Koumba and the Ark

Rainy season got off to a slow start, arousing concern among farmers throughout the region, but if last week is of any indication those fears have been put to rest. Sunday night brought one of the most violent storms I’ve ever experienced in a thatched roof dwelling – filling my ceiling tarps with gallons of water and rising the faro water levels well beyond their usual limits. Luckily Tigi is an eager snuggler and was more than happy to comfort me as deafening thunder claps shook my hut’s questionable foundation. This story isn’t really about the storm though, epic as it was. This story is about the next day...

I had planned to leave Sare Sara bright and early Monday morning to begin the trek to Fass Kahone, my friend Sharon’s site in the middle of the bush. The ride to Fass Kahone entails 15km on the main road (paved) and another 20km on a bush path (unpaved, unmarked, uninhabited). Sunday afternoon we confirmed our plan - rain or shine Sharon was to meet me on the main road and lead the way down the bush path. Due to the intensity of the rain – torrential for about 6 hours – that changed slightly Monday morning. Plan 2.0 was for me to take a car 35km to Dabo, then bike a laterite road (gravel but nice) about 20km to our friend Kelly’s village in order to visit her newly opened health post (something we were planning to do later in the week), then head to Fass Kahone in the afternoon. Game time thinking, no problem.

I caught a car out of Sare Sara by 8, and was on the turn off to Kelly’s village – Chewa Lau – around 10. You can’t go there today, some old women advised me, the road is washed out. Hm. Harnessing the very limited cell reception in the area and the last juices of my cell phone battery I reached Sharon, who was supposed to be meeting me at about that time (a back road from Fass Kahone meets up with the laterite road about 20 km after Chewa Lau, which is 20 km from Dabo). My family won’t me leave the village, she said, let’s try to meet up tomorrow. Oh, ok. I then biked down to see this washed out road for myself, and sure enough a lake had sprung up and people were streaming away from it like refugees as children splashed about. While I imagine I could have made it through the water, fighting the flood of people was more than I was willing to attempt so I headed back to the road, somewhat at a loss as to what I should do 20km away from the highway with no reachable friends in the near vicinity.

Another phone call to Sharon. I’m just going to come and I’ll swim if I have to, I told her, just tell your village you can’t get a hold of me. So off I went down the laterite road, unsure if it was even possible to reach my final destination, in which case I would be 40km out in the bush and easily two hours from any automobile. 40 minutes later I reached the turn off to the bush path and headed into the woods. About 100 yards in I met 2 young men with 6 of the mangiest dogs seen in Senegal and large machetes in hand. You can’t go that way, they protested. Well I’m not going to stay here with you, I said while riding by (a friend’s recent unpleasant encounter with machete wielding men fueling my resolve to continue - don't worry, no physical harm done).

A minute later I saw what had stopped their progress. The entire bush path and all of the forest visible on either side was fully submerged for about 100 yards. Super. Sharon’s sisters had claimed that the water was up her neck, but ignoring that information I marched straight into. There weren't any crocodiles (I didn’t consider snakes until later) and the water wasn't moving, so how hard could it be? After a few steps I heard Sharon calling my name from downstream and charged on. This plan went well for the first 50 feet or so, the water only coming up to my ankles. Then it started to get deeper. And deeper. And deeper. Halfway through the flood zone and I was holding my backpack on my head with one hand and dragging my half-floating bike through the water with the other as chilly flood waters came up to my waist. Sharon had a prime spot to watch this scene unfold and was practically in tears as I reached dry land, just in time for it to start raining again.

Another few minutes of bush path and I reached Fass Kahone a little wet but no worse for wear. The entire village (150 people) now know me as the fearless - and somewhat crazy - toubob who braved the flood waters (which they claimed was impossible). Thankfully the only casualty of the day was my water bottle that floated out of its holder while under water.

Sharon and I have already requested Peace Corps issue inflatable kayaks for next rainy season and are planning a boat tour of the Kolda faro system – potentially attempting to paddle from Sare Sara all the way into Kolda if we have another epic rainy season next year. I can only imagine the looks my villagers would give me if I blew up a pool float and took to the water for an afternoon float, but aside from the inevitable schistosomiasis infection it’s quite tempting. Just an idea for the next care package...

