'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.

Goodbye IST, hello Ramadan

In-service training (IST) was full of lots of informative sessions, some not-so informative sessions, and a ton of time spent with all my fellow March staigaires. I failed miserably at documenting the whole thing, but my lovely friend LaRocha did an excellent job, so instead of stealing her photos, I'll direct you to her blog: http://thissenegaleselife.blogspot.com/.

After 2 weeks of IST, I headed to Dakar for 3 days. I had a few med appointments (don't worry, no infectious tropical diseases) and some more time with some of my favorite people. I ate delicious ice cream, thai food and pizza, went to Casino, a real live grocery store with air conditioning and aisles, and enjoyed the luxury of the climate-controlled med hut with hot showers and comfy beds.

4 of us from Linguere got back yesterday afternoon just before 5 after a 6-hour ride in a 7-places car. Our month 8 (Islam's month 9) welcomed us with lots of hungry people. Ramadan, bismillah. If you're interested, here's an article about Ramadan: http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/practices/ramadan_1.shtml. If not, the basic idea is this: During the whole month, one lunar cycle, Muslims fast from the first prayer of the day until the main evening prayer around 7:30. It's sort of like lent- people also refrain from sinful behavior and read the Koran as much as possible.

Lots of volunteers fast with their families; I've decided to give it a try, but I'm not in it for the long haul. My older sister is pregnant and not fasting, so I'm counting on her to cook us delicious lunch every day. I'm headed back to the village this afternoon. We'll see how it goes.

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.

Bismillah!

I had a grand welcome to Doundodji, complete with all the fanfare. There was chanting, singing, speeches, dancing, an MC, hundreds of kids, money being thrown... I couldn't have asked for more. Then village life proceeded, in an extremely hot and slow manner.

I've gotten settled in my little hut and am adjusting to the daily schedule:
4:50-5:00 AM: try to ignore call to prayer.
5:00-5:30 AM: fall asleep temporarily, if no dogs, donkeys, camels, chickens, or children happen to be disturbed at the time.
5:30-6:30 AM: try to ignore loud singing
6:30 AM: roll out of bed just as the singing finally stops.
6:50 AM: go for run or bike ride, scare camels, goats, sheep, and Pulaars with the unusual sight of a white person moving fast.
8:00-9:00 AM: shower, breakfast (loaf of delicious village bread & tea), water garden
9:00-11:00 AM: Morning activity*
11:00 AM-1:30 PM: lay in a pool of sweat/sit with family in a pool of sweat, study/read/chat
1:30 PM: eat lunch- rice with fish and veggies or rice and beans and dried fish and peanuts, or rice and sauce, or rice and veggies... you get the idea
2:00-5:00 PM: lay in a pool of sweat/sit with family in a pool of sweat, study/read/chat, drink tea
5:00-7:00 PM: Afternoon activity*, water garden
7:00 PM: shower, putz around in hut
8:00 PM: emerge from hut equipped with a book, my chair, and almighty headlamp.
8:00-9:00 PM: sit with family, chat/read, talk about how bright my headlamp is, try to avoid gigantic scorpions
9:00 PM (or 9:30 or 10:00...): eat dinner- ground millet with bean sauce or ground millet with peanut sauce or ground millet with milk...
9:30 or 10:00 PM: go to bed
10:00 PM-4:50 AM: sleep/sweat/listen to the nightly music of Doundodji (singing, chickens, kids, the mouse eating something in my room or crawling up and down my mosquito net, donkeys, camels- on special occasions, dogs, mystery creatures)

*morning and afternoon activities include: working in the garden, chatting, watching whatever happens to be going on around the compound, strolling around town and greeting people, visiting the neighbors, sweating.

It might sound hot and boring, but it's actually quite nice in the village and the people are lovely. I still can't understand most of what they say, but it's coming along and I'm doing a lot of smiling and nodding.

Hut, pre-painting

hut, post-painting and decoration

shower/toilet/frog habitat

hut, bathroom, and my little baby baobab tree

The work crew at my garden filling tree sacks

hammin' it up

Camels!

Sworn In

We finished up training in style by making beignets with moringa for our host families in Mboro then PC threw a fabulous party for them at the training center. There were speeches, musicians, delicious food, and lots of dancing. Swearing in was the next day in Dakar- we all got dressed in our lovely new Senegalese outfits and headed to the Ambassador's house for a ceremony and hors d'oeuvres on the lawn.

 Makin' beignets

 Host family reception

 Fancy new outfit... with my host sister Kine

 Dancing!

 Swearing in  with our country director Chris Hedrick

Linguere volunteers 

Chatting with the Ambassador

I'm getting installed in my village this afternoon- the PC car will drop me and my gigantic pile of stuff off at my little hut... and leave me to fend for myself. Our country director has challenged us to spend 5 weeks without staying a night at one of the 13(?) regional houses. We can also look forward to a party at his house if we succeed... I'll be there. Until then, I'll be in my village without electricity save for the occasional day trip to our apartment in Linguere. The thermometer says 115, here goes...