A Slice of My Paradise

So I realized I haven't done a basic photo show of my village yet and it's about time I share that with all of you! This blog post will be mainly photos with a few stories thrown in there!

View of the area surrounding my house in mid-April when I came for my first visit

My room was a labor of love. I wanted to paint, wanted to decorate a bit and have it feel homey. Supplies just aren't the same here as in America haha. Tape does NOT stick to the wall (though the 110F heat probably doesn't help with that) and painting walls without a roller is a task. But it's done now and I love it.

The map of Senegal that many of you signed hanging prominently on my wall

My desk/dedicated IU corner. I couldn't resist. And yes, I painted that symbol myself. There was a masking tape job involved but I'm super proud of how it turned out!

My bookshelf with dedicated kid-writing space

Panorama view part 1

Panorama view part 2

My village does not have many immenities. We have an elementary school, a "hospital" (run by a volunteer health worker in our village), and a mosque. That is pretty much it. We do have one household that runs a small store out of their house with oil, spices, soap, etc. These establishments are all in varying conditions, and a repair of the hospital (pictured below) is one of the projects I'm hoping to embark on while I'm here.

Our health hut (ie hospital)

Our mosque - this is right outside of our compound so I usually wake up for the 5:30am call to prayer

These are various pictures of the grounds of my village. This is pretty much the entire thing - I could walk from one end to the other in about 5 minutes. The first pic is a field view looking into the village. The next shows what most of the houses look like - my hut is identical to those you see. The third picture is a far away view of the hospital (the white building) and the main community well is right in front. 

Our whole village is farmers so the entire area is surrounded by these fields

After the call to prayer, this is the sound that wakes me up the most, the daily pounding of corn or millet into a floor type texture for cooking. You can hear the pounding ALL day starting around 5:30am! I've tried it - not easy!

The biggest transition I have experienced thus far in village is that of hot to rainy season. We had a very slow start to the rain, which really concerned everyone since our crops are our main food source. Things have picked up now and it's amazing how much the village transformed! I really enjoy rain, so those rainy days in village are some of my favorite :)

The rain moving in!

View from my backyard of a rain storm coming towards us!

And just to illustrate how drastic the change has been, here is a side by side comparison of my first visit to village and the same view now. This is right out of the fence surrounding my back yard.

The greenery is awesome and I'm already dreading the time it will go away. The work done to protect our crops is quite something. The main things we grow are corn, millet, beans, and peanuts. Many of you may not be as familiar with millet, but it is actually one of the main ingredients used in bird seed in the states (thanks mom for this detail!). I saw this fact in action recently - my 12 year old brother has a slingshot that my host dad fashioned for him. His daily job right now is to go into the fields and use the sling shot to fling rocks at the birds and chase them away as they try to eat our millet. I just keep thinking that it's the perfect job for a 12 year old if he has to work in the fields! I'll try to get a picture of this in action...

Corn growing outside our compound

The well by our school surrounded by crops - that is millet you see growing in the background. 

With rainy season also came a change in diet. We now eat meals consisting mainly of dairy 2-3 times each day! This is usually an oatmeal-like thing mixed with yogurt in the morning, and fresh cow milk mixed with pounded corn or millet for dinner. I have never consumed fresh dairy like this and I really like it! Next step: learn how to milk cows (something on my bucket list!)

My host dad and one of our cows

Our young farmers having their milk/millet snack. This gets delivered daily by women in our house.

But watch out for hungry cows...

And corn taller than your head!

I'm practicing to be part of the breakfast delivery crew, but right now I only trust myself with empty bowls! Otherwise I fear no one would eat at all...

And no matter how hard times might get, when you wake up to this sunrise out your door, it's hard to feel anything but fortunate!

 Thanks for reading. Peace & love,

Lindsay

Ramadan (and an Ebola-Free Senegal)

Ok – I’m going to start off with what I’m sure everyone wants to know. Senegal does NOT have Ebola :) I know many of you have heard that Peace Corps evacuated volunteers in 3 West African countries – Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Liberia. Senegal remains unaffected. There have been no positive cases of Ebola identified here, but Peace Corps Senegal is monitoring the situation closely and keeping us well-informed!

