There aren't any of what I would call easy days here. If I'm working, I'm working. Any number of things can make that hard: cultural and linguistic barriers, my appalling ignorance, or the damn long skirt I wear most days in the village. Especially that skirt, for God's sake, it almost hits my ankles. And if I'm not working, you better believe I'm freaking out about my inaction. I've never felt so guilty simply picking up a book before.
Even if there aren't easy days, I would generally describe most of my days as good. I'm happier here every day, or so it's seemed for the last two weeks. And new things make me happy: bantering with my family, playing with the kids, wandering through the village to the market for a snack and knowing, finally, several people's names.
But today was maybe the second or third genuine bad day I've had. A family member in the States is having health problems, and I'm holed up in the Peace Corps/Senegal office here in the capital city of Dakar. I got here early this afternoon after maybe 2 hours of sleep and 5 hours in a sept-place. You know things will be a little ugly when you spend more time in the Senegalese public transit system than you spent in bed the previous night. But it's better to be here than in the village. Here, there's a phone I can use to call the States with no charge. Here, there's Internet access so I can... I don't really know what I do online, honestly. Here, there are other volunteers and PC staffers who are sympathetic, available, and helpful.
So I'm here. Waiting. Just waiting.
This is the type of moment when you have to step back and take a good look at some things you may have preferred to ignore. I could have been on tonight's flight to New York, could have been out west with my family by tomorrow afternoon. I say the word, they put me on the plane. I can come back to Senegal or not.
Every day I ask myself about what it is I'm doing here, why it's important, why I should care and continue to care. Most days, these questions are academic: I know I'm not going anywhere, I know I'm where I want to be. But some days, the questions are very real and very pressing. Today is one of those days, and tomorrow will be one too. For a few days, or a few weeks, or a few months to come, I'll have to make the decision to come to Senegal every morning when I wake up. I'll have to re-commit every day and then re-examine my commitment every night. I'm scared, I'm tired, but I'm pretty sure I'm ready for it.
Just to prove to you that I mean it, I'm going to plug the bed-net thing again. Go look at my last post, if you missed it.
Love and guts, for serious,
Jessie
Friday, June 19, 2009
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Against Malaria bed net distribution project
Dear friends and family... and total strangers who read my blog,
I got to Kaolack just this morning, and I have a whole lot to write about. It's been a good couple of weeks, maybe some of my happiest days so far in Senegal. And there was this one guy in a purple cowboy hat -- I have pretty good story to tell you about him. But I want to take a break from the usual tone of this blog to shamelessly, without the slightest bit of guilt, ask you for money.
Here are the basics. I'm raising money to provide everyone in my village and in the three tiny villages next to mine with mosquito nets. Each mosquito net costs $5. My goal is to be able to bring around 1,200 nets to my area, which should be enough to cover every single bed.
Already interested in helping me out?
www.AgainstMalaria.com/JessieSeiler
I think probably you'd all agree that saving lives is, generally speaking, a good thing to be able to spend your money on. And a quick internet search or a perusal of the Against Malaria website will tell you that malaria is the number one killer of children and pregnant women in the world, that one to three million people will die of malaria this year, and that the children who will die today from this disease would fill seven jumbo jets. You'd also quickly discover that malaria is an entirely curable, entirely treatable disease. But all that means is that if you or I got malaria, we'd be fine. For almost all of the victims of malaria, however, prevention and treatment are just out of reach. The decision is between being able to eat for a week and being able to purchase a mosquito net. The people I live with don't have $5 to save their own lives, but I know you do.
Anyway, you know all these things already. So I wanted to tell you a little about my own experience with malaria.
So far, no one I know has ever died of malaria. The rainy season is just just just starting here in Ndiago. After the first heavy rain, I've been told, the mosquitoes will come out. There are lots of ways to try to prevent malaria, and we're making use of all of them in my area. After my causerie the other week, the women are making and selling neem lotion, a natural anti-bug lotion made of soap, cooking oil, water, and the leaves of the neem tree. Our first big set-setal, when everyone in the village sweeps up all the trash in their compounds and in the public areas and burns it, is Monday. We'll be repeating this task every two weeks to keep the malaria population under control. So I've done everything I can, at this point.
That's pretty much what's killing me. With my limited Wolof and my limited resources, I'm spent. And I know it's just not enough. Ever since I got to site, I've been feeling a gnawing anxiety about the advent of the rainy season. Part of me is excited, because soon the harvest will come and we'll have more food and the malnutrition rate in the villages around me will drop from its current level of 40%, and I'll sleep better. But the thing bringing on this wealth -- the rain -- is also bringing misery.
So spend a few dollars and save a life or two. Don't forget you're also buying me a small reprieve from intense anxiety. Everyone will be sleeping a little better.
Other blog posts to follow soon. Thank you so much for reading and responding, here and in emails to me. I'll get to them as soon as I can.
Love and guts,
Jessie
I got to Kaolack just this morning, and I have a whole lot to write about. It's been a good couple of weeks, maybe some of my happiest days so far in Senegal. And there was this one guy in a purple cowboy hat -- I have pretty good story to tell you about him. But I want to take a break from the usual tone of this blog to shamelessly, without the slightest bit of guilt, ask you for money.
Here are the basics. I'm raising money to provide everyone in my village and in the three tiny villages next to mine with mosquito nets. Each mosquito net costs $5. My goal is to be able to bring around 1,200 nets to my area, which should be enough to cover every single bed.
