One Final Thought

It’s been about one month since I returned to the USA, and almost two since I left Senegal. I miss my village, friends and host family dearly, but it is also wonderful to be reunited with so many loved ones stateside. I am honestly handling the transition better than I anticipated. Life in the USA is so much an engrained part of my entire life experience that it just feels normal. At the same time, my outlook on everything has changed due to the experiences I’ve had over the last three years.

I want to extend the biggest THANK YOU I possibly can to all of you who supported me throughout this journey with your letters, packages, skype calls, texts, prayers, and positive thoughts. There were many tough moments, and what kept me going was the love for my village and the knowledge that I had all of you in my corner.

As is often said in the Peace Corps community, volunteers end up taking away more from their host communities than they give, and I am certain that is no different in my case. The people of Senegal taught me many things throughout my Peace Corps service. Perhaps the biggest takeaway is best summed up in the children’s book “Old Turtle and the Broken Truth” when “…as the people met other people different from themselves, they began to see…themselves.”

Senegal is an amazing country filled with loving and caring people, and I have no doubt that it is just one example of many like it around the world. So in this tumultuous time filled with so much fear, hate, and doubt, please remember that we are all one, brothers and sisters united on this earth to bring peace and prosperity to all those who seek it.

I leave this thought with you in this final blog post and thank you all again for your everlasting support.

WOAH! We're done!

Thanks for reading. Peace and love,

Lindsay

Pieces of Peace

It’s official – I’ve entered into the last month of my time in Senegal. I have just under three weeks left before I fly out. As a result, I’ve also moved into what seems to be the most emotional part of my service.

There are so many things I’m looking forward to about being back home in the USA – my family, my friends, a washing machine, a smartphone, craft beer, etc. And there are things I won’t miss about being in Senegal. Washing my clothes by hand, for one (something I’ve done for the last 3 years), is something I can live without!

Despite all of this, I’m devastated to be leaving. Don’t get me wrong, I love the USA, and I am really excited to be home and start the next chapter in my journey. But at the same time, I’ve built a life here and integrated into a culture that I adore, sometimes more than my own. I keep trying to figure out why leaving here seems so much harder than how I felt leaving the USA back in 2014. What I’ve realized is that, in 2014, when I quit my job and moved out of Chicago, I knew that I would see my friends and family again. This time, things seem more final. Of course I plan to stay in touch with my host family and friends here and eventually come back to visit, but there is always a real chance that we will never see each other again. This thought terrifies me, and in my final weeks, it is the thought that leads to spontaneous bouts of tears.

On Saturday, I am gong back to Tamba to visit my village one last time and say goodbye. My host family has had a major influence on my life. We’ve been through the death of a child, domestic violence, weddings, funerals, and plentiful harvests, all in three years. They made my Peace Corps service feel like home. They welcomed every member of my immediate family into their home, and as with Senegalese culture, instantly and honestly believed that, through me, our families are now merged as one.

It is this spirit of openness and hospitality that I am hoping to carry with me to the USA. No matter where I am in Senegal, village or city, home or sidewalk, I’ve found people inviting me to sit with them for tea, share a meal, or just chat like old friends even as strangers. This makes it really easy to find friends, know your neighbors, and build relationships with your local grocery store clerk/tailor/roadside food stand seller/etc. I’ve been gone for 3 years during what seems to be some of the most polarizing times the USA has ever experienced, and I often wonder how different it could be if we imported this “teranga” or hospitality into our own culture. So even though leaving this place will be hard, my mission is to spread Senegalese peace wherever I go. For as Brian Andreas so beautifully painted, “She left pieces of her life behind her everywhere she went. It's easier to feel the sunlight without them, she said."

Thanks for reading. Peace and love,

Lindsay

Touring the Country

The newest group of Peace Corps Senegal trainees arrived last week – 53 of them, 33 health and 20 for our community economic development program. For the next two months, I’ll coordinate the training of the 33 health trainees, giving them the technical skills and cultural knowledge to integrate well into life in Senegal. Experiencing Peace Corps life through the eyes of a new trainee is one of my favorite aspects of the job of the 3^rd year volunteer for the health program.

On Tuesday, after just less than a week in Senegal, the new trainees left for community based training for the first time. This is where trainees go to live with host families for various lengths of time during their 2 month training, focusing on language and cultural integration. I’ve had extremely nostalgic feelings this past week, thinking back to my first experience at CBT, walking into my compound with only enough language skills to say “Hi” and “I need to go to the bathroom”. My first memory is of my host mom running at me screaming my Senegalese name (Rama at the time), so excited that I’d arrived. I distinctly remember this feeling of “what the hell have I signed up for” running through my mind those first few days. Now looking back on 3 years here, it’s almost funny how nervous I was. 

Top of a mountain!

The other aspect of my job that I love the most is assisting with site visits. Throughout this past year, I’ve gone out into the field on numerous occasions, each for about 1 week at a time, accompanying a staff member from the health program, visiting current volunteers in their sites. I’ve visited villages and towns around the entire country, sometimes driving two hours in one direction just to reach a volunteer’s village, do his/her visit, and turn around. It’s an exhausting experience, but one of the most thrilling!