Now onto Ramadan! For a little background, Ramadan is the month in the Lunar calendar during which Muslims fast. Fasting occurs from sun-up to sun-down and includes both food and water. For us, Ramadan started around the end of June, and the entire village eagerly awaited the start of the month by watching the for the crescent moon. For someone who has followed a “normal” western calendar system my entire life, seeing the people in my village sync their activities based on what moon appeared was a completely new experience. Frankly, I was shocked at how coordinated it all was.

The first night of Ramadan was probably my favorite. Typically, people pray 5 times each day, the 5^th prayer being right after dinner at the mosque, and the mosque being used exclusively by the men in my village. On this first night of Ramadan, however, as darkness fell and it was time for the 5^th prayer of the day, everyone (women included) started moving towards the mosque. The village turned into an oasis of darkness with little balls of light from flashlights bobbing along the pathways. Soon, every adult in my village had gathered at the mosque for what turned out to be an extremely lengthy prayer session to commence Ramadan. I was so intrigued that I wandered the perimeter for a few minutes just to listen. There was an eerie beauty to the moment – the darkness, communal praying, and melodious chanting. In that moment, I felt witness to a very intimate and special moment.

Thus began the month of Ramadan. I decided to try and follow along as strictly as possible, which meant 4:45am alarms and 5am breakfasts! Evening prayers continued to be much longer than usual and contained both men & women, though I stayed home during prayers! If I went into Tamba to the volunteer regional house for work I usually took that day off from fasting, but if I was in village I adhered to the no food/no water policy. My village was really excited that I was trying because they saw how much I wanted to experience their culture. They were also really good about cautioning me to take breaks and not fast on certain days if I got sick.

I managed to fast almost entirely the first half of the month before I became sick with some gastrointestinal issues (if you know what I mean!) that also turned into a bit of malnutrition. So I still woke early with my family to eat breakfast, but started sneaking small bits of food throughout the day if my appetite agreed!

As the month came to a close, it was hilarious to try and figure out when Ramadan would actually end. I kept asking, and the response everyone gave was “I don’t know. It depends on when the moon comes.” So each night we watched for the moon, and when the crescent shape finally appeared the kids in my compound went CRAZY! They were running around shouting and pointing at the moon. And immediately, just like that, prayers at the mosque returned to normal and Ramadan was over.

Next came the party! The day after Ramadan ended we had a village-wide celebration called Korite. The 2-3 days leading up to the expected end of Ramadan included many activities to prepare for the party, mainly for me another round of henna and getting my hair braided…not a cute look for me!

Getting my hair braided!

My village pooled money together to buy and slaughter a cow, a VERY big deal for us (though I only ate one tiny piece and left the meat for everyone else). The day started with a large village prayer session at our elementary school. 

Village Prayer Session

Then everyone cooked very fancy meals, shared food, and walked around the village to greet each other. It was a fun day to get dressed up and hang out with my family, but I was really glad to get back to a normal eating and sleeping schedule :)

My Host Dad & Mom #1

Me and My Work Counterpart Sadio

Mom #3 and Some Siblings

Yes, these kids ALL live in my compound!

Proof that my personality hasn't changed :)

My and one of my little sisters

 

BIG HAIR! This is what it looked like when my braids came out!

I’m back at our Peace Corps training center right now for a 2^nd round of training with my training class, a nice and needed break from village life!

Thanks for reading! Peace & love, Lindsay

The African Wedding that Went for Days

…literally, days long!

About 2 weeks before the actual event happened, my host family informed me that my 16-ish (age is usually unknown here) year old sister was going to get married. My emotions went in two directions at this point. One – super excited because I get to experience a wedding being held in my own home! Two – bummed that I will witness the reality in my own home of a 16-year old getting married, a very common occurrence in this country.

My family was very excited about me having a traditional appearance for this wedding, which usually includes a complet (the outfit they wear), braids, and henna. So the night before the wedding, my younger sister went to work applying henna on my feet.