Already interested in helping me out?
www.AgainstMalaria.com/JessieSeiler
I think probably you'd all agree that saving lives is, generally speaking, a good thing to be able to spend your money on. And a quick internet search or a perusal of the Against Malaria website will tell you that malaria is the number one killer of children and pregnant women in the world, that one to three million people will die of malaria this year, and that the children who will die today from this disease would fill seven jumbo jets. You'd also quickly discover that malaria is an entirely curable, entirely treatable disease. But all that means is that if you or I got malaria, we'd be fine. For almost all of the victims of malaria, however, prevention and treatment are just out of reach. The decision is between being able to eat for a week and being able to purchase a mosquito net. The people I live with don't have $5 to save their own lives, but I know you do.
Anyway, you know all these things already. So I wanted to tell you a little about my own experience with malaria.
So far, no one I know has ever died of malaria. The rainy season is just just just starting here in Ndiago. After the first heavy rain, I've been told, the mosquitoes will come out. There are lots of ways to try to prevent malaria, and we're making use of all of them in my area. After my causerie the other week, the women are making and selling neem lotion, a natural anti-bug lotion made of soap, cooking oil, water, and the leaves of the neem tree. Our first big set-setal, when everyone in the village sweeps up all the trash in their compounds and in the public areas and burns it, is Monday. We'll be repeating this task every two weeks to keep the malaria population under control. So I've done everything I can, at this point.
That's pretty much what's killing me. With my limited Wolof and my limited resources, I'm spent. And I know it's just not enough. Ever since I got to site, I've been feeling a gnawing anxiety about the advent of the rainy season. Part of me is excited, because soon the harvest will come and we'll have more food and the malnutrition rate in the villages around me will drop from its current level of 40%, and I'll sleep better. But the thing bringing on this wealth -- the rain -- is also bringing misery.
So spend a few dollars and save a life or two. Don't forget you're also buying me a small reprieve from intense anxiety. Everyone will be sleeping a little better.
Other blog posts to follow soon. Thank you so much for reading and responding, here and in emails to me. I'll get to them as soon as I can.
Love and guts,
Jessie
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Sustainable development?
My very first neem lotion causerie was Thursday!
Depending on who you are, there are a few words in there I may need to gloss before talking about how it went.
A causerie is a demonstration and conversation with the people of my village about a specific topic. These are going to be a big part of my service, and topics will include things like nutrition, adequately and cheaply feeding a baby who's being weaned, the making and maintaining of mud stoves, and, well neem lotion.
Neem lotion is some seriously good stuff. It's a mosquito repellent that's easy and cheap to make; the only ingredients are the leaves of the neem tree, bar soap, a little oil, and water. When you live in a country with a whole lot of malaria and no DEET spray (except for what the Peace Corps gives me, which makes me die inside a little bit inside for reasons I'll explain soon), neem lotion is a potentially very powerful tool. The volunteer I replaced cut the malaria rate in the village by 90% (yep) during the last rainy season, when she made and distributed neem lotion to all the villagers. Other measures helped, and I'm doing all those things too as the rainy season approaches. But since the Peace Corps is all sustainable development, I chose this year to try to convince the women of the village to make the neem lotion on their own, so that they could sell it in and around the area. Since the lat volunteer changed everyone's mind about their ability to influence whether or not they fall ill with malaria, I figure I should be able to push it up a notch.
Anyway, the causerie went really well. The women understood my Wolof and I understood theirs, and I feel all right about it. I sort of want to tell you about it, but I'm not sure how much time I have to write today (heading back to village later) but I also kind of want to get on to this other topic....
Sustainable development?
So I'm all about neem lotion. The advent of the rainy season here makes me crazy, maybe partially because I don't know what it looks like. I know it brings mosquitoes and malaria, but it also means there's going to be more food and fewer starving people, so I feel kinda conflicted. The thought of people in my village falling ill with malaria (a preventable, treatable disease) and possibly dying of it fills me with anxiety.
And neem lotion is... I think it would be called "appropriate technology" by authorities on the subject. Maybe I should call it that too. After all, it can be easily made with local products, it's effective, it's even potentially a moneymaking project for the women. All good things, right?
What it makes me think about, though, is the fact that the Peace Corps gives me DEET sticks for my own protection against mosquitoes. I take a malaria prophylaxis every week, provided and required by the Peace Corps. And if I were to fall ill with malaria in spite of these precautions, the medications to save my life would be readily available to me and doctors would be there to prescribe them. I would be fine, and I wouldn't pay a cent for it. This is a disease that killed approximately 881,000 people in 2006, most of whom were probably too poor to purchase DEET, some of whom would be too poor to purchase even neem lotion, and all of whom were just as alive, just as human as I am. But through some meaningless accident, I was born in the United States. Through no action or virtue of my own, because I'm an American citizen, one of the very few and the very privileged, I have nothing to fear from this disease. I help the women of Ndiago make and sell neem lotion while enjoying full access to medications and technology that make neem lotion totally unnecessary for me, personally.
It's hard for me, then, to always embrace sustainable development, because so often I think we conflate that concept with "appropriate technology;" in other words, with accepting cheaper, less effective methods of health care for the world's poorest people. And it's hard for me to be a Peace Corps volunteer sometimes for similar reasons. All of us have medical kits stocked with all sorts of drugs, including Tamiflu and the first few days of a regimen of pills to take in case I manage to get malaria. And I'm not exactly supposed to give that stuff out to the people of the village.
