car ride, ready for the dust

Stuck at the sand trap

Fae made friends with Paul and Maddy's pet sheep, named Sheep

Turkey feather headdresses, ready for the feast

Packed up to head back home

The sheep brains are not delicious.

Tabaski went something like this:

I woke up, showered, watered my garden, ate breakfast, then cut up onions for several hours. Meanwhile, the men woke up before the 5AM call to prayer, got dressed up in their finest, went to the mosque, and came back mid-morning to kill and process 3 sheep. Once laundry pan after laundry pan came back full of sheep parts, us women folk started the seemingly endless process of cutting up all the meat. We sent off a few big hunks of meat via bowls on children's heads to a few people around the village, and cut and cut and cut the rest of the meat apart. My sister-in-law cut out and fried up the liver first- we ate it hot-n-fresh (pretty delicious). Little brother got right to grilling up the ribs (really delicious). We also chowed down zillions of watermelons all day long (America delicious). A huge bowl of freshly fried meat with lots of onion sauce and 'taters came out for lunch, and we made short work of it. We sent out bowls to neighbors and they sent some to us (ours was the most delicious). The rest of the afternoon was dedicated to processing all the meat, organs, intestines, and various sundry sheep parts to be eaten over the course of the next several days. I got dressed up in my most shiny space-age Senegalese outfit in the early evening and walked around to neighbors' houses. A big part of the holiday is asking forgiveness for your sins/wrongdoings over the past year- there's a very specific greeting that people exchange:

-Baal ma aq: forgive me for my wrongs.
-Baal naa la: I forgive you. Yalla nanu Yalla boleen baal: God forgives us
-Amiin: Amen

also:
-Dewenati: May God allow us to celebrate this holiday next year
-Fekkeel deween: We'll celebrate this holiday next year.
-Amiin: Amen

Once I was pardoned for all my wrongs, I came home to eat a delicious dinner of more sheep meat.

Day two: Normal village day, but with lots of guests around, and every house I visited had a group of women gathered around a bucket cutting up sheep parts. The smell was getting stronger. There was also a stick strewn with intestines in all the compounds... feasts to come. We ate rice and sheep for lunch (kind of delicious), then the highlight of the whole thing- millet couscous with brain for dinner. We're not talking about indistinguishable bits here; there was a whole bonafide brain, brainstem, and a few other mystery chunks floating in some greasy grey sauce in the bowl. I psyched myself up and ate a few bites (not delicious in any way). At least it wasn't chewy.

Day three: Escaped to Linguere to welcome our two brand new ag volunteers! A Peace Corps staff member who has family in the area brought us a dinner of sheep with spaghetti and onion sauce (most delicious meat I've eaten in a long time). We even ate some heart (not so delicious).

Subsequent days: I'm hoping to go back to Doundodji tomorrow to find meat-free meals.

Through a series of unfortunate events, my camera didn't make it to Tabaski, but just use your imagination.

Happy Eid al-Adha

Since I'm stuck in the med hut for yet another day, here's an educational blog post about the upcoming Muslim holiday, along with a few other tidbits.

Eid al-Adha (we all call it Tabaski here) is the festival of the sacrifice, to commemorate Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael. Before this could happen, Allah provided a ram to sacrifice instead. In recognition, many families or communities here kill a ram and divide it into three portions: one for the family, one for friends and neighbors, and one for the needy. This year, it'll happen on November 7th, which is the 10th day of the 12th Islamic month. The lunar calendar is used here, which is shorter than the Christian/Gregorian calendar by about 11 days, so holiday dates change every year. The annual pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj) is occurring now too- from the 7th until the 12th of the 12th month, Dhu al-Hijjah. 

Korite, the last holiday I was here for, included no more protein than a few hunks of monitor lizard jerky, so I'm getting pretty excited about the possibility of actual meat. That is, until the third or fourth day of eating it without any refrigeration. Other than the eating, Tabaski will include lots of hair braiding, dressing up, praying, and guests from far and wide. There's been a lot of hype about Tabaski around the village, it seems to be the holiday that people take most seriously, the most guests visit for, and most often used as a reference point in the calendar. Instead of giving a month or date for events, people will say how long before or after Tabaski they occur. There have also been huge lots of the most incredible looking rams (think small horses) for sale in cities for the past month or so. While it's pretty normal the whole year 'round to have a sheep, goat, or otherwise strapped to the top of your car while traveling around the country, it's particularly common now. Just remember to roll up the window if you're sitting under the business end of the sheep...

In other news:
In conjunction with the 50th anniversary Peace Corps celebration in DC, Senegalese musician Youssou N'Dour gave a concert, and was introduced by our country director, Chris Hedrick. There's a video here: http://www.kennedy-center.org/explorer/videos/?id=M4784.

