tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5823601045298754352024-02-20T08:40:43.547+00:00Jessie in Senegal!I hate malaria. I love Cheez-Its.Jessiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14750558216102330003noreply@blogger.comBlogger58125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582360104529875435.post-10984640342745525382012-09-13T04:29:00.002+00:002012-09-13T04:32:30.290+00:00There is a thin cord.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I left Senegal. My Peace Corps service ended on July 25th, and I've come to New York to study to be a doctor. I want to write about all this more soon, but I can't yet. </div>
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What I can write about right now is what happened this week. I knew my friend Maguette in Ndiago was pregnant, and I knew she was due about now. As often as I tried to call, it was four days before the call was able to go through. The delivery had gone just fine, and Maguette is mother to a new baby girl. She has decided to name her Aissa, my name in Senegal, after me. </div>
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And this is a little tiny beautiful thing, and I can write about it. I guess I wrote this to myself, but I think you'll know what I'm talking about. </div>
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*****</div>
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There is a thin cord. </div>
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Do not let the thin cord drop. </div>
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Pull it closer to you, tuck
it as close to your heart as you can, so that every beat and every breath
reverberates along it. You will hear the sighs and sweet breaths and laughter
of the people you love in your sleep,
because they too knew to draw the cord to themselves and tuck it in
deep. As the afternoon closes over the fields and the huts under their sky, they
will wait to feel the stirring in their breasts that means you have awoken half a world away.
They will retire at night knowing that you can hear and feel them,
knowing that you will keep watch. This watching and being watched over, this
waiting for that little tug, this restfulness and peace in knowing that they
are safe and alive and loving you, and that from now on you and the people on the other side of this cord can never be alone: it’s how you know you’re alive. Do not let the thin cord drop.</div>
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It is thin
because it’s not meant to be a burden or a restraint. It’s thin because
you move around in the day, negotiating subway turnstiles and small desks in
lecture halls. It’s thin because you have to study and learn and become a
doctor, because that is what you promised as the cord began to weave itself between
you and them. It’s thin because you can’t call every day, and you can’t see
pictures of the new baby just now, and because maybe something will happen to
the family that you won’t be able to keep them from, or grieve over them with,
or try to understand with their help, because you are 3,000 miles away. Which is
where they think you should be right now. So the cord is thin.</div>
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It is strong because they know you love them. And they know
because you told them every day, with deeds and work and conversation and
everything you had in you. And you know they love you, because here is this
phone call you were finally able to make to them, and here is this new baby
they’ve named after you, and and here is this cord you have woven together. And
suddenly here is this afternoon when you’re in New York watching the season
change and you’re in this small village in the middle of nowhere in Senegal,
which could be anywhere, any family, any new baby, anywhere in this world, and
suddenly New York and the shifting seasons and the world and all of it are just
right here, in your heart, as you think about this baby. The cord could not be stronger.</div>
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You will not let the thin cord drop.</div>
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Jessiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14750558216102330003noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582360104529875435.post-44431729150252967682012-04-12T13:01:00.001+00:002012-04-12T14:13:37.933+00:00What I love about malaria work.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
World Malaria Day is coming up on April 25th, which for <a href="http://stompoutmalaria.org/" target="_blank">those of us in the malaria field</a> means that Christmas is coming in the springtime.<br />
<br />
<br />
For a year now, I've been Peace Corps Senegal's malaria person. After my two years in village, I came up here to Dakar to coordinate volunteers' malaria work and give them what support I could. I was also charged with beefing up our relationships with other organizations in Senegal, like <a href="http://www.networksmalaria.org/" target="_blank">NetWorks</a>, <a href="http://www.speakupafrica.org/" target="_blank">Speak Up Africa</a>, and <a href="http://malarianomore.org/" target="_blank">Malaria No More</a>. I've been in a great position to see the way malaria interventions are changing here in Senegal, and to watch as new volunteers come in with amazing ideas about how to fight malaria in their communities. Again and again, I have been blown away by what we can do together, and as World Malaria Day approaches, I've been reflecting on the past three years. I really believe that I work for the Peace Corps program that's doing the best malaria work on the continent. It was a messy road, at times, but it's been worth it.<br />
<br />
The first health talk I ever gave in village was horrible, and it was about malaria. Each family in the village sent two women to hear me talk about the signs and symptoms of malaria and to watch me make neem lotion, a mosquito repellent made of cheap or naturally occurring ingredients that are easily available in rural Senegal.<br />
<br />
It was a bust.<br />
<br />
Having just been installed in the village about two weeks beforehand, I barely spoke enough Wolof to keep myself out of trouble, let alone talk about a complicated disease like malaria. I had made neem lotion before, during our brief but intense time in training, but never before a curious audience, and never by myself. As I poured in the shavings of a bar of soap, which melt in the neem leaf-infused boiling water, an exasperated lady in the front row of the crowd shuffled up to me. Grabbing the large spoon out of my hand and shooing me from the pot, she rolled up her flowing sleeves and started stirring powerfully. Apparently, I needed to be taught how to stir. Watching the soap dissolve, I wondered what the hell was I going to be doing in this village for the next two years. I couldn't be trusted with the simplest of daily tasks, so it didn't seem possible that I would be much of a community health educator.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A neem lotion causerie at the end of my service, when I had figured out how to stir.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
At first, Senegal and I found one another mutually confounding. Babies cried when I, the white ghost, approached for their monthly weighing. Women my age with three children didn't understand why I didn't want a husband. Men in garages didn't know what to do with the dirty girl dressed in a tank top and a traditional Senegalese wrap skirt, who spoke choppy, aggressive Wolof and refused to pay the tourist price for her car fare. I occasionally forgot some of the conventions of politeness in Senegalese culture, once, for example, passing a market lady a handful of change with my forbidden left hand.<br />
<br />
Luckily, and to my eternal wonder and joy, humans get better at things as they go along. I spent two years learning Wolof, getting to know the 300 people who chose to share their village with me, and found out more and more about malaria and the role it plays in the lives of the Senegalese people.<br />
<br />
Malaria costs Africa $12 billion dollars a year. Malaria kills a child every sixty seconds. The numbers vary, but the total estimated malaria deaths range from 655,000 to a million every year. The vast majority of people who fall victim to malaria are pregnant women and children under 5 living in sub-Saharan Africa, which is great news, because that's a demographic that doesn't have enough difficulties to deal with in life.<br />
<br />
And the real kicker? Malaria is a preventable and treatable disease.<br />
<br />
Preventable and treatable. It's like someone in the States dying of a cold.<br />
<br />
My slow grasp of these facts and my growing rage came upon me as I continued to integrate into my community in Senegal. I lived in a hut of my own, with mud brick walls and a thatched roof that housed a number of small birds, mice, and a couple of plump snakes. The hut had been built in the compound of the Gningue family, who took me in as if I were their very own, if slightly stupid, daughter. My host father introduced me around the village and helped me keep my hut standing through the windy rainy season and the hot dry months. My host mom dressed me up and took me to baptisms, weddings, and funerals, where she helped me become a part of the community of women who do so much of the work in the village. The children listened to me practice my Wolof, and laughed as they corrected my grammar and pronunciation.<br />
<br />
Together, the community taught me what it was, what the members valued, what they wanted from their lives and from each other. They taught me how they saw malaria, what they thought of this threat to their lives, what they knew to do when they got sick. They helped me understand why they couldn't pay the $4 to buy a mosquito net, even though they knew that sleeping underneath one every night would protect them from being bitten by the mosquitos that spread malaria. They talked about being too scared to go to the health post to seek treatment for a suspected case of malaria when their infant sons and daughters became ill, even though they knew the disease was so dangerous. They surprised me with their knowledge and resources, and saddened me with their matter-of-fact statements about their perceptions of the limitations on their lives.<br />
<br />
Over the first two years of my time here, the people of the village turned every idea about public health I had on its head. Not only did I have to learn how to stir a pot of melting soap slivers, I had to start at the absolute beginning when it came to figuring out how health care and malaria prevention education should work.<br />
<br />
Luckily, Peace Corps get all this. Peace Corps Senegal, maybe especially so. Our volunteers are motivated, excited, thoughtful, and well-informed. When they are installed in their new villages, their new homes for two years, they're ready to study up. They find out everything they can about their communities, the health priorities there, the barriers to seeking health care, and what diseases cost the people the most.<br />
<br />
I've written about malaria a few times on this blog. But I want to invite you all to be a part of something bigger than that.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6gzO4-d57LROsC4sQjtNX77LRh3kaI795LTmteXumbMuVOPxp2AC_BubFzW4MyfMaP0k1ikDtdXuhpyu5LnmE2lsTMVq_PO7k040gmgOYaOx0ZZWhAqSoaUR0MH_530UykZP-FAcjcdSN/s1600/cover+photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="235" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6gzO4-d57LROsC4sQjtNX77LRh3kaI795LTmteXumbMuVOPxp2AC_BubFzW4MyfMaP0k1ikDtdXuhpyu5LnmE2lsTMVq_PO7k040gmgOYaOx0ZZWhAqSoaUR0MH_530UykZP-FAcjcdSN/s640/cover+photo.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
April is Blog About Malaria Month, and April 25th is World Malaria Day. Peace Corps Volunteers, community health workers, NGOs, and other actors across Africa are rolling out anti-malaria interventions all this month. We're pioneering new techniques and scaling up old interventions, writing blog entries and op-eds and letters home. By the end of this month, more Africans will know how to protect themselves and their families from malaria than ever before. And more westerners will understand this disease and the crippling effect it's having on this continent than ever before.<br />
<br />
Haven't you heard? Africa's going to end malaria by 2015. <a href="http://stompoutmalaria.org/" target="_blank">Find out more.</a><br />
<br />
This is the time, guys. And I couldn't be happier or more thankful to be a part of it.<br />
<br />
Love and guts,<br />
Jessie</div>Jessiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14750558216102330003noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582360104529875435.post-58268057874399711402011-12-05T11:03:00.001+00:002012-02-15T17:21:37.975+00:00A funeral in the village.I have a sense that <a href="http://jseiler.blogspot.com/2010/12/four-paragraphs.html">my reaction to death in Senegal</a> has always been childish. It is not fair, it is never fair, someone should have stopped it -- I may as well be stamping my foot, throwing a tantrum. This is a story about growing up: not all the way, but a little.<br />
<br />
Even after almost three years in country, I am still gratified and amazed at how many opportunities there are in daily life for remembering that here in Senegal, you are always a part of a community; that the people around you are connected to you; that no one here could live in isolation.<br />
<br />
For example, the greeting ritual in every language in Senegal is a long and complicated series of questions and answers about personal health, family, and work. It's an opportunity to ask after certain people by name, which is a way of affirming your knowledge of them and your connection to them. The answers aren't important. In fact, they're just as formulaic as the questions: How are the family? They are in peace, thank God. And the whole ritual almost always starts with the repetition of the last name of whomever you're speaking to: an affirmation of their place in their family and community.<br />
<br />
Everywhere in Senegal, there's closeness and conversation. Public transportation. Vegetable markets. <a href="http://jseiler.blogspot.com/2009/12/waiting-room.html">Hospital waiting rooms</a>, as I wrote about a long time ago. Curiosity, questions, answers, togetherness, a delight in even the smallest shared bit of personal history. Time and time again, my Wolof -- which is quickly identifiable as having been learned in a particular part of the country -- has won for a me a cheaper price, a friendly exchange; even a grin from a taxi driver, for example, who was maybe more interested in swindling me before I opened my mouth and started speaking in the accent of the people of his village.<br />
<br />
Family events are another beautiful affirmation of the way an individual supports and is supported by community here. Weddings and baptisms are universally attended, not only by close family and friends, but by everyone within walking distance. Everyone brings a small amount of money or a gift. The married women come early to help prepare the massive amounts of food needed at even a small celebration, and the unmarried girls stay late to help take care of children and be sure that the compound is kept clean.<br />
<br />
Funerals, too.<br />
<br />
Preparations for the day of my Senegalese host father's funeral began long before daybreak. The compound had been full of family and friends for the last two days, ever since his death, and many of us were sleeping in the sand or on concrete "beds" outside. From where I lay on my back in a thatched outdoor sleeping area, shivering in the pre-dawn cold and watching the stars disappear, I could hear the women begin to pull water for the daily chores. Babies began to stir and cry. Young girls with brooms began sweeping the sand of the compound, clearing it of leaves and small pieces of trash. Another day. On any other day, I would have registered all this and drifted back to sleep, preferring to wait until the sun came up before I rose. Not today.<br />
<br />
I rose slowly, my back stiff and sore from the two previous nights passed on cement, thinking of how I had gotten here. The phone call had come from Ndiago two mornings ago, as I was getting ready to head to work. He had been sick for a long time. With the help of my boss here at Peace Corps, I was able to leave Dakar immediately. Driving in to Ndiago that afternoon, the village seemed deserted. I saw no children playing in the dirt paths between family compounds, no women in the lanes sorting the peanut crop and gossiping, no men sitting beneath trees and drinking tea. They had all gone to my family's compound.<br />
<br />
As I walked in, I was amazed. There were hundreds of people in an outdoor space meant for perhaps two dozen. I greeted the men and women I walked by, received their condolences and gave my own, and was led to the room where my father's two wives sat. They were on the floor in the back corner of the hut, surrounded by their sisters and their husband's sisters, by their daughters and aunts and nieces. Their heads were covered and their eyes cast down, and as I approached them through a haze of soft sad words in Wolof, I hardly recognized them. More greetings, prayers, words for the dead. Their eyes on my face did not seem alert enough to recognize me.<br />
<br />
Later in the day, the crowd in the compound receded. They left gifts of food and money. Neighbors sent bowls of their own dinner to the two widows, which were appreciated but returned untouched. Even as night fell, the compound was still more crowded than usual, since many of the extended family members from out of the village were staying with us. The women took over the chores, making sure that everyone was properly fed, bathing the children, finding places for us all to sleep. The men sat with the sons of the family, caught in low earnest conversations. A cold night was followed by a cold dawn; and when I awoke the next day I watched as the compound filled up again.<br />
<br />
On this second day, mourners began to arrive from further away. Horse carts filled with people came from villages I had never heard of. They came to greet and give condolences, to drop what money they could spare on a piece of fabric laid out at the feet of the widows, or on another laid out by my aunt, my father's sister. There were even some who came from towns and cities in cars, like the marabout from a few villages away. Many were mourning the death of Osseynou Gningue, and none of them would be doing it alone.<br />
<br />
And then finally, the day of the funeral. The mourners who had left the compound the night before came back, and their numbers somehow swelled to over 700. Seven hundred men and women in the compound, seated on plastic mats and chairs provided by the village, praying or sitting silently. Here and there a woman would begin to wail and moan softly, concealing her grief beneath her head wrap. Everywhere, heavy eyes and stillness. The imam prayed and spoke of Osseynou, followed by all of the important men of the community: they praised his devotion to his family and his work, and spoke of the struggles his illness had brought him in its final stage. It was better now for him, they said. He could rest.<br />
<br />
I moved around during the funeral, uncomfortable, listening sometimes to the men eulogize Osseynou, passing sometimes to my host mother's room to sit with her, and settling sometimes with the elderly women, who could not help prepare the funeral lunch and therefore were in charge of the children. I felt grief, yes. But it wasn't a daughter's grief. I respected Osseynou for the way he took care of his family, and I was terrified of what would happen to them now that he was gone. But I wasn't sure there was a place for that at this event.<br />
<br />
Later in the day, my oldest host sister Tenning passed by with a bin of water on her head, on her way to the temporary outdoor cooking area where the women were preparing the meal. She had her role, just like everyone else, in spite of and because of her grief. But as she walked by me, she began to stumble and cough and cry again. Another woman and I eased the heavy basin from her head and took it over to the huge pots full of donated rice, meat, and vegetables.<br />
<br />
I made my way with Tenning, who was still sobbing, back to our mother's room. Tenning went to her mother and curled up against her, picking up her youngest child and cradling him in her arms. As I turned to leave, feeling not for the first time out of place in this room, this family, this village, and this country, my host mother Aissatou called out to me. "Come sit with me, Aissa. Stay and talk."<br />
<br />
It was a village commonplace, that phrase. Come sit with us, stay with us, talk. I hear it every day, even in Dakar. But today it meant that I was to take a place with Aissatou and Tenning and the other women. We might not talk much, and I might not feel what they felt or say the right things, but that's where I belonged then. As even more mourners came in, they would come to greet me too. They would say the words affirming my place in this family and my loss, and I would say the words of gratitude and peace in response.<br />
<br />
And this is what Senegal has done to me so many times over the past three years.<br />
<br />
Holding back tears and covering my head with a borrowed shawl, I moved into the room again.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Jessiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14750558216102330003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582360104529875435.post-4019242644161546642011-11-15T10:03:00.001+00:002011-11-15T10:05:38.391+00:00Occupy Senegal.<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222;">I originally wrote this for an online op/ed website that asked for a submission. It was difficult. I feel like I'm maybe conflating the idea of Occupy Wall Street and the reality of life here in Senegal, and I'm not sure how valid that is. Anyway, I would love to here your thoughts. Please comment.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222;">*****</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222;">I called my
Senegalese host family from the capital city of Dakar the other day to wish
them a happy Eid al-Adha, but I didn’t bother to ask them if they’d heard about
Occupy Wall Street. The village of Ndiago, where I lived for two years as a
Peace Corps volunteer, is home to about 300 people, almost all of whom eke out
a living as subsistence farmers. Many of the villagers listen to radio
broadcasts in Wolof and a few of them can follow the broadcasts in French, but
there’s not often much news from the United States.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #222222;">I did, however, ask around in my office here in Dakar. Although
the other Americans and I have been following events back home closely, even
the Senegalese men and women who watch television news every day and pay
attention to what’s going on abroad haven’t heard of Occupy Wall Street. I had
been curious because I received an email from an old friend a few days ago
asking me what I thought about the movement. “</span>It all must seem sort of silly from your perspective, right?