I don't know. I'd really appreciate your thoughts on this one, here in the comments section (oooh! start a conversation!!) or in an email. This stuff keeps me up at night, and sometimes it makes it hard for me to do what I came here to do.
Anyway, things are well, as usual. I feel like I'm focusing on work pretty well, and bein' thoughtful about some stuff, and learning a whole lot. Keep sending the love, knowing I have friends out there keeps me going.
Love and guts,
Jessie
Depending on who you are, there are a few words in there I may need to gloss before talking about how it went.
A causerie is a demonstration and conversation with the people of my village about a specific topic. These are going to be a big part of my service, and topics will include things like nutrition, adequately and cheaply feeding a baby who's being weaned, the making and maintaining of mud stoves, and, well neem lotion.
Neem lotion is some seriously good stuff. It's a mosquito repellent that's easy and cheap to make; the only ingredients are the leaves of the neem tree, bar soap, a little oil, and water. When you live in a country with a whole lot of malaria and no DEET spray (except for what the Peace Corps gives me, which makes me die inside a little bit inside for reasons I'll explain soon), neem lotion is a potentially very powerful tool. The volunteer I replaced cut the malaria rate in the village by 90% (yep) during the last rainy season, when she made and distributed neem lotion to all the villagers. Other measures helped, and I'm doing all those things too as the rainy season approaches. But since the Peace Corps is all sustainable development, I chose this year to try to convince the women of the village to make the neem lotion on their own, so that they could sell it in and around the area. Since the lat volunteer changed everyone's mind about their ability to influence whether or not they fall ill with malaria, I figure I should be able to push it up a notch.
Anyway, the causerie went really well. The women understood my Wolof and I understood theirs, and I feel all right about it. I sort of want to tell you about it, but I'm not sure how much time I have to write today (heading back to village later) but I also kind of want to get on to this other topic....
Sustainable development?
So I'm all about neem lotion. The advent of the rainy season here makes me crazy, maybe partially because I don't know what it looks like. I know it brings mosquitoes and malaria, but it also means there's going to be more food and fewer starving people, so I feel kinda conflicted. The thought of people in my village falling ill with malaria (a preventable, treatable disease) and possibly dying of it fills me with anxiety.
And neem lotion is... I think it would be called "appropriate technology" by authorities on the subject. Maybe I should call it that too. After all, it can be easily made with local products, it's effective, it's even potentially a moneymaking project for the women. All good things, right?
What it makes me think about, though, is the fact that the Peace Corps gives me DEET sticks for my own protection against mosquitoes. I take a malaria prophylaxis every week, provided and required by the Peace Corps. And if I were to fall ill with malaria in spite of these precautions, the medications to save my life would be readily available to me and doctors would be there to prescribe them. I would be fine, and I wouldn't pay a cent for it. This is a disease that killed approximately 881,000 people in 2006, most of whom were probably too poor to purchase DEET, some of whom would be too poor to purchase even neem lotion, and all of whom were just as alive, just as human as I am. But through some meaningless accident, I was born in the United States. Through no action or virtue of my own, because I'm an American citizen, one of the very few and the very privileged, I have nothing to fear from this disease. I help the women of Ndiago make and sell neem lotion while enjoying full access to medications and technology that make neem lotion totally unnecessary for me, personally.
It's hard for me, then, to always embrace sustainable development, because so often I think we conflate that concept with "appropriate technology;" in other words, with accepting cheaper, less effective methods of health care for the world's poorest people. And it's hard for me to be a Peace Corps volunteer sometimes for similar reasons. All of us have medical kits stocked with all sorts of drugs, including Tamiflu and the first few days of a regimen of pills to take in case I manage to get malaria. And I'm not exactly supposed to give that stuff out to the people of the village.
I don't know. I'd really appreciate your thoughts on this one, here in the comments section (oooh! start a conversation!!) or in an email. This stuff keeps me up at night, and sometimes it makes it hard for me to do what I came here to do.
Anyway, things are well, as usual. I feel like I'm focusing on work pretty well, and bein' thoughtful about some stuff, and learning a whole lot. Keep sending the love, knowing I have friends out there keeps me going.
Love and guts,
Jessie
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Oh, P.S.
It's early morning here in Kaolack and I'm going to head back to my village soon, after stopping in the market here to pick up some fruit as a home-coming gift to my family. I meant to respond to the emails I've gotten on this trip, but some circumstances out of my control made it much harder to sit down and write than it usually is here. But please, keep them coming, I love hearing from you guys, and I may be in Kaolack this weekend again for an event here. And, of course, to answer your emails.
Soon,
Jessie
Soon,
Jessie
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Food for thought.
I think about food a lot these days.
A friend of mine here in Senegal recently reminded me of the time in training when I, hungry, commented that I would love to slather some buttery salty mashed potatoes on a chunk of rich, moist chocolate cake. Nowadays, I can use this mental image as a barometer of my general hunger level. If I think this combination sounds delicious, I suspect that I've consumed fewer than 1,000 calories or so that day and on some number of previous days.
Right now, potatoes and cake sounds gross. I'm tempted to list everything I've eaten since I arrived in Kaolack yesterday morning, but I know that no one reading this is as obsessively concerned as I am. So I'll pass, and say that my tummy is happy, and that I hope you all have happy tummies today too.
