The Life of Sandy: Adventures in a Mud Hut: January 2007

THE RETURN OF ROUGIE

In just a few days’ time I will be back in Thies for three more weeks of training, and my name will once again be Rougie Sow. I’m really excited about this for a multitude of reasons.

Reason #1: I’m really excited to see all the people in my stage again. I’ve been able to see a few who live up north, but not many. There are plenty of volunteers in my region, just none in my stage, and I miss seeing people I know well.

Reason #2: FOOD. Thies is a large city with toubab restaurants, which means I’ll be able to eat hamburgers, pizza and ICE CREAM!!! Yayyyy!!! I mean, eating rice for lunch and dinner everyday is pretty cool and all, but I am really looking forward to a little variety.

Reason #3: My name will be Rougie again (pronounced like “lougie” with an ‘r,’ as in the variety you hock out of your mouth. Some people in my stage even call me Lougie, cuz that’s what they thought I said my name was at first, and I guess it is kind of a funny nickname too). Anyway, I just like the name Rougie and I think it suits me. My name at site is Aissata Ly (pronounced like ‘eye-sa-ta leigh’), which is just kinda nasal and I don’t like very much. I’m getting used to it though.

Reason #4: At the end of training my parents and brother are coming to visit!

There are lots of other reasons, but I’ll stop there. I’ll be in Thies for 3 weeks of “In Service Training (IST)” which is focused on technical training. That basically means that we’ll actually learn how to do our jobs. When we get back from IST we’ll be able to start projects. I’m definitely looking forward to working.

Not much has been going on here, I’m still pretty much just hanging out trying to learn Pulaar and meet people. I guess one thing that happened is that the two Peace Corps people who are in charge of the Small Enterprise Development program came to my town to visit me (they visited all new volunteers). They’re both middle-aged males, but one is American and the other is Senegalese. They pulled up in a Peace Corps car right outside my house, and I came outside to greet them. All the little kids in the surrounding compounds came out too, and they kept yelling to me “Aissata, baaba ma artii! Baaba ma artii!!” which means “your dad came back.” I had no idea what they were talking about, but I knew that’s what they were saying. Eventually I figured out that they thought the one American Peace Corps dude was my dad. It’s possible they were using the word for ‘dad’ just because he’s older than me, but I’m pretty sure they actually thought he was my dad. I mean, come on, he’s white, he’s gotta be Aissata’s dad! I got a good chuckle out of that.

I’m going to be pretty busy during training, but I should have more regular internet access, so I will try to post again soon. Let me know if there are any topics you’d like to hear about!

Aaaand nowwwww, it’s time for a

Random Africa Moment:

I don’t remember if I’ve explained regional houses or not, sorry for the repetition if I have. There are 5 regional houses in Senegal, and they’re primarily intended to be transit houses, just places for volunteers to stay on their way to and from other places. They’re also a place for volunteers to gather to work on projects together, or just to take personal days away from site.

A few weeks ago I met up with some other volunteers at the regional house, and we decided that we wanted to cook chicken for dinner. One of the families that live next to our regional house has chickens, so we went over to buy one. Luckily I was with some volunteers who have been here a while and have much better Pulaar than I do, so they haggled for a price (which is customary) and eventually settled on one. Then we decided that we’d rather pay them to do the dirty work (actually killing the chicken and plucking its feathers and whatever else you have to do to a chicken). Kris, one of the other volunteers, handed some change over to the woman with whom we’d been doing most of the negotiating.

Sidenote: Senegalese call pretty much any friend a brother or sister. If a person is older than you are, then you call them mother or father. If a person is younger than you are, then you call them your son or daughter. When a woman wants to convey that she is somebody’s mother, a common (and to me absolutely hilarious) method for doing so is for the woman to grab one of her breasts and shake it with one hand, while pointing with the other to the person she wants to say is her son/daughter. Older Senegalese women also wear clothes that don’t do a great job of covering their boobs. Picture a long piece of fabric about twice as long as a person is tall. Now fold that piece of fabric in half, and cut a hole in the middle of the fold and put it over somebody’s head. Then, from the waist down sew the fabric together. The resulting side view is often a saggy boob.

