Real live work and other notable events

Local highs have fallen below the skin-scorching 130 degrees of my first month at site, and I now have some semblance of an ability to communicate with the people around me beyond semi-coherent mumbles intended to resemble some sort of appropriate responses to questions. The result: I'm actually doing work. Yay!

My garden has somehow survived the heat and is growing nicely. I've got moringa trees growing out of my ears (they're fabulous miracle trees: http://www.moringanews.org/moringa_en.html, http://www.pcsenegal.org/index.php?page=food_security/moringa.html), zillions of eggplants, tomatoes, cucumber, turnip, carrot, okra, mint, and a few other kinds of trees. Now, the trick will be for all these lovely lush happy plants to survive the onslaught of hungry creepy crawlies that will come with the rains.

The garden: freshly dug bed, veggie nursery, and eggplants

Moringa!

I went to a nearby village with a couple of the other fabulous Linguere volunteers to teach them how to make neem lotion, an easy, relatively cheap (about 50-75 cents per liter) mosquito repellant. It's made with neem tree leaves, water, soap, and oil. I plan to do a neem lotion teaching marathon in my village for the rainy season when mosquitoes show up, but that's still to come...

Doundodji has 6 womens' groups, each of which has a garden where they grow vegetables to eat and sell (thanks to the volunteer before me, Brian). I met with all the groups to get acquainted and find out what kinds of activities they want to do. Many of the women are motivated and interested in my work, which is a big help. The gardens all have good things going for them, but definitely have room for improvement- that's where I come in.

There was a vaccination and malnutrition campaign in town a couple weeks ago. I accompanied our local ASC (agent de sante communitaire), matron, and health relais for a few busy days of vaccinating against polio, giving vitamin A supplements and anti-parasitics, and measuring brachial circumferences of kids from 7 months to 5 years. We first did a tour of Doundodji, then took to small neighboring villages. I got a better sense of the area and the state of affairs in terms of health. There's a lot of work to be done.

Aside from all the business, all of us from Linguere along with 80 or 100 other Senegal PC volunteers trekked down to the southeast corner of the country, Kedougou, for a 4th of July blowout. Personally, I took a car. While not particularly comfortable, reliable, or speedy, it did the job. Some other Linguerians made an epic trek on their bikes over the course of a week. Epic is the key word. It's beautiful, lush, and tropical down there- they have hippos, monkeys, rivers, waterfalls, and green loveliness as far as the eye can see. Just as a reminder, in Linguere, we have sand, camels, thorny bushes, cows, more sand, and (hallelujah!) yogurt.

The Gambia River

There were hippos

...lots of hippos

We had a picnic by the river on our way down to Kedougou

Lazy days in Kedougou

Dindifello

The lovely waterfall at Dindifello

I'm headed back to Thies tomorrow morning for in-service training, 2 weeks back at the cushy training center to cram lots of useful information into my brain before coming back to implement my master plans of curing AIDS, malaria, malnutrition, lack of education, deforestation, drought, and all else that ails the nation.