The last two weeks in village went by very quickly, and I think pretty successfully. I'm slipping into good standing with my family; I did baby-weighings in Ndiago, Nguick, and Keur Daodo (two neighboring villages) without dropping anyone; I know some names and faces. Getting between Kaolack, Guinguineo, and Ndiago is no longer a very intimidating process. My Wolof is improving, and I can greet in Sereer now too. Of course, behind each of these simple statements of progress lurk a million stories, and I wish I didn't have to be selective about telling them. Anyway, here we go.
Being a health volunteer involves thinking quite a bit about childhood malnutrition. For the next two years, I get to monitor the malnutrition rates in my villages and a handful of surrounding communities by doing monthly baby-weighings. I just set up shop in my compound with my two scales (one for very tiny infants, one for children as only as 5-ish) and the notebook I've devoted to this purpose. In my village, I can go around and tell the women to show up on a certain day and at a certain hour, but elsewhere the local health workers help me to get the word out. I weigh between 30 and 40 kids per village.
Part of this is hilariously fun, because I like hanging out with kids. It's a little nuts, because some of them are just hideously frightened of the whole experience. If you are a young Senegalese boy or girl, it's possible that for you toubabs like me are super scary, and being stuck in a sling hanging from a tree branch is super scary. And so the moms stand by with their breasts sticking out, ready to immediately grab their wailing children from me after I remove them from the sling so they can take comfort in the familiar act of feeding. Some kids enjoy it, though: it's basically as close to a swing as anything I've seen in Senegal, and we all know that swings are basically one of the three best things about childhood.
But the days in which I've done these baby-weighings have been some of the hardest for me. This is the starving season, and while we wait for the rain to come and prices of food to fall, the malnutrition rate in these villages is between 30 and 40 percent. Some of these children, according to their charts, have never had a healthy weight. Some have just stopped gaining weight this season, and some have been losing weight. They're tiny, so tiny, with coppery hair and skinny arms and distended bellies. Sometimes the moms seem to know what I'm going to say before I say it: "Are you still breast feeding? She's too young for water, your breast milk has everything she needs." "He's too old for just breast milk now, he needs to breast feed and eat solid foods too." But some of the women aren't eating enough or drinking enough to produce all the breast milk their child wants. Sometimes, because of the heat, the mothers will give their infants water, filling their bellies but not giving them any calories or nutritional content. Sometimes they stop breast-feeding too early because they're pregnant again. Again. If I were God, or if I were a more teleological and sympathetic evolution that what we live with, I would make it impossible for a woman to get pregnant while she's still breast feeding.
This last situation is the story of a little girl who lives in the compound next to mine. Her name is Jiall (rhymes, more or less, with doll) and she's maybe three years old. When Jiall was 7 months old, her mother's milk dried up because she became pregnant again. Jiall's maternal grandmother took up the task of rearing the infant once her younger sibling was born. She got other things to eat, of course, but no breast milk. This is bad, worse than it would be in the States because diarrheal diseases and dehydration resulting from unclean food can kill kids who can't get breast milk. Jiall made it this far, but she suffered. Her hair is coppery, she doesn't walk or talk as well as the other kids here age, and she's small.
On top of all this, nobody seems to like her that much. My dad's second wife sometimes shoos her out of the compound for, it seems, no reason. The other kids she hangs out with are bigger, and they know it. I yell at them when I see that they're picking on her or hitting her, but even though I feel like I see it happen 100 times a day, I know it happens even more when I'm not around. If leftover food is being given out, or if someone's buying the kids snacks or mangoes or whatever, Jiall is almost invariably left out or given short shrift. I just don't understand it.
One day, I noticed the adults in my compound calling her Suppome, which is the French/Wolof word for cabbage. Why, I asked, was she given this nickname? One of the women said simply, "She's small." I couldn't handle it. It seemed like it was too much, this child was the butt of so many jokes among her peers, and even the adults mocked her openly. That afternoon, when I noticed that the other children were calling her cabbage too, I snapped a bit. I decided to hand out some nicknames of my own, and since we had started with cabbage, I moved on to the other ingredients of the Senegalese national dish, ceeb u jeen (fish, rice, veggies -- a luxury). The brattiest kid in the village is Carrot now, my own little sister is Jaxatu (I have no idea), my brothers are Eggplant and Fish. The women in my compound loved it, and the kids picked it up pretty quickly too. One woman gave us all ingredient names. When it came to be my turn, she said, "You are the water we cook everything in." My nickname hasn't stuck, but some of them have, and I hope I'm removing a little bit of the stigma or onus of singling out Jiall.
I have more, of course. I could go on forever. But I need a little break from writing. I'm leaving the Kaolack house tomorrow morning, so I think I'll have time to write a little more for you guys.
Seriously, though, send me emails. Tell me all about your lives. I miss you.
LOVE AND GUTS,
Jessie
A friend of mine here in Senegal recently reminded me of the time in training when I, hungry, commented that I would love to slather some buttery salty mashed potatoes on a chunk of rich, moist chocolate cake. Nowadays, I can use this mental image as a barometer of my general hunger level. If I think this combination sounds delicious, I suspect that I've consumed fewer than 1,000 calories or so that day and on some number of previous days.
