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.