Ok, the radio silence is finally being broken! I got
installed in my village 5 weeks ago as of this week and can’t believe how
quickly that time flew by. At the same time, village life has a very slow and
leisurely pace that as many of you can imagine is something hard for my
personality. The adjustment process is still ongoing, but there is a beautiful
simplicity to the life in my village.
First things first – my new name is Weli (Welly) Kande. In
Pulaar, my first name literally translates into “delicious” or “good”, so
people usually say something is “weli” in reference to a meal. I’ve never heard
this used as a name other than my namesake (my host dad’s deceased mother, and also her granddaughter), so even
when I introduce myself to other Pulaar people they laugh…it is a very
respected name in my village though and some people even refer to me as Daa
which means grandmother.
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| My new namesake Weli |
I haven’t quite completed all of the elements of my hut yet,
but pictures will be coming soon! I have 24 people living in my compound
including myself. Of these, 8 are between the ages of 0-6, and another 8 are
between the ages of 10-16. So needless to say there is TONS of action and
energy happening at all times of the day. I really enjoy this aspect of my
house and get along with everyone for the most part.
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My sister-in-law Aminata and Miriama
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Everyone in my village is a farmer, so on most days I feel
like I live in a zoo. At any given time we have cows, goats, sheep, horses,
donkeys, chickens, cats, or dogs in our yard, sometimes all at once! I have
come to detest goats the most because they make the creepiest noises that can
sometimes be confused for screaming people…it’s really weird! We also grow
millet, corn, sorghum and beans.
A man came through our compound on his bike one day to buy
some chickens, and I couldn’t resist this picture. Yes, those chickens are
still alive!
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| Yes, those chickens are still alive... |
Honestly, though the food is sometimes rough and really
repetitive, I do admire the way we live off the land. My family eats meals
containing almost entirely things we grow ourselves (and since we don’t have a
garden right now that means almost no fruits or veggies). One of their favorite
dishes is a leaf sauce, and they literally cut a branch of leaves off of a tree
and we pick them off and turn that into a sauce. If I didn’t feel enough like a
hippy already this lifestyle makes me feel like hippy combined with little
house on the prairie!
As far as amenities go, my house is the only one in our
village with some electricity. We have a solar panel on our main building that
provides light at night from one lightbulb, and it also serves as a place where
everyone in the village comes to charge their cell phones. We also have a tiny
TV that gets wheeled out randomly and hooked up with tons of extension cords to
watch some burned DVDs. Most of the time they are in random languages and are
just watched for the entertainment. No joke, one afternoon we were sitting
around and they decided to watch TV, and 15 minutes later we were watching a
DVD of Michael Jackson music videos! They were so confused that I knew all of
the words haha. It has been fun with the World Cup on right now though because
all the men in our village come over to our house and crowd around this tiny tv
to try and watch some of the games. I am the only girl that sits and watches
with them, and sometimes I get so riled up that I end up yelling at the TV in
English, which just results in all of them staring at me like I’m crazy. If
only they saw me watching an IU basketball game…
From a work perspective, my first 3 months at site are
really meant just to focus on improving my local language. I had a strange
realization one day that it had been a long time since I’d understood an entire
conversation held in my presence, but I am improving every day. The region I am
in, Tambacounda, is also going through Universal Bed Net distribution for
malaria nets right now, so I got to go around with my work counterpart and
conduct a census of my village and the 4 other villages that report into my health
structure. That was a great experience because we visited every single
household in each of the 5 villages. As a result, my village learned that they
are actually about 200 people under what they estimated, so my village
population is only 550 with 35 households. I don’t know everyone yet, but
almost everyone knows my name and I routinely have strangers greeting me by
name.
I have also been making a lot of great contacts. I went to a
cultural event with a few of my middle-school aged sisters and met the
principal who speaks English very well. During the event, the administration of
the school noticed that I couldn’t see very well and invited me to sit with
them at the front of the stage area. I felt weird about this because it almost
seemed like I was getting preferential treatment for looking like a foreigner,
but I think they just knew I was someone “special” for the school. So then out
of the blue they invited me up to introduce myself in Pulaar in front of about
200 people! I was SO nervous, and stumbled through it quite a bit because at
this point I had only been in site about 1 week, but it worked out ok. Then
later during the event, the Principal got up and said that he had a phrase in
English and he would give a new cell phone to whoever could repeat it first. He
then said “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.” I literally busted
out laughing, and one of the teachers turned to me and asked me if I knew it. When
I said yes, I had some students around me asking me to teach them. A few students
tried the phrase and couldn’t get it, so then the Principal called me up and
asked me to “show everyone how it’s done”. Naturally I said it flawlessly, but
then he tried to give me a tongue twister in Pulaar and I failed miserably. The
entire thing was hilarious, and as a result I’ve already worked with that
principal on a radio show in English, so I’m excited for the next school year
and all of the opportunities that exist!
Otherwise it has just been ridiculously hot here, but rainy
season is right around the corner! My compound looked like this after only 1
intense rain, so I can only imagine the scene when it starts to rain every day!
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| The center of our compound flooded after 1 rain |
Thanks for reading! Peace & Love, Lindsay