Right now, potatoes and cake sounds gross. I'm tempted to list everything I've eaten since I arrived in Kaolack yesterday morning, but I know that no one reading this is as obsessively concerned as I am. So I'll pass, and say that my tummy is happy, and that I hope you all have happy tummies today too.
The last two weeks in village went by very quickly, and I think pretty successfully. I'm slipping into good standing with my family; I did baby-weighings in Ndiago, Nguick, and Keur Daodo (two neighboring villages) without dropping anyone; I know some names and faces. Getting between Kaolack, Guinguineo, and Ndiago is no longer a very intimidating process. My Wolof is improving, and I can greet in Sereer now too. Of course, behind each of these simple statements of progress lurk a million stories, and I wish I didn't have to be selective about telling them. Anyway, here we go.
Being a health volunteer involves thinking quite a bit about childhood malnutrition. For the next two years, I get to monitor the malnutrition rates in my villages and a handful of surrounding communities by doing monthly baby-weighings. I just set up shop in my compound with my two scales (one for very tiny infants, one for children as only as 5-ish) and the notebook I've devoted to this purpose. In my village, I can go around and tell the women to show up on a certain day and at a certain hour, but elsewhere the local health workers help me to get the word out. I weigh between 30 and 40 kids per village.
Part of this is hilariously fun, because I like hanging out with kids. It's a little nuts, because some of them are just hideously frightened of the whole experience. If you are a young Senegalese boy or girl, it's possible that for you toubabs like me are super scary, and being stuck in a sling hanging from a tree branch is super scary. And so the moms stand by with their breasts sticking out, ready to immediately grab their wailing children from me after I remove them from the sling so they can take comfort in the familiar act of feeding. Some kids enjoy it, though: it's basically as close to a swing as anything I've seen in Senegal, and we all know that swings are basically one of the three best things about childhood.
But the days in which I've done these baby-weighings have been some of the hardest for me. This is the starving season, and while we wait for the rain to come and prices of food to fall, the malnutrition rate in these villages is between 30 and 40 percent. Some of these children, according to their charts, have never had a healthy weight. Some have just stopped gaining weight this season, and some have been losing weight. They're tiny, so tiny, with coppery hair and skinny arms and distended bellies. Sometimes the moms seem to know what I'm going to say before I say it: "Are you still breast feeding? She's too young for water, your breast milk has everything she needs." "He's too old for just breast milk now, he needs to breast feed and eat solid foods too." But some of the women aren't eating enough or drinking enough to produce all the breast milk their child wants. Sometimes, because of the heat, the mothers will give their infants water, filling their bellies but not giving them any calories or nutritional content. Sometimes they stop breast-feeding too early because they're pregnant again. Again. If I were God, or if I were a more teleological and sympathetic evolution that what we live with, I would make it impossible for a woman to get pregnant while she's still breast feeding.
This last situation is the story of a little girl who lives in the compound next to mine. Her name is Jiall (rhymes, more or less, with doll) and she's maybe three years old. When Jiall was 7 months old, her mother's milk dried up because she became pregnant again. Jiall's maternal grandmother took up the task of rearing the infant once her younger sibling was born. She got other things to eat, of course, but no breast milk. This is bad, worse than it would be in the States because diarrheal diseases and dehydration resulting from unclean food can kill kids who can't get breast milk. Jiall made it this far, but she suffered. Her hair is coppery, she doesn't walk or talk as well as the other kids here age, and she's small.
On top of all this, nobody seems to like her that much. My dad's second wife sometimes shoos her out of the compound for, it seems, no reason. The other kids she hangs out with are bigger, and they know it. I yell at them when I see that they're picking on her or hitting her, but even though I feel like I see it happen 100 times a day, I know it happens even more when I'm not around. If leftover food is being given out, or if someone's buying the kids snacks or mangoes or whatever, Jiall is almost invariably left out or given short shrift. I just don't understand it.
One day, I noticed the adults in my compound calling her Suppome, which is the French/Wolof word for cabbage. Why, I asked, was she given this nickname? One of the women said simply, "She's small." I couldn't handle it. It seemed like it was too much, this child was the butt of so many jokes among her peers, and even the adults mocked her openly. That afternoon, when I noticed that the other children were calling her cabbage too, I snapped a bit. I decided to hand out some nicknames of my own, and since we had started with cabbage, I moved on to the other ingredients of the Senegalese national dish, ceeb u jeen (fish, rice, veggies -- a luxury). The brattiest kid in the village is Carrot now, my own little sister is Jaxatu (I have no idea), my brothers are Eggplant and Fish. The women in my compound loved it, and the kids picked it up pretty quickly too. One woman gave us all ingredient names. When it came to be my turn, she said, "You are the water we cook everything in." My nickname hasn't stuck, but some of them have, and I hope I'm removing a little bit of the stigma or onus of singling out Jiall.
I have more, of course. I could go on forever. But I need a little break from writing. I'm leaving the Kaolack house tomorrow morning, so I think I'll have time to write a little more for you guys.
Seriously, though, send me emails. Tell me all about your lives. I miss you.
LOVE AND GUTS,
Jessie
Thursday, May 14, 2009
One of those weird Senegal moments.
The title of this blog post is a little on the vague side, but you might not even be aware of that yet. After all, lots of weird things have happened to me in Senegal. This very afternoon, as I was sitting here typing today's previous blog entry, there was a knock at the door of the Kaolack regional house. Believe it or not, the Jehovah's Witnesses were calling for us. Seriously. They made it all the way to Senegal. Here were these Senegalese men and women, neatly dressed in an awkward mixture of western and traditional clothing, knocking discreetly at the door. No bikes or suits here, but the general feeling came through. Strange, indeed.
