Pre-Intermediate Service Training (IST)

Pre-IST (4 May - 14 July 2019)

Install:

After feeling on top of the world, we packed our lives into sept-places and headed off to our respective regions first thing in the morning, lacking sleep and proper hydration after celebrating swear-in. And reality set in. In Kounghuel, my road town a few of us bought all of our furniture over a couple days with the help of nearby, older, volunteers. And then I was dropped off in my new site, with my new hut, and my new family, and it was all very real. Wolof Rekk.

Here I received my new and final Senegalese name: Babacar Sy. For better or worse, this is also the name of a well-renowned religious leader and I sometimes get called Serigne Babacar Sy. It took a couple days to adjust, but I am blessed to have some key people in this town that have made my integration as smooth as possible. They are:

Marie Ndaiye – Selected by the village to come to Thies and learn about Peace Corps and help me integrate. She is a mother, she is one of three wife to a holy man, and a jambar (hard worker or warrior). She has taken me all over to meet officials, she has helped my language learning, she has fed me, and mainly, she has been an unlikely friend in new place
My host family – My host dad is the village chief: very well respected, very patient, and a great resource. My host mom is his second wife and has four kids (one of which was born at the end of Ramadan): Saliou, Cheikh, Yama, and Mohamed. The compound I live in consists of five separate families (all related in some way or another) as well as several student that live here so they can attend the local middle school. This make remembering names so difficult, but they have all been very welcoming.
The Health Post staff – A bunch of hardworking people that seem to always be on call. I can speak French with if needed. Sometimes even a little English. There closer to me in age than the before mentioned people which makes see topics more relatable. The way the health system works, the medical staff often gets educated in Thies or Dakar and then are sent all over the country, despite where their family may live. In turn, they all live together at the health post and have their own make-shift family that I have enjoyed becoming a part of.

Aziz, nurse, teaches on common illnesses

Me and Marie after training

A charet ride with Saliou

Ramadan:

To put it simply, Ramadan (or koor in Wolof), was hard. That may seem like a silly statement to any of my muslim friends reading this, but as someone who grew up in a christian family, this was all new to me. In a nutshell, no food or water is consumed from sun up to sun down for one lunar month and it happens to fall right in the middle of hot season. Although I only fasted a few days (and cheated from time to time because I felt water was essential in that moment), it was like a spell came over the town and the struggle was mutual. Everyone is fatigued and resting. Work is slow. Noppalu’s rekk. Moreover, it wasn’t uncommon for me to miss lunch because... well no one was cooking. I called it passively fasting and I dare say it’s almost as difficult as fasting because you don’t mentally prepare yourself to fast, but you end up doing it anyway. Or end up eating peanuts with peanut butter because that’s all you have stashed away in your room haha). Despite the difficulties, when the sun would set, around the fourth of the five daily prayers, everyone gathers to break fast (called ndogal) and shares in buttered tapalapa bread, kingkiliba, cafe tuba, and dates. Kingkiliba is a delicous tea and cafe tuba is a spiced coffee, both with so much sugar and both of which I hope to bring back home and share with you all. Breaking fast is not only delicious, but more importantly, it’s an incredibly communal event where everyone becomes re-energized as we chat, laugh, and watch as the moon waxes and wanes letting us know how much time we have left. After a months worth of fasting, everyone celebrates in whats called Korite. We'd all dress in our nicest clothes, go out to the fields in the morning for a long prayer session (I went to observe), and then we ate until we couldn’t eat anymore. After eating until we couldn't anymore, w went to another family’s house and continued to eat haha. The eating/lounging combination reminded me of thanksgiving in that way haha. But the prayer in the morning was beautiful: slowly but surely, everyone came to the outskirts of town, set out their mats, and the Imam and other significant figures lead the prayer while the sun came up behind them and shined over the beautiful landscape. It was a wonderful day.

Sundown during Ramadan: excited to break fast

The Five Week Challenge: Baptisms, Funerals, etc.

Peace Corps encourages volunteers to stay at their permanent site for the first five weeks without any outside travel to help maximize integration and familiarization with the community. Seems easy enough, but with the added difficulty of Ramadan, after three plus weeks of speaking nothing but Wolof and six days a week of work at the health post (even with my off times, practicing Wolof felt like work), I was exhausted. I was ready to take a trip, see a friend, and speak a little English. However, right about the time I decided this, my host mom had her baby! A very exciting moment, but the baptism would be a week later and with the added difficulty of getting out of site (a single ‘bush taxi’ that leaves once a day right around the first mornings prayer that takes about 2.5 hours down a sandy dirt road to get the road town), I was locked in to the five week challenge.

All that being said, it was well worth it. The ngente (baptism) was a wonderfully ceremony. The ngente serves as a naming ceremony where the week old baby has his head shaved by an elder and then is given its name by the father. This was done first thing in the morning. The rest off the day people from all over town came to congratulate the family and give a small offering, and even though we were fasting, having everyone together was wonderful. My favorite and most nerve racking part of the five week challenge may have been this day. Many of the family members in the compound knew I had been practicing guitar and had been bugging me all week to play at the ngente, which I happily refused. All morning I had avoided talk of it… but by early afternoon there was no escaping it and one of the neighbor ladies, Adama, was insistent. After some hassling, I bit the bullet and said “FINE! I’ll do it… but only if you ALL sing and dance.” and then we did. I had only been practicing guitar for about four weeks so I just strummed the six or so chords I knew well, and for what felt like forever but was probably only ten minutes, I made them dance and sing, especially Adama. It was actually such a great time and I certainly made some errors, but they were lost in the commotion of everything else, mashallah.

