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

The BIG Move - Installation Day

Well tomorrow is the big day when I finally move into my permanent village site! I arrived in the regional capital of Tambacounda on Sunday with all of my belongings in tow. Peace Corps has regional houses in many regions across Senegal where Peace Corps volunteers can gather periodically for meetings, use the internet, cook an American meal, and just generally hang out. We have one in Tamba, so that's where I've been for the past 2 nights.

There is one other new volunteer, Dario, installing out of Tamba as well. When we got here on Sunday, we were met by a few current volunteers who have been in charge of taking us around to buy anything we need. For many of you, it will come as no surprise that I've already been made fun of for my incessant list-making: 1 shopping list, 1 list of furniture to get made in village, 1 list of things to do tomorrow, etc.  It has been pretty intense though trying to purchase everything you think you might need for the next 2 years, at least the big stuff. So GO LISTS!!!

Tomorrow morning, a couple of Peace Corps staff members will arrive at the Tamba regional house to take Dario and I to our sites. First we will go around to a number of important members of the Tamba community to introduce ourselves - the police chief, the equivalent of the major, the regional hospital chief since we're both health volunteers. Then it's go time! I'll get driven to my village with all of my possessions, introduced to my family, and then left.

My village is only about 10K from the regional capital, so if I forget something or want to use internet, it's only about a 30 minute bike ride into the city. In that regard, I have it much easier than many other volunteers. Dario is actually based in the regional capital so it's nice to have a friend located so close to my site. In my village, I will finally have my own hut and bathroom. After two months of living out of suitcases, moving around a lot, and sharing all of my space, I am excited to have a hut to call my own. It is in my family's compound, but I can paint it and really nest! No electricity, but my family does have a solar panel (pretty fancy for a village!) so they have a few lights around at night.

I think I should feel more nervous right now than I do, but honestly I am very excited! My language has a long way to go, but I'm a big fan of the immersion technique because I think it works, so I'm confident my language will just continue to improve! Also excited to start learning more about my village and gathering ideas for what I can do to improve the health of my community.

Next stop - Saare Aladji, population 750!

Thanks for reading. Peace & love.

NEW ADDRESS!

Sorry for 2 posts in one day, but I want to make sure everyone has my new address. This is where any mail for me should be sent for the next 2 years :)

PCV Lindsay Swisher
BP 320
Tambacounda, Senegal
West Africa

I've also updated it on the right-hand pane with the rest of my contact information!

Tomorrow It Becomes Official!

So it's finally the end of our 9-week training. I swear in tomorrow as an official Peace Corps Volunteer at the US Ambassador's residence in Dakar. Training has been a very intense time, if nothing else because the schedule is so packed full of sessions, activities, home stays, and tests that you have no time to stop and really process anything. It has been a whirlwind that I have loved.

Last weekend I stayed with my training host family for the last time. It was just a 3 night stay, so the time flew by, but it was great to visit with them again before I move to Tamba. There have been a few times during my stays with them that I get really irritated by the kids because they constantly want to touch my stuff, and a lot of times they do it without asking! But then I remind myself that they are just genuinely curious about almost everything I have because it is so new/shiny/intriguing. My parents sent me balloons to give to my host siblings during my last stay, and I have never seen a group of people enjoy balloons as much as these kids. After we blew them up, they wanted to untie them so they could save them for later. My language skills have been improving, but I had a really hard time explaining that balloons don't really work like that! It was a wonderful reminder to look at the pleasure in even the simplest of things, something this family has constantly been teaching me these last 2 months.

My Siblings and Their Balloons!

Saying goodbye to my host family the morning I departed their house was by far the hardest day I've had in country so far. However, I know I'll come back to visit them as often as I can. It was fun though because that afternoon, Peace Corps hosted a family party where a few members of our host families got to come to the training center in Thies for a thank you celebration. We had a great time eating, dancing, and listening to Senegalese drummers. My family even brought me a very incredible and humbling gift of a traditional Senegalese outfit. I put it on and my mom was so thrilled! I know my family doesn't have much, and this gesture moved me beyond words (especially trying to express gratitude in Pulaar!).