Anyway, that's not really the moment I'm referring to. A few days ago, when I was a week and a half into my first village stint, I was agitated, unhappy, and nervous. I had trouble settling down to one task or activity: I sat down with a neighbor to chat, and then left. I went to pick around the edges of the pepiniere, since there's always work to be done with dirt. No dice. I took a bucket bath, and it was totally unsatisfying. The sun was sinking and the day was almost over, and I was still bouncing around from one corner of my hut to the other, from one part of my family compound to another. As I sat in the kitchen hut, watching dinner being prepared ("Aissa's cooking dinner!" "No, I'm just watching." "Hooray, Aissa's cooking dinner!!" "Mmm hmmm."), I had a definitive moment of anguish, a final crescendo and crash. I thought suddenly of all the work ahead, all the daunting tasks, whether small (the weekly market in Guinguineo) or large (the preparation to be done against the threat of the oncoming rainy season and the inevitable presence of malaria-bearing mosquitoes). How, I wondered desperately, was I ever going to get all this done, or even manage to get out of bed on any given morning, when I was so far away from everything I love? My friends and family, the familiar scenes and situations, all of it seemed infinitely remote. How could I ever conjure up the strength, the courage, the guts to get the job done?
What could I do? I didn't have enough phone credit left to call or send a text message to anyone in the States for reassurance, and even if I had there was no guarantee that it would go through. I could try talking about it to my new adoptive family, but this thought only made me a little crazier because I realized the extent to which my Wolof is still limited: I can say I like something or someone or some place, I can that say something tastes good, and I can say that my stomach hurts. But I didn't know how to say "I love" in Wolof.
Within a minute of asking myself the question -- how will I ever have the strength to do this, when I am so far from what I love? -- I had the answer. I was sitting there in the hot, cramped hut that serves as kitchen in my compound, between an open fire with a heavy pot on it and a woman I had known for days, who was busily chopping onions in her hand. Outside my host-brother was coming in from a day in the fields, the youngest children were playing with whatever make-shift toys they had managed to find (bottle caps, sticks, bits of plastic from God knows where), and my host-mom watched passively. I could barely talk with any of these people, my new "family," or anyone in the village for that matter, my new "home." But I realized suddenly that this whole being-a-Volunteer thing was going to work because I was going to find love here. Senegal, this village of Ndiago, is going to break my heart. These men and women, now strangers, are going to become the center of my life. I will want to teach, to help, to protect them all. When I can pull it off, it'll feel great. And when I can't, it'll tear me apart inside.
The moment I realized this, I was calmed. Now that I know what's ahead, I can face it. It's not going to be pretty, but it's going to be all right.
Anyway, that's not really the moment I'm referring to. A few days ago, when I was a week and a half into my first village stint, I was agitated, unhappy, and nervous. I had trouble settling down to one task or activity: I sat down with a neighbor to chat, and then left. I went to pick around the edges of the pepiniere, since there's always work to be done with dirt. No dice. I took a bucket bath, and it was totally unsatisfying. The sun was sinking and the day was almost over, and I was still bouncing around from one corner of my hut to the other, from one part of my family compound to another. As I sat in the kitchen hut, watching dinner being prepared ("Aissa's cooking dinner!" "No, I'm just watching." "Hooray, Aissa's cooking dinner!!" "Mmm hmmm."), I had a definitive moment of anguish, a final crescendo and crash. I thought suddenly of all the work ahead, all the daunting tasks, whether small (the weekly market in Guinguineo) or large (the preparation to be done against the threat of the oncoming rainy season and the inevitable presence of malaria-bearing mosquitoes). How, I wondered desperately, was I ever going to get all this done, or even manage to get out of bed on any given morning, when I was so far away from everything I love? My friends and family, the familiar scenes and situations, all of it seemed infinitely remote. How could I ever conjure up the strength, the courage, the guts to get the job done?
What could I do? I didn't have enough phone credit left to call or send a text message to anyone in the States for reassurance, and even if I had there was no guarantee that it would go through. I could try talking about it to my new adoptive family, but this thought only made me a little crazier because I realized the extent to which my Wolof is still limited: I can say I like something or someone or some place, I can that say something tastes good, and I can say that my stomach hurts. But I didn't know how to say "I love" in Wolof.
Within a minute of asking myself the question -- how will I ever have the strength to do this, when I am so far from what I love? -- I had the answer. I was sitting there in the hot, cramped hut that serves as kitchen in my compound, between an open fire with a heavy pot on it and a woman I had known for days, who was busily chopping onions in her hand. Outside my host-brother was coming in from a day in the fields, the youngest children were playing with whatever make-shift toys they had managed to find (bottle caps, sticks, bits of plastic from God knows where), and my host-mom watched passively. I could barely talk with any of these people, my new "family," or anyone in the village for that matter, my new "home." But I realized suddenly that this whole being-a-Volunteer thing was going to work because I was going to find love here. Senegal, this village of Ndiago, is going to break my heart. These men and women, now strangers, are going to become the center of my life. I will want to teach, to help, to protect them all. When I can pull it off, it'll feel great. And when I can't, it'll tear me apart inside.