Anyway, back to the story. Kris paid the woman, who’s probably at least 60 years old, to kill the chicken. She looked at the money, and apparently was incredibly excited about the amount because she got really animated, reached in her very open "shirt," grabbed her boob, started shaking it and saying that Kris was her son and blah blah blah. A lot of people were sitting around, including another man, who I would say was at least in his mid 30’s. As the woman was busy celebrating the money and shaking her boob, this man knelt down to where she was sitting and freaking sucked on her boob! We all pretty much had the same reaction: “AAAAAAHHHH!!!” followed by quickly turning around, saying thanks, walking away and cracking up. All we could manage to say was “What? Did he really just do that? I don’t get it! Why did he do that? That’s disgusting!!” We never figured it out.

I saw Kris again recently at the regional house. We were just sitting around hanging out, and he says, “Hey Sandy, remember when that guy sucked on that lady’s boob?” I said “yeah.” We both were quiet for a split second, then of course we busted out laughing again, and started asking the same questions “What WAS that? Why did he do that? Can you imagine somebody in the states doing that?” At this point we’d sort of gotten over the shock of it and we discussed it a little bit. We concluded two things: 1) The guy must have just done it for show, and to get a reaction out of us 2) People just do weird stuff like that here.

In case you were wondering, the chicken we had that night was de-LICIOUS! And well worth the horrifying scene.

I hope everybody had a fantastic Christmas and a wonderful New Year’s celebration! Thank you so much to everybody who has sent me packages and letters…it makes me so happy and I really appreciate them!! I put all the cards I get up on my wall and it makes me smile when I think about the people who sent them :)

I spent my Christmas in St. Louis, which is a city on the NW coast. It used to be the capital of Senegal before the capital moved to Dakar, and it was also the capital of French West Africa. The European influence is obvious, but the mix of Senegalese culture gives the city a really interesting vibe. I really liked the city (and the beach we went to was amazing….that always helps!) and I hope I can make it back every once in a while.

I met up with 5 other volunteers in my stage, and we did our best to make Christmas as festive as possible. One of the volunteers, Bryn, made stockings and filled them with goodies she’d gotten in a care package (which was extremely nice and we all loved it…thanks, Bryn!), I made Santa hats, Megan brought a fake Christmas tree, Krista brought some Christmas CD’s, and the boys, well, they helped spread the Christmas spirit I guess. Preparing Christmas Eve dinner was fun, but it was an all day process for several reasons. First of all, believe it or not, Ukrop’s hasn’t made it to Senegal yet, and it took a while to gather all the ingredients we needed. The main reason it was a long process though is that we only had one gas to cook everything on, so we could only cook one thing at a time. We ate when something was done, then started cooking the next item. We had mashed potatoes, pasta, green beans, chicken, apple cider and smores for desert. Everything was fantastic! Plus, we cooked outside where we had an awesome ocean view, and the company was even better. It was really nice to hang out with friends from my stage and compare experiences. We’d only been at our sites for about a month…but that month was a big adjustment period and we had plenty to talk about!

Tabaski

Tabaski is probably the biggest Muslim holiday, and this year Tabaski fell on New Year’s Eve (Muslims follow the lunar calendar, so the date changes every year). Tabaski is also called the “fete des moutons,” because every family kills a sheep. No joke, it’s a big deal. I saw a lot of sheep being transported the last couple of weeks, and I’m pretty sure it was because of Tabaski. “How does one transport sheep?” you might wonder. It’s easy. Step 1: Wait on the site of the road for an “Alham” (a big van/bus thing that’s the most common form of transport. Most Alhams seat about 30 people. Toubabs call them Alhams because the front of every one has “Alhamdouliliah” written on it, which means ‘praise be to god.’ I don’t really know what the Senegalese call them, I think to them everything is an ‘oto’). Step 2: When an Alham stops to pick up you and your herd, you start tying up the sheep. You wouldn’t want to have the sheep already tied up when the Alham comes, because that would make things efficient. It’s better to make the 30 people inside the Alham wait for you to tie up your sheep. Step 3: Somebody climbs on the roof of the Alham where the baggage (and sheep) go, and others help hoist up the sheep one by one. Step 4: Tie them to the roof, only after you’ve made each animal incredibly uncomfortable so they’re all bleating at their maximum volume the entire rest of their journey. Some people prefer the method of putting each sheep in a bag instead of tying the legs up. Maybe the bag method is the less humane way, I don’t know. Or maybe some people just don’t want to eat a wind burned sheep on Tabaski.