Garden project

Discussing projects

When we arrive in a site, we typically sit with a volunteer and ask her about her projects, challenges she has at site, new work ideas, etc. We also meet with representatives of the volunteer’s host family and work partners. We ask them the same questions about how the volunteer is doing culturally, how work is going, any challenges they are experiencing, etc. Even as a 3^rd year volunteer, I find site visits incredibly rewarding and motivating. It is awe-inspiring to travel the country learning about all the projects different volunteers have taken on. Site visits serve a strong work purpose because they make me a better mentor to the volunteers when I can connect people with similar work interests together. They also continue to renew in me the importance of Peace Corps - I’ve seen incredible projects and heard testimonies from many people about the value of Peace Corps and how rewarding it has been working with one or many volunteers. 

An awesome nutritious porridge project for malnutrition

This 3^rd year of service has really brought my entire experience full circle. I travel around consulting with first and second year health volunteers on their successes and challenges at site, and I develop new trainees into the next group of amazing volunteers. This past year was a long extra year away from my friends and family, but the rewards certainly outnumber the challenges.

And now the countdown is on! My official last day is May 19^th! I’ll be flying into Zurich to meet my parents and Aunt Sandy for a visit with one of our family friends and a tour around Italy. Then I’ll be back in the USA, preparing to start graduate school in the fall (more on that soon). I have SO many ambitious travel plans for the summer, but I’m also realizing that I might need some quiet time at home just reintegrating into life in the USA. It’s weird to be worried about reintegrating into my own country, but that too will be a part of this entire experience. I’m looking forward to sharing that with all of you!

Thanks for reading. Peace & love,

Lindsay 

Sunshine When He Smiles

Well here we are in 2017 and I haven’t written a blog post in months…my intention was not to stop blogging during my third year of service. I just got distracted by so many things (new job, grad school applications, politics), and this is what fell to the wayside.

As anyone who knows me well can image, the end of 2016 was a VERY rough time for me (as I know it was for many of you). I think living abroad during the presidential election added a whole other element to my experience. There happened to be a big volunteer event going on at our training center (where I work now) during the election, so my friend Morgan and I planned a big election party. We traced a map of the electoral college that turned out amazing, managed to stream live USA news stations, had a senate race update station in the back of the room, and provided snacks. I didn’t sleep a wink. I look back on the beginning of that party with such fond memories and can’t believe the turn of events we are now experiencing.

We all hoped 2017 would start off better, but its not looking to be the case. THANK YOU to all of you who have marched, rallied, spoken out, called, etc. I feel somewhat helpless from here, but am trying to find ways to do my part. That’s where blogging comes in. There is sooo much (too much) negativity out there right now, so I am going to blog about positive things happening here. Today’s topic – my little brother Haruna.

Haruna and me on a horse cart

Haruna with the cows

Maybe some of you remember Haruna from previous photos or stories. His dad died when he was younger, and then his mom married my host dad as his 3^rd wife. He has the sunniest disposition of anyone I’ve met in Senegal. He is 11 years old and has spent most of his life as our family’s cow herder, leading the cows around the open bush near our village everyday to find water and grass patches.  

I realized how smart Haruna was very early on in my service. Though never having stepped foot in a classroom, he has somehow taught himself to read (a feat I literally can’t explain considering how many factors are stacked against him). He can write, do basic math, sound out words, memorize English, and understand basic concepts faster than any other child I have met. I wanted him in school SO bad.

I broached the topic a couple of times with my host dad, but as someone still trying to find her place in the family, I didn’t want to appear forceful. Each time, my dad would say that he knew Haruna was very smart, but he was our family’s herder and that was a necessity.

While I was home in the USA last June, I vented to my parents about this same topic, and we came up with additional strategies for me to try. The saga is much longer than what I will tell here, but thanks to perseverance, love for this child, amazing financial support from my parents, and a compromise from my host family, HARUNA ENTERED SCHOOL THIS YEAR! He is starting the equivalent of 1^st grade at the age of 11, but he has the best attitude about his situation. He is attending a private school in the regional capital of Tamba, about 10 kilometers from my village. He lives with the family of one of my friends, and then visits our family in village on the weekends.

He quickly mastered the art of selfies on my iPod

I have never felt more like a mom in my life. On his first day of school, I wanted nothing more than to walk him to class, but was sadly already back in Thies for work! He and I talk frequently, and I bother him with questions about school, the family he lives with, if he’s eating enough, if his clothes fit, etc. Essentially I’m a nagging mother who just sent her kid off to college. 

I went back recently for a visit to my village, and many people congratulated me on getting Haruna into school. I told them, “I haven’t done anything yet. You can congratulate me when Haruna graduates.”

Selfie!

I’m leaving soon – I only have about 3.5 months left here. Though I will miss it dearly, I am also ready to come home. But my mission is to keep in close contact with my host family, not just because I love them, but because I want Haruna to have the opportunity to finish school. This kid represents everything that is good in the world. He has worked hard in tough conditions, and he deserves the chance to learn.

Getting Haruna enrolled in school was a major personal victory, but it is also OUR victory. Every one of you who supports me has helped make this a reality. So if you’ve got a dark cloud around you these days, join the club, but then look at this face and remember all the good that exists in the world!

I forced him to model his school uniform :)

Thanks for reading! Peace and love,

Lindsay