The moment I realized this, I was calmed. Now that I know what's ahead, I can face it. It's not going to be pretty, but it's going to be all right.
The first two weeks.
I am sitting underneath a ceiling fan.
If you didn't slow down for a few minutes to appreciate that statement, to empathize a little with my relief and joy, it's understandable. But you should know that it's been well over 100 degrees in Ndiago every day since I installed there two weeks ago, and when you don't have ceiling fans or cold water to alleviate your misery, it can get rough out there. It's worse than the summer in Annapolis -- at least then we had smoky evenings and early mornings at Harry Browne's. And it's worse than summer in Los Angeles, where it was always ten degrees cooler once you sat in traffic on the 10 for an hour.
But you know what? It's not bad.
I think the way I feel about the temperature in Ndiago isn't too dissimilar from the way I feel about life in the village taken as a whole. It's rough, it's new, it's by turns incredibly intimidating and deathly slow. But I know I can do this.
Installation day was April 29th. Installation is a funny word for the process, but that's Peace Corps-speak for you: I felt, just because of that word, more like a light bulb than I ever have before. And that was the day it started not being as scary as I thought it would be. The whole village had gathered in a semi-circle in the central area: men and women sat in chairs or squatted behind drums, pots, pans; children hovered around the edges, staring and giggling. As we drove up, the drumming started. Drumming in Senegal is a Thing and every woman here is better at it than anyone in the United States. Better rhythmically speaking, and better at improvising too -- any surface can be used as a noisemaker. So the drumming was immense. And over it, the women chanted in an improvised song: "Aissa new naa! Aissa new naa!" I didn't catch all of it, but that phrase means "Aissa came!" (Aissa, pronounced EYE-suh, is my name in Ndiago.) I probably could have escaped dancing that day, but Keri (the volunteer I'm replacing) and I jumped into the center of the circle and busted it out for a minute, stomping and waving our multi-colored sers (traditional skirts). Laughing, hysterical hooting, clapping: they loved it. Their new toubab liked to dance! Not true, necessarily, but I figured today was the day.
Anyway, the drumming and singing stopped and the speeches started. My counterparts spoke, telling the village about the work we had done together during the counterpart workshop in Thies. And they were definitely not out to make it easy for me. The people of the village seem to have pretty high expectations for me, and they were excited to hear about some of the stuff we have planned. My host-dad spoke, welcoming me to the family and the village. My installer guy spoke, welcoming the village to me. And then he turned to me and said, "Your turn."
I don't mind public speaking, but this was something completely different. Imagine yourself in my shoes. New village, new family, high expectations, and this is my first shot at saying hello and making an impression. Oh yeah, and it had to be in Wolof. So on top of everything else, I had the grammatical range of a 10 year-old and the vocabulary of a smart toddler to work with. But it went pretty well, I didn't embarrass myself, and as far as first impressions go, I like the village and the village likes me right back.
The last couple weeks have been mainly feeling things out. I'm learning names, hanging out with people, and making friends. There's no such thing as a typical day for me yet. Sometimes I'll hang out with my mom in the center of the village for most of the morning, chatting and learning new words. I've visited the school in Ndiago and spent a lot of time talking with the teachers and headmaster about what the school needs and what we can do there. I hang out with my counterparts a little, talking about their health work in Ndiago and going on tourneys in the surrounding villages. I hang out with my family in the compound, where I'm slowly learning to feel at home.
I have a few projects for this initial period before In-Service Training in late July. I'm mostly supposed to be scoping out the village, assessing needs, assets, and willingness to work as a community. I have a couple surveys to do to figure all this out. I'm also doing a baby-weighing tourney in Ndiago and the surrounding villages next week. That involves lots of screaming children getting put into a little hanging scale thing I have while I talk to their moms about breast-feeding, weaning foods, and malnourishment. It's tough, because right now we're right at the end of the dry season and food is expensive. Most of the villagers are eating just rice and couscous (not Moroccan couscous, smaller grained stuff) right now. My family gets veggies once a week when I go to the weekly market in Guinguineo, the road-town 45 minutes away by charette. And we have fish a few times a week. We're pretty well off, but I know the kids are hungry.
With the help of Keri, I've also put together a tree pepinierre. Deforestation is a big deal here. And there's one type of tree, the nebeday or moringa tree, which is especially great because its leaves can be used to make a super-nutritious sauce for rice and couscous. Plant enough of these trees, teach people how to harvest mass amounts of the leaves, and you could go a long way toward fighting malnutrition. It's just that good. People also love mango trees, for obvious reasons. Mango season is in full swing here, by the way. YUMMY. Anyway, more on trees later. I have some plans along those lines.
Since the malaria season is coming, I'll be doing a malaria party in a couple weeks too. The women of the village will get together and make neem lotion, this magic tree juice that keeps the mosquitoes away. We'll talk about bed-nets, taking anti-malarial medication during pregnancy, and stuff like that. I hope my Wolof is up to it; I think it'll go fine. More on this later, too.
OK, I have a lot more to write about but I have to make a quick run to a store here in Kaolack to buy some stuff for dinner. We're making food! Alisha, thanks so much for the pesto mix, it's going to be the center point of dinner tonight here in the Kaolack regional house. And I'm mailing you a letter very soon on the beautiful stationary.
More thoughts soon, I'm excited to write today. And as usual I miss everyone a whole lot. Send me an email, tell me all about your life! Thinking of my friends and family back home helps me through the rough time.