The whole 99% message? Everything we perceive here as an injustice or as
unacceptable must look like just another luxurious privilege from where you
stand.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Not quite. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Senegal is a
developing country, and I guess you could say that life here is generally more
difficult than it is in the United States. The life expectancy at birth in the
U.S. is around 80 years. Here in Senegal, it's 56. One in five Senegalese
children had a low birth weight and 17% of children under five are moderately
to severely underweight. The national adult literacy rate is 42%, and honestly,
in villages like Ndiago it's closer to the single digits. Much, much closer.
Every day, people in Senegal die of preventable and treatable diseases. Is
dehydration even technically a disease? Who cares? It kills children. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Before moving to
the capital city to take on a job in malaria prevention and eradication, I
worked for two years in Ndiago as a health education volunteer. A big part of
my job was to teach the men, women and children of the village about ways they
could keep themselves from falling ill from diarrheal diseases, malaria,
infected wounds and the like. Access to health care in rural Senegal is
inconsistent and expensive; unreliable health workers who don’t explain what
they’re doing or why they’re prescribing a particular medication make many
people unwilling to fork out the cash for it. I felt there was an urgent need
for someone to talk to mothers about exclusive breastfeeding for the first six
months of their babies’ lives, to teach school children to use latrines and
wash their hands with soap and water, and to convince families to use mosquito
nets at night to protect themselves from malaria. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Even within the
village family in Ndiago who took me in as their own daughter, it was difficult
work. My host mother, a wiry and energetic woman named Aissatou who had seen
six of her 11 children die before they reached the age of five, injured her arm
one day in the fields. It wasn’t a serious cut and it probably would have
healed fairly quickly, if only it hadn’t been the rainy season, when the heat
and humidity are high and even the smallest lacerations can become infected; if
only she had access to more nutritious foods to help her body fight infection;
if only she believed that washing the cut regularly with soap and water would
make a difference. Once the infection got serious, I begged her to go to the
health post in the village. But I had begged her to keep it clean, and that
hadn’t worked. She honestly had not believed that anything she could do would
effect whether her wound healed well. And I found it hard to blame her, when I
thought about how many of her children had been killed by inexplicable
diseases. If you spend a lifetime noticing that nothing you do seems to make a
difference, that poverty and poor health and circumstance seem to be making
your decisions for you, fatalism and acceptance become ground into you.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Preventative
measures are so much easier and cheaper than curative ones, in almost every
situation I see here. Soap to wash my mom’s wound is cheaper than the
antibiotics she ended up having to purchase; mosquito nets are cheaper than the
medications to treat malaria. Everyone in my village understood these concepts
by the time I had been there for six months. So why was it so hard to get
people to take the next step and change their behavior? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m starting to
think it’s because no one in Senegal has heard of Occupy Wall Street.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It takes a lot
of patience to live in a place like Senegal. Things just happen more slowly
here than they do in the States, and I can’t even count the number of times my
frustrated attempts to try to pick up the pace on a project have resulted in a
Senegalese man or woman smiling at me indulgently and saying, “Ah yes, in
America time is money. Not here.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ndiago is about
20 miles from a large city, Kaolack, which is where I used to go for Internet
access and the occasional cold beer. That trip routinely took three or four
hours: the horse pulling the cart from Ndiago to the road was sometimes tired
and slow; and on the stretch of potholes that could not quite be called a road,
the rickety, ancient van stuffed with 40 people and an unknown number of goats
and chickens, piled high with baggage, sometimes blew a tire. I have seen and
been involved in more car accidents in less than three years in Senegal than in
my 22 years in the States. But the Senegalese sit patiently and wait to arrive,
the women drawing the fabric of their head wraps across their mouths to keep
out the dust, the men staring listlessly ahead, all of us ignoring the flipped,
burned-out cars that litter the roadside. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In all the time
I’ve been here, I’ve never seen anyone lose patience and demand better service,
safer roads, or a refund of their fare. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Americans, I
imagine, would be up in arms. We’d be making phone calls to our congressmen,
writing blistering letters to the editor of our hometown newspaper, demanding
that the roads be fixed. We’d be canvassing our neighborhoods, trying to
register new voters, trying to inform and involve as many people as possible. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is how I
see Occupy Wall Street. Someone, or maybe a group of people, saw the equivalent
of one of those burned out cars on the side of the road and said No. This is
not how it ought to be. This is not the relationship an individual should have
to the state, not the relationship a bank or a corporation should have to the
state: not in a democratic, egalitarian society. That person started doing a
little research and started having conversations and realized he or she wasn’t
the only one with the gut feeling that something was deeply, desperately wrong.
The conviction grew and became a movement, a conversation, an action and a
demand that spread from New York to Los Angeles, from the U.S. to the world,
and my deepest hope for Senegal is that some day soon, it will come here. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My host mother
Aissatou raised five children. The oldest ones are starting their own families
now, and the youngest is only ten. I want all of her children and all of her
grandchildren to grow up knowing that they can make decisions that will change
the course of their lives, believing that this world is theirs for the taking,
acting up and acting out and making their country a better place to live. I
want them to demand better access to healthcare, more teachers and school
supplies, and a chance to eat enough nutritious foods to grow up strong. I want
them to occupy their lives, their future, their country. Because that’s what it
means, to occupy: to take hold of something, to take control. It’s their turn
in Senegal, and it’s our turn in the United States. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222;"><br /></span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Jessiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14750558216102330003noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582360104529875435.post-5699523800739765382011-10-30T17:45:00.001+00:002011-10-30T17:45:14.400+00:00Bean sandwiches and mosquito nets.This is going to be a picture post, so I may as well start out with a photo of the best breakfast there is in all of Senegal. Ladies and gentlemen, the bean sandwich!<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjra7doYVe7IQxJKQrp_Ru2TZc83uqEjYUxcRPYn4Yehj6ZT6o8iEbG4fzYThe9BCiDlTJRvdZOR_2eWJNFB5SY7aLBhb0STIe_l-w-TIg6mkG3-mid7qN2xnO6NuopjgENycjdBLalxAA7/s1600/DSCN0317.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjra7doYVe7IQxJKQrp_Ru2TZc83uqEjYUxcRPYn4Yehj6ZT6o8iEbG4fzYThe9BCiDlTJRvdZOR_2eWJNFB5SY7aLBhb0STIe_l-w-TIg6mkG3-mid7qN2xnO6NuopjgENycjdBLalxAA7/s320/DSCN0317.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seriously the best thing ever. SERIOUSLY.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /><div>
For you folks at home who want to make your own, make sure you spice the beans heavily and slather the whole business with mayo. More adventurous eaters will want to follow my lead and add spicy pasta, scrambled eggs, fried potatoes and onion sauce to their sandwich as well. Oh, and it's not a proper bean sandwich if it's not wrapped in discarded newspaper or something, so save your trash!<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Anyway.<br /><br />
Several weeks ago, I posted something extremely brief about how excited I was for the upcoming month and promised a full report on it when I came back from the travel. That post was never written, and probably never will be. At least not in the way I had intended to write it. I'm afraid to say too much about it, because that month produced the type of happiness you suspect could be easily crushed by too many words and too much reflection. Good thing I took some pictures to share.<br />
<br />
It ended up being an intense month. I started out in Thies, where Peace Corps/Senegal has our training center, for the <a href="http://stompoutmalaria.tumblr.com/">Stomping Out Malaria Initiative's</a> second boot camp. Staff members and volunteers from across Africa came together to learn more about what we can all be doing to eliminate malaria in our communities. Putting together this training was a little exhausting, but it was worth it to meet the incredible people who attended. I feel privileged to be working side by side with men and women from so many countries, who all believe so firmly in our goal.<br />
<br />
I had to leave boot camp a few days early, though, to help supervise a big mosquito net distribution in the southeast corner of Senegal. Peace Corps volunteers and some of our national and international partners were headed to the community of Saraya, outside of Kedougou, bringing a few thousand nets with us.<br />
<br />
These distributions are insanely complicated. They begin with a community census, when trained community health workers go from house to house, hut to hut, and count the number of beds and other sleeping spaces (mats rolled out on the floor, stuff like that) that don't have nets.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyMpk2CXIDY6GrFcdlY_XcdWBdSWQ_QLb1qHNWSddiMxyDVMFGeveFzpz0yqDCd2K81QOoJaXuhQNqTT68yWb2EqbLqta4R4qP9Z5hRvC4Rsvwou13tjH_jbl6bGmzijKTlsoN5Abetl_T/s1600/DSCN0260.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyMpk2CXIDY6GrFcdlY_XcdWBdSWQ_QLb1qHNWSddiMxyDVMFGeveFzpz0yqDCd2K81QOoJaXuhQNqTT68yWb2EqbLqta4R4qP9Z5hRvC4Rsvwou13tjH_jbl6bGmzijKTlsoN5Abetl_T/s320/DSCN0260.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Health workers enter every hut to get an accurate count of the number of sleeping spaces.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
After all this data is validated by a committee of village dignitaries and health workers, the nets are all counted out and divided up. Each one is opened and the name of the new owner and the date and location of the distribution are written on them. When the big day dawns, people are already lined up at their distribution points to collect their nets.<br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX-ejMrDjKiRzmgrjaAv2Z0APe4XwSD__nOmcAfx_ah8g83Ci8j2yLhRaxhIKgjV3mGeY4rAYgYtieGWoiB3MHUpAhi0feuLlrlbYHS9bP3comEg8kjZCLUnC800bQPxFdXPk3tt7bIbu-/s1600/DSCN0294.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX-ejMrDjKiRzmgrjaAv2Z0APe4XwSD__nOmcAfx_ah8g83Ci8j2yLhRaxhIKgjV3mGeY4rAYgYtieGWoiB3MHUpAhi0feuLlrlbYHS9bP3comEg8kjZCLUnC800bQPxFdXPk3tt7bIbu-/s320/DSCN0294.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Community health workers in Saraya getting the nets ready for distribution day.<br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUbEXKi1RiStVmpJkyUPutu94e-CcQdDeaeeeXtb3k_rIu7eXtRHyAABFDFOmOLYWqf_2oGNhhp-KXXFXaYd0AgxSCjCXClkN2Svp2r_SFcsa_adXrQg_wtPjQ7bhSR5LKHWn69Ku4lZNM/s1600/DSCN0302.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUbEXKi1RiStVmpJkyUPutu94e-CcQdDeaeeeXtb3k_rIu7eXtRHyAABFDFOmOLYWqf_2oGNhhp-KXXFXaYd0AgxSCjCXClkN2Svp2r_SFcsa_adXrQg_wtPjQ7bhSR5LKHWn69Ku4lZNM/s320/DSCN0302.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Waiting for new mosquito nets in Saraya.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Every distribution is accompanied by a talk about how to properly use and maintain these mosquito nets. The community health workers will follow up in the weeks ahead by going from compound to compound again, making sure that people have hung their nets correctly and teaching them about the symptoms of malaria. Finally, after some internal evaluation, the distribution effort is done. Using this method, Senegal will have covered 10 of its 14 regions by the end of this year. And that, my friends, is what universal coverage of mosquito nets and malaria education looks like.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR8Aa0Y_KGWrDIvg8AbvQvekBHV8MVxWHD022oNFJSMT0TMy75_qPsbx2gEpeJgG8DUlv-eXuBEEkic9DCNxgppZjEnq06eFyUq2Hmj_mxKIbNNPKXZN9amkJ03uxUjlqKYQ-N3GujKs9F/s1600/11559_505980056475_172400553_30159241_771714_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR8Aa0Y_KGWrDIvg8AbvQvekBHV8MVxWHD022oNFJSMT0TMy75_qPsbx2gEpeJgG8DUlv-eXuBEEkic9DCNxgppZjEnq06eFyUq2Hmj_mxKIbNNPKXZN9amkJ03uxUjlqKYQ-N3GujKs9F/s320/11559_505980056475_172400553_30159241_771714_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A family sitting beneath their new mosquito net.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
If nets are being widely used in a village, it benefits every individual within the community: mosquitos have less of a chance to pick up the parasite that causes malaria and pass it to another human host. So if you have about 80% of a community sleeping under their mosquito nets, you'll cut the incidence of malaria roughly in half, and mortality will is reduced by about 17%. Not a bad deal, since a distribution costs about $.50 per net after the cost of the nets themselves. Yep. Fifty cents. And those nets aren't exactly costly either.<br />
<br />
It wouldn't be business as usual in Senegal if the car bringing us in to Kedougou hadn't broken down one late afternoon, after the whole distribution was finished and I was getting ready to come back to Dakar.<br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcStGDY_Oxxsx7Ppn2cvQir06GepqY3xXYSurRCIhTuG3h3vufOYbkCPfBo_CmvjML1kjlVQG_PTJjzFYRk2RLuw5awQoq80ShbQ2XhtPozsbkXL83L68ODmFcScW5HqZduMSC9ysICTJ4/s1600/DSCN0307.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcStGDY_Oxxsx7Ppn2cvQir06GepqY3xXYSurRCIhTuG3h3vufOYbkCPfBo_CmvjML1kjlVQG_PTJjzFYRk2RLuw5awQoq80ShbQ2XhtPozsbkXL83L68ODmFcScW5HqZduMSC9ysICTJ4/s320/DSCN0307.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The guy in the hat and sunglasses said I wasn't allowed to help push-start the car, so I stayed inside and took pictures.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
In my current job, I help other people makes things happen. Distributions, trainings, other malaria projects. I don't get out much these days, and I don't get to use my own hands for much beyond typing and drinking too much coffee. In fact, although I had been arranging the budget and putting mosquito nets in cars down to Saraya for weeks in advance of this distribution, I hadn't been sure I'd get to travel to be a part of it.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
But I'm glad I ended up in Saraya for this distribution. The volunteers and the Senegalese health workers who were involved astonished me on a daily basis with their eagerness, compassion and energy. Besides, check out this river!</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-wlNlXuk4yVP6woI1lsiyhVk-i0RtyDTKWsZvxSKb2kdspPh0jXuY6GqYhFqNSFYohUayy1eKoKfZSGH4ZAdmllqKJ5Fo8j3jyzCG1A368SskQEp7JyBjT2m7McqsRvapsSVuLX8Jxb-x/s1600/DSCN0311.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-wlNlXuk4yVP6woI1lsiyhVk-i0RtyDTKWsZvxSKb2kdspPh0jXuY6GqYhFqNSFYohUayy1eKoKfZSGH4ZAdmllqKJ5Fo8j3jyzCG1A368SskQEp7JyBjT2m7McqsRvapsSVuLX8Jxb-x/s640/DSCN0311.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yummy. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
I think a lot these days about how a few small things in my life could have been just different enough to have kept me from ever joining the Peace Corps. It would have been so easy to stay, to take a teaching job, to keep going in that old direction. There wasn't anything in my life to make me particularly unhappy. Nothing was missing. Things were good. Joining the Peace Corps and coming to Senegal was maybe kind of an act of madness.<br />
<br />
But now I have this whole other element in my life, like a color I had never been able to see before I came to Senegal, or like an entirely new way of putting the same old words and thoughts together, an entirely new way of living. This color, this feeling is with me all day, as I do my office work, as I shop for vegetables in the market, as I live this life. And it's with me every night, loud and clear as the call to prayer.<br />
<br />
The work in Saraya was some of the finest work we can do, and it brought me some of my happiest days and nights in country. The best days are the days that are full. The best nights are the nights when I go to bed sunburned and sore, with a light heart, a full stomach, and the knowledge that I have done a good thing well. This is all I want. Let me not live a day past my ability to feel this way. Not an hour.<br />
<br />
Love and guts,<br />
Jessie</div>
</div>Jessiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14750558216102330003noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582360104529875435.post-32982156415925012852011-10-11T15:29:00.000+00:002011-10-11T15:29:05.818+00:00Not a real post.<br />
I haven't been tending this blog in the way I like for a couple of
months. That will change soon, for sure. And for now, how about a
version of the essay I'm submitting with my grad school applications? I
promise it's more like a blog entry than an app essay is. Oh academia, I
want to come back to you. Kinda-sorta-sometimes. Anyway, I'm not sure that this is less interesting to you than what I usually post. So here it goes.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
My time with the Peace Corps in Senegal has completely
changed the way I envision spending the rest of my life. I had studied
philosophy and been focused on an introverted, academic future before I became
a volunteer. Joining the Peace Corps was supposed to give me a temporary break
from that life, a chance to learn to use my hands a little and to see a new
part of the world. But I spent two years in a village of 300 people as a health
volunteer, and now I work in Dakar, Senegal’s capital and largest city, on
malaria prevention and education initiatives. I have come to believe that a
life of service is more important than the life of the mind. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As a Peace Corps volunteer, I saw the people the village as
my constituents. I listened to them, learned what they considered to be their
greatest health-related problems, and worked with their abilities and resources
to try to find solutions. Sometimes I could bring additional resources of my
own, whether through grant writing or the technical training I received when I
became a volunteer. But no matter what the project, I always wished that I
could do more, pass along deeper knowledge, and serve the people of the village
better. As I thought over what it would mean to serve better, I began to focus
on the practice of medicine as my means.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There was also, always at the back of my mind, a thought
that there was some sort of obligation I had to meet. It wasn’t my obligation
as an individual but rather my obligation as a representation of a type:
privileged enough to have been well educated from early in my life, free enough
to join the Peace Corps after college, and inclined to think that I am not
entitled to live a life of suspended, isolated ease simply because I was born
in a First World country. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My sense of this obligation grew as I saw the residents of
what I came to think of as “my” village in Senegal fall ill from preventable
diseases or die from treatable ones. It seemed wrong, especially when the
victims were children. And what compounded this wrongness was that the children
of my host family, whom I love, were not particularly special. Special to me,
yes, of course. But my host sister Thian, now almost four, who has survived
malaria and diarrheal and respiratory diseases, is not one in a million. She’s
one of millions. I could – and did – help Thian by teaching her mother about
insecticide-treated mosquito nets and oral rehydration solution therapy. That’s
something, and I’m glad I could be there to do it. But there are lots of
children like Thian, and their needs are greater, more systematic, than I feel
qualified to meet now. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I joined the Peace Corps, I remember thinking that the
task ahead would be like cleaning a very messy house, maybe one that had been
flooded or damaged in an earthquake. If you stepped back and looked at the
whole of it at once, you would feel as if you were doomed to be cleaning up the
mess forever. But if you stopped in the first room you reached, picked up one
