Kids these days

I had seen many adult street preachers before, yelling at the top of their lungs on a crowded Kampala streets during the day. I had been told it was kind of a recent trend, but I had never seen a child doing it. The other night, I was at a bar with a friend when two kids, making an awful lot of noise started walking toward the sidewalk terrace we were on. I asked permission to take video before I started and talked to the kid after while showing him the video. He looked to be about 8 or 9, out after dark on a school night, toting an English bible and yelling until he was hoarse about "Jesus!" and "the Lord!" and "Hallelujah!" - though, of course, like any kid his age, he was having a hard time pronouncing that last one. He was wearing his school uniform so I knew at least he was in school during the day. I asked him if he knew how to read English yet, he said no. I asked him if he knew many stories from the bible, he mentioned one that I couldn't quite understand. In trying to find out if an adult had put him up to it, he seemed adamant that it was his choice to be out, in down town Kampala with his friend at 9:00 at night. I gave him some change to get home with public transportation instead of walking. They stuck around a little while, doing their thing, and then made their way up the street, preaching to other sinners.

On! On!

A friend that I made here through Ultimate Frisbee happens to be, from what I have witnessed, the mascot for the local Hash House Harriers group, he’s been doing it since he was a young kid. That, and the fact that my dad was pretty active in the local Hash group when I was growing up made it only a matter of time before I started hashing. For those of you unfamiliar with the group; the lore tells us that it was started in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia by a group of British ex-pats in 1938 as a way to run off their weekend hangovers. For each weekly run, a different path is marked through different neighborhoods by intermittent symbols and splotches in chalk or powder. Some of the intersections contain false directions so when the front-runners (front-running bastards) discover the path is false, they double back and warn everyone that it’s the wrong way. There are also hooks that require the FRBs to double back until they reach the last runner and then start back on the forward path. There are check points where everyone meets up for a few minutes, maybe sings a vulgar song or two, rests a little and then continues on together. I’m actually still getting the hang of the rules but by the time I get baptized with my “hash handle,” the alias that each person gets after they’ve run several hashes, it should be all good. I should also be in great shape; if I haven’t mentioned it already, Kampala is situated on seven rather large hills, this means that no hash is truly complete without a monster climb or two. Following each run newcomers are introduced and made to chug a beer, whoever invited them is made to chug a beer, “sinners” are made to chug a beer, and many people are sprayed with beer or water for one reason or another. This “drinking club with a running problem” has been active in Kampala for quite a while, the runs that I have done so far are numbers 1258-1260 so by my calculations of weekly Monday hashes with once-a-month Saturday hash, that makes about 21 years of hashing here in Kampala. I’m sure I’ll enjoy my 1.

The NGO Meeting

The other day Harry and I went to the monthly meeting of the directors of many different NGOs with offices in Kampala. We had been invited to the meeting by the director of Care Uganda and at the meeting there were representatives of about 15 other NGOs including Oxfam, Christian Children’s Fund and others. We were given a few minutes for Harry to make a presentation on what we are doing here between their discussions of IDP (Internally Displaced Persons - much like refugees but who haven't left their home country) camps, AIDS orphans and how to deal with unwarranted bad publicity from host-country politicians. Harry gave his short presentation and before he was even finished, people were offering to buy the lamps and panels that we had with us. They were very interested in offering the lamps as part of packages for the communities they are serving, especially the IDPs who are receiving assistance to move back home. The directors purchased the lamps so they could test them with their communities but left saying that if they worked out they would be buying hundreds or even thousands of lamps in the coming months, great news for BASE Technologies!

Making Like Moses

The other weekend, on the advice of another ex-pat, my colleague, Harry, and I went rafting on the Nile for the day. We had been told that there were only a couple months left to experience the Victoria Nile in its current state because of a dam they are currently working on that will flood the area, displacing some communities and effectively covering two of the class-5 rapids on the river including Bujagali Falls. The dam is being built to provide hydro-electricity for Uganda and the surrounding countries, though it’ll likely not be nearly enough to stop the power-shedding or rolling blackouts that are common here.

