Officially a PCV

This past week I said goodbye to my amazing training host family, pictured at left, and became a Peace Corps Volunteer during a lovely little ceremony at the new ambassador's house yesterday.  It has been a busy week and thus a fittingly demanding end to an exhausting, wonderful, and busy 9 weeks of training.

Here are some highlights of the past few weeks:

- I was and will continue to learn two local languages: Wolof and Pulaar.  Which means if I can get the languages down I could call myself quad lingual!  A big shout out to my awesome training buddies in Thieneba and my two Language & Cultural facilitators who patiently told me the verb for 'napping' at least twice a day.

- Overindulging in yummy laak, a traditional yogurt porridge, at a baptism can make my tummy feel funny.

- Kolda is my hometown down south. I visited my new site for a few days in the middle of training and I am so excited for the amount of fruit available year round as well as the work potential in the regional capital.  A thank you to Natalie, my ancienne, for a wonderful tour and also for a great example of what it means to be a Peace Corps volunteer.

- I can now cook pretty awesome beignets, thanks to my host mom.

- Going to help out on the family farm in the heat of the afternoon is a really bad idea.  Just because my little 12 year old host brother can do it everyday does not mean I can.

- Skippy Peanut butter tastes SO good and starburst can brighten any mood.

- Two months went by quickly. I want to really appreciate each of the next 24 months and not wish away any time, be it good or bad.  I hope to be invested in each moment here and I'm excited to get started this week as I officially install into Kolda this coming Friday.

En ontuma! (until next time in pulaar)

my aunt's parting gift - braids!

Two weeks in Thieneba

Fishermen at the beach

I'm back in Thies (with wifi!) after two weeks in Thieneba living it up Senegalese style; lunching on rice and fish, playing lots of uno with my little brothers and sitting around under our garab tree chatting in broken Wolof.

It was an intense 14 days of language, trying to get to a proficient level before I start my second local language - as I'll be working in Kolda I need to learn Pulaar in addition to Wolof.  While I'm a little nervous about being in a language class by myself for the last 3 weeks of Pre-Service Training (PST) I'm hoping the one on one attention will help me progress quickly.  Even though the two weeks were a lot of work it was great for immersive practice in the language and I feel as if I am starting to really communicate with my family and people in the village.  For example, I can now joke with my 12 year old brother that he is useless since he can't cook or clean and I can now talk with my youngest aunt about what she wants to do after she finishes high school next year. Its exciting to start having conversations in Wolof, a language I didn't even know existed a few months ago.

While we did work hard these past two weeks, we did get to play a bit too.  My language class met up with the rest of the trainees - the 17 of us have been divided up into groups of about 2-4 in different villages - for a day trip to the beach.  It was wonderful to swim in the ocean again, especially as the water is actually pretty warm here.  We also took a break from our daily rice and fish in the form of a long long lunch out at a restaurant back in Thies starting with a pain au chocolat and ending with a banana split.  The lunch was actually a great practice in language too as we had to travel to and from Thies on public transport without our language instructor - Joe shows off the interior of one such taxi, please note the chord as a door handle.  

For the grand finale, my class rewarded ourselves for a successful two weeks with a beignet cooking lesson with my host mom - Thieneba's local donut baker - on our last day in village.  It was awesome to hang out with my family and my classmates with such yummy fare, but it was also not as fun to see how much oil and sugar goes into those donuts my mom hands me most mornings.

Tonight its back to some more technical training as we welcome our counterparts and supervisors from our respective sites to Thies for a two day training session.  Over the next few days we will learn a bit more about one another as well as put together a plan for the first two months in village.  Tomorrow also marks the start of Ramadan, which means all Muslims (95% of the population of Senegal) will fast from food and drink from dawn until dusk for the next month.  As a show of respect, one must eat and drink in privacy so lunches will have to be indoors and water bottles stashed away in bags.  It will be interesting to see how Senegal changes as have heard from other volunteers that the pace slows down a great deal  as people just lose energy during the end of the day.

Ramadan also means that I am only 19 days away from swearing in (Inchallah, God willing) and moving on down to Kolda.  I will miss the familiar faces of my fellow trainees, but I'm also excited to get to work!  Please note that my mailing address in Thies is no longer valid as mail won't get to me before I move, but I'll be sure to post a new address soon.

Love and hugs!  And a special big hug to mama and dad for an amazing care package - I am currently exercising a great deal of self control to not eat an entire box of peanut M&Ms while writing this.

Site: Kolda!

Today, our group of trainees learned where we will be for the next two years!  I'm heading out at 6 a.m. tomorrow morning to Kolda to meet with my ancienne, the volunteer whose work I will be taking over, as well as some potential work partners, my host family and volunteers who will be around the area during my service. Kolda is a regional capital, located in the south of Senegal, below the Gambia, and is supposed to have a pretty great selection of fruit year round.

Here's what the Peace Corps has been doing in the region and I'm excited to be a part of it.

Sama Turondo

Here is a pic of me and my turondoo, or namesake in Wolof, Nene. She is my host grandma (host dad's mom) and the elder of our house.  She wakes up early, makes coffee for the family and then heads out to sell lots of good food stuff in the local market.

She has a quiet and strong spirit and never fails to make me feel right at home.  I feel quite lucky to have such a strong female figure around the house and even luckier to have the honor of being named after her.

Happy 4th!

While I wish I could teleport for a night of s'mores and fireworks on the beach with my family this 4th, I get the next best thing: eating Pumba.  A couple of fellow trainees have dug a hole and a nice pig is roasting in that pit waiting to be eaten pretty soon here...

Tomorrow morning I head back to my host family for a few more days of language training, which I desperately need. New resolution is to really focus on prepping questions before I hang out with them so I can practice of course and also I need to speak as much as possible before my first language exam this Friday.  Each volunteer needs to be at an intermediate level, conversationally competent and also able to converse on a technical basis, before we can start working and right now I feel a long way off hence the self inflicted homework.  But Friday is also the day we all find out where we are going to be working for the next two years!


Happy 4th friends and family!  Hope you have a s'more for me :)