book and put it back on the shelf, you would have made a start. One tiny job
would have been completed. And so I told myself, “Do the job in front of you –
for now.” I kept my focus on particular projects and people and events, and I tried
to ignore the bigger picture as much as possible.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I think I’m ready for that bigger picture. I want to
understand disease and be able to fight it on an individual level – on the
level of one person, one patient. I think perhaps that I want this so deeply because
of Thian and the other members of my host family in Senegal. Living with them,
seeing them struggle with malnutrition and disease, has left me believing that
disease will never be an abstraction for me, will never be something whose
story could be told entirely by the tabulation of morbidity and mortality
statistics. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But I also want to be able to see why some diseases attack
the poorest countries in the world, why they thrive there, and what we can do
about it. In my mind, great opportunity comes with great obligation. And maybe
our obligations are greatest toward those with the least opportunity. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s hard to escape my background in philosophy, so I’ve
been inclined to think of these statements about obligations and opportunities
as universal maxims. But I am realizing now that they serve perfectly well as
guiding lights. At this moment, these beacons have led me to desire to pursue a
career in medicine, with a concentration in global public health. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It will be very hard for me to leave Senegal. I have a life
here, and a family, and a job that allows me to do good work. But if by leaving
I can take a first step toward a career as a doctor, I will be grateful and
come eagerly to the new studies and pursuits. Thank you for your consideration.</div>
Jessiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14750558216102330003noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582360104529875435.post-43059064668494976612011-08-29T17:19:00.003+00:002011-08-29T17:23:01.487+00:00Stomping Out Malaria in Africa! A Peace Corps Initiative!Hello there. I haven't had much time to write recently, but I wanted to share the website of the thing/people I'm working on/with. <a href="http://stompoutmalaria.tumblr.com/">Check this out!</a> We have a facebook page and a twitter, for those of you who are bold enough for such things. I am not. <div>
<br /></div><div>Also, September is maybe going to be the busiest, most exciting month I've had since... don't even know, actually. So busy and exciting that I might even take some photos to share. </div><div>
<br /></div><div>I hope you all are being treated right by your situations and surroundings. Also, eat a box of Cheezits for me. I can't stop thinking about Cheezits these days.</div><div>
<br /></div><div>Love and guts,</div><div>Jessie</div>Jessiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14750558216102330003noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582360104529875435.post-19925076333110596792011-08-10T08:42:00.003+00:002011-08-10T09:01:37.570+00:00Dakar.<span class="Apple-style-span" >There are a lot of good things about life in Dakar, and some thing that are not so good. And then there are quite a few aspects of the life here that are not better or worse than life in the village, just different.
<br />
<br />No one farms here in Dakar, and there's not much animal herding either. Even newer neighborhoods like mine, where there are still many empty plots and unfinished buildings, there's not much open space here. My neighborhood does have a small herd of cattle floating around, but that's about it. I always hated the cows out in the bush; whenever I walked to my site mate's village just a few kilometers away from mine, I would be a little nervous about surprising some one-ton cud muncher into forking me with those insane curved horns they all have. So it's strange to run across them here, too, where they occasionally pass by me peaceably as I walk to work.
<br />
<br />But no farming, none at all. So I guess I have no right to be upset that there's not much of a rainy season up here. Dakar has its own microclimate, so we get a lot of humid days when we can see clouds on the horizon in every direction and unrelentingly uncomfortable nights when everyone stumbles into the office the next mornings looking like they've spent the last eight hours stewing in a puddle of their own sweat instead of sleeping. Here, I miss out on the pleasure of feeling the cold wind blow a storm right up to my doorstep, the satisfaction of watching the rain fall on my host family's fields of millet and peanuts, the adrenaline and fear and reckless joy of riding out a violent storm in a hut I knew was made mostly of mud and sticks.
<br />
<br />There are other things that come with the rain here. Our apartment floods a little bit. I don't mind mopping the floor for half an hour after each sparse rain, especially because there aren't going to be many of them. But it does feel like a petty move on the weather’s part. Really, storm clouds? My hut made it through all those rainy seasons without collapsing, but these bullshit raindrops are going to form a stinking greasy puddle around my trash bag?<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--><!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" >
<br /></span></div><div> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" >Overall, though, this is good. I like our neighborhood. It’s a three-minute walk from the Peace Corps office, which is handy. There’s a vegetable market right outside our doorstep, where Senegalese women sell carrots, onions, sweet potatoes, cabbage, grains, bissap flowers and even meat. For our higher-maintenance moods, there’s a well-stocked grocery just behind the office, and a variety of restaurants within walking distance too. There are even a couple reasonably seedy, non-touristy bars.<span> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" >As I sat with a friend on the front patio of one of these bars, sweating out the final hour of the late afternoon and wishing desperately that the miserable portion of the Atlantic ocean we were staring at would offer up a breeze to lift away the blanket of humidity, a skinny, sad-looking Senegalese man walked up to the bar with a cage full of birds. Tiny birds, making lots of screechy panic noises, apparently for sale. A Senegalese man at the table next to us, who had been nursing the same beer and talking quietly with his friends for as long as we had been in the bar, stood and demanded how much money they cost.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" >The skinny man with the cage looked three parts dead. I didn’t think he had it in him to rise above his exhaustion and answer, but they negotiated and exchanged money, and then the skinny man handed over the cage to the bar patron. Without hesitation or a single glance at any of the rest of us, this man stood up, opened the tiny door to the cage, and started shaking it up and down, side to side. Birds spilled everywhere, shooting off into the sun. I stared and stared. Everyone in the bar must have been staring. When only a few birds remained, too shocked to find the way out of their bouncing, shaking cage, the man stuck his hand in to flush them out.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" >“Leave them, don’t shake the cage, and they’ll fly out on their own,” I shouted in Wolof. As if I had all the experience in the world with this type of thing. Jesus. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" >“No, it’s fine,” the man replied, not even glancing my way. The last bird flew away, and the man handed the cage back to the bird seller, who didn’t even seem to have noticed what had happened.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" >I was still gaping at the man openly. I wanted him to make eye contact so I could ask him why he had done what he had done. I wanted to know what the birds were to him, what raw, jangling nerve their captivity had touched in him. His action must have meant something, but I never found out what. He went back to his table of friends and his beer. From as much as I could hear of their conversation, they never brought up the subject of the birds. I didn’t understand at all. This is our local bar.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" >The electricity at our apartment is mostly on, the water mostly comes out of the taps when you want it to. The roof doesn’t leak, but then, we’re on the second floor. One neighbor on the fourth floor is a fellow American, and next to him lives a Senegalese family. Below them, there’s a family from Cote d’Ivoire. And then there’s us, and then the guard below us. There’s a sort of inverse balcony that cuts through the building, a big open space that allows the sound to travel freely from apartment to apartment. I hear the guard waking up before dawn prayers to take his first meal of the day, which is his last for 14 hours, this being Ramadan. I hear a girl or young woman on the floor above me singing during weekend afternoons. She sings like she’s alone in her apartment, her large family all gone for a few hours while she has stayed behind, perhaps to sweep and clean, perhaps to sing. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" >The work is good, too. I’m proud of what I’m a part of. It is refreshing to be able to embrace a task without cynicism, with hope and passion, with comrades. I come home exhausted and emptied out every early evening, and it feels honest.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" >Even just that three-minute walk home is something satisfying. Even as a white girl, my relationship with my neighborhood is different because I speak Wolof. The construction workers and guards around here know my name and greet me as I pass, as does the elderly lady who presides over a small boutique. She is losing her eyesight, but she writes down every purchase and sale she makes and she knows where all her grandchildren and relations are at every second. Her name is painted above the boutique counter in big, bold print. She has a domain, and passing by her in it makes me feel a little like I do, too. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" >This is not the village; it is not home. But the village was not always home, either, and I had a few miserable days in the beginning when I didn’t understand that fact. I remember with perfect clarity the day early on in my service when I realized that it was a place I would come to love, full of people I would come to love. I’m not saying that’s going to happen here. But I like knowing that it might. And until I have that feeling again, either here or somewhere else, I can live here, and greet the people I know in the street and be a part of this world and feel like I understand it and fit in it and belong to it. If I ever get too comfortable, I can go back to that bar where I saw the man let one hundred tiny birds go free, and remember that there are also always mysteries and experiences left in the world, and that there’s always something to do and somewhere to go tomorrow. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" >Love and guts,</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" >Jessie</span></p> <!--EndFragment--></div>Jessiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14750558216102330003noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582360104529875435.post-19288697369087648772011-07-01T09:22:00.003+00:002011-07-01T10:27:34.691+00:00Mass protests and beautiful music.I went to see <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lGo2N8_UWo">this group</a> at a venue here in Dakar last night, recent violent demonstrations in that part of town notwithstanding. <br /><br />Although I didn't stroll through the epicenter of the protests, there were plenty of signs downtown that something had happened. Broken windows and signs were everywhere, as were swept-up piles of glass shards. Not every business seemed to be open, even though it was only the early evening. I couldn't be sure it wasn't my imagination, but it seemed like there were fewer people out on the streets. No white tourists, anyway. <br /><br />Something's happening in Senegal. There's a presidential election coming up in February of 2012, and the current President, Abdoulaye Wade, has lost the esteem of the voters. He knows it, or at least someone close to him does: he's 85, and the term of office here is seven years. Rumors of senility and weakness are already circling. In advance of the election, Wade has introduced several new laws designed to keep him in office for the beginning of another term for at least a little while. His true objective, people say, is to step down and boost his deeply unpopular son Karim into office. The bill that was up in the Senegalese legislature on Thursday the 23rd would have virtually guaranteed his ability to do this. <br /><br />The 23rd will be remembered here in Senegal for a long time, I suspect. Thousands of young Senegalese, pushed over the brink by their disappointment and anger, took to the streets outside of the legislature and presidential palace. Soon, people started calling it a riot. The demonstrations spread throughout the city and even, after a couple of days, into the suburbs of Dakar and to other large cities in the country. Protesters burned cars and tires and sacked and burned government buildings. The demonstrations turned violent when the national security forces attempted to disperse the crowd with tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets. No one needs this story finished for them: these days, we all know what police brutality in struggling countries looks like. One Senegalese man, attempting to describe his despair to me, held out his hands in front of his chest and slowly drew them inward, clenching them into fists. "This is our country, and it is being held hostage."<br /><br />If this is an awakening, it is a welcome one. Often I have sat in an overcrowded truck or car lurching slowly down a pot-holed road (though its hardly fair to describe these "roads" like that: they're more pot-hole than flat surface), inching forward, taking hours to travel just some twenty-odd miles. Often I have looked around at the faces of the Senegalese men and women traveling with me, glazed over with indifference, scarves and wraps held to their noses and mouths to filter some of the choking dust out of the air, babies and small children draped over their laps or across their backs. Often I have wondered where their breaking point could be found: when is a road so pot-holed that it is no longer a road? When is a government so corrupt that it is no longer a government? When will these people rise against their corrupt leaders and their poverty?<br /><br />Wade backed down, and the demonstrations are over for now. We're expecting more trouble in the months to come, however, if Wade does not surrender this country to its people. <br /><br />Peace having been restored to the city of Dakar, our security guy gave us his blessing to attend this concert. I was excited. Daara J Family has some beautiful songs (seriously, check out that link up at the top), and they're also a very political group. <br /><br />The show was amazing. We were seated in the highest of the semi-circular rows. In front of us stretched a view of Senegalese families and white couples. Behind us was a standing, swaying crowd of young Senegalese people, who knew every word to every song and who danced in ecstasy for the entire two hours, screaming out requests and cheering as loud as they could. The men sang about putting aside sadness and despair, about being proud of Senegalese and African heritage, of being responsible for their lives and futures. In a city no longer in thrall to violence, one hundred of us were transported by the music of hope andjoy. <br /><br />Being at the show, getting caught up in the music, listening to the lyrics in Wolof (and some French) and watching the crowd respond made me feel so much a part of Senegal. I know it's an illusion, I know this place is not mine. But even outsiders must feel something stirring in response to the claim that man made to me: this is a country held hostage. It is a country holding a village where I spent two years growing up. It is a country where I have chosen to work for three years, where my future has been shaped and my heart warmed and softened. It is a country where children I love will grow up, where they wil make families, where they will raise children. Is it somehow vulgar to feel, really feel, the injustice holding this country and these people in a vice grip? Why has this place, which is no particular place, become so particular for me? <br /><br />Thian and Fama, my host sisters in the village of Ndiago, are two of millions of children born into poverty, destined for a lifetime of back-breaking work in the fields, insufficient schooling, early marriage, and repeated childbirth. They shine for me because I spent two years with them. Maybe it's the same thing with Senegal: this country where I was not raised has lifted me up, become particular and special and worth caring about with everything I have. This is another lesson for me about doing the job in front of you, however you define that job: this child, this village, this country. <br /><br />Love and guts and music,<br /><br />JessieJessiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14750558216102330003noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582360104529875435.post-6825516016295464762011-06-10T08:18:00.005+00:002011-06-10T15:48:56.373+00:00A post that is sort of about work.On our way back from Sokone, the big Peace Corps bus that had been so true to us for hundreds of kilometers started making a horrible intermittent noise that brought my heart to my throat every few minutes. I started examining the villages we passed, noting their size and their distance from the road. I drank my water slowly, in sips now, saving it just in case, and mentally counting the money I had left on me. The sun was setting, after all, and the bus sounded bad enough that I stopped feeling confident we'd make it back to Thies that night. <br /><br />The group I found myself traveling with understood what it would be mean, to be benighted on the side of the road. They were all Peace Corps folks, one way or another. Peace Corps/Senegal has invited all the other posts in Africa to send experienced volunteers and staff members to our training center here in Thies for a malaria boot camp. This is the beginning of the Stomping Out Malaria in Africa initiative, the program I have extended for a third year to work with. We are pooling knowledge and resources from across the continent and bringing together all of our partner organizations to step up malaria education and prevention and treatment programs. We're working toward a 50% reduction in deaths caused by malaria by the year 2015, and the substantial elimination of malaria deaths by 2020. We're working to completely eradicate malaria.<br /><br />We had been in Sokone and a couple of other places that day to watch as Peace Corps/Senegal volunteers and Senegalese community health workers did their crazy thing. We watched men and women receive new bed nets and learn how to use and maintain them properly. We saw volunteers teach market women how to make and sell neem lotion, a cheaply-made natural insect repellent that is gaining in popularity here in Senegal. Every time we got off the bus to visit another location, grinning women and joyful men gathered around us to shake our hands, tell us their stories, and thank us for our work.<br /><br />It had been a good day, and maybe in the States we would assume that such a day could not end on a sour note, leaving us stranded short of the training center and our dinners and beds in Thies. Senegal, however, has taught me to be gentle with the future. Speaking aloud to a friend in the next seat or even thinking to myself, I began phrasing every sentence in the future tense conditionally: "If we make it back to Thies tonight...." Mostly, I just sat and stared out the window, less out of grumpiness or apprehension than habit.<br /><br />It's a difficult time of year here. The hot season is two or three months old, but no more thoughtful of what might please us, or make it less uncomfortable for us to sleep at night without the benefit of fan or breeze, let alone air conditioning. And it wants to rain so desperately. Every day, the heat rises and the humidity thickens as the morning passes. All through the afternoon and evening, we seek shelter from the broiling heat, and in the evening we sneak away to quiet seats beneath cool mango trees, to let the heat drop before trying to sleep. And still, day after day, no rain yet.<br /><br />Driving now, trying to make it back to Thies, I watch what manifests itself from all this heat and humidity. There are clouds in the distance; or rather, the clouds are all you can see of the distance, with thick baobab trees perching on the horizon, reaching up for a single penetrating ray of sun here and there. Closer to the road is the occasional small village, usually just a handful of clustered compounds. Sometimes a man and his sons will still be working the fields, preparing them again to receive seed and rain, even though this hour of approaching darkness is for bathing, eating and resting. They bring the debris of the last harvest together, circular piles of millet stalks and other organic material, and light them on fire to clear the field quickly. When the last of the fires is ablaze, they leave it to God and turn home. Here and there are girls, brightly clothed and conspicuous against a grey sky quickly turning black and inscrutable, who were sent from their homes for a last pail of water from the well. Not lingering as they might during the day, they quickly hoist their buckets to their heads and start for home. The sun sets.<br /><br />Our driver is a king among men, and he has managed to silence the horrible grating noise coming from the engine of the bus. We are thirty minutes away from Thies, from dinner and showers and rest. I am suddenly confident that we will make it; it seems obvious, as if it's already happened. We open the windows and let the night air in, and though it is not yet cool, it is rushing and refreshing. The sun has set, but our hearts have not; the night comes in through the windows, but despair does not.<br /><br />Please excuse my wordiness. But we are all young, and we have a beautiful goal ahead of us, after a filling meal and a good night's sleep. Excuse the wordiness, and also the confidence that was justified to me when we did in fact arrive in Thies that night. It is that confidence, a touch of humility, and a bounty of joy in our work that will bring us to the true end of our journey.<br /><br />I'll post the link to the Stomping Out Malaria in Africa initiative's website as soon as we have it up. <br /><br />Until then, love and guts,<br /><br />JessieJessiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14750558216102330003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582360104529875435.post-60901262942707123562011-05-19T06:05:00.001+00:002011-05-23T02:30:45.622+00:00Vacation. <meta name="Title" content=""> <meta name="Keywords" content=""> <meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"> <meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 2008"> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Georgia; panose-1:2 4 5 2 5 4 5 2 3 3; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> </style> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family: Georgia; color: black;">I have been watching scenery since New York, where I landed on the 27<sup>th</sup> of April. Except for a quick trip home in February to take care of some family business, this is the only time I have been home since the beginning of 2009. If you choose to extend your service for a third year, as I have, Peace Corps takes good care of you. They gave me a month off, tickets home and back to Senegal, and some pocket money. I decided to fly only as far as the east coast, which defaults to New York City because of flight restrictions from Africa, and then make my way west by other means. Because of this choice, I’ve been living out of my big orange backpack, on my feet, in cars, and on trains for over 20 days.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; color: black;">