My namesake and me at the Family Party

My host mom, namesake, and me in my new outfit

In addition to saying goodbye to my host family, I also have to say goodbye to my language group in a few days. This may be even harder because I have grown really close with these people and they are my support system in this country that I see and talk to every day. I am pretty bummed to be living about 6 hours on average away from all of them, but it gives me lots of excuses to travel around other parts of the country. We all got matching clothes made that we wore to the family party on our last official day of language training, so I also have a skirt now to remind me of them!

My language group

I can't believe that 9 weeks has flown by so quickly. I'm beyond excited to swear in as a Peace Corps Volunteer tomorrow. Of course it's also daunting because, on the 14th, I get dropped off in my village with all of my belongings and that's where I'll live for the next 2 years. I feel like I've done so much already that sometimes it's hard to believe there is another 2 years to come!

Thanks for reading. Peace & love.

My New Home! (for 2 years...)

Well I just returned from a 16-day stay with my training host family sans internet. I actually wrote this post well before then (April 9^th) but couldn’t connect to the internet at our training center so am posting it now.

I did indeed find out my permenant site! While I assumed I would be moving to Kolda, the region in the south of Senegal where most of the Fulakunda speakers live, I’ll actually be moving to Tambacounda, a region in the middle part of the country over to the east. I am the only person from my language training group moving there. Tamba is one of the largest regions in Senegal, but there are only 17 Peace Corps volunteers based there, so there is lots of opportunity for collaboration. The region has 1 economic development volunteer, 5-6 health volunteers (including me), and the rest are all focused on agriculture work.

I will be based in Saare Aladji (Aladji Village), population around 750.  I got to visit my village for one night and meet my new host family. My host father is the chief of our village and he has 3 wives, all of whom live in our compound with their respective children. This will be very different from my training homestay since I was in a 1-wife household then.

In this setting, I will have my own hut within our compound rather than a room within the main building. I still don’t have electricity, though our house has a solar panel so we have minor light in the evenings and a place to charge my cell phone. I can paint my room, so stay tuned for pictures once I move in – I’ve got some big ideas :)

My New Hut - view from the backyard!

Sunrise view from my backyard :)

The Volunteer who has been serving in my village for the last 2 years

I will move into my permanent site sometime around May 15^th, and then the true work begins!

A Life Without Internet...

INTERNET!!! Let me say, this post was originally written on April 1st. Due to internet I'm a bit behind in posting...

First off, let me say that I’m SO sorry for the delay in updates! My life has been very intense lately, mainly due to a very busy training schedule and some home stays with no internet.

A few key points first:

1.     I now have a Senegalese phone number! You can call me at 77-489-0308 (the country code for Senegal is 221). My parents have been buying credit on Skype and calling me that way, but I’m not sure of the cost. I can receive and send texts as well, but probably on a sparingly basis due to cost.

2.     I did manage to keep my cell phone number in the States. I converted it to Google Voice, so if you send me a text or call me on my old number, I’ll still get it! It’s actually really fun to get voicemails because they get emailed to me and I can listen to them :) I can’t call back but I can text back via email.

Ok – now for the fun stuff! Since I’ve last written, I’ve gotten lots of details about my life!

I am officially learning Fulakunda, a dialect of the Pulaar language. I’m happy to be learning a dialect of Pulaar because variations of this language are spoken in a lot of other West African countries.

For 15 of the last 20 days I’ve been doing community based training, which means that we get split into small language groups with 1 instructor, and then taken into villages where we live with host families. There are 2 other Peace Corps trainees in my group, and our instructor is a Senegalese native who is my age, so we all get along really well.

My Language Group! Nathan, Boubacar, and Randi

When I arrived in the village of Samba Laobe, I could speak about 6 sentences in Pulaar, mainly greetings, but was dropped off at my host family’s house. I was instantly greeted with huge smiles and the shouting of my new name, Rama Kande. In the Senegalese culture, it is common to have a namesake, someone in your community or family after whom you are named. So, my namesake is my 5 year old sister, Rama Kande – super cute but comes with a serious 5-year old attitude!

My and my namesake Rama

In my compound, there are about 15 people. I have my own room but share the toilet and shower facilities (which are located outside) with everyone else. The toilet took some getting used to since it’s just a hole in the ground, but there’s no roof, so one advantage of that is getting to see the stars and moon at night while you’re peeing haha. (Sanibel crew – the stars here are incredible and I think of you all often when I look at them! SO bright!)