More Masterpieces

Here are the other two murals I did last week, plus the finished version of my first one.

Putting the Friend in Friendly

I wrote once before that the hardest part of being a volunteer is not having your friends around the corner to make those bad days look a little brighter. I think in general this still holds true and is a universal volunteer challenge. On a more personal level though, I think my greatest challenge is the constant, 24/7, political campaign trail-esq socialization required of living in a 500 person village and even more the challenge of making real cross-cultural friends. Generally speaking, I think I’m fairly sociable. In America I have friends, I’m confident in my ability to make new friends and I think people who meet me, on average, think I’m alright.

In village though, it’s a little more difficult. It is practically required by law that everyone greets everyone every day. Did I just greet you? No problem, let’s do it again just to be sure. I like being friendly, but my friendly is more of a New Yorker’s “brief wave, half smile, minimal touching and no more conversation than absolutely necessary” rather than the Senegalese “let’s drag this out while shaking hands for the fifth time even though I saw you 30 seconds ago.” I just don’t have the friendly reserves to be that friendly all day. By the time I make it to my breakfast bean sandwich I need a nap just to be able to smile again. This is how I know I will never run for public office.

This leads me to the second challenge – making friends. It’s harder than you think! It’s actually something I’ve spent quite a bit of time pondering with my friends, how does one go about making friends in village? Sure, everyone is really friendly. But many times they’re also asking me for 1) money 2) medicine 3) my bike 4) to take them to America 5) to marry me. How do you know who’s really your friend? Since sarcasm doesn’t really translate (trust me, I’ve tried and met many blank stares in return), I am left with little in my humor arsenal and, as we’ve already covered, I’m just not that friendly.

My lack of village friends was made abundantly clear to me last week when a young guy (who I had never met prior) took it upon himself to berate me in front of my entire town for having no friends. Really, guy? Really?!? As if is wasn’t something I didn’t know already but to have Mr. Stranger announce it to everyone I know was not particularly encouraging for my sense of integration. I meekly refuted his claims (and a few people half-heartedly rose to my defense) but it was an effort not to burst into tears on the spot, and you can imagine the shade of red I must have turned. His barrage of questions and insults included: Issa (my annciene) had friends, Issa was nice, Issa gave out medicine, why don’t you give out medicine, Issa was better than you, you should give out medicine. Awesome. As you can imagine, I really wanted to be in village after that gem of a conversation.

Although I was tempted to leave Sare Sara and hole up in Kolda for the rest of Ramadan, I’ve made an effort this past week to really step up my friend game. One of my initial reservations has been making friends with men. Generally, the guys in my age group (15-25) are the easiest to talk to, most outgoing, funniest and most interested in talking to me. As I’ve mentioned, the women in that same group are more difficult to relate to because they’re usually much shier, are married and have 1-3 small children. My concerns about making friends with the male demographic is mostly an issue of reputation – I’m worried about what people will say if I’m always hanging around with the guys. I’m very careful never to have guys alone in my hut (for both safety and appearances) but I didn’t know if hanging out with them in town would send the wrong message. This week I’ve let go of those reservations and thrown myself in with the guys, trying to learn their (incredibly confusing) card games and helping out with their English practice. My new strategy seems to be working, and I’m actually much happier to go sit around and shoot the shit with my new gang (ok we’re not quite there yet, but it’s getting better!). I’m hoping I’ll get in with the guys first, the moms with my baby weighing and everyone else little by little.

As for Mr. Stranger, he’s taken to following me around everywhere – spending 2 hours watching me paint my mural, trying (unsuccessfully) to teach me cards, demanding English lessons. I think he wants an American wife. No thanks, jerk.

Call Me Michaelangelo

My masterpiece!