PC Senegal has launched a new website, it's real fancy and has lots of great content: http://pcsenegal.com/.

Out and about

It's been a busy few weeks full of lots of traveling, meeting, and adventuring. I headed to Dakar for a meeting with the gender and development group (SeneGAD; http://senegad.pcsenegal.org) with a few other Linguere volunteers. It was conveniently scheduled poolside at the lovely American Club in Dakar. There are lots of really great gender activities going on around the country, and everyone's busy planning for the national GAD meeting, all-volunteer conference, and the West African Invitational Softball Tournament (WAIST) that will happen in January. Us Linguereians went out for a seafood dinner by the ocean; a little too close to the ocean, actually... a few of us were a bit soggy at the end of it. 


After GAD was done, Mac met me in Dakar for a day in the big city; we climbed up to the lighthouse for a wine and cheese picnic with Emma, Emily, and some other new friends, visited the renaissance statue, and soaked in all the luxuries. After Dakar, we went to the beautiful city of St. Louis for a few days of beach vacation, rooftop yoga, city wandering, kayaking, shopping, and delicious food. St. Louis is really different from the rest of the cities I've been to in Senegal- it's very European, and even has a sort of New Orleans feeling. To top off the trip, we went out for out of this world Thai food, then Miss Emma and friends threw an impromptu roof deck dance party complete with little cakes and a rendition of the birthday song by the Beatles to celebrate my 26th. You can't beat that. 

Lighthouse picnic in Dakar

Post-beach, St. Louis

Emma, turning CFA into wishes in the Senegal river

Giving our sun-starved bodies a dose of vitamin D

St. Louis

Crabs on the beach in St. Louis

Mac and her kayak

Paddling across the Senegal River

Post-St. Louis was a trip down to the PC training center in Thies, which had an air of homecoming to it, for a mud stove training followed by a meeting for all the Health and Environmental Ed volunteers in country (Health/EE Summit). The 2 days of stove training were really great- we learned a lot about building stoves, why it's so important, and got in some practice hours making mud, filling molds, and burning cooking things. The highlight of it all? Mixing clay with water and sawdust in giant buckets with our feet. Gotta love that squishy feeling. Summit kicked off the next day with brainstorming, re-evaluating, learning, and fun times with everyone in the sector. Most of team Linguere was there, and they all took me out for a birthday dinner at Massa-Massa in Thies. There aren't words for the food. We ate family style: macaroni and cheese with ham, lasagna, seafood, chicken pot pie, rabbit, and profiteroles with a trick candle (throwback!). The worldly folks from Linguere also managed to sing happy birthday in 6 different languages: English, French, Spanish, Wolof, Pulaar, and Mandarin (Mac made attempts at Hebrew and German too, but they didn't quite make the cut...). Pretty impressive. We finished up the Thies trip with the final day of summit, and all headed out.



In case I didn't get enough traveling in, I ended up in the med hut in Dakar after that with some sort of fever-headache-lung infection combination of fun. I'm on the up and up now, and should be going back to the desert Monday, Inch'Allah. 

Baby Sarah, and the rest is just details...

It's been far too long, and a million things have happened: Ramadan ended, I ate 3 monitor lizards, got my hair braided in a million little braids, made 2 radio show appearances, attended wrestling matches, helped with a fabulous girls camp, gardened, taught about gardening, traveled around the area testing for malnutrition, weighed babies, made lots of neem lotion, taught about malaria prevention, planted trees, surveyed Doundodjians about their lives, helped with discussions about risk factors in pregnancy, harvested beans, ate beans, attended a million baptisms and a wedding, got amoebas, organized a talk by the fabulous Awa Traore about communication, career ambitions, sexual health, and so much more...

While all of that was lots of fun, this was the highlight of September:

Baby Diarra with her big sister Codou and cousin Ndeye

Diarra and Codou

 My sister Mbayen had a baby and named her after me! Unfortunately, the people of Senegal have a hard time with the name Sarah, so she's called Diarra, which is my name here. So far, she just does normal baby stuff - eating, pooping, sleeping, crying, but she's still pretty entertaining and adorable. The family has started calling us white Diarra and black Diarra, just to make things clear...

the loudest of the loud

The loud music/yelling/noise that started around noon yesterday for no apparent reason proved to be our source of amusement for the rest of the day...

First, we were annoyed

Then, we wanted to know why it wouldn't stop

After that, we asked nicely for it to end

We were ecstatic when the electricity went out

...but then they got a generator, and the noise continued until 4AM.

Thanks to Justin and Ann Marie for the lovely videos.

I'll take the blaring mosque right outside my compound in Doundodji over this any day... back to village.

