Bad 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.

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.

Love and guts,

Jessie

So 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.

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.

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.

Give me a minute, and a fresh start.

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.

One afternoon, Maguette walked out of her room and sat next to me. I was playing with her youngest daughter, Thian.

"Aissa," she asked. "Why don't you pray with us?"

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.

Maguette seemed perfectly satisfied with my answer. But she wanted to tell me more.

"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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"Well," said my host mom. "There are crazy people everywhere: America and here, and everywhere else."

"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.

Love and guts,

Jessie

Family.

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.

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 here. 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.

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.

Anyway, as usual, I started out by talking about something other than what I actually want to talk about.

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.

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, here's a post about that day. 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.

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.

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 this post 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.

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.

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.

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:

"...but now lead on;
In me is no delay; without thee here to stay,
Is to go hence unwilling; thou to me
Art all things under Heaven, all places thou...."

It's lines 614 to 617, just in case you're one of those people.

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.

Love, and more love, and guts,

Jessie

Surprise trip home.

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.

I’ve 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 isn’t the prospect of putting on socks for the first time in two years, and seeing my friends and family again.

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.

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.

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.

Relate is one of those words that’s changed in meaning since I came here. The Wolof word bocc 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 to share.

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 Bodey is my grandparent as well. There aren’t that many last names in Senegal, maybe fifty or so, but everyone with my last name is also my bocc. 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 isn’t actually Aissa, 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.

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 doesn’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? Wouldn’t happen.

I know I’ve 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.

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.

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?

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. They can’t imagine that I could change in any significant way.

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.

Love and guts,

- Jessie

P.S. See you soon. Which is good news, really.

Happy (Holi)Days

I 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Love and guts,

Jessie

Four Paragraphs.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Huzzah!

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.

Anyway, one of the potential sources of books is this organization, 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 Ndiago 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.

I'm writing about this project again (and probably not for the last time) because I would like to ask you to help me fund raise for books. When I first got to Ndiago 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.

Here is the form email that International Book Project sends out to people, helpfully edited to have the relevant information already inserted:

Greetings from the International Book Project! Jessie Seiler gave our organization your contact information as someone who might be willing to sponsor a shipment of English language books for her school library organization in Ndiago, Senegal.

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 www.internationalbookproject.org. The cost for shipping an m-bag (approximately 32 lbs) of books is $200.

You may donate by sending a check to:

International Book Project

1440 Delaware Avenue

Lexington, KY 40505.

You may also donate online via credit card by going to www.internationalbookproject.org 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 Jessie Seiler, Peace Corps Volunteer. All donations are tax deductible.

Thank you for your support. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

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.

Love and guts,

Jessie