The source of the Victoria Nile (which eventually joins with the White Nile and the Blue Nile to form the Nile in Egypt that we all learned about) is in a city called Jinja, about a 2-hour drive East from Kampala. We got up early, grabbed the sunscreen and shorts that they told us to bring and made our way to town to meet the bus that would take us to Jinja. After a couple delays thanks to a semi that had tipped over in our path we made it to the rafting company campsite. Before we got our boats, there were a couple people who wanted to take the opportunity to bungee jump (another offering of the rafting company’s). Each jumper gets the choice whether or not to be dipped into the Nile and whether or not to be clothed. A friend has confirmed that if your first jump is naked, your second is free of charge.

We got in the rafts and learned the commands that our boat leader would be shouting throughout the day, practiced flipping the raft and then we were off. One passenger in our boat happened to be a relatively experienced rafter – having rafted on a couple different continents, he informed us that he had heard that the rapids we were to be rafting were the roughest commercial rapids in the world. Our guide, a Brazilian, has been traveling the world, finding work as a rafting guide where he can, South America, North America, Europe and now Africa. His reason for being in Uganda at this point was also to enjoy the Nile before it is forever changed by this dam.

During the day we had four class-5 rapids with some paddling, political talk and a lunch break on and island in between. We paddled past boys swimming and playing, women and girls washing clothes in the river, river otters and some truly stunning views. Earlier in the day one of the kids in our raft had been tossed out by a rapid but besides that we had all remained in the raft until the final set of rapids of the day – Itanda – “The Bad Place”. We set out with the goal of no flipping for the entire day, a feat that’s not too easy. We paddled up to it, our guide told us to “get down!” I started to take shelter in the interior of the raft, between the inflatable benches and before I knew it the opposite side of the raft was coming down on me and I was under water, tumbling as if I was inside a washing machine, doing my best not to let go of my oar so it wouldn’t get lost. Eventually my life-jacket popped me up and I scanned the water for the rest of my raft mates. Everyone was fine, some were a little shaken by the flipping experience but I was simply in awe of the river’s power and glad I had the chance to really experience the Nile.

Fresh

In two words, the produce here is ample and delicious. There are several kinds of banana, sweet potato, mangoes, papayas, watermelon, pumpkin, tomato, ginger and best of all, avocado. The other day we were “up-country” – which I have learned means anywhere outside Kampala, and we stopped at a roadside stand for produce. We bought two large papayas, a watermelon, four mangoes, four big sweet potatoes, a gigantic bunch of huge bananas (about 20 of them), a bagful of tomatoes and three beautiful avocados which all together cost us 7500 Ugandan Shillings or the equivalent of $4.61.

I have had a couple chances to try Ugandan food since I’ve been here. The staples are rice, corn, sweet potato and matoke – like mashed plantains. The matoke is not currently a favorite of mine, it is quite pasty and doesn’t taste like much so you have to drown it in sauce. They have a peanut sauce that is very common here too, and I finally got to try some today at lunch. My verdict is that it’s not quite as nice as Awa Sy’s in Senegal, but it’s still pretty good.

The other nice surprise for me has been the weather. The climate has been more or less perfect since I arrived. I’m not certain about temperatures but it hasn’t been higher than 85 (27C). Who knew living on the equator would be so comfortable?

Month 1 in Uganda

It’s been almost a month and I’ve gotten started at work, moved into an apartment and I’m really settling into life in Kampala. Work is coming along, I’m much more familiar with the project and my role here now which is officially called “Recruitment and Training Manager.” To give you the gist of it, Barefoot Power is here to establish a Ugandan joint venture, which we’ve decided to call Base Technologies. Base will be setting up an training a network of local entrepreneurs who will go around to rural communities to make the Firefly lamps and solar panels available to the people in order to replace the kerosene they are currently using for lighting. After 2-3 months, the lamp will pay for itself in saved kerosene expenditure and it’s obviously cleaner, safer and brighter then the lanterns. Beyond the lamps, Base is aiming to make appropriate technologies to the population at the “bottom of the pyramid” (the poor who make up the vast majority of the population in most countries and world wide). We’ve been meeting with various NGOs and other organizations who may be interested in working with us and through them we have plans to take on a few entrepreneurs to start out and take a test run with the training, the entrepreneurs and the product actually in the field. The feedback we’ve been getting on the product has been overwhelmingly positive, so it’s looking promising and hopefully, from our experience here, we will be able to develop model to use in other countries in the future. I’m now working on developing the training materials and resources, along with other odds and ends.