So anyway, besides getting a sheep there are lots of other preparations, especially for the women. My cousin told me that on Tabaski, “everybody is beautiful.” Everybody gets a new fancy outfit to wear, but I’m not really sure where people get the money for it. New hair do’s are also a necessity. All the women get their hair braided especially nice, and most of the women get hair extensions, too. The women also do a henna (temporary tattoo) thing on their hands and feet. Between trips to the tailor’s, getting hair braided and getting henna, the women are pretty busy the days before Tabaski.

The actual day of Tabaski was fun. In the morning lots of onions and potatoes are peeled, a sheep in slaughtered and the food is prepared. Lunch is the biggest meal of the day here, so around lunch a bunch of old women came to my house and ate with my mom. My sisters and I went over to the compound next to ours where a ton of other women and children were gathered and we ate there. In the late afternoon/early evening everybody put on their new outfits and got all decked out. Then, groups of friends go around to their other friends and families’ houses just to greet each other. I put on the one dressy Senegalese outfit I have and I went around with my sisters and cousin. It was fun, but it seemed kinda dumb to me. At each compound we greeted the people there (which means shaking hands and mumbling ‘how are you’s’ and ‘i’m doing well’ without really speaking to or answering one specific person). After the greetings the family says we are welcome in their home, and we say thanks and move on to the next house. That’s it. And it was dark so you couldn’t really even appreciate all the effort people made to look nice. It was still fun though and a nice break in the normal routine.

So what is it that I’m doing here? Good question. There are several different sectors within Peace Corps. Senegal has volunteers working in the following sectors: Small Enterprise Development (SED), Ecotourism, Sustainable Agriculture (Ag), Agro-Forestry (AgFo), Urban Agriculture, Environmental Education and Health. My sector is Small Enterprise Development, which is very broad but it is basically business development. Projects vary from site to site, and I don’t know specifically what projects I will be working on yet. There is a large women’s group in my town and I will probably be working with them, and I would also like to work with local shop owners (teaching basic business skills like accounting or marketing).

Peace Corps Volunteers in Senegal have 8 weeks of ‘pre-service training (PST), 3 months at site, then 3 more weeks of training, called ‘in service training’ (IST). PST focused mainly on language and culture/safety, and during our first 3 months at site we are supposed to focus on learning the language and getting to know our town and the people we hope to work with. We are not supposed to start any work related projects during the first 3 months. Training at IST is mostly technical training, where we will actually learn how to do our jobs. We’re supposed to start ‘working’ after IST, although it may take several more months at site before we have a clear idea of what we want our main projects to be. So right now I spend most of my days just hanging out trying to listen and understand Pulaar, which is easier said than done! People speak really fast and it’s really easy to space out and lose focus when you can’t understand anything! I just try to learn a few new words everyday and try to listen as hard as I can. There’s not a whole lot to do besides going to visit people, and trips to the post office are usually the highlight of my day. I used to go to the store every once in a while and treat myself to a soda and some cookies until one of my cousins saw the cookies in my room and told me most people in my town couldn’t afford to buy cookies. Ouch. I felt about 5 inches tall. A pack of cookies costs about the equivalent of 80 cents. I knew that my town was poor, but she put it so bluntly and I wasn’t expecting a comment like that and it totally caught me off guard. I haven’t bought too many cookies since then.

Random Africa Moment:

There are these little red fruits that everybody eats called jaabe. My family occasionally snacks on them, and I’d never questioned where they came from. A couple weeks ago my sister was doing something in the back yard and I went back there to see what she was doing. It turns out the tree in our back yard is a jaabe tree, and that’s where the fruit had been coming from. My sister was shaking the fruit out of the tree and picking up the fruit. It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky, perfect temperature. I decided to help.

What’s so random about that?

My family has 23 cows. They pretty much live in my back yard. Needless to say, my back yard is pretty much dirt and cow poo. And the jaabe tree. Which means the jaabe fruit drops on the ground amongst the cow poo, and then we eat it. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure they don’t wash the fruit before they eat it.

When I realized what was going on, I thought to myself, “AWESOME. I’ve been eating fruit that’s been hanging out with dried cow poo.” Then I shrugged, figured ‘when in Africa…’ and starting picking out the jaabe out of all the cow poo, trying to suppress my giggles.

Here's a photo of one jaabe on the ground (the little orange-ish round thing in the middle):