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; color: black;">While most of the people I meet on this trip look at me like I’m crazy when I tell them I’m going all the way to Los Angeles without letting my feet leave the ground, I have enjoyed every second of this trip. Not only have I been able to visit with friends in Philadelphia, DC, Annapolis, Chicago, St. Paul, and Portland, which is all too much excitement for me to deal with anyway: I also have been staring out the window the whole time.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; color: black;">
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; color: black;">On the way from DC to Chicago, we passed through the Cumberland Gap heading west (and yes, though that was a Kaolack shout-out, it also happens to be entirely true). I had forgotten the particular beauty of that part of the east coast, maybe because I went to college in Maryland and got so used to it at some point. North Dakota and Montana were too flat to be real places, even, but at some point the wind came up and I watched the green and amber waves of grass as we rushed by. Finally we got into the mountains again. We climbed and climbed, and suddenly there was snow everywhere, rushing rivers and sudden waterfalls coming out of every crevasse, fog creeping up and down the tall pine trees, taller than buildings, taller than I could believe. Portland seemed like a city offered to us in a basin of rolling hills that led away darker mountains.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; color: black;">
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; color: black;">And the trip south from Portland, which I find myself in the middle of as I write this, has been perhaps the most beautiful stretch of land so far. There is a lake somewhere up here. The train tracks skirted around it for ages. The clouds covered the sky completely, so even though it was still light out, there was not a fragment of blue to be seen above the train, the lake, the mountains. The trees covered every square meter of the rolling hills around the lake, and though you could not see the terrain directly because of how thickly they grew, you knew where it rose and fell again because the tops of the trees echoed the shape of the earth below. So little blue, but so much green. The lake shone with it, rippling, closer to green than blue, sometimes even a bright living green, changed by the strange foggy light and the green of the trees into something more reflective, more in its right place, than other bodies of water. As we were gliding by in the train, there was nothing to suggest to us that any human had ever been able to come here, had ever been able to do more than we were doing, passing by in silence, staring, not touching it or being allowed to share it.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; color: black;">
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; color: black;">I think I prefer this passiveness, this watching the scenery go by outside. Sure, it could be frustrating if I wanted to get out and listen to the crunch of snow under my feet, or shake some of it from the lowest bows of the trees. There is sometimes a path going off into a forest that could be for me.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; color: black;">
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; color: black;">But there is a privilege in simply sitting and watching, in not engaging. This is my vacation, after all, my first one in over two years of being a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal, and to not engage with the world around me, for once, is a feast. I suppose that is what this vacation has been: an opportunity to be passive and unengaged, to relax and rest. If I were in Senegal, there would be something calling me back to the world: Thian or Fama pulling on the hem of my skirt, asking for a piggy-back ride; a simple task or a more complicated project to be planned or carried out; even the need to bathe, to drink enough clean water, to eat enough food to stay healthy. But here in the States, on this train, hovering somewhere at the border of Oregon and California, I only have to sit and watch as everything passes by outside the window.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; color: black;">
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; color: black;">Don’t get me wrong; I look forward to waking into the real world again. But I know that won’t happen until my plane touches down in Dakar in another ten days.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; color: black;">
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; color: black;">Until then, love and guts,</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; color: black;">Jessie</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <!--EndFragment--> Jessiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14750558216102330003noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582360104529875435.post-68391722798105184762011-05-13T18:52:00.003+00:002011-05-14T04:01:34.801+00:00Bad blogging....I consider it a bit of a crime to declare your intention of writing something to the world (or the portion of it that knows you exist) before you actually, you know, write it. But it's been a while since I posted on this blog, and I wanted whoever actually reads this to know that I'm working on a couple of things for it. Currently I'm on vacation and transitioning to a new role with Peace Corps/Senegal, one which will move me to Dakar and get me working in an office. Crazy. <div><br /></div><div>Also, I wanted to let whoever you are know that the Los Angeles Times is running something I wrote as an op-ed in the Opinion section on this Sunday, the 15th of May. Hooray! I'll link to it, when there is something to link to.</div><div><br /></div><div>Love and guts,</div><div><br /></div><div>Jessie</div>Jessiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14750558216102330003noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582360104529875435.post-7208327811185202542011-03-07T20:04:00.006+00:002011-03-11T10:38:26.404+00:00So McCarthyism is cool now, huh?I read the other day that hearings are beginning in the House of Representatives to investigate the threat of the radicalization of Muslim Americans. All right, America. I'll put this in the same column as the bill that passed the House cutting funding for Planned Parenthood: signs that you just need to be allowed to throw your little temper tantrum until you get rid of all that excess anger and cry yourself to sleep. I will also let other, better informed people get angry and write about this. Instead, I'm going to take a deep breath and try to let my frustration go, so that I can tell you about something I see every day and only recently realized I had kind of weirdly missed during my ten-day semi-vacation in the States. Muslims in prayer.<div><br /></div><div>Those of you who have been educated enough to realize that Islam is not an inherently violent and hateful religion also probably know that Muslims pray five times a day while facing the holy city of Mecca.</div><div><br /></div><div>Ok. There was still too much anger in that sentence for me to continue writing what I intended as a post about peace and prayer. </div><div><br /></div><div>Give me a minute, and a fresh start.</div><div><br /></div><div>In the two years that I've been here, no Senegalese has ever tried to evangelize me. No fighting words about the state of my soul, no passionate diatribe about Allah and His will, no assurances that I'd be happier as a Muslim. The people in my village haven't even shown much interest in what I do believe. I remember one conversation, though, with a woman in my compound, Maguette. She's a sort of distant cousin of the family. Since her husband lives and works in Dakar, she stays here with us, his mother, and her three small children.</div><div><br /></div><div>One afternoon, Maguette walked out of her room and sat next to me. I was playing with her youngest daughter, Thian. </div><div><br /></div><div>"Aissa," she asked. "Why don't you pray with us?"</div><div><br /></div><div>I mumbled a response about how my parents didn't pray -- a phrase which, in Wolof, is exactly synonymous with the phrase "my parents are not Muslims." In Wolof, there's no distinction between praying and being a Muslim; the same Wolof verb translates to English in both ways. Prayer is the defining act of faith for the people here. Parents teach their children to pray. So really, my response makes a lot of sense in Senegal, as much as we would find it strange in the States. </div><div><br /></div><div>Maguette seemed perfectly satisfied with my answer. But she wanted to tell me more.</div><div><br /></div><div>"When I pray, everything becomes peaceful again. I know that Allah will protect me and my family, and I feel that when I pray, but mostly I like that it brings me peace."</div><div><br /></div><div>Maguette mostly prays indoors, away from others' eyes, which seems to be pretty normal for married women. I can easily imagine why it would bring her peace. Five times a day she puts whatever she is doing aside, shoos her three children away, and is entirely by herself for a few minutes. She's been praying this way since she was a child, and the repeated words and motions of standing, bowing, standing again, full prostration, and sitting up must be a comfort to her in the same way that all familiar things are always a comfort to us. And then to know that all around her, across Senegal, across Muslim Africa, across the world, other Muslims are also bending and rising in prayer -- perhaps that brings her peace. I know it would do something for me.</div><div><br /></div><div>Her stepmother, Maam Bode, is by now too old to stand, walk, and bow easily. Maam Bode has her own way of praying. She remains seated on the ground, stretching her weakened legs out in front of her, away toward Mecca. Saying over the words carefully and more slowly than anyone else in the family, she brings a handful of sand up to her forehead instead of bending down to prostrate herself.</div><div><br /></div><div>My host dad prays out loud. You can hear him from several feet away. When he hears the calls to prayer, he doesn't even stop to complete the ritual cleansing of his hands, feet, head, and face. He simply rises up, arranges a mat to be facing Mecca, calls his young son Abib to his side, and begins to pray. Occasionally, mostly during the holidays, his two wives and the young girls of the compound will line up behind him to pray in accompaniment. </div><div><br /></div><div>Mostly, though, the two wives pray out of site, in their rooms. Only rarely do I see them pray outside, as the girls do. Khady, my host-sister, is about 14. The compound is also temporarily a home to two girls who are studying in Ndiago this year, Adam and Vige. They're both a little older than my sister and further along in school, and both are stricter about praying at the proper times. I noticed that when they came to live with us, Khady became more vigilant about prayer as well. The three of them wash together, wrap their legs in long skirts if they're wearing pants or skirts that fall above their ankles, and cover their heads. They stand in a line on a plastic mat facing Mecca and pray together, chanting the words under their breath, standing and bowing in unison. </div><div><br /></div><div>Thian, Maguette's youngest daughter, is two and a half years old. She's beginning to speak quite a bit of Wolof, but it'll still be some time before she learns how to say the Arabic prayers. Nevertheless, when the teenage girls or my host dad pray, sometimes Thian will rush to stand beside them. She will watch carefully and imitate their movements, rising to her feet or dipping to the ground just a second after everyone else. I've never noticed anyone getting mad at her for this, even though I can see how her behavior would seem inappropriate. </div><div><br /></div><div>But she's not mocking her elders or mimicking them for the sake of cruelty. She wants to be a part of the world, and that means praying five times a day. It's another way people here have of affirming their relationship to a greater world -- the world of Islam -- and to each other. </div><div><br /></div><div>The thing I love the most about watching my family pray is how they seem to create this temporary place of peace and absolute purpose, a small area that exists just for them and what they're doing, just for the length of time it takes to complete their prayers. The moment they kick off their sandals and stand at the foot of a mat, facing Mecca, ready to pray, their posture changes. The place, a small stretch of sand, becomes a holy place. They go through an experience that they share with millions of people around the world, one that connects them all together, in prayer, in peace.</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't have a good sense of what people are feeling in the States, or what it could be that would lead to the nonsense I'm reading about in the news. But I remember sitting with my family on the anniversary of September 11th, watching the news on TV. There was footage of the two towers burning, followed by a story about that crazy preacher in Florida who had wanted to mark the anniversary by burning a bunch of Korans. My family turned to me for an explanation, since they don't understand French, the language of the broadcast. I explained. They remembered September 11th, but they were confused about the preacher.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Well," said my host mom. "There are crazy people everywhere: America and here, and everywhere else."</div><div><br /></div><div>"It's true," I replied. I guess this was enough of an explanation for her. The day's final call to prayer was sung out over the quiet village evening, and my family stirred to rise, wash, and pray. And I guess that was enough of an explanation for me, too. There are crazy people everywhere, and in most places, for most people, there is also peace. Here, I see it. Over there, in the States, I don't know. I hope for it, and let others pray for it.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Love and guts,</div><div>Jessie</div>Jessiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14750558216102330003noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582360104529875435.post-74049448085159825962011-02-26T16:42:00.009+00:002011-03-03T20:54:43.522+00:00Family.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Well, here I am, back in Senegal. It's been a wild few days. I spent about a week and a half in Los Angeles helping my mom move, eating Mexican food, and listening to Car Talk every morning. Not bad, I'd say. I'm a little zonked from unpacking and moving, but my mom had it much worse than I did. </span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">I came back here just in time for the annual West African Invitational Softball Tournament, appropriately abbreviated to WAIST. If you missed my description of the tournament last year, you can find it </span><a href="http://jseiler.blogspot.com/2010/02/not-at-home.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">here</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">. Just be warned, I was going through this phase of not feeling happy with American comfort culture, and if you're an ex-pat living in Dakar, there's a good chance I will have accidentally insulted you in that post. I'm sorry. </span></div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Once WAIST was over, it was time for our Close of Service Conference. That's right, sports fans. The Spring Stage of 2009 has been here for two years, and it's time for some of us to go home. This conference was about making the transition back to American life, going to job interviews, stuff like that. Since I had already made the decision to stay in Senegal for a third year, I zoned out for parts of it. But being reunited with the group of people I came to country with two years ago was fun, and talking to them about their plans made me realize that the Peace Corps Volunteers I've met here are some of the most amazing individuals I know. If I don't get my act together, I'll probably be working for one of them some day. But you know what? That wouldn't be so bad.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Anyway, as usual, I started out by talking about something other than what I actually want to talk about. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">I went home to LA to help out my mom. It wasn't an easy decision. There's a lot on my plate just now. On top of the work stuff, I'm also transitioning into my third-year role and saying goodbye to my village and host family, which is turning out to be much more difficult than I anticipated. But for some reason, it seemed like a decision I had to make. I was exactly where I had to be, doing exactly what I had to be doing. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">What confused me, though, was that when another family situation came up at the very beginning of my time here in Senegal, I elected not to go home. Peace Corps would have put me on the first plane out, but I decided to stay. Just in case you're not already uncomfortable with how personal this blog post is getting, </span><a href="http://jseiler.blogspot.com/2009/06/bad-day-in-dakar.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">here's a post about that day</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">. I felt at that time like I had to wake up every morning and make the commitment to Senegal and Peace Corps work again, and that every night I would go to bed not knowing whether I'd be ready to recommit the next morning. Now, I can commit to not just another day, but a whole year. In fact, I feel like these past two years and this next one have shaped the path I'll be taking for the rest of my life.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Something in me has changed these last two years. I guess I knew this much would happen when I signed up for this ridiculous adventure, but now I'm beginning to figure it out much more precisely. Two years ago, I stayed in Senegal when I should have gone home to my family. Two weeks ago, I went home to my family. I think I know why.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">If you've read my blog before, you know I love the way family works here in Senegal. Everyone in my village is related to everyone else, usually literally, but at the very least through some sort of economic or social arrangement. There's no such thing as isolation, because to isolate yourself would be to die. We have so little here that everything must be shared. There is so much work to be done simply to keep us all alive that everyone must lend a hand. Every time, as is the custom here, you greet an acquaintance with their first and last names, every time you ask after their family members, every time you ask how their fields are doing, you are in fact affirming a vital connection with that person, and through them with an entire community that extends far beyond the borders of the village. I guess this is sort of a greatest hits type of post, because I want to point you to </span><a href="http://jseiler.blogspot.com/2009/12/waiting-room.