I’ve moved into an apartment that is shared with two brits, Malcolm and Samantha. Malcolm is a freelance journalist mostly working for Al Jazeera and Samantha has been working on some television programming and films here. The apartment is out of town a little ways, toward Lake Victoria – I can actually see a small sliver of it from my balcony. The neighborhood is quiet and very green. That balcony actually overlooks a swamp of sorts, though from what I can see, it may as well be a nice green field.

Kampala has proven to be an astonishingly livable city in my first weeks here. There are many more western amenities than in Dakar. There is are a couple shopping malls, a movie theater where I was able to see “Sex and the City” a couple weeks ago, alhumdulilah! Several great restaurants; Indian, Japanese, French, Ghanaian and an Irish pub where there is actually pub quiz every other Thursday – yes! We showed up to the quiz after a long day of driving to the southwest corner of Uganda and back, the pub was crowded with ex-pats and Ugandans, but we joined a team and won. We got the prizes of t-shirts, a case of beer and the honor of writing the next quiz – oh and free drinks all night long for the night we host that quiz. Can you guess where I’ll be every other Thursday from now on?

Finally, I have a P.O. Box and phone number now so if you’d like them, or if you have any questions about what I’ve written, just shoot me an email. Becca[dot]Schwartz[at]gmail.com

Here are a few of the many monkeys that hang out at a hotel we visited in Entebbe(and a couple of my co-workers).

Petrol

Before I left the U.S. one of the major things on everyone’s minds was the price of gas. With truckers striking, price hikes every other day and the issue mentioned on the news just about every day; it was evident that people think it is a big problem. It took a voyage of thousands of miles and talking to a few people here to see that gas prices in the U.S. are still just half the price of those here in Uganda (prices are about 2600 shillings per liter which ends up being about $6.40/gallon). U.S. prices are also still cheaper than European prices. It really demonstrated to me how easy it was to get wrapped up in the informational fortress of the U.S. where almost nothing else can get in. It seems to have become a part of the national psyche to be so self-involved and self-focused that nothing outside the U.S. and Iraq even registers anymore unless it’s a natural disaster or other act killing thousands of people. Do Americans really know what’s going on in the world? Or how other people live?

Wedding fundraising

I got to witness an interesting Ugandan phenomenon last night. I was waiting with my hosts for the daily, evening, horrendously-bad traffic jam to dissipate a little so we could actually drive home and we happened to be at the National Theater in Kampala. They mentioned that there was a nice crafts market inside so we wandered around "window" shopping a little. eventually we made our way around the building and there was a group of people having a meeting in one of the rooms. It turns out that Harrison and Audrey knew some of them so we went in. I soon found out that what was going on was a meeting for a couples future wedding. Weddings in Uganda - like those in the U.S. are expensive and almost no one can pay out of pocket for all the expenses, so they hold fund raising meetings with friends and family in order to have enough money to pay - and yes, these same people who give at these meetings are expected to bring a gift on the day of the wedding too.

This meeting was in the form of an auction, the likes of which I have never seen before, but along with the sandwich maker on auction, people were bidding to try to make others in the room do silly things. Sing the national anthem, dance while the other was singing, sit on someone else's lap, get the mazunga(white person) to sit next to the other mazunga(there happened to be a Japanese guy sitting at the back). So none of these things actually happened because others would bid to cancel previous motions. Another motion involving myself involved the "chairman" buying a bag of fried grasshoppers from a vendor passing by, for the mazunga - Becca, and for Becca to eat said grasshoppers, or at least one. I pulled the vegetarian card because I didn't want my first time knowingly eating a prepared insect to be in front of a crowd - hooting and hollering. Later I told my hosts that I'd try it some other time, when the audience was smaller.

First days in Uganda

Arriving at Entebbe Airport I was stiff from 17+ hours of air travel, sleep-deprived and nursing a throat and sinus issue that had conveniently started the night before I left Wisconsin. Even with all this and the fact that it was pitch black out when I landed, I could tell that I was going to like Uganda.