The experience with my family has been absolutely amazing. Imagine allowing a complete stranger to move into your house, occupy a room, and essentially become a member of your family. Now imagine that this person spoke no more of the language than a 2 year old! This was me just 15 days ago, and the hospitality my family showed to me was without a doubt one of the most gracious things I have ever experienced.

My Neene

My Baaba

My Wonderful Senegalese Family

My typical schedule is as follows:

7:30am – 8:45am Wake up, eat breakfast, leave for language class

9:00am – 1:30pm Language class at my instructor’s house (in his sandy yard that contains about 20 goats and 10 chickens…needless to say a DRASTIC change from my cubicle at Discover)

2:30pm Eat Lunch – I eat every meal with my hands, and I eat LOTS of rice. I haven’t gotten sick of having the same meal over and over yet, but after 2 years I may never want to look at rice again

3:00pm – 5:00pm Relax/Make Attaya – The afternoon is just too hot to do anything, so most people stay inside during this time. They either take an afternoon rest or make attaya, the traditional tea in Senegal. It’s a 3 cup process that takes about 2 hours to complete. I’m learning to master the process, but I’ve got some practice to do!

5:00pm – 7:00pm Either more language class or some Peace Corps activity with the other 2 people in my language group and our instructor

7:00pm – 8:30pm Hang out with my family/help make dinner

8:30pm Eat Dinner (This took some getting used to because I was so incredibly hungry this late at night)

9:00 Hang out with my sisters and practice Pulaar or dancing. They think my attempt at dancing is hilarious, but I’m learning lots of good Senegalese moves!

I have no electricity in my house at all, and no running water. So at night if I want to read or need to study, I use my headlamp (thanks sis – it’s getting tons of use!).  My family usually goes to the well every morning and stocks up on water for the day that we keep in large plastic tubs – I run all mine through a filter before drinking, don’t worry! I have been surprisingly comfortable with this drastic lifestyle change, but I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had a lot of time to even think about not having electricity or internet.

A couple of other pics because they're fun!

Jemmi, Me, and Samba

Carrying our baby Samba on my back

A few things I have missed:

1.     News – I have very little idea of what’s going on in the world and that is a struggle for me!

2.     Broccoli – So weird, but I want some! There are veggies here but I haven’t seen any broccoli yet.

3.     March Madness – Even though my team didn’t make it (womp womp) I still crave sitting with a great IPA and watching some basketball

I am truly loving this experience though and am so happy with the decision I have made to take my life in this different direction. I find out my permanent soon and then will be traveling for 4 days to visit the volunteer I’ll be replacing, so exciting news to come!

Peace and love to all! Thanks for reading.

Well It's Real!

Hi all! Just a quick note to let you know I'm safely in Senegal. It was quite an adventure to get here, starting with my Detroit to Philadelphia flight being canceled. But it wouldn't be Peace Corps without testing our flexibility from the very beginning!

We landed in Dakar, Senegal on Wednesday afternoon and were then driven to the Peace Corps training center in Thiès (pronounced kind of like Chess but with a z sound on the end) which will be our home base over the next 9 weeks. Starting next week, we'll be leaving the training center in small groups of about 4-5 people to do intensive language training sessions. I still don't know where I'll be permanently placed within the country, but once we get assigned a language to learn then I'll at least know the region where I will be based. We haven't done any language study yet but I'm getting eager to learn. My French has come in handy a few times though :)

From Wednesday until today we were confined to the compound that houses our training center. For security reasons, the Peace Corps staff doesn't allow new volunteers to leave the compound until we've been given some basic safety and security instructions, and then given a guided tour of the city. SO, today we finally got to leave the compound and take a tour of Thiès, something I'd been eager to do since we got here!

I had all of these visualizations about what the city would look like outside of our gated compound, and none of them compared to the real thing. Pictures to come in the near future, but for now I'll just say there's lots to take in and a lot to learn about this new culture. We did stop in a Bon Marche, the stomping grounds for people buying Western food and toiletries (for my study abroad friends, you would have loved this place! It was just like France, and I found SO many things I remembered loving in Rouen!). I think visits to Thiès in the future will be accompanied with a stop here to stock up on comfort food - good to identify this place early on!

More pictures and details of my new life to come soon!