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">this post</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> if you're interested in reading more about family and interconnectedness in Senegal. Ugh, when did I get so self-referential? But seriously, I don't know if I could say it better than I already did in that post.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">After living here for two years, my concept of family has been redefined. I'm not even really talking about my family in particular here. It's not just about my mom and my dad. It's about who you need. It's about who you always have to say yes to, even if you don't feel ready or are scared about what saying yes means. It's about my fellow Volunteers -- the work, the parties, the shared experiences. It's about my friends back home, and how I used to wish I could carry pocket-sized versions of them around with me. It's about a network of people who, in spite of what I feared when I came here, I can never really lose. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">I wish I had learned this years ago, but I'm thankful I get it now. And I'm pretty sure that coming all the way out here to this tiny village in Senegal was the only way I could figure it out. I left my family and came here to find a new one. I was looking for comrades, for people who cared about the same type of work that I did, people who wanted adventure and challenges and who never felt comfortable with Good Enough. Our reach may always exceed our grasp, but we will never, ever stop reaching. What I found was what my real family -- those related to me in the States, the people here in this village in Senegal whom I have come to love, and even my friends on both sides of the ocean -- means to me. It's everything. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The sentiment is the opposite of something Eve says to Adam in Book XII of Paradise Lost as they prepare to leave the Garden of Eden:</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">"...but now lead on;<br />In me </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">is no delay; without thee here to stay</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">,<br />Is to go hence unwilling; thou to me</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br />Art all things under Heaven</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">, all places thou...."</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">It's lines 614 to 617, just in case you're one of those people.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">She's saying to Adam, you, to me, are all places. Eve doesn't need Paradise, she needs Adam. For me, I guess it's the opposite. In all places, I find you, a family. My family. I just didn't know it until I came here. Which I guess means I'm home, and always will be, no matter where I find myself.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Love, and more love, and guts,</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Jessie</span></div></div>Jessiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14750558216102330003noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582360104529875435.post-17647691399475286372011-01-16T11:18:00.002+00:002011-01-16T11:27:39.331+00:00Surprise trip home.<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal">So I’m going to back in the States for a quick trip to help my mom out. She’s moving across the city. I don’t know for sure that I’m ready for a trip home, but this seems like one of those things you do for the people you love.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">ve</span> been trying to put my finger on exactly what is so terrifying about the prospect of being back over there. It is not the piles of guacamole and potato tacos I’m going to devour. It’s not the daily access to fresh fruits and vegetables. It’s not the constant access to hot showers and flush toilets and air conditioners and space heaters. It’s not the long flights, though I do hate flying and dread and begrudge every hour spent in the air. It <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">isn</span>’t the prospect of putting on socks for the first time in two years, and seeing my friends and family again.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">America should be an appealing place to go, by any standard. Even though I can no longer tolerate dairy products or temperatures under 70 degrees with anything like comfort, this jaunt across an ocean and a continent should be something I look forward to.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Maybe I should take a step back. When I talk about America with my host family or other Senegalese people, lots of things surprise them or leave them thinking a little differently about the world. Yes, I explain, in response to the constant commentary on how wealthy all white people are. America does have a lot of money, it’s a very rich place. But there are affluent places and poor places in the States, just like we have here in Senegal: places like Dakar, places like the village. Places with plenty, places with nothing. People are often very curious (and sometimes rather abrasive) about the fact that at 24, I’m not married. Senegalese women of my age have three children and a fifth-grade education. Since I am invariably uninterested in the Senegalese men who approach me, and sometimes extremely rude in response to their advances, I’m something of an anomaly.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Another thing that surprises people here is my description of how people relate to each other in the States. No one makes eye contact or greets with strangers in the street? Families live hours and hours away from their “close” relations? Children leave the houses of their parents when they turn 18? The physical and emotional distances are unthinkable for Senegalese people.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Relate </i>is one of those words that’s changed in meaning since I came here. The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Wolof</span> word <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">bocc</span></i> is both a noun and a verb, not unusually in this language. It is how you would describe your blood relations, your family, but it also means <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">to share</i>. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">Both concepts, family and sharing, are more expansive here than they are in the States. Any man of my father’s generation in my village is also someone I could call my father or my uncle, and anyone as old as my Grandmother <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Bodey</span> is my grandparent as well. There <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">aren</span>’t that many last names in Senegal, maybe fifty or so, but everyone with my last name is also my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">bocc</span></i>. Crowing wealthy fat women in cars to Dakar are delighted to find out that their little sister and I have the same first name. It establishes something between us, even though it’s obvious that my name <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">isn</span>’t actually <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Aissa</span>, even if the time in which we actually share a physical space is limited to five hours or so, and we never meet again after that.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Sharing in Senegal is different too. Every day before lunch, my compound and the family closely related to us next door switch plates of food. It <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">doesn</span>’t matter if the two dishes are different and one family is worse off for having swapped a plate of fish and vegetables for a bowl of plain, dry rice. The households always share and never begrudge anything. Anyone passing through or by the compound at lunch or dinnertime is called in to share the meal, even if it’s just a bite, even if they’re a stranger here. Children who come upon a piece of hard candy will split it with their back teeth and hand out tiny fragments to each of their friends, anyone who’s present. Can you imagine asking an American four-year old to split a Jolly Rancher with her friend? <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Wouldn</span>’t happen. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I know I’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">ve</span> commented on this before, but I can’t stop thinking about it. Life in Senegal, especially in rural areas, is a constant stream of reminders of how connected we are to the people around us, how vital others are to our own existence and happiness, and what our role and position is within the group. When two people meet and go through the greeting ritual, they will repeat each other’s last name over and over again. Even if they’re just saying good morning, it can go on for a while. Recognizing someone and saying their last name is a way of affirming for that person that she has a place here, that she has relationships in the village, that she’s connected to everyone. It’s how you say that you’re home, and that the person you’re speaking with belongs here too. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">The same type of thing happens at events, too. Everyone in the village, and many people from nearby places, shows up for baptisms, weddings, and funerals. No matter how affluent the couple getting married or the family of the new mother, all the people coming to celebrate the occasion will bring some money, a length of fabric, or a new cooking pot as a gift. They know that on the occasion of a birth, death, or wedding in their house, all the same people will reciprocate. When I imagine all the property that changes hands, and especially when I think of how the money gets passed back and forth, I imagine a vast net that stretches all over Senegal, holding people close, leaving no one out. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">It’s all something we miss out on in the States. There’s less need for a constant reminder that we are not alone, perhaps. We have cell phones and the Internet and a reliable postal service, after all. But there’s also less need for closeness and trust. Here, you buy vegetables from your aunt and bread from your dad and you go the carpenter that your family always goes to and you get your clothing made at the same tailor as all of your most stylish friends. In the States, we can trust that products and services are going to be of a certain quality, that doctors are trained well, that cars won’t just give out, that we’ll never be stuck on the side of the road, miles and miles from home. Here in Senegal, none of that is guaranteed. So if the car you’re in breaks down, it’s midnight, and you’re hours from a major city, it helps to know that you can walk into the nearest village, pick any compound, and find a family there. The family will offer you food and water, and probably you’ll be welcome to spend the night, and odds are they’ll know someone who’s going to be headed in your direction tomorrow: would you like a ride?</p> <p class="MsoNormal">When I left the States, I left behind a lot of important relationships. I know they’re still there, at least for the most part. They’re more real, in many ways, than what I have here in Senegal. After all, sometimes people are nice to me because my skin is white. But there’s something so easy to trust here, something I know I can rely upon. I don’t have to work at relationships or try to build stronger ties. I can disappear and come back the next day, the next month, the next year, and the reaction from my family would be the same when I walked back into the compound: quiet happiness, fuss-free greetings, and a quick reintegration back into the fold, the daily life, the closeness and community.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>They can’t imagine that I could change in any significant way. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">I can’t be sure that it’ll be so easy when I come home to the States. The family across the country, the friends I left two years ago with sadness; I’ll see some of them again soon, but then I’m leaving again for Senegal. Senegal is not a place I’m ready to leave, and the States is not a place I’m ready to live again. This trip will be a little bit of an experiment in coming home, and while I’m happy to do it, I’m more sure of what I’ll feel landing again in Dakar than touching down in Los Angeles.</p><p class="MsoNormal">Love and guts, </p><p class="MsoNormal">- Jessie</p><p class="MsoNormal">P.S. See you soon. Which is good news, really.</p> <!--EndFragment-->Jessiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14750558216102330003noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582360104529875435.post-62560956628596770202011-01-04T09:58:00.001+00:002011-01-04T10:00:43.799+00:00Happy (Holi)DaysI have never been much of a holiday person. Even when I was a little kid, I think a slightly arrogant precocious skepticism in me ruined Christmas for my mom. Not that I was one of those people who sensed the beginning of the holiday season with gloom, either. I just never got that attached to the various mythologies of the holidays. <div><br />In any case, I usually enjoy occasions. People bustling around being friendly, good food, etc. What’s not to love? There’s one type of holiday person who does manage to get very much on my nerves, however. She’s the one who organizes the parties and finds the decorations and bakes the 16 types of reindeer cookies. Generally people follow along and get excited with her, so she is rarely disappointed with the reception of her Christmas eve cocktail party, which is inevitably followed by her Christmas morning breakfast buffet, which finally culminates in her Christmas day feast. </div><div><br />On the other hand, if you’re someone like me, who doesn’t dislike Christmas so much as feels rather apathetic to the whole holiday thing in general, beware. This is the time of year to keep your mouth shut. Anyone who has the nerve to be less exuberant about the holiday season than this person, no matter the reason, is not simply allowed to do her own thing, go her own way, attend only the cocktail party and skip out on the buffet and feast the next morning. No, no. People like me are generally labeled the scrooge or grinch of the season. </div><div><br />In spite of my seasonal wariness of good cheer, I had three very nice holidays recently. Thanksgiving was spent with the other volunteers of the Kaolack region in our regional house. The kitchen is tiny and not particularly well founded in pots and pans and spices. Somehow, though, the volunteers doing the cooking put three turkeys on the table, a bunch of pies, and a forest of side dishes. In a country where real milk (not powdered) and butter (instead of margarine) are luxuries, and where you have to go all the way to the capital to find things like plums, celery, mushrooms, basil, and quality cheese, these guys put nothing short of a feast out there for us all. (And, I’ll say, they did it without being the type of people I described above.) Anyway, it was delicious. </div><div><br />Some friends and I were treated to another fine meal on Christmas eve. The parents of a good friend came out to visit, and they treated us all to dinner at one of the classiest places in Dakar. The meal was, of course, incredible. So was the people-watching. There aren’t that many Christians in Senegal, so I expected the restaurant to be mostly packed with the Lebanese and ex-pat population of Dakar. Not so. For every table of awkward Americans, there were two of three of Senegalese, plus the occasional Lebanese family, among others. When every table was seated and the place really got bustling, we began to hear the familiar beats of Senegalese music floating over from a big concert next door. More than just the beats, actually: we probably couldn’t have heard it any better had we paid for tickets instead of dinner. As the Christmas eve wine began to take hold, whole tables of young men and women leapt to the small center area of the restaurant, right in front of our table, and started dancing wildly. Beautiful flowing Senegalese fabrics, sharp leather dresses, brightly colored veils and scarves everywhere. They danced together, falling into something between what you would see in an American club and what I see in the village at baptisms and weddings. It was exuberant, unscheduled, unimposed merriment, and everyone in the restaurant shared it, no matter who they were, what they were, or what they thought they were celebrating. Merry Christmas, indeed. Or merry something, anyway. The merry part is enough for me, when it’s real. And it was, that night. </div><div><br />I had been in Dakar for a few days at this point, and since I’m at that point in my service where the end of my time in village is in sight, I hurried home to Ndiago for New Year’s. We had a beautiful, simple, delicious night at home on New Year’s Eve. I was actually surprised that anyone took much notice of the new year anyway, since Senegalese villagers have little need of the calendar we use in the States. Time is held together by Islamic holidays, planting and harvesting times, and the weekly communal prayer and market days. Days aren’t numbered or assigned to months unless you’re waiting for a remittance from your husband who’s working in Dakar. Nevertheless, the women cooked delicious holiday dinner dishes and made an incredibly sugary beverage with milk and tea and mint candies, and everyone stayed up talking and drinking until they were tired enough, even with all the excitement, to go to bed. That was when the old year passed, for them: when they were ready to sleep. </div><div><br />Holidays are a reminder of what we already know: that food is delicious, that we love our family and friends, that we can never get enough of counting our blessings. It’s not about something that happens once a year, but about what happens every day. What I love in this time of year is that we are given more opportunity to be thoughtful about all that. Christmas isn’t a single day, a blowout event, a thing that’s contained, and neither is Thanksgiving or New Year’s. The single big feast, the ceremonial lighting of the tree, the conviction that this day is special in any way all seems short-sighted to me, and perhaps that’s why the grinch label sticks. But to me, anyway, a holiday is whenever you’re merry, whenever you’re full of delicious food and surrounded by friends and the people you love. </div><div><br />Every Senegalese holiday has this feeling to it, and so does every baptism and wedding in the village. Every new life, every holy moment, every feast day is an opportunity to get together, eat until you can barely think, and then dance your brains out with your family and friends (which, in the Senegalese sense, are one and the same). No grinch am I, then. At least not in Senegal. It’s not that the holidays aren’t important to me; it’s just that every day has something holy to it. So happy Thanksgiving, merry Christmas, and happy new year to all of you. I hope you have a lovely January 4th as well.<div><br /></div><div>Love and guts,</div><div><br /></div><div>Jessie<br /><br /></div></div>Jessiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14750558216102330003noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582360104529875435.post-90281298576609841062010-12-13T23:46:00.001+00:002010-12-13T23:47:49.943+00:00Four Paragraphs.<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal">It seems like a Peace Corps cliché to say that death is everywhere in Senegal: the smell of it, the sound and even sight of it. If they cannot be eaten, the carcasses of donkeys, horses, cows, goats, and sheep are dragged out to the empty fields just beyond the village, to the same place where it’s considered polite to dump your trash. For days afterward, people passing on foot and horse cart hold scraps of fabric to their mouths and noses, breathing shallowly or not at all as they go by. The sound of death is also a little mundane. It’s the sound of my cat pouncing on whatever he finds scurrying around my hut at night. Besides, this is not a place like the United States, where we are far from our food. On the holidays and rare occasions when we have meat, it’s slaughtered right there in the compound. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">In villages further south, the death of a member of the community member is announced by the wailing of women, which begins among the bereaved and travels from compound to compound. In my village, it’s announced over the same loudspeaker that is used to sing out the call to prayer. When we hear the system switch on at a time we know is not set aside for a pause for devotion, everyone stops what they’re doing to listen. All conversation stops. Children are shushed and shoved aside. The man making the announcement greets the village and lists the names of the deceased’s closest relatives before saying his or her name. Though he begins to repeat the message, his voice is drowned out by the beginnings of shocked or grieved commentary. Deaths here are not always surprises, but it seems like they’re always shocking. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">As the car I was in pulled out of the garage in Kaolack the other day, we passed the usual street vendors and travelers common in that corner of the city. This is my least-favorite place to walk in Senegal, this short stretch at the mouth of the garage: too many people, too many cars, and not enough space for everything that’s happening. I had a window seat, which almost never happens, and though I’ve seen it all a hundred times I still sat staring out at the passing foot traffic moving quickly between a lane of cars and a row of street vendors. Perhaps I stuck out to the man on the opposite side of the road because my skin, like his, is not black. For whatever reason, I caught the eye of this Lebanese or Moroccan man as the car passed him by, headed in the opposite direction. I have three freeze-frame memories of what happened here. The first is his face as we made eye contact, expressing a little surprise, perhaps, to see a young white woman traveling in the normal Senegalese way. The second is just a moment later, when the car I was in had almost reached him and the larger car behind him began, inexorably, somehow not stopping, to crush his body beneath it as it passed, moving in the direction opposite my car. In this moment his legs are bending, but backwards and not at the knee. His hands are briefly thrown up before they come rushing back down. The third is the aftermath, the last scene, the final frame this man will ever appear in to anybody. I tried to get my car to stop, less out of a thought that the first-aid training I received at the beginning of my service could be of any possible use, more out of a feeling that the man should not be left behind, that by witnessing and being present at his death, we were responsible in some way for what immediately followed. Or rather, that I was. It was panic, desperate and simple, and the others in the car could not share it because they had seen nothing. “He’s dead, probably,” they told me, when I had said what I saw. The car drove on.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">I have this feeling, every time I hear of a death in my village or a death back home in the States, that to die is to be left behind by everyone and everything else. Even grieving is a way of continuing, by sorting through the pain and horror of the death of a loved one until you come out the other side of it. Of course, it would be impossible to stand still with those we love who have died, unthinkable to halt our progress forward in time, horrific to allow ourselves to live only in the past with our ghosts. I know, I know. But I can’t shake this feeling that we do the dead an injustice by leaving them back there, driving away with people who did not see, to meet people who will not know, to confront a life that we perhaps think continues, always and always.</p> <!--EndFragment-->Jessiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14750558216102330003noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582360104529875435.post-44114422134670471772010-12-06T16:25:00.005+00:002010-12-06T18:15:31.511+00:00Huzzah!<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The library program we're starting up is getting to its feet! I'm working on a grant to rehabilitate the oldest classroom at the primary school and we're working on locating donors for books in French and English. For background and explanation of this project, please take a look at the previous blog post.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Anyway, one of the potential sources of books is </span><a href="http://www.internationalbookproject.org/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">this organization</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, International Book Project. They have worked with Peace Corps Volunteers in the past and I'm very excited to be making a connection with them. One of the best parts is that they'll be able to maintain a relationship with the primary school in </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Ndiago</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> after the last Peace Corps volunteer here has gone home. From my contact with them so far, it seems like a really great group of people.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I'm writing about this project again (and probably not for the last time) because I would like to ask you to help me </span><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">fund raise</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> for books. When I first got to </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Ndiago</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> and asked my family and friends to help me raise money for mosquito nets with Against Malaria, I was blown away by the response. The generosity I saw made me feel like I was a part of a team, being supported here by friends and family far away. This is a much smaller project, at least at this stage, but I still need your help.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Here is the form email that International Book Project sends out to people, helpfully edited to have the relevant information already inserted:</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" border-collapse: collapse; font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:13px;"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span style=" font-weight: bold; "></span></span></span></b></p><blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style=" font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Greetings from the International Book Project! </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FF0000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Jessie </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Seiler</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> gave our organization your contact information as someone who might be willing to sponsor a shipment of English language books for</span><span style="color:red;"><span style="color:red;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> her school library organization in </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Ndiago</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, Senegal. </span></span></span></span></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style=" font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style=" font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The International Book Project is a 501 (c) 3 non-profit which collects new and used books and sends them to schools, libraries, and other nonprofit organizations in developing countries. You can learn more about our organization at our website </span><a href="http://www.internationalbookproject.org/" title="blocked::http://www.internationalbookproject.org/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(25, 107, 123); "><span title="blocked::http://www.internationalbookproject.org/" style="color:black;"><span title="blocked::http://www.internationalbookproject.org/"><span title="blocked::http://www.internationalbookproject.org/"><span style=" text-decoration: none; color:windowtext;"><span title="blocked::http://www.internationalbookproject.org/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">www.</span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">internationalbookproject</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><wbr>org</span></span></span></span></span></span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">. The cost for shipping an m-bag (approximately 32 lbs) of books is $200.</span></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style=" font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">You may donate by sending a check to:</span></span></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style=" font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">International Book Project</span></span></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style=" font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">1440 Delaware Avenue</span></span></span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-weight: bold; "></span></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style=" font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Lexington</span></span></span></b><b><span style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, KY 40505</span></span></b><b><span style="font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">.</span></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style=" font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style=" font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">You may also donate online via credit card by going to </span><a href="http://www.internationalbookproject.org/" title="blocked::http://www.internationalbookproject.org/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(25, 107, 123); "><span title="blocked::http://www.internationalbookproject.org/" style="color:black;"><span title="blocked::http://www.internationalbookproject.org/"><span title="blocked::http://www.internationalbookproject.org/"><span style="color:windowtext;"><span title="blocked::http://www.internationalbookproject.org/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">www.</span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">internationalbookproject</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><wbr>org</span></span></span></span></span></span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> and clicking on the “Donate” banner at the top of the page. Please indicate in the memo of the check or the notes section of the online giving screen that the donation is for</span><span style="color:red;"><span style="color:red;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> Jessie </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Seiler</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, Peace Corps Volunteer</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">. All donations are tax deductible.</span></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style=" font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><b><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style=" font-weight: bold; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Thank you for your support. We look forward to hearing from you soon.</span></span></span></b></p></blockquote><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Times New Roman', sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Times New Roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">They say it about as well as I could. Thank you for your support. I look forward to hearing from you, and even seeing you, very soon.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Times New Roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Times New Roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Love and guts,</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Times New Roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Times New Roman', sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Jessie</span></span></p></span></div>Jessiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14750558216102330003noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582360104529875435.post-85175318462676344812010-11-12T11:15:00.003+00:002010-11-12T11:51:54.366+00:00A Post About Work!<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">I never write about work. I suppose that writing is a kind of thoughtful vacation for me, and I spend too much time already stressing and obsessing about the details of the work I do in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Ndiago</span> to want to carry that over into the relaxing pensiveness of writing for this blog. But today is a little different. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">This entry almost didn't happen. I was trying to get to the village this morning, but since <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Tabaski</span>, a big old Muslim holiday, is just a couple of days away, about a bazillion people are traveling now and I missed my morning car to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Guinguineo</span>. I've been here too long to be frustrated by the workings and non-working of public transit, so I returned to the regional house and got back to work. I'll give it another shot in the afternoon. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">Anyway, some variant of what I've written below might find its way into a grant request, so there's more background information here than you'll want if you read this blog a lot (weirdo) or if you talk to me regularly on the phone. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">Here we go. The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Ndiago</span> Library Project.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Ndiago</span> is a small village in the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Kaolack</span> region, 7 kilometers from <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Guinguineo</span>. It is home to about 300 men, women, and children. Like most people living in rural areas in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Kaolack</span>, the villagers are primarily farmers living just above the subsistence level. Everyone farms, but some families have enough money to run small businesses as well. One woman sells soaps, another peddles lightly-used clothing and fabrics, and a couple of the wealthiest families have even established small boutiques, stores that sell very basic supplies such as powdered milk, cooking oil, eggs, and small sweet candies. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>Another sign of the slight prosperity of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Ndiago</span> is the presence of the schools. The village is the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Communite</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Rurale</span>, the Senegalese version of the county seat, so we have the area's main schools. Together, these three small schools serve children roughly between the ages of 5 and eighteen. Kids attend from <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Ndiago</span> and many of the surrounding <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">vilages</span>, including <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Sakhagne</span>, where my neighbor <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">PCV</span> Andrew <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Oberstadt</span> lives and works. Formal education is very highly valued in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Ndiago</span> and the surrounding area, and families will save and sacrifice to pay the enrollment fees and to purchase chalk, pencils, and notebooks for their young students. When a child receives a certificate of promotion to the next grade level, the mothers will proudly display the prized sheet of paper on the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">otherwise</span> barren walls of their huts. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>The experience of earning an education in Senegal is completely different from what my school life was like in the States. My parents never reluctantly pulled me out of class for a week because they needed my help bringing in the last of the peanut crop. I went to a series of good schools and was lucky to meet so many gifted and passionate teachers. Year after year, my teachers were thoughtful, excited about their work, and endlessly devoted to instilling a love of learning in me and my classmates. And when we graduated from college, some of the best and most intelligent people I know chose to become teachers. No surprise there, with the role models we had. We also never suffered from a crippling lack of school supplies. Back-to-school shopping was a yearly ritual, and maybe the only type of shopping I ever enjoyed. We had computers and educational software and endless supplies of pencils, binders, erasers, a million other things. Many of the administrator’s offices at my high school had bowls of M&Ms ready for casual visits by students. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>And then, of course, we had books. We had school libraries and city libraries full of books on every subject imaginable, and since I grew up in Los Angeles, those books came in many different languages. I am a child of parents who love the written word, and so my love of reading came upon me early. I might be one of the only American 24 year-<span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">olds</span> left who would prefer an hour with a book to an hour with the Internet. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>When I got to Senegal, I quickly noticed that people here do not read for fun. Cramped into a ball on Senegalese public transit, barreling down horrific roads full of pot-holes and squished between smelly, coughing adults and screaming, puking infants, dodging the streams of goat urine trickling down from the roof of the decrepit vehicle (those goats up there must be terrified, they way they bleat and carry on), I pull out a book. In the 22 months I have lived here, I’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">ve</span> never seen any Senegalese person even carrying a book around like that.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>That’s one problem. But it’s not really what I’m concerned with. What makes me sad is that the students of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">Ndiago</span> don’t have access to books. The only authority they have on any subject is their teachers. Sure, they can ask their parents questions, but their parents probably received even less of a basic education than they’re getting. There’s no Internet here, no textbooks that the kids have easy access to, no Encyclopedias, no dictionaries, nothing. Teachers write out a passage in French on the board, students copy it down and memorize it. No children in the village hear French spoken at home, very few adults understand it, and so it’s tough to imagine how the students could comprehend much of what they “learn.” </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span>School opened back up recently, after the long rainy season break. The kids, even ones as young as 5 and 6, have been working in the fields with their parents and older siblings for months. Now, they return to the classrooms. They return to overcrowded rooms, to a lack of basic supplies, to teachers who are angry and frustrated and who sometimes go on strike because they haven’t been paid by the Senegalese government.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">It’s tough to be very excited about these prospects, but this year, I am. The teachers at the primary school approached me with a plan. We are rehabilitating a large empty building on campus and turning it into a library, for the use of all the children in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">Ndiago</span> and the surrounding communities. We are also going to incorporate time for reading and a basic literacy program into the curriculum. I can’t imagine a project that could be as rewarding to the community and as gratifying to myself, given the importance of education in Senegal and the deep love I have of reading.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">Right now, we’re taking the preliminary steps. The village leadership has invited a mason to come evaluate the old classroom this weekend, so that we will know if we can fix up the space or if we should consider building a new one. I will soon be looking for some funding to build bookshelves and bring in seating and tables and perhaps electric lighting for the library building. And then, of course, we’re looking for books. Many organizations who specialize in sending lightly-used books to the developing world exist, so I’m not too worried. We’re looking primarily for books in French, since students don’t begin to learn English until a very late time in their schooling when many have already stopped attending. I’m talking with all the teachers about how they can incorporate more literacy and reading comprehension in their students’ days. All in all, there’s a lot of work to be done, and everyone involved is excited to get to it.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">I’m also excited because this is a project that I can invite my friends and family back home to help me with. I might be doing some fundraising myself for the project instead of writing a grant, and of course at some point I might ask for donations of books. In another way, I’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">ve</span> already received a lot of help from home. My parents and every teacher who ever put a book in my hands are all a little responsible for the fact that I’m undertaking this project so happily. Thank you to all of you.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">Anyway, time for lunch and a second shot at getting out of here, back to Ndiago. Happy Thanksgiving.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">Love and guts,</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt">Jessie</p> <!