My luggage thankfully made it through despite two plane transfers in two different countries and my hosts, Harrison and Audrey, graciously picked me up and the airport. They welcomed me like old friends and as I stepped out of the airport the warm, humid air seemed familiar, even though I have never been here before.

On the ride home there was some swerving in and out of traffic – something I got used to in Senegal. I was probably slightly more nervous because I was sitting in the seat that I normally think of as the driver’s; fortunately the steering wheel was on Harrison’s side. The driveway leading to Harrison and Audrey’s apartment is possibly the steepest I have ever seen, it was even difficult for me to negotiate on foot, both up and down the following day. That night I gulped down some fresh passion fruit juice thanks to Audrey and got to bed to try to sleep off whatever I had.

In the morning I woke up to a gorgeous view from the balcony. Lush, green hills dotted with red tile roofs and red exposed earth where houses are being built. I could see a couple small banana trees in a neighbor’s yard and down in the valley there were cars on their way to Kampala. Somewhere lower on the hillside there was someone, a shop maybe, that has loud talk radio that can be heard throughout the day.

I took it easy for most of the day, still trying to get better but I did end up walking to the other side of the hill to hit up a bank and go to the supermarket to buy ingredients for a Senegalese meal for my new Ugandan friends. I can already tell that I’m making too many comparisons between Senegal and Uganda, I don’t want to be the kid that moves to a new school but can’t stop talking about her old school. I’ll keep the comparisons to a minimum until I get to know Uganda better, mostly because I’ve learned that first perceptions in a new culture are often wrong.

The first photo is of my host, Harrison on his balcony outside Kampala and the second is of the taxi stop in down town Kampala, on the hill you can see the newly opened mosque, started by Idi Amin, finished by Colonel Kadafi.

Information

During the flight from Amsterdam, we flew over Sudan from North to South, I think we even got relatively close to the troubled Darfur region. When I looked out of the plane window, all I could see was desert with one or two rocky hills, there was no evidence, at that height, of the problems that are still going on there. Sudan is one of the few African countries that is occasionally mentioned in the U.S. news, recently South Africa and Zimbabwe have also made the news thanks to the terrible things happening there. It reminded me of an interview I heard recently with a Nigerian actor/director. He was saying that the west has the perception of Africa as a place of war, famine, disease and poverty. He has a point; Africa is very rarely in the U.S. news unless some disaster (natural or otherwise) has occurred. But then again, Africa is really not the only region with this status, I can’t ever remember hearing the name Myanmar (or Burma for that matter) on the news before the cyclone a few weeks ago. Really, if it’s not happening in the U.S., Iraq, Afghanistan or China (mainly because we’re so afraid they will replace us at the top of the pecking order) it is passed over by the evening news in favor of the latest celebrity or political gossip.

As I’m typing this, I am watching Aljazeera. In the hour that I’ve been watching, they have reported news from North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Seeing coverage like this makes it clear how internally focused we are in the U.S. and how much power the media has in our culture.

Home Sweet (and cold) Home

You know it's been too long when you're thankful that the password you flat out guessed actually worked to sign you into your blog. It's been 6 months, 18 (or so)countries many degrees no matter if you use Fahrenheit or Celsius, many, many great new friends, and several inches of snow, and I'm back in the neighborly mid-west of the U.S. of A. I am now an RPCV - since I have Returned from the Peace Corps. Today I helped cook Mafe, a West African dish, for the umpteenth time since leaving Senegal, though since it wasn't eated from a big bowl with hands or serving spoons, it was served over brown rice and no one said "Bismilah" before we started it only bared a small respmblance to the Mafe I knew in Sara Ndiougary, Kaolack, Senegal. I also got sucked into the television today, something that tends to happen when I'm unemployed and without purpose and in the US. Why is it so easy to sit and watch people that I don't even like or movies I've seen several times for 4, 5, 6 hours at a time?

Chim!!

"Chim!" is just one of the many Wolof exclamations I have picked up and now use probably much more frequently than I should. In fact I was using this other one, pronounced kind of like you're clearing your throat of phlegm (khay!), so much that my host-family had a mini-intervention, telling me I was using it too much. The loose translation is "What the hell?!" To which the response - if those around you think you are overreacting is "Jamm" - peace. If you have been in my presence lately, chances are you heard some of these things. Anyway, I digress; the reason for the title of this blog is that it has been well over a month since I posted anything. - Chim!

