8.4.11

the big reveal!

Just a quick note - we received our site announcements yesterday! I am going to be living in the Kaolack region of Senegal for the next two years! I am very, very excited, but I am about to head back to my training village right now, so I just wanted to let you all know where my new home is! I promise some more details when I get back!

6.4.11

a day in the (village) life

Just got back from a two week stint in my training village, and let me tell you two weeks is a long time! Not complaining though, I have a really great family and I actually had a really good two weeks. I'm going to try to give you all a little snapshot of my crazy new life -

Every morning at 5:30 I am woken up by the call to prayer, which blasts out of the speakers of our neighborhood mosque. Breakfast is pretty routine for me - instant coffee with about half of a baguette, and if I'm really lucky I get some chocolate spread or some laughing cow cheese to go with. I know that that might sound pretty tasty, but after a month straight of the same thing I am pretty over it. The girls in my village and I have a running joke that we are so desperate for some eggs in the a.m. that we are going to invest in some chickens. Not even kidding, that is probably going to happen, so I guess I should hone my chicken raising skills. The food is pretty tasty, but rather monotonous and definitely lacking in protein. We have maalo fo lip, which is rice and fish, everyday for lunch. I almost always enjoy it because the sauces that they put in are super tasty. There are two versions of a mango sauce, one which is made with tomatoes, that I LOVE. Seriously, anything with mango is tasty, tasty, tasty.

We have language class twice a day, which isn't super exciting, but our other activities have been pretty interesting. My favorite thing in the village so far is our garden at the school. Since I am an Environmental Education volunteer, I have to be able to plant something! This is basically our practice garden, but it has been really fun learning all the techniques here! Since the soil here is so degraded and lacking nutrients (sand, basically) we have this process called double digging, where we dig deep into the subsoil and mix in additives like charcoal, ash, dried leaves, manure and neem leaves, which have a natural insect repellent. After that, we had to wait about a week for the soil to solidify up again, and then we seeded and transplanted. We have a good mix of veggies and trees in the garden, including lettuce, eggplant, hot pepper, onion, cucumber, okra, bissap, turnip, and carrots. We also have a tree pepinere going with a few varieties of local trees. It may seem a little humdrum, but gardening has probably become my favorite part of my day!

We were also able to observe a Senegalese class one day and visit the local health post to observe monthly baby weighings and vaccinations. The school visit was interesting, since I will probably be doing alot of my work within the school system. The classes are vastly overcrowded here, and memorization is the key to everything here, versus analysis and comprehension. In terms of our garden, which is at the school, the students all seem pretty interested in helping, though that may have more to do with us being weird toubabs and not the garden haha. The health visit was really interesting as well, and I was able to play with alot of little babies, so of course that was a good time. We were able to observe the methods that they use to track malnutrition and vaccinations, and talk with some mothers in out very limited seereer about their views on maternal health. Really, our two observations were pretty limited due to our lack of language skills, but I really enjoyed being introduced to the apparatuses within which I will be working.

On the social side, my village is pretty low key - getting a fanta after class is about as exciting as it gets. This past weekend, however, our village had five weddings in one day. Seemed to us like kind of alot to jam into one day, but who knows the rational behind it. The wedding, which is "ngulook" in seereer, was CRAZY with a capital C. I started the day being dressed up in some Senegalese garb - a pange, which is like a large piece of fabric that you wrap around as a skirt and a rather oversized shirt in matching fabric. I look incredibly ridiculous, but I took a picture so you can all enjoy. The day was really like a flash of dancing, singing, drumming and eating - SO MUCH EATING. It was really good food though, so I enjoyed immensely and ate far more than I needed too.

Nothing else too exciting has really happened, but we get our site announcements tomorrow, so I'll put up another quick blurb about my village and the region that I will be living in.

Miss and love you all!