--EndFragment-->Jessiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14750558216102330003noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582360104529875435.post-39988265640251944512010-09-18T23:00:00.005+00:002010-10-09T21:58:57.953+00:00Writing about falling asleep instead of falling asleepThe sudden and strong wind that usually brings rain starts before dawn this morning, and since I live in fear of my hut collapsing with every breeze, I wake up. With no real anxiety, I sleepily make a mental list of what to collect from the ruin, the rocks and mud: my wallet and cell phone, my Senegalese work permit, my two passports (Peace Corps kids are just that cool), a sweater. I curl my feet up away from the part of my bed that inevitably gets soaked in every downpour and poke my cat until he wakes up, not for any reason, just because he shouldn't get to be comfy if I'm not. My arm brushes against my mosquito net, which keeps out the bugs, the bad dreams, and the zombies. The cat does not agree with my assessment that he should be awake just now and falls back to sleep, after attempting to stretch out on my face.<div><br /></div><div>Really, it is not as physically miserable as it sounds. If Senegal has given me anything, it's a comfort in waiting, something more than patience or acceptance; an ability to be suspended with good humor over unpredictable prospects, or even predictable disappointments. </div><div><br /></div><div>The wind subsides and no rain comes, so I stay dry -- but awake. By this time, my cat Pierre is fully awake and demanding breakfast. Dawn is getting around to breaking through the remaining wisps of clouds from whatever storm has passed us by, and my host mom is up and about, pulling water and clucking back at the chickens. I give in, get up, and make slow oatmeal on my tiny gas stove. Slow oatmeal is just like normal oatmeal, but for one thing: you let it sit there after it's cooked and cool off, because the day is already too hot for a steaming breakfast. By seven o'clock, the two year old girl in our compound is banging on my door, demanding that I pick her up. I'm more than happy to oblige, and the days begins.</div><div><br /></div><div>I greet my family and pull a couple buckets of water for bathing and drinking. After some other light chores and a mug of tea, I head out on today's errand: bothering people. As a health volunteer, bugging people about stuff is my most common activity. Wash your hands, eat your veggies, take your kid to the village health post at the first sign of high fever, etc. My bosses call it "education" or, even better, "sensitization." Today's subject is mosquito nets. I was curious how many people still had them from last year's distribution, how many people were sleeping under them every night, and what other measures people were taking to prevent malaria. </div><div><br /></div><div>I ramble around the village until the early afternoon, going from compound to compound and asking people about their nets. The survey goes well, though more people have managed to lose, tear, or give away their nets than I would have imagined. But that's life. I dispense advice about neem lotion and malaria prevention, gossip a bit, and head home.</div><div><br /></div><div>By the time I get back to my compound, it's time for lunch. My family and I sit down to a big, bland bowl together. The dish is called "mbaxal," and it's really just rice cooked with a handful of crushed peanuts, some spices, and a hint of dried fish. I feel hungrier with a stomach full of mbaxal than I do before I sit down to eat it, and I know it's worse for my family. My youngest host brother is six, and even he goes out to the fields every morning. Today, like most days, I have nothing to complain about.</div><div><br /></div><div>After lunch, the afternoon routine: sitting. During some of the seasons, no matter how hot it is or how crappy lunch was, people have to go back to the fields. Today, though, everyone stays in. We all sit outside in the shade of a neem tree, roasting some of the early corn to snack on and trying not to move more than necessary. Our neighbors come to visit. Teenagers with fake-fancy cell phones play music and show off their ring-tones while the adults doze and gossip and the youngest kids are sent to bring them glasses of water from inside. The sun glares, since the early morning clouds are completely gone, but going inside means relinquishing the slight breeze. It's just too hot for that. So much for a cool, comfortable rainy season. </div><div><br /></div><div>I settle down with a book until late afternoon, when I go see my counterpart to discuss the mosquito net information and some plans for next week. As the sun sets and the temperature and humidity finally drop, I take a bucket bath. The day is not far from an ending. We eat dinner and sit in the moonlight, in the silence, speaking softly: the electricity is out again, and for the thousandth time since I've come here I think how strange and beautiful it is that the stars actually twinkle.</div><div><br /></div><div>As I lay on my back, drifting on a plastic mat on the sand, watching the moon and the stars and their shapes in the sky, thinking inevitably about geometry, Fama plops down next to me. Fama is almost five, and she is pretty sure that Allah put me on Earth to give her candy and piggie-back rides. As she wriggles beside me, still dancing while falling asleep, I can't think of anything wrong with her way of seeing things.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Aissa," she says. "Aissa," she insists, calling my name and speaking half from her dreams. "When I'm sleeping, scratch my tummy a little bit. Scratch it a little bit right here, and then when I wake up and ask, say it's Pierre, say it's your cat. OK? Say Pierre is rubbing my tummy. Aissa, Aissa, today Pierre went up into the tree, he ate a bird." She mumbles something a little more about the cat and the tree, curls up and grabs at my hand, finally is still and deeply asleep. </div><div><br /></div><div>The wind is coming up again. I'm thinking that it'll rain tonight, and I'll pull my feet up again and hope they don't get wet. I'm lying on my back, swatting at a few mosquitoes, listening to muted voices in the darkness, not thinking of anything in particular, watching triangles of stars and a passing satellite. Pierre deposits himself on my stomach comfortably. Fama is sleeping beside me and any minute now I'll carry her to her grandmother's bed. It's cooling off enough to sleep. I never used to fall asleep easily in the States, but here it just comes naturally. </div><div><br /></div><div>Today was good. I've never been happier in my life, and I'm thinking maybe tomorrow will be a good day too.</div><div><br /></div><div>Love and guts, and please excuse the typos. It's past my bed-time.</div><div><br /></div><div>Jessie</div>Jessiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14750558216102330003noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582360104529875435.post-89356498800179996692010-08-26T18:35:00.005+00:002010-08-30T09:27:31.910+00:00Grocery shopping.A trip to the grocery store is a pretty simple matter, especially for someone who's as passive about food as I am. Growing up, the food selection was pretty much the domain of my parents. In college, the massive monthly shopping trip was a pilgrimage to Costco, where we bought orange juice concentrate and frozen pot-stickers (gross) in bulk, ate six of every free sample we could find, and eyed the children's bed shaped like a pirate ship with concern (and, for some of us, cupidity). Of course, we had to be careful to time our trips so that we all had money in the bank. When we weren't so flush, we hit up the deluxe dumpsters at Trader Joe's and the Odwalla Juice distribution center. Even on the few occasions when we were caught, we still managed to stock the refrigerator.<div><br /></div><div>Here where there aren't a whole lot of refrigerators in my life, the affair is more complicated. What I thought of as fridge staples in the States, even things like milk and butter, are unusual luxuries here. When they do appear, they're different. Butter is margarine, needing no refrigeration, and milk is either powdered or comes fresh and unpasteurized in little plastic jars from the Pulaars who live out in the hinterlands around my village. But these items are for purchase and consumption only on special occasions. </div><div><br /></div><div>The staples here are rice and millet. Like most families in this area, we farm our own millet and purchase large, 50k sacks of rice from the road town. Both grains are store by my host father and carefully measured out to whichever woman is cooking that day. Tiny MSG packed bullion cubes, available here and in every village in Senegal, appear prominently in all of our meals. On good days, the rice bowl will have a sprinkling of beans, locally grown, or dried fish, the cheapest and most foul way of ingesting protein known to man. And on really good days, the market days, we get vegetables. </div><div><br /></div><div>If nothing else comes of my service, I used a portion of my Peace Corps living allowance (Thanks, American taxpayers!) to buy vegetables once a week for a family that otherwise would be unlikely to have them. That's two lunches of rice topped with vegetables, with is kind of a big deal. All volunteers are required to make some sort of monetary contribution to their families, since we sit around awkwardly and drink the water and eat the food and so on. Mine involves these vegetables, which I purchase at the big weekly market in Guinguineo, the road town. These carrots, onions, eggplants, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, and random root vegetables with no counterpart in the States are shockingly cheap but prohibitively expensive. The price for a kilo of onions is up to about $1, and you should hear people complain about it. How much would you pay for a kilo of onions in the States? And potatoes, which run about $1.50 a kilo, are too expensive even for my budget.</div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, I love louma days in Guinguineo. I'm unequivocally good at it, which is a pleasant change of pace. I know how much I should be paying for stuff, and I have established relationships with vendors that look, on the surface, not entirely unlike friendship. It's a day full of Wolof banter, one of my favorite activities. It's the day I pick up any packages, letters, or post cards that have come for me, and the day I get to eat a bean and pasta and mayo sandwich with a mug of hot coffee, the greatest way of consuming 500 calories known to man. And when I get home at noon, I get to take a bucket bath and a nap. Lunch and dinner are going to be delicious, filling meals. Instead of the normal millet dish, we eat a big bowl and spicy macaroni with bread on louma days. "Wednesday nights are always good," said my host mother to me recently. "We eat until we're full!" Yeah, that's right. One meal in the week, we eat until we're full. No wonder it always feels like a holiday.</div><div><br /></div><div>Last Wednesday, though, was a little tricky. It had rained the night before, one of the long, windy storms that make it seem like there's no roof over my head. I've found the square foot of my hut that almost never gets leaked on, though, so I slept all right. Usually after a storm that big, you don't expect another one the next morning. I went off the the louma, an hour's charette ride away, totally unprepared for what happened next.</div><div><br /></div><div>I had done a fair bit of my socializing and veggie-buying when the rain started. My neighbor and I stood giggling as I finished weighing out my carrots, watching as the people around us scampered for cover. We finally hefted our own buckets and joined a group of people standing below a small terrace. It turned out to be a brief shower and once it let up, everyone returned to their business. But it wasn't quite over.</div><div><br /></div><div>I waded through rain and waste water up to my ankles while finishing up my market business, trying to forget that the contents of the water came not only from the sky, but also from the dirty streets, the fish market, and the flooded sewers of Guinguineo. By the time I was ready to head home, the sky had roared open again. There was no point in trying to make my way to where the charettes for my village normally stand, since even the most homocidal of horse cart owners would be staying indoors for the duration of the storm. Rain here is not just rain. It's heavy, gusting wind that knocks down saturated mud and cement walls. It's lightning and thunder, of a scarier variety than the tame stuff we get in the States. I'm closer to every aspect of my life here in Senegal than I was in the States: my food, my health, life and death, the weather. There's no cozy, warm way to ride out a storm here. You have to experience it fully.</div><div><br /></div><div>And experience it is what I did, trapped in a huge semi-enclosed area of the market with a hundred or so women and children. This courtyard seems like originally it was just an open space between buildings. At some point, a cement floor and a plastic peaked roof were added, to provide shade and cover from the rain. But the roof is lifted several feet off the roofs of the buildings around it, perhaps to provide ventilation. In a storm as massive as the one we were caught by, the rain brought almost as much water into the space as it slammed around outside. Within ten minutes of noticing the first drop, even though I had a nominal roof over my head, I was completely soaked. Long skirt dripping, tank top providing no comfort whatsoever, I stood shivering with the others. The wind and rain were too loud for any conversation you felt like having below a shout, so we mostly just stood around looking at each other. Everyone there was as wet as I was, their clothes clinging sloppily to limbs and bellies, scraps of plastic on their heads to cover their hair extensions and braids. I squatted, not entirely miserably, not entirely without amusement, next to a sort of cement table that offered a little protection. The woman selling some vegetables and spices from it, a relative of mine, hunched below a small piece of plastic sheeting and shivered. </div><div><br /></div><div>It lasted forever. I don't know how long, perhaps an hour and a half. I was afraid to take my phone out to check the time, since it would be immediately wrecked by water damage. The time passed, and everyone just stood or squatted or sat right down on the dirty, soaked floor. With the same patience that makes the fasting month of Ramadan seem to go by with ease, the same resolve that is required when the roads (if there are roads) are so mangled that a trip of 20 miles can take four hours, the women sat. They nursed their babies, stared off into space, and, as the storm died down and conversation became possible, traded gossip and compared prices with their neighbors. The wind dropped and the rain stopped falling, more or less. After some final brief downpours and a little more waiting, I made it home, laden with my full burden of bread and vegetables, macaroni and spices, a gift of bananas for the children and some soap for us all.</div><div><br /></div><div>There's good patience and there's bad patience. The good type allows the Senegalese to sit out a storm like this in the miserable condition I witnessed. Keep in mind, it's Ramadan: we were well into the day when the storm came, and none of the adults had eaten a bite since the sun came up, or sipped any water. It's a sort of waiting with composure. A minimum of fretting. A trust in the future, maybe a certain amount of resignation as well. But can I call it resignation, with all the negative connotations that word carries, when we all knew that the rain would eventually stop?</div><div><br /></div><div>And then there's the bad patience. I see it every day. It is the patience that counsels silence, even when a voice ought to be raised. The roads are horrible, they're an affront to the people who live anywhere outside of the capital city, they're a hindrance to commerce and a danger to everyone who travels. I've seen more of car accidents and their aftermath, and been involved in more, during my 19 months in Senegal than I ever did in 18 years of living in Los Angeles. It is the patience that breeds apathy, even for those who suffer. Men with infected, oozing sores. Children with diarrhea and fever. Women who know that they should go see the village health worker for their pre-natal visits, who know that giving birth at home is dangerous, who know others who have lost their own babies to preventable, treatable diseases. Knowing is not enough.</div><div><br /></div><div>As a health volunteer, my work centers around behavior change: convincing people to take up healthier, cleaner, safer practices and pass them on to their children. I thought maybe I'd be good at it, having some experience in the method of crafting a convincing argument. I have yet to find the argument that always works here.</div><div><br /></div><div>My hope for Senegal is still alive, but more and more I have a hope for myself: that I can take some of this good patience with me when I leave, without bringing any of the bad patience along with it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Love and guts,</div><div><br /></div><div>Jessie</div>Jessiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14750558216102330003noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582360104529875435.post-81694634550431205432010-08-15T20:18:00.002+00:002010-08-15T20:46:05.727+00:00Making decisionsIt's August, which means I've been in country for 18 months and at site for 16 months. The group of Peace Corps volunteers who arrived in Senegal immediately before we came is about to leave the country, which means we're going to be saying a lot of goodbyes around here. For the last couple months, I've been hearing them talk about their futures -- grad school, boyfriends and girlfriends, jobs, houses. It's like being back in high school or college, watching the seniors prepare to graduate. Knowing my friends and I are next is prompting some serious thought.<div><br /></div><div>For some time now, I've been thinking about extending my service for a third year. I wouldn't stay in the village, though. Instead, I could take a position in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Kaolack</span>, the regional capitol, working with all the volunteers around here, or in Dakar. It's an exciting thought in a lot of ways. Another year in Senegal with the Peace Corps would mean another year of work experience in development, the field I'm probably going to choose for a career. That's especially enticing, since my background has nothing to do with the field. By reputation, furthermore, Peace Corps/Senegal seems to be doing pretty well for itself. The program is highly regarded in the Peace Corps community. So I suppose this is an opportunity to continue learning from people who know what they're doing. </div><div><br /></div><div>On the other hand, I know what I want. I know which graduate schools I'll be applying to and which degree programs are most compelling to me. Maybe I should just go for it.</div><div><br /></div><div>More importantly, I know what it is that I don't like about the Peace Corps. I know why I'm frustrated in my work here. My thoughts on how development ought to be done, on what I would need to be doing to feel comfortable and happy and fulfilled in my work, are pretty fully formed. In that sense, I might be ready to move on to an academic setting, where I can do some really valuable study and continue to refine my thoughts. </div><div><br /></div><div>So now I'm soliciting advice. Send me an email or write a comment, whatever you're comfortable with. I could really use some new perspectives on this, even if you and I aren't close friends or whatever. If you read this blog, which it seems you are, then I'm guessing you have an opinion.</div><div><br /></div><div>If I had to state a preference right now, I'd say that I would like to be convinced to stay on for a third year. But that's the thing. I need to be convinced. What does the Peace Corps do well? I feel like I'm having a hard time seeing it these days, not necessarily because it's not there. It's just been a frustrating few months.</div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, I'm headed back to the village, in spite of the fact that my latrine is collapsing. It's Ramadan, too! More on that later, I guess.</div><div><br /></div><div>Love and guts, and I wanna hear from you.</div>Jessiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14750558216102330003noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582360104529875435.post-31383563721182376332010-08-08T02:49:00.005+00:002010-08-26T19:40:55.009+00:00A dentist appointment and a crisis of empathy.<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:3.0pt">Against my deepest inclinations, I’m going up to Dakar tomorrow to do my mid-service physical. I tried to get it done a couple weeks ago, when I had to be in the capital for other reasons as well. I made it as far as the initial conversation with the Peace Corps doctor.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:3.0pt">“Well, Jessica, you’re awfully late for this appointment. You were due back in February or March.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:3.0pt">“Yeah, I know. Sorry about that.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:3.0pt">“<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Ok</span>, you’re here now, no matter. So today we’ll do your physical and send you to the dentist, we’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">ve</span> got you scheduled for your OB/<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">GYN</span> appointment tomorrow morning, and then in the morning on the day after that, you’ll need to come back to have your TB test read.