It has started raining, a lot, in Kaolack. The other day I was in town, at a friends shop as the downpour started. The street soon turned into a rushing river of sorts and everyone did their best to find shelter. The folks in the shops near my friend's soon saw and took their opportunity to get rid of the trash that had accumulated in their establishments; sending it right on down the street-river and eventually into the actual river that runs through my town. Needless to say I was appalled and didn't bother trying to hold my tongue but this didn't matter in the least.

Among the quirky things I've noticed when it rains; many people here are really afraid of getting their heads wet - they could be walking through a torrent, no umbrella - nothing to protect their clothes or faces from the rain, but they'll have a plastic bag tied neatly around the top of the head to keep it dry. Most people seem to think that if the rain gets your head wet - you will get sick, not exactly true but probably doesn't hurt for them to think this.

Also, goats hate rain. As soon as it even starts to sprinkle you will see goats in a full sprint, searching for the cover of a tree or un-inhabited building. I know its mean but I find a sort of joy in chasing them out of their shelter and back into the rain, it usually doesn't work for long though - their clever devils.

What's not so quirky or funny, at least not to me at the time was the aftermath of the storm in the market. If you haven't read about it before - Kaolack is a filthy, poo-covered hole with trash piled high that volunteers lovingly call "the cesspool on the Saloum." So when it rains all this filth takes on liquid form and floods large portions of the city. The market is a particularly filthy and particularly flood-prone place and that's exactly where I found myself. At first I was trying my best not to step into water deeper than the soles of my shoes, when that proved too difficult I had no choice but to bite the bullet and step on in, hoping the parasites didn't think my feet looked like a great place to party. No signs of Creeping Eruption yet and I will be getting tested for Schistosomiasis before I leave here, but I'll keep you updated on my parasite prognosis.

Change in Routine Part II

I have been back in Senegal now for about a week and a half from my little vacation to Madison. Before I left I felt a little apprehensive about what to expect but sure enough, the USA I left is very much the same one that greeted me when I arrived back. There was no reverse culture shock, there was just annoyance at the old American habits of consuming more than necessary and wasting much more than necessary that stuck out more than they used to. In Senegal, even though its very difficult to find a street that doesn’t have a major litter problem by American standards, the waste is very little relatively. Everything is consumed by people or animals and reusable parts are reused until they will absolutely not function anymore and then they become great toys for kids.

Anyway, my trip was great. I got to see parents, grandparents, both my sisters, an aunt, an uncle, some cousins, and a few friends. To the shock and awe of many volunteers I also managed to seek out the Senegalese community in Madison and went to a baby-naming ceremony too. Despite the travel difficulties I had getting back to Senegal (involving a 24 hour delay added onto a trip that was already supposed to take more than 24 hours, all in airports or airplanes) I am glad that I made the trip and I am now ready to dig in and finish up the remaining months of my service. With 20 months under my belt, the remaining 4 or so will seem like no time at all.

Change in Routine Part I

Routine is something that many PCVs come to depend on, living in a strange country with unfamiliar people and culture, being able to count on something is a small thing that really means a lot to many of us. The birds that live near my house also apparently value routine. Their routine involved coming to the windows on either side of my bed at about 6:30 in the morning and proceeding to flutter and peck loudly on the window pretty consistently until about 4 in the afternoon. This not only left my sill covered in poo but it also left me feeling quite angry that my routine of sleeping until my alarm goes off was broken. I’m not sure why the birds do this instead of say, searching for food to eat at some point during the day, maybe fighting with one’s reflection in glass is more important than eating to these birds. I tried to get them to stop by using a piece of duct tape to suggest that the window a shiny surface and not their mortal enemy but they just used that as a new perch from which to launch their attacks. I also tried draping the decorative iron bars in cassette tape – a remedy told to me by another PCV. Farmers put it in the fields sometimes to deter birds from eating the seeds or crops. And though I was careful to pick out the absolute worst tapes from the regional house I guess it is the sound the tape makes in the wind that birds don’t like, and not as my host mother suggested, the music on the tapes. The tape did not even phase the birds though I got some strange looks from my neighbours when decorating in this strange new style.