This brings up another ceremony: the Senegalese funeral. After only being at site for a few weeks or so, my neighbor and great aunt passed away. It was a big ordeal as the Imam announced it over the loudspeaker of the mosque with the first morning prayer and all day people came to pay their respects and give an offering to the family. You can’t quite prepare for this a week in advance like you can for an ngente. I happen to come back from a morning run in my rather revealing short shorts, covered in sweat and met my host dad by my hut when he said that she had passed away. Looking around it was evident that there was already an increased number of people and they were all mourning. Not at all in the right attire I scuttled into my room and consulted some of the Peace Corps staff on what to do. I even went to work just to realize I had made a mistake and should be with the family. The whole day we gathered with our nicest boubous, sitting in the shade, the men on one mat and the women on another. The men would sometimes sing, and despite the somber feeling in the air, there were some good laughs as people from all over were happy to be reunited and share in each other’s company. However, by the third prayer of the day, the body was taken to the mosque and a small ceremony was held as elders close to her, including my host father, said their peace. From their the men walked to the body to the cemetery. Wrapped in nothing but a white cloth, as is the muslim tradition, the body was prayed over as everyone sat in silence and watched as the hole slowly fill. Only until it was completely packed down did anyone leave. It was a very humbling and somber experience. It made me miss and appreciate my family back home. And despite being a hard day for a lot people, I believe it brought me closer to the host family and I am grateful for that.

Five weeks eventually came. The celebration started as a meeting with the other volunteers in the region. It was so good to see everyone again. This was followed by a dip in the pool and a long awaited cold beer. The next day, several of us new volunteers travelled to Tambacouda, the neighboring region. Here they have more amenities like an ATM, a “toubaab” grocery store, and a Peace Corps transit house. Yes, I have to go to three or so hours from my road town to Tamba (to the east) or Kaolack (to the east) for an ATM and the closest Peace Corps transit house. But trips like this become adventures. Friends from the Tamba area met us at the house, showed us the best spots to eat, showed us another pool, and we all slept on the roof of the transit house as the very first rains of the season came through. Breaking bread with our friends in the south of Senegal, we'd share stories of our own trails at site and laughed at the differences and similarities. After our boondoggle in the south and way too much time spent in sept-places, we all returned to site to find we had picked up food poisoning! Not from the chicken we brought at a street shack and ate with our hands, but from the shawarma most of us had at a fancy establishment. I was back on my feet in a day and a half, but others who had a larger appetite that day were down for a bit longer.

Language Seminar
Not too long after the five week challenge, new volunteers get together for a multi-day intensive language training to answer unresolved questions, sort through colloquialisms, and dive deeper into the language. Our group consisted of the 5 newbies in the Kaffrine region and our instructor, Ibra. My good friend Trey hosted us at his family's compound where we would eat, sleep, and learn for the next few days. It was nice indulge in English conversation with a group of friends but eben better to feel my language skills growing. Not to mention Ibra was a fantastic teacher and full of jokes. However on our last night, Ibra shared with us his prior battle with Malaria and how it could have taken his life. His outlook on doing good onto others with a second chance at life is inspiring and ever so motivational for us as health volunteers to know that the work we do may save the lives of the friendships we're building in Senegal now.

Language Seminar Group: Trey, Michele, Maria, Ibra, Myself, Amalia

The Routine:

With the five week challenge in the bag and ramadan over, life became a little bit more comfortable. Each morning starts with a run (inshallah) through the bush as the sun comes up. It’s then followed by a nice oatmeal coffee breakfast (found at the Tamba tubaab store). I show up to work about 9am and in true senegalese fashion, I greet the whole health post staff before settling in myself. Work during this time frame consists of learning about the community, doing small surveys and observations until the next big training us volunteers will go to after 2 plus months at site. I’ll go back and eat lunch with with the family around 2pm. Afternoons are relaxed as I’ll practice guitar, noppalu, and or drink attaya before returning to work or meeting with Marie Ndaiye to do other projects. Evenings are my favorite as I’ll generally sit with the host family and present them with all the new words I heard that day and they help me work through them and teach me tangential lessons. Sundays are the only day the health post is closed. I call Sundays my “bes bu noppalu” or day of rest and my family gets a kick out of that. I do all my laundry, by hand, and then noppalu rekk the rest of the day. Some days at site are great, I’m out and about, my Wolof feels quick off the tongue and I can feel the improvements. Not to mention, the people here are wonderful and always happy to see me and greet me. Other days I am drowning in Wolof. When my brain is so tired from operating in another language for so long, it becomes apparent and simple greetings can become a chore. Other challenging days are associated with lack of sleep and self-care, heat, and people trying to teach you Pular for an undetermined amount of time when all you want to do is sleep haha. Whats worse though is learning of friends returning to the states - ETing - for one reason or another. Despite these hard days, I have a great support group of family back home and friends here in Senegal that have made those days, simply, just a day and something that too will pass. If you’re taking the time to read this, you’re probably one of those people, so thank you :)