A Social Sunday Stroll

After a week of sniffling and sneezing around my compound, or more aptly my room on especially yucky days, my head decided it was done being runny and achey this Sunday.  So I strapped on some sandals and went for a walk around my neighborhood.

My first weeks here consisted of getting to know other local PCVs and meeting different NGO and local government employees.  However, I have been sorely neglecting another vital opportunity to meet and greet right in my own quartier.  I realized that I haven't been spending time in my own neighborhood when a neighbor greeted me two nights ago and then asked where I had been for the past week and was shocked to hear I had not left town.  Apparently I need to get out more and say hi.

So Sunday I spent walking around the neighborhood and into compounds of neighbors I knew despite still not being completely comfortable showing up at someone's house without calling ahead or receiving an earlier invitation.  After getting over that initial hesitation, it has been heart warming to always receive a warm welcome and be asked to sit and chat for a while - a short while for now as my very limited pulaar doesn't exactly allow me to make deep conversation.

Social Sunday strolls may have to become a service tradition for me although I'll also be sure to be social the other days of the week too so my neighbors don't think I leave town Monday-Saturday.

Dust off the radio and tune in at 6 tonight

Hut sweet home!

Welcome to Kolda! After the initial drop in my stomach while watching the white Peace Corps car pull away from my compound, I have been enjoying getting to know my new home and my new family.

While we still eat lots of rice and fish and love to watch TV (when the power doesn't cut out) home now is quite different from my living situation in Thieneba, but just as welcoming and warm.  Biggest change has been my siblings. While the Thieneba crew's oldest was around 16, my current youngest is 12 years old, preceded by two in late high school and most of the older ones are living abroad in Spain or Dakar for university. This means there is less demand to play Uno or be bounced on my knees while I make horsey noises.  My host dad works for an NGO and is usually pretty busy, but always takes time to sit with the family after meals.  And what great meals they have been.  The amazingness of the food might be attributed to the end of Ramadan we just celebrated and the fact everyone is excited to be eating regularly.  So don't worry, mama, I'm eating just fine.

These first few weeks are meant to be spent settling and integrating into my new home. This has meant lots of meetings with local leaders, government offices and NGOs; to which my counterpart has graciously accompanied. It is also the time to practice the language(s).  Conversations have often flowed from French to Wolof to Pulaar, which I like to think helps me practice all of them at once.  The most helpful person to this end, besides my local tutor, has been my host grandma.  Sitting outside our gate with her in the evenings, greeting passer-byes has been key to properly pronouncing 'jam tun', which means peace only, as well as learning the many various ways of asking how life is going.

To hear my three languages in action and if you are lucky enough to be in Senegal, you should tune in at 6 pm tonight to hear Rougui (my new Senegalese name, pronounced "Roo-gi" hard G at the end there) introduce herself as the new small business volunteer here in Kolda, excited to work with current and budding entrepreneurs on anything from marketing to accounting.

But it hasn't been all work.  I've lazed on our back patio reading and usually take a bike ride or two around town each day - partially to work off all the carbs I am eating.  These explorations have brought forth some great discoveries such as a woman who sells what is the closest approximation of a baked cookie I think I can find in town as well as a small local library complete with books in local languages. Photo to the left is on a ride home past my neighborhood 'lake' which is probably just the result of bad drainage during rainy season, but still pretty!

Much love and many hugs from my new home in Kolda.  Also thanks to everyone in the region who came out to celebrate my install and show me around town and a special thanks to my wonderful new site mates. I'm lucky to be just a short bike ride away from some pretty incredible individuals.

A missionary, an aid worker and PCV are walking down a road...

A fellow PCV just posted this and made me giggle as well as do a bit of reflecting, so I'm passing it along.


"A man falls down a well and calls for help. A passing missionary hears his pleas and drops a Bible down the well. Next an aid worker stops and drops down some money. A Peace Corps Volunteer hears the man screaming, drops down a bag, then leaps into the well. “What are you doing?” asks the startled man at the bottom of the well. “I’ve come to live with you,” the PCV replies."


Thanks for sharing, April!

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.