I was at wit’s end and my mind had been drifting toward murder whether by spraying the culprits with insecticide or lacing some seed with rat poison, I was fed up and really tired. Finally a friend suggested what I should’ve thought about long ago, thorny branches do a good job keeping animals away from other things, why not my window? Well, it appears to be working pretty well. Not to be easily discouraged, the birds continue to come and peck at the window but now they also stab themselves on the thorns so the pecking isn’t nearly as frequent. I have also seen them trying with all their might to pull the branches off the sill which tells me that their routine really means a lot to them and they won’t go down without a fight. With an equal stubbornness about my sleep and an endless supply of kids to run and get me thorny branches, I feel confident that I will win this battle.

Homecoming

I went on a jog this morning and about half way I took a short break at a place on the edge of town where a few watering holes had been. During the rainy season these holes filled up with water and animals used it to drink and people used it to wash their animals. Since the end of rainy season, around mid-October, it has not rained one drop on the Department of Kaolack where I live. So these watering holes that used to have at least a couple feet of water and flowering water plants, are now bone dry complete with cracked mud and a dog carcass at the bottom. Yeah, so I’ve been here a long time.

To be exact, I’ve been in Africa for 1 year, 7 months and 6 days. But I am coming home in less than three weeks. I’ll be home for about 2.5 weeks and I am really looking forward to seeing family and friends, eating delicious food, enjoying some relatively cool weather and seeing what I’ve missed. Home is something that every PCV thinks and wonders about daily from the day we step off the plane, and I am no different but lately this pondering has become a mild anxiety. Don’t get me wrong, I am still extremely excited about it and when I imagine what it’ll be like, everything is fine but I just don’t know if my memory of home is enough to prepare me for actually being home. Hearing stories from volunteers who have already made the trip about reverse culture shock, I wonder if it’ll be similar for me. After all, I am in a city, I have running water and electricity, my cute little room is quite comfortable (even for my parents), I even see other Americans at least weekly. Will I be stunned by the pace? by people speaking English all around me? by all the options? by the materialism? I guess I’ll find out soon enough. What I am pretty certain of though is that my formerly thick Wisconsin blood has now thinned beyond all recognition and I’ll be wearing a sweater when it’s 75 degrees, and that my GI system will go through reverse culture shock with all the cheesy goodness I’ll be eating, hey, maybe it’ll even be enough to get rid of the amoebas.

The African Sky

I had seen movies and Paul Simon sang that great song but I have to say I wasn’t entirely prepared for the African skies. Especially in my part of the country, where it’s as flat as it gets and the tallest building in the regional capital is 4 stories high, the expanse of the almost-always cloudless, blue sky is remarkable. The cloudlessness makes for the days to be oppressively hot, with the only escape from direct sunlight being the shade of a tree or building, but it makes the nights absolutely breathtaking. When I visit friends in the village, and the moon doesn’t get in the way, the expanse of the Milky Way stretches out above us. Sometimes, if there’s a power-outage, I’m lucky enough to get a taste of it where I live too. My host family doesn’t quite understand my curiosity with the night’s sky, but they usually humor me.

The other night, my calendar said there was supposed to my meteor showers so my sister, Maguette and I pulled a mat out into the road in front of the house to lay there and watch for shooting stars. Well, we didn’t see any, but we had a great conversation, one of those that I hope to remember many years from now. First she told me that for her birthday (which is coming up), what she wants more than anything is a cell phone. But then she started asking me about the Earth, the moon, the stars. We lay there for a couple hours, me trying to explain space and astronomy with my usual mix of Wolof and French and her talking about heaven and God as she knew them. Like I said, there is just something special about the African sky.

Gamou: Americans in Kaolack

This week there is a pilgrimage to one of the neighborhoods in Kaolack to celebrate the Gamou. Last year I stayed as far away from that quartier as possible but this year I decided to check it out with my friend Ndeye – she’s a mechanic. The quartier – Medina Baay, is home to a huge, Moroccan style mosque that was built by one of the Sufi Islam Brotherhoods that are centered in Senegal. This brotherhood is called the Baay Niass brotherhood, named after its founder but the unique thing about this brotherhood is that they have lots of American talibe (followers). I was told that there are several that have even moved here permanently to be close to their spiritual leader, but mostly the Americans visit Medina Baay for a couple weeks every year to partake in the pilgrimage.