The process here involves covering your feet in designs made out of strips of something resembling medical tape and then covering that with the henna paste. Then, you have to sit for a long time to let that sink in, but for whatever reason this also requires you to cover your feet in plastic bags while you wait?? So since it was nighttime already, I ended up sleeping with plastic bags on my feet for a night haha. The next morning (the day I was told the wedding would start), the bags were taken off and all of the henna paste scraped off. I thought this was the end, but THEN they cover your feet with a mixture of something called “manioc” and charcoal powder, which makes the henna black. You sit with that for another hour or two, and then you’re finally done! It’s supposed to turn completely black, but mine turned a combo of black and yellow, so I just looked like I had bruises all over my feet – eew. But my family, and in fact the entire village, loved it! Everyone noticed and was super excited I had henna on my feet. Though most of it has faded I still get lots of comments and I think it’s because my toenails are black right now so everyone knows I’ve had henna recently…

                                        

Look at the beautiful coloration...

The Finished Product!

By about noon no guests had shown up. So I kept asking when the wedding would start and was told “evening”…but around 6pm people just started to arrive, so there must have been some organization or method to the madness! People stayed all evening and we cooked dinner for them in this insanely large pot that the whole village shares for special occasions. Other women in the village came to our compound and were in charge of cooking all of the meals.

That's a lot of rice!

Our chefs

                                     

As the evening progressed, people just sat around and talked, and the young people turned on a radio and started dancing, but no one went home. Then as it got later, it became evidently clear to me that no one was going to leave, but that they were all staying at our house until the next day. So mats got pulled out and people pretty much slept wherever.

The next day, the festivities continued as usual. People sat around and talked, people listened to music, and there was food! At one point all of the young girls gathered my sister’s clothes and went to the well to wash them. Apparently when you get married and move to your husband’s village, you leave all of your old clothes behind and only take new things with you. So we washed her clothes and then left them in the hut.

Carrying my sister's clothes to the well

                                                 

And then it came time for my sister to leave for her husband’s village. I thought there would be some ceremony or event, but the groom didn’t even come to our village for this portion of the wedding. When it was time to leave, a large vehicle pulled up with some of the groom’s friends. The men said lots of prayers and then my sister was loaded into the car with her eyes shielded. They then loaded up all of her belongings, and any of the guests that wanted to go to the groom’s village PILED in (I didn’t go to this part – it was kinda far and my host dad was a bit worried about me attending). From what I understand, the groom’s village is pretty much a replica of what happened in our village: talking, eating, dancing.

My host sister sitting with her head covered while prayers are said

Being carried to the car

People waiting to pile in

So for one day our compound quieted down and then after one day of festivities in the groom’s village, they all came back! The car pulled in again and all of these women, minus my sister, unloaded. They stayed one more night at our house and on the 4^th day finally started to return home. Once everyone had left, the silence was heaven. I obviously stuck out through all of this so everyone wanted to talk to me – my Pulaar got a workout which also meant I was extremely tired at the end of every day!

Overall the experience was not quite what I had expected. The event seemed almost sterile to me because no one really paid any attention to the bride. It was a gathering because of her but that didn’t seem to matter. And when it was time to leave for the groom’s village, neither my host mom or host dad went along, nor did they say goodbye to her. Considering that in Senegal, not a lot of travel happens between villages, even a 10K move can mean months before you see each other again, so I found this particularly sad. My village loved my outfit though and people are constantly asking me why I’m not wearing my complet! 

My host mom and me

It was a great adventure in terms of cultural integration!

Thanks for reading! Peace & love, Lindsay

The Village Life

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.

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.

My sister-in-law Aminata and Miriama

Mehta & Ansata

Kumba, Mehta, and Miriatou

Baboyel

My host brother Alfa

Sitting inside during the rain storm

My host sister, also Aminata, and Weli's daughter Kaciatou

My host brother Ousmann

Hanging out at the compound

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!

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!

The center of our compound flooded after 1 rain

Thanks for reading! Peace & Love, Lindsay