Love and guts,
Jessie
If you didn't slow down for a few minutes to appreciate that statement, to empathize a little with my relief and joy, it's understandable. But you should know that it's been well over 100 degrees in Ndiago every day since I installed there two weeks ago, and when you don't have ceiling fans or cold water to alleviate your misery, it can get rough out there. It's worse than the summer in Annapolis -- at least then we had smoky evenings and early mornings at Harry Browne's. And it's worse than summer in Los Angeles, where it was always ten degrees cooler once you sat in traffic on the 10 for an hour.
But you know what? It's not bad.
I think the way I feel about the temperature in Ndiago isn't too dissimilar from the way I feel about life in the village taken as a whole. It's rough, it's new, it's by turns incredibly intimidating and deathly slow. But I know I can do this.
Installation day was April 29th. Installation is a funny word for the process, but that's Peace Corps-speak for you: I felt, just because of that word, more like a light bulb than I ever have before. And that was the day it started not being as scary as I thought it would be. The whole village had gathered in a semi-circle in the central area: men and women sat in chairs or squatted behind drums, pots, pans; children hovered around the edges, staring and giggling. As we drove up, the drumming started. Drumming in Senegal is a Thing and every woman here is better at it than anyone in the United States. Better rhythmically speaking, and better at improvising too -- any surface can be used as a noisemaker. So the drumming was immense. And over it, the women chanted in an improvised song: "Aissa new naa! Aissa new naa!" I didn't catch all of it, but that phrase means "Aissa came!" (Aissa, pronounced EYE-suh, is my name in Ndiago.) I probably could have escaped dancing that day, but Keri (the volunteer I'm replacing) and I jumped into the center of the circle and busted it out for a minute, stomping and waving our multi-colored sers (traditional skirts). Laughing, hysterical hooting, clapping: they loved it. Their new toubab liked to dance! Not true, necessarily, but I figured today was the day.
Anyway, the drumming and singing stopped and the speeches started. My counterparts spoke, telling the village about the work we had done together during the counterpart workshop in Thies. And they were definitely not out to make it easy for me. The people of the village seem to have pretty high expectations for me, and they were excited to hear about some of the stuff we have planned. My host-dad spoke, welcoming me to the family and the village. My installer guy spoke, welcoming the village to me. And then he turned to me and said, "Your turn."
I don't mind public speaking, but this was something completely different. Imagine yourself in my shoes. New village, new family, high expectations, and this is my first shot at saying hello and making an impression. Oh yeah, and it had to be in Wolof. So on top of everything else, I had the grammatical range of a 10 year-old and the vocabulary of a smart toddler to work with. But it went pretty well, I didn't embarrass myself, and as far as first impressions go, I like the village and the village likes me right back.
The last couple weeks have been mainly feeling things out. I'm learning names, hanging out with people, and making friends. There's no such thing as a typical day for me yet. Sometimes I'll hang out with my mom in the center of the village for most of the morning, chatting and learning new words. I've visited the school in Ndiago and spent a lot of time talking with the teachers and headmaster about what the school needs and what we can do there. I hang out with my counterparts a little, talking about their health work in Ndiago and going on tourneys in the surrounding villages. I hang out with my family in the compound, where I'm slowly learning to feel at home.
I have a few projects for this initial period before In-Service Training in late July. I'm mostly supposed to be scoping out the village, assessing needs, assets, and willingness to work as a community. I have a couple surveys to do to figure all this out. I'm also doing a baby-weighing tourney in Ndiago and the surrounding villages next week. That involves lots of screaming children getting put into a little hanging scale thing I have while I talk to their moms about breast-feeding, weaning foods, and malnourishment. It's tough, because right now we're right at the end of the dry season and food is expensive. Most of the villagers are eating just rice and couscous (not Moroccan couscous, smaller grained stuff) right now. My family gets veggies once a week when I go to the weekly market in Guinguineo, the road-town 45 minutes away by charette. And we have fish a few times a week. We're pretty well off, but I know the kids are hungry.
With the help of Keri, I've also put together a tree pepinierre. Deforestation is a big deal here. And there's one type of tree, the nebeday or moringa tree, which is especially great because its leaves can be used to make a super-nutritious sauce for rice and couscous. Plant enough of these trees, teach people how to harvest mass amounts of the leaves, and you could go a long way toward fighting malnutrition. It's just that good. People also love mango trees, for obvious reasons. Mango season is in full swing here, by the way. YUMMY. Anyway, more on trees later. I have some plans along those lines.
Since the malaria season is coming, I'll be doing a malaria party in a couple weeks too. The women of the village will get together and make neem lotion, this magic tree juice that keeps the mosquitoes away. We'll talk about bed-nets, taking anti-malarial medication during pregnancy, and stuff like that. I hope my Wolof is up to it; I think it'll go fine. More on this later, too.
OK, I have a lot more to write about but I have to make a quick run to a store here in Kaolack to buy some stuff for dinner. We're making food! Alisha, thanks so much for the pesto mix, it's going to be the center point of dinner tonight here in the Kaolack regional house. And I'm mailing you a letter very soon on the beautiful stationary.
More thoughts soon, I'm excited to write today. And as usual I miss everyone a whole lot. Send me an email, tell me all about your life! Thinking of my friends and family back home helps me through the rough time.
Love and guts,
Jessie
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