So I started with dinner at Ndeye’s house (Ndeye’s family aren’t followers of Baay Niass but there is a lot of mutual respect between the brotherhoods so she wanted to take me to the festivities), after dinner, at about 10pm we took a mini-car to Medina. The roads were packed with people dressed to the nines, vendors selling just about anything you can think of including clothing and jewelry with Baay Niass’ likeness painted on it. We got out of the car and started walking and shoving our way toward the mosque which was also dressed up to the nines for the occasion – including strings of lights and a large fake palm tree perched on top of the mosque itself. We walked through the mosque, taking shoes off before we entered, where people were sitting, praying and sleeping on the carpeted floor. The walls were beautifully tiled with dozens of columns throughout the room. We stood in line to pay our respects to Baay Niass’ final resting spot and then we left to go find a host relative of mine who lives in the area, Pathe Thiam.

Well I never found Pathe but as soon as I entered the home of Imam Assane Cisse I heard “How ya doin’” – In that New York accent I haven’t heard in a year and a half. I turn around and see three Americans, dressed in their boubous, speaking Wolof to other people. We chatted and the told me that they come hear to replenish their souls every year. I was very interested in hearing their thoughts on things and unfortunately their views on polygamy and women’s rights fell right in line with those of the conservative Senegalese men I have met – Polygamy being natural and necessary because there are so many more women than men; 4:1. That and the “divine order,” – First there is God, then men and then women. Even though we didn’t see eye to eye on many things it was very interesting to meet them and I’m very glad that I made the pilgrimage this year… even if it was only to the other side of town.

Ants and Karma

The other day I was eating breakfast in my compound, sitting next to my mother. There was a slight commotion, she said something to my brother, Baba, and pointed behind where she was sitting where, I’m not sure how I didn’t notice but there were thousands of ants swarming between my steps and the entrance to the kitchen. I was about to jump up and get the insecticide I keep in my room when she explained to me that the ants were asking for a sarax, the term used for the food or money you give to people who beg. She asked Baba to give them some millet and as he scattered it on the ground I thought “Oh no, now there will be even more ants swarming.” She turned to me and said “Just watch, they’ll all be gone in 5 minutes.” And sure enough, the ants took the millet back to their nest, wherever it is, and all but a few were gone in 5 minutes and as far as I know haven’t come back.

After the ants were given their sarax my mom told me a story that she prefaced as being “a true story,” in mixed French and Wolof. According to the story there was a young pregnant woman who once encountered the same problem with swarming ants. Instead for giving them the sarax she threw boiling water on them and killed them. Later, when her baby was born, it was born deformed and would never walk. When she went to the spiritual leader to ask why that had happened to her he told her that her baby was born like that because she had been cruel to the ants.

…a very Buddhist idea for a Muslim country.

Pan-Atlantic Telephonaphobia

First of all I want to preface this blog by saying that I’m really not as bitter as this may make me seem, I’m not trying to make anyone feel bad or give any kind of guilt trip and I truly do appreciate the emails that I get from people. I’m simply remarking on a behavior pattern that many PCVs have found that their friends and loved-ones have in common. Plus I have the chutzpah to post it on my blog and so the others who may not be so forward, but miss talking to their friends, will just link their blogs up to mine.

Besides fellow volunteers who had returned home or were on vacation, I have received phone calls – wait, no, one phone call from someone who was not immediate family in the past 18 months. Most volunteers, in fact, don’t get phone calls from anyone but family and possibly significant others. So, in the style of “Sex and the City,” I couldn’t help but wonder; why is it that American extended family and friends are so hesitant to call over-seas and particularly hesitant to call Africa?

Every volunteer I know has a cell phone and most actually have decent reception or a tree in their village under which reception is better. People may be freaked out by the cost, that is a valid concern, but how much does a 15-20 minute phone call to a cell phone in Senegal cost? About $4 - $5. To be fair, since we do have phones, we could be calling the states more too, the same phone call from our cell phones to the U.S. costs 4,500-5,000 CFA which is about $9-$10. Money that many volunteers don’t really have as disposable income. Now, I do realize that getting the rate mentioned above often involves buying a phone card; either a schlep to the store or buying one online (which involves a whole different phobia), but hey, aren’t there occasions when you are already going to the store, or already shopping online, heck there was probably an annoying pop-up ad trying to sell you a calling card while you were reading this entry.