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:3.0pt">That’s about when I got antsy. My plans, as usual, were to get out of Dakar as fast as possible and get back to the village before the fat city made me go crazy with its conspicuous consumption, its healthy ex-pat and Senegalese children waddling around, its night life and easily accessible beer. So I hemmed and hawed a bit and managed to talk my way out off everything but the dentist appointment. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:3.0pt">The dentist’s office was one of the strangest places I’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">ve</span> seen in a while. The Peace Corps driver responsible for carting me off to my appointment in a super swanky air-conditioned Peace Corps car resisted my half-joking pleas in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Wolof</span> that he take my place. “You can say you’re Jessica <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Seiler</span>, who’s gonna notice? I’ll tell everyone back in the Peace Corps medical office that it went fine. Come on, you could just let me out here and be on your way.” No dice. He laughed heartily and told me not to be afraid, but never even gave my offer fair consideration. When we arrived at our downtown destination, the driver wished me good luck and left.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:3.0pt">There were no other patients, just the kind Senegalese lady at the front desk who chatted with me in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Wolof</span> as she did my paperwork, then sat me down in an air-conditioned waiting room. There and in the examination room, everything was done in shades of pink, from the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">pleather</span> upholstering on the chairs to the highlights on the big old hanging lamp thing they stick in your face. There was even a fish tank with a few inhabitants swimming around inside. The whole experience had a little of the feeling of a Twin Peaks-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">esque</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">mefloquine</span> nightmare, but I kept my cool for the entire appointment. No cavities. When he noticed a little crack at the top of one of my front teeth, the dentist (jokingly?) asked, in his far from excellent English, if anyone was hitting me a little, maybe “with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">hees</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">feests</span>?” I’m pretty sure it’s an old soccer wound. Wonder of wonders, in this country with one doctor for every 10,000 or so people, I’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">ve</span> been told to go back to the dentist in his air-conditioned office in six months so that he can monitor the situation, so that we can be sure it <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">doesn</span>’t, God help me, turn into a cavity.<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:3.0pt">Anyway, I’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">ve</span> come to accept that I can’t avoid the rest of those appointments and the need to spend a couple days in Dakar. And besides, I have another commitment up there this week. So I’ll be heading up tomorrow. Wish me luck.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:3.0pt">The timing is not great. It’s getting harder to believe in the Peace Corps with almost every passing day, and I’m not sure that a dose of Dakar (both inside and outside the fortress of the Peace Corps office) and the Dakar attitude toward the rest of the country is going to help me out much.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:3.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:3.0pt">This trip to Dakar began last night, with an evening ride out of my village on my host dad’s horse cart. He makes the trip to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Guinguineo</span>, our road town, every evening, and then comes home to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Ndiago</span> every morning at dawn with a cart full of bread. I thought I’d take advantage of the free trip, spend the night in <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">Guinguineo</span> at a Peace Corps volunteer’s house there, and then be on my merry way the next morning. As the hour approached for us to leave, however, I started to doubt how simple this trip would be. I watched my dad ready the horse and packed my own bag, but with every passing minute the wind was picking up. Out to the west especially, just above the horizon, there floated the long grey low bar of an approaching thunderstorm. Someone was getting pounded by rain out there, and it <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">didn</span>’t seem impossible, given the direction of the wind, that it would head our way next. The last place I wanted to be at the beginning of a violent storm was on a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">charette</span> in the middle of the bush, below a vast expanse of thunder and lightning, tossed about by the gales of wind and completely exposed to the rain. But my dad seemed sanguine about our chances, so we left. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:3.0pt">He turned out to be right. Halfway to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">Guinguineo</span>, the clouds were visibly breaking up above us. The wind was still coming right at us, bothering the horse to no end, but it probably <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">wasn</span>’t going to rain. My dad turned to me and said, “Allah is good, we’re not going to have to worry about that storm anymore.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:3.0pt">“Allah is good,” I replied.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:3.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:3.0pt">It’s so easy for me to see two worlds here, though I know that it's an illusion: in one, we have the fat guzzling children of Dakar, and in the other, the children of my village, who every day eat a handful of bread brought back to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">Ndiago</span> by my father for their meager breakfasts. In one world, I sat in an air-conditioned room and had my teeth X-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">rayed</span> and pored over by a very nice man with soft gloved hands while I listened to the gurgle of his fish tank. In another, my host dad thanks Allah when he can make the forty-five minute trip to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">Guinguineo</span> without misfortune. In one world, ex-pats and wealthy Senegalese leave their houses, greet their always-awake armed guards, and drive their <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">SUVs</span> out of their gated, barb-wired compounds to meetings in other buildings with guards and gates and barbed wire. In that world, they make decisions about development philosophy and the programs that will be put in place in the other world, my world, the world of my village. Many are so thoroughly insulated against the very world they seem to consider themselves to be working for that they may as well have never left Washington. I noticed and wrote about this before, during the big annual softball tournament in Dakar. It seems like a lot of people come here and then spend a great deal of money and effort to maintain the illusion that they are not, in fact, here.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:3.0pt">That’s one thing in the ex-pat community. I guess they’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">ve</span> got their young children to think of, or whatever, and if they want to feed their kids American food specially shipped over and let them attend schools that are guarded like prisons, that’s their prerogative. It <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">doesn</span>’t seem like any way to live, but then again I’m no great authority on child rearing, or even on how to live your life, generally speaking. So I try not to judge, I try not to even think about it.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:3.0pt">What I’m starting to wonder is if we Peace Corps folk are guilty of some version of the same crime. Even though we are living a total immersion experience, with host families, out in the bush, the solitary white kids for miles and miles, we still find plenty of ways to distance ourselves from Senegal. Often it’s just for our sanity or our health, and I think all in all it’s a healthy thing to do. If my mom <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_28">didn</span>’t send me jars of crunchy peanut butter, and if I <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_29">didn</span>’t escape to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_30">Kaolack</span> occasionally for cheeseburgers and a beer, I’d be one skinny miserable young lady, thank you. As it is, I already find myself craving monstrosities like <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_31">Poptarts</span> smeared with peanut butter and jelly, topped with marshmallows, or burritos stuffed with fried chicken, Velveeta chunks, pineapple, and hash browns. I bring a little America back to my hut, to get me through the slower days, in the form of my <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_32">iPod</span> and books and magazines. If I were Senegalese, or perhaps if I were truly integrated into the culture, I would mitigate my boredom by sitting and gossiping with the women instead of by devouring novels and non-fiction.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:3.0pt">I don’t think I can disapprove of these practices in themselves, but I think they’re dangerous. Every step I take toward building an America for my body and mind is a step that removes me from Senegal a little bit, and from the Senegalese people I live with. I’<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_33">ve</span> noticed this tendency to remove ourselves a bit, to suspend our empathy, in myself and in other volunteers. Not all of us all of the time. But sometimes. It’s subtle. It’s in our grammar and our choice of words. It’s not something we’re necessarily conscious of doing. It’s something I do myself.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:3.0pt">When discussing how to write grants, older volunteers and Peace Corps staff will encourage newer volunteers to include an “in-kind” stipulation, a percentage of the total cost of the project that will be paid by the community. This might be a good idea for some reasons, but when we talk about it, we say it’s an encouragement to see the project through to the end for the Senegalese people involved. As if it were the four dollars each adult is required to give toward the construction of a new protected well that makes the project valuable to these men and women, rather than the opportunity to drink clean water, to give their children clean water.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:3.0pt">When we talk about mosquito net distributions, invariably someone bemoans the perceived tendency poor people have of selling the nets that are given to them, or of passing them on to relatives or friends. When they next speak to the Peace Corps volunteer or community health worker who gave them the nets, they ask for another one. Where is the sin in this? We can only condemn this action when we stop empathizing with the people and begin judging them. Imagine knowing that you can’t afford to buy a net, but also knowing that you can’t afford to pay for the medication to treat malaria. Imagine knowing that every single member of your family is in the same situation. Imagine feeling responsible for them. I’d lie to a Peace Corps volunteer for an extra mosquito net or two, without a second’s hesitation.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:3.0pt">When we put ourselves in one world, a world of privilege and easy access to the goods and services that satisfy our needs and security, we are living in a dream and condemning others to live in a nightmare.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:3.0pt">I don’t want to cast stones at any one, and I want to say again that I’m no expert in development. My background could not be less helpful when it comes to considering these questions. I’m not making accusations or trying to belittle the good work that so many people are doing in Senegal and Africa and across the world. But I need to understand why we do things the way we do, and where our principles come from, and I want to know that we’re doing the best we can. I need moral guidance on this one.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:3.0pt">It’s almost 3 A.M. I barely slept last night and haven’t slept yet tonight. I’m sorry if this blog entry showed signs of that, but I’m hoping that after finishing it and posting it, I’ll give myself permission to get some rest. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:3.0pt">Love and guts, </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:3.0pt">Jessie</p>Jessiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14750558216102330003noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582360104529875435.post-38438726901357256042010-06-17T12:23:00.000+00:002010-06-17T12:24:22.808+00:00Also....<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; ">"One learns, I would hope, to discover what is right, what needs to be righted — through work, through action." </span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:sans-serif, serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:sans-serif, serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">-Daniel Berrigan</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:sans-serif, serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:sans-serif, serif;font-size:100%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">Amen, brother.</span></span></div>Jessiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14750558216102330003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-582360104529875435.post-58391878705771586792010-06-17T11:20:00.007+00:002010-07-15T20:07:14.631+00:00Coming to terms with a certain amount of uncertainty<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination: none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">One of the repeated lessons of my time in Senegal has been that the future is less certain here than it is in the United States. So many things fluctuate. The prices of basic foods rise and fall with the season, and with how lucky or unlucky we were during the last planting and harvesting cycle. We do our best to build strong foundations and walls, and when the termites come to rip the heart out of our mud-brick buildings, we rebuild them before the heavy rains begin and wait, and watch, and hope. My family members go to the local wise men and come back with blessed scraps of string to tie under our knees, to ward off snakes and protect us from their bite. We set up mosquito nets against the threat of malaria, and every pregnant woman in the country is offered a free and anonymous HIV/AIDS test during one of her first pre-natal visits. This sense of a hesitant belief in a future that may not be full of blessings reveals itself even in the way we speak. The future tense in Wolof is habitually indicated by a murmured "</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Inshallah,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">meaning, God willing. God willing, I will see you at the meeting this afternoon. God willing, I will call you from Dakar when I get there. God willing, the rains will come, the food will be plentiful, we will gather together at the end of the fasting month to pray, to slaughter a goat, to feast and be thankful and ask each other pardon for our sins. It's not the same as Western style superstition. We're not knocking on wood for fear of jinxing the future. We simply are not sure that there is one, or that we would welcome what it holds.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;mso-pagination: none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;text-autospace:none"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">For a long time, this mentality was a source of anxiety to me. How could I bear to hear my family admit at the beginning of every journey I made into Kaolack that my return depended on the will of an utterly impersonal, absent God? How could every work plan I made with people in the village hinge not on my desire to see the work through to its end, or on the drive and energy and wisdom that the Senegalese men and women I work with bring to each new project, but on something utterly beyond my control? No Muslim, I. No atheist, quite, either, but I lack the deep-seated devotion or whatever other faculty it may require to accept so much uncertainty. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">During my first couple months at site, as everyone around me calmly made their preparations for the rainy season, I dithered around in a whirl of anxiety over what was to come. My family, who had seen the rains come and go, sometimes leaving plenty and sometimes leaving much, much less than what would be needed to feed them for the eight long months of the dry season, went to the fields. They gathered the dried millet stalks and clumps of roots into piles and set them aflame, tending the fires, sending the vaguely intimidating scent of readiness my way as I watched from the edge of the field. They spread manure and seeded the millet, corn, bissap, beans, and peanuts. And then they came home and waited. I raised money from my friends and family back home for a mosquito net distribution, taught women how to make a lotion that would ward away mosquitoes, and waited with mounting terror for the first rain. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">It came, of course. God willed it? Only two people in my village got malaria over the course of the rainy season. The fields produced enough food for us, and when the end of Ramadan came we slaughtered a goat and feasted. God willed it. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">This year, I am waiting again. We’re on the brink of it now. Other volunteers to the south and east have reported the type of storm I know to be coming our way, where the force of the wind wakes you at three in the morning and the torrent of water pours from the sky, whipped in all directions through the thin thatching of my roof, into my bed, and onto the fields, where the seeds already wait for it. We haven’t had a storm like that yet, but we have had a few late afternoons where the wind picks up out of the southeast, storms clouds roll in, and we watch the lightning from 100 miles away as a few spare drops fall on our upturned faces. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">On one such early evening, I sat in the doorway of my hut watching as the women of my compound brought in the plastic chairs and mats we sit on outside, just to be safe. My host mom put out the cooking fire and everyone retired to their huts to look out at the light drizzle. Everyone except for Fama, the four year old girl-demon of our family. Not yet bathed for the evening and free from the disapproving gaze of her mother, who had gone to another village for a wedding, she ran skipping and screaming through the heavy drops, sliding and diving in the sand that would some day soon be welcoming mud, counting in broken Wolof the number of water splotches she found on her arms, on my face. As the rain picked up a little, still not the real thing, her joy increased. She sang and danced, and when she began to hear the low murmur of the thunder that crashed heart-stoppingly over other villages and other families far away, she clapped her hands over her ears and whooped. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I watched her from my doorway until she was too tired to continue. She came to me and sat in my lap, eagerly telling me that the thunder would kill you if you listened too closely, and that her mother would be bringing back a wonderful gift for us from the wedding, and where did my pet cat, Pierre, go when it rained? We sat there chatting until the drops, never strong enough to force even one of their number through my thatched roof, stopped entirely. Life resumed, the chairs and mats and wooden benches came back out, and my mom rekindled the cooking fire. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I have never in my life felt the type of peace in my heart I experienced that evening, as the sun set behind me and Fama and the rainclouds danced before me. I suppose it’s still up to God’s will to bring the rain, to keep my partially strengthened hut from collapsing when the heaviest of the winds come, to look to our fields, and to give Fama the life and the joy I think she’s ripe for and deserves. That’s not something I understand. But it’s something for which I am willing to wait, and watch, and hope. In the meantime, we’ll prepare. I am expanding universal net coverage in my area, through the generous help of my friends and family back home who donated to my Against Malaria campaign, and my family here is out in the fields. Fama dances, and she fears and loves the thunder and the rain, and I fear and love our futures. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Love and guts,</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Jessie</span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Jessiehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14750558216102330003noreply@blogger.com3