Stomping 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. Check this out! We have a facebook page and a twitter, for those of you who are bold enough for such things. I am not.

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.

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.

Love and guts,

Jessie

Dakar.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

“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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Love and guts,

Jessie

Mass protests and beautiful music.

I went to see this group at a venue here in Dakar last night, recent violent demonstrations in that part of town notwithstanding.

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.

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.

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."

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Love and guts and music,

Jessie

A 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I'll post the link to the Stomping Out Malaria in Africa initiative's website as soon as we have it up.

Until then, love and guts,

Jessie

Vacation.

I have been watching scenery since New York, where I landed on the 27^th 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Until then, love and guts,

Jessie

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