Timing may be another concern. We are always one Greenwich Mean Time, always. That means 4 hrs difference from the East coast in the summer and 5 hrs in the winter, and 7 and 8 hours respectively from the West coast. So even with the maximum time difference we are probably sharing 8 of our waking hours. With the timing, you may be concerned that you would be interrupting something. You aren’t. If you haven’t caught this yet, please refer to past entries on my blog or any of the linked blogs to the right. In short PCVs have a lot of free time, not to mention that if they were doing something, they’d just answer their phone in the middle of it like every Senegalese person – we’re culturally integrated! If it makes you feel better, set up a time to call over email.

Anyway, there is a lot more that we’ve discussed in our ever-so-slight bitterness, but I’ll spare you the details. However if you take anything away from this blog it should be this: We know that you are busy but we miss you and love you and it would literally make our month if we heard from you.

Update

I haven’t written in a little while probably mostly because the past 2 months have been about the busiest I’ve yet had here in Senegal. To update everyone, the predisential election passed without any trouble or any surprises – the incumbant, Abdoulaye Wade, won pretty easily. My parents also visited for 10 short, fun-filled days. I’ve asked them to write up their experiences here because I thought it would be interesting for people to read some different perspectives, so if you happen to see or talk to my folks, encourage them to type something up so I can post it soon. It was great to be able to show my parents my Senegalese life and the people they met are still talking about their visit and probably will be for the next year. They got to meet most of the people that are a part of my life here in Senegal, and though they didn’t really speak the language, communication was managed. They got to see Dakar and Kaolack (where I live) as well as some of the naturally beautiful places like the mangroves of the Siné-Saloum Delta and the largest colony of Great White Pelicans in the world at Djoudj National Bird Park.

Since they left I’ve spent a few days at the pool, forming relationships with the swimmers and the people that work there that will hopefully lead to a stroke clinic for the national team... eventually. I’ve also been starting the process for the Michelle Sylvester Scholarship that is awarded by SeneGAD to girls of middle school age who do well in school but may be at risk of dropping out of school to help their families or even be sold into early marriage because their families can’t support them to attend school.

I have chosen 5 schools since Kaolack is so large and 6 girls will be chosen to apply from each school. The process involves a short application, an essay about how they see the next 10 years of their lives panning out, an interview and before I choose who I will send on to the final selection committee, I will do some home visits. For the interviez, I ask some questions like “What do you do for fun when you don’t have work to do?” Probably about half of the girls I have posed this question to have a hard time understanding it. After some explanation (sometimes a lot of explanation) the girl usually says she hangs out with her family or with her friends, reads, watches TV or does extra studying. One reason they could be having a hard time with this question though, is that girls between the ages of 8 and whatever age at which they get married, do not have liesure time. My host family is weathly enough to have a maid so Maguette (younger sister) is lucky to not have to do all the work around the house but for families with no maid, the daughters fill that roll. They sweep and make sure breakfast is ready in the morning, during the day they cook lunch and may do the men’s laundry, then in the evening they prepare dinner. A couple of the girls in my girls club have mothers who are disabled and unable to do any of this work, the girls end up doing all this work whenever they’re not at school and I know that because of this strain, their grades have fallen since last year. Another question that these Senegalese students answer much differently than their American counterparts is the one that asks if they could travel to any city in the world, where would they go and why. About 90% of them say they would go to Paris or New York, and about 90% of them say they would go there to work – these are 14, 15, 16 year-old girls.

I’ve actually been having a really difficult time thinking about who I might choose to send on to the selection committee because of the guilt having to tell some of them that they won’t be getting the scholarship. Principals tell me that everyone in their schools could use the scholarship, everyone is in dire need. In the end I’ll just choose the students that fit the criteria best and the rest will get a pat on the back, “Keep up the good work and try again next year.” And I’ll keep my fingers crossed that their families will continue to scrounge up the money to help their daughters go to school.