'Tis the season for mural painting

In order to break up the endless sitting, napping, staring, resting, hungry, thirsty, tired hours or Ramadan, Mac and I decided to go on a muraling tournament. We started in Doundodji, where my elementary school director requested a big map of Africa on one of the buildings. I was most excited about painting the latest-and-greatest South Sudan.

Doundodji pre-mural

Mac, ready for both mural painting and hunting season.

There were a lot of letters involved.

Look, we did it!

nephews/audience Abdou, Cheikh, and Mor, up to no good.

In our downtime, I documented the termite damage on my bed so I can send in the insurance claim.

After 2 days in Doundodji, we hopped on our bikes to go to Linguere, then on a bush taxi to go to Mac's village, Xol Xol.

Mac documented this lovely bag on the bush taxi to Xol Xol: "Yogurting endlessdreams" I have no idea, and neither does the person who owns it. 

We decided to paint a sort of Senegal version of Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy - a "you are here" mural.

Xol Xol pre-mural

Paint-fume induced delirium

Still cheerful, I don't know how she does it.

You are in Senegal, and Senegal is in Africa, and we're done!

Delicious yassa, special because: 1, it's Ramadan and Mac's family fed us lunch anyway, and 2. There were no Senegalese people around, so we lefties got to eat with our left hands.

Other notable events during my 2 days in Xol Xol included: 4 babies born, 2 baptisms, and twice being pooped on by birds. Village life was all in order.

I made it back to Linguere this morning in a chock-full bush car, which is quite a site to see: a little beat-up pickup truck with 7 adults (including me) and 2 kids in the cab, 10 in the bed, and 5 or 6 more on top of the cab/roll-cage over the bed, along with baggage and a few sheep and goats.  This afternoon we're being graced by over 4 hours of full-blast loudspeaker mosque chanting/singing/noise, and asking dear Allah to make it stop. I'll be back in Doundodji tomorrow for the last week of Ramadan before the end-of-fasting celebration, Korite.

Green!

Everything was brown and dead, and people were starting to get worried, but then my fellow Linguerian, Mac, did a rain dance with her village out in the bush and saved the day. It involved lots of singing, dancing, chanting, costumes, and dragging people in the dirt. Details here: http://macmacmacafee.wordpress.com/2011/08/19/rain-dance/. That very afternoon, the rains started and we haven't had a day without rain since. Now, Doundodji looks like this:

After one of the gully-washers, I went out into the bush with my sister-in-law and niece to wash laundry in the huge lake that suddenly appeared. There were so many frogs thrilled to be there, it was hard to have a conversation.  

My moringa trees grew like crazy, so I harvested the leaves, made some leaf hammocks out of a wrap skirt, a pillowcase, and my dirty laundry bag, and dried out the leaves. Once it's not so humid, I'll pound them up and have lots of leaf powder to nutritionalize all our food.

 

The rest of my garden is growing too, and all the neighborhood kids get excited about coming out to help harvest veggies (and pull weeds!), who knew kids would be so happy about turnips and okra. Eating them is another story.

Malaria Tourney

So far, I've spent a few days of Ramadan in Doundodji not fasting, and when the lunch bowl came looking like this:

... I wished I was fasting. So that's the plan as of tomorrow, or I'll be pretending to fast and eating delicious America snacks in my room. Anything to avoid the greasy rice bowl with gelatinous cow parts and dried fish hidden inside. Yuck.

In other news, all of team Linguere has spent the last week visiting each of our villages to do presentations, skits, and demonstrations on malaria prevention. All in all, over the course of 4 days, we visited 11 villages and spoke to about 1300 people. Every village had a great turnout and everyone was enthusiastic about the whole thing. We also had a really fun time making total fools of ourselves... for entertainment and education value of course.

Mboula - Emily talking about mosquito nets

back-of-the-truck mango eating by Mac

Ngaraff - Making neem lotion

Doundodji - there was dancing!

Doundodji - Abby and my counterpart's little sister got the crowd going

Doundodji - a little theatre by Ann Marie and Justin

Mac and I perfected our Pulaar squat and taught the crowd that drinking too much milk may give you gas, but it sure doesn't cause malaria.

Doundodji - the crowd under a neem tree

Linguere - Abby, Ann Marie, and Emily even did a radio show to talk about our project.

Xhol Xhol - Team Linguere with our Peace Corps driver/helper extraordinaire, Tidiane

Xhol Xhol - record attendance

Neem lotion - it may look delicious, but don't eat it...

Between stops, Justin was our tour guide

Diagely - the men were front and center

Diagely - Abby took the stage between skits dressed as a mosquito caught up in a net.

Diagely - Kim ran the show in Pulaar.

...then the storm rolled in

and we celebrated the coming of the rains

did a rain dance

and called it a day.