Returning to the issue of what my job actually is, this is something I’m still trying to figure out too. Now that I’m a “real” volunteer in theory I can start projects of my own. As I wrote before though, Ramadan isn’t the ideal time to do that and I still have to wait until my “Action Plan” meeting in October before I can begin writing grants or doing large scale projects. That gives me about two more months to finish my baseline survey and hammer out what my action plan will actually be (more on that in a few weeks, inshallah). To occupy my time, and not annoy any grumpy hungry people, I’ve started doing little things around Sare Sara to keep myself busy (and create the illusion – for myself and my village – that I’m not entirely useless).

A popular side project of many volunteers is to mural – yes, large and public paintings to both educate and entertain. Art isn’t exactly my forte, so I wasn’t keen to jump on the muraling bandwagon but after completing my first work of art I’m excited to paint the town red (and yellow, blue, green, orange…). My first mural, a map of Senegal at the nursery school, was a huge hit with my counterpart and the village leadership and I’ve been asked to do a few more, both at the school and the new Centre Polyvalent (more on this building later, it’s a beautiful newly opened training center in Sare Sara that I’m hoping to commandeer for my own projects).

I’ll be continuing to mural my heart out this week with more maps – one of the world and one of the African continent. Both of these are going to be significantly larger/more detailed than my first so wish me luck. Assuming these go well, I’ll move on to murals with an actual health focus in the hope of eliciting behavior change Inception-style. And they thought handwashing was their idea…

In a less covert effort to change behavior, I’m having my first baby weighing next weekend to give me an idea of nutrition problems within the village. Although the women’s group has asked me to address malnutrition, I’m interested to see how big of a problem it really is (the kids mostly look healthy to me, but what do I know). Here’s hoping my mamas actually show up and I can make this a monthly event!

Halfway and Hungry

Returning from IST two weeks ago I was under the impression that my job here would suddenly become clear; a parting of the clouds after 2 months of hand shaking, baby kissing and wondering what a volunteer actually does. Well to be honest, that’s not really been the case. Ramadan is a less than ideal time to begin work – everyone is either a) fasting b) working in the fields or c) grumpy and irritable from doing a) and b). Although I had hoped to “share the experience” of Ramadan for a few days, I lasted a grand total of one day (or approximately 10 hours) before concluding that without the religious aspect, it’s just meaningless starvation. Unfortunately, since no one else in my house is eating I’m left to my own devices in terms of daytime eating and have ended up fasting by default from breakfast until about 5pm when bean/spaghetti sandwiches appear downtown. In all honesty, even though I’m able to eat and drink at will I’m probably a hundred times grumpier than my neighbors who seem to be doing more work now than they were last month.

Although I’m not expected to fast, people enjoy giving me a hard time about it (actually, they give me a hard time about whatever I do – fast, not fast, work, cook, garden, anything). When people ask why I’m not fasting my responses vary from “It’s too hard” to “I’m not Muslim.” This garners laughs but has led to some serious discussions of what religion I actually am. This isn’t a question I readily have an answer for in everyday American life, so I’ve been fudging the response with a vague Christian-Jewish half answer. During PST we were told that having no god here is equivalent to having no morals, so a white lie is usually the best bet. For the record, no one here seems to care what I am – Christian, Jewish – but they do seem happy that I’ve said something. I can play along with that game.

But back to the fasting question. One guy I spoke with inquired why I’m not fasting, and I said that I’m not Muslim. I asked if he’ll be fasting on Yom Kippur, the day when Jews fast. Of course not, he replied. So there, I thought, point made - I don’t have the same god so I don’t have to fast. But there’s only one god and that’s Allah, he answered. Well…let’s just agree to disagree on that one.

Other villagers have tried to strike deals with me – fast Saturday, Monday and Wednesday only. Ok, but that still involves waking up at 5 am which I’d really rather not do. This week I’m going to make an effort to fast one more day, maybe tomorrow (I think my biggest problem last time was that I missed the 5am meal, bad idea).

So that’s where we are in Ramadan, 12 days down and 18 (?) to go. While I can’t say I’m on board with the voluntary starvation idea, my Senegalese family and friends have shown some serious strength this month and I for one have been continuously impressed – I can barely stay awake for a full day in this heat as it is, but my brothers have spent 3 hours in the fields by the time I get up at 8am and are still pretty damn chipper until break-fast at 8pm.