IST through the first 6 months in Senegal

IST through the first 6 months in Senegal (July – September. Roughly.)

Intermediate Service training (IST)

IST was an intense two week training back in Thies with all the new health and business volunteers once again under the same (metaphorical) roof. Side note, IST is the French abbreviation for a sexually transmitted disease and caused a comical amount of confusion for the French speakers at the health post. It was similar to PST in the sense that we had class all day and lost sleep all night trying to catch up, be social, and revel in the ability to speak English.  Where it differed was in the content in the training.  While PST spent a lot of time discussing what to expect in Senegal and how to speak the local language, IST dove into future projects, how to write grants, and the resources available to succeed in these projects. The last few days, we all had our counterparts from our respective sites come and partake in the training with us.  A counterpart is someone sharing our same field of work who is has the time to help tubab with mediocre language skills, but more importantly, has a shared motivation to make a difference in their town and in Senegal. And let me tell you about my counterpart! Moussa Ba is a real jambar; when he is not farming, he is working as a relais (or a community health volunteer) leading health lessons throughout the greater Gainth Pathe area, sometimes walking ten miles just to teach on tuberculosis; he also has formal training on being a community health assistant and will soon work directly under the head nurse treating patients; moreover he is fluent in Wolof, was raised speaking Pular, and even speaks some French (so communicating and conveying health lessons to the community will be no issue); but above all, he is a nice guy that I appreciate hanging out with and look forward to working with.

Me and Moussa after training

                In between all the hardwork, we made sure to enjoy each other’s company. Highlights included a quick pit stop to the beaches in Mbour (it’s very weird seeing the differences in the “Midwest of Senegal” as I call it versus the touristy coast), we cheered for Senegal sporting our green, yellow and red as they battled it out in the finals of Le Coup d’Afrique soccer tournament, and we celebrated Christmas in July. Worth noting, Christmas in July consisted of a fuuke Jaay secret santa.  Fuuke jaay is the equivalent to a thrift store back in the states, but requires much more digging through literal piles of clothes and instead of one big store, you have to roam the market making stops at small hole in the wall stores or even street vendors. So the idea was we all had to get a wild outfit for our respective secret santas and wear them all out for one of our last nights in Thies.  I was gifted with a debatably stylish overall fake glasses combo. It was a blast.

My fuuke jaay overalls and my fuuke jaay gift reciever

Back at Site

                As a health volunteer, one of the first projects the Peace Corps encourages us to do is to paint a map of all the health facilities in our area, note where each town is situated relative to those health facilities, and include the populations being served.  For some volunteers, this consisted of a small handful of villages. In my case, there are 43 villages and this took a lot longer than planned haha. Nonetheless, it was fun, it added a nice aesthetic touch to the health post, it was a great way doing visible work in the community, and it has already proven to be a useful resource.

The finished mural

                Looking forward, Moussa and I have high hopes for future projects.  To fight malnutrition we plan to create of a community garden to not only provide healthy foods, but teach on nutrition. To engage the community from the bottom to the top, we will start a health club at the local middle school, teaching them on local health issues and their own health, but also challenging them to share what they've learned with their families and their community.  To improve sanitation and digestive health, we want to improve hand washing in the community, but will do so by empowering woman to make soap and teaching them the importance of it to be used as their sales pitch, hopefully making it a sustainable and continual cycle. To satisfy the inner engineer, but to also decrease the number of respiratory related illnesses and the amount of wood burned for cooking, we will make mud stoves that burn cleaner and more efficiently.  Inshallah, these will all happen, and some are already in the works, but we will see what other projects present themselves along the way.

                Beyond the more obvious definition of work, I am continually integrating and learning about the beautiful culture here in Senegal and in the Saloum Saloum region.  Some of my fondest memories at site are in the blurred area between work and play.  Not too long after IST, Gainth Pathe was in a dry spell. A false start to the rainy season meant the first round of crops were suffering or had already died.  In response, the older women of the town dressed like the farmers and gathered the town in one of the open spaces to sing “Yallah may nu ndox” (or god give us water) and dance while others came banging bowls like drums and singing along.  In a time of hardship, this was a moment of solidarity and so many smiles.  If you have not seen it already, there is a video on my facebook and instagram that makes me happy to this day. Another instances was in mid-August.  My host brothers and I were discussing the differences between a guitar and the three string Senegalese xalem.  Before I knew it, my bedroom was full of kids listening to me play the few songs I know. We were all singing and dancing when all of the sudden my host brother Saliou and his friend Ableye insisted on singing in English.  I have not laughed that hard in so long, as they confidently screamed in “English” the equivalent verbiage to the adults in a Charlie Brown episode.  This is also a video on my social media that I highly encourage you to watch. Next on the set list was 18 year old host brother Ousmane. I beat my guitar like a drum while his buddies peer pressured him into rapping… and then he did!... And it was good!  Really good! All in Wolof, I still have to figure out what he said, but it seemed to be a pretty big hit amongst the others in the room.

A quick glimpse at the "rain dance" but definitely watch the video

Tabaski (August 12, 2019)

                 Maybe the biggest holiday in Senegal, Tabaski celebrates Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son, before God stopped him at the last minute and had him sacrifice a sheep instead. This is a story shared by Islam and Christianity (Old Testament).  To celebrate Tabaski, people all over Senegal come back to their parent’s home several days before and several days after. Married men, if financially able, will buy at least one ram for their family. I’ve never seen so many sheep before, let alone being transported on the tops of sept-places haha. On the morning of, all the men go to the mosque in their finest boubous while the women begin to prepare the meal, also dressed to impress.  From the mosque, everyone went to the Imam’s house.  No one can sacrifice their sheep until the Imam has done so first.  Then the party began.  People bustled home to begin their feasts. My compound consists of several families and collectively two or three sheep were killed and five or more goats followed. For those unfamiliar with the of cleaning animals or for some of our vegetarian friends, this was an understandably hard thing to watch.  On the contrary, this was the much needed protein at site that a lot of us craved haha.  The women were quick to fry up the liver and testicles (yeah) as our appetizer.  A few hours later, we would eat a delicious and insane amount of food until we couldn’t eat anymore. And then, like Korite, we went to a neighbor’s house and continued eating. It was wonderful.  It should be noted that with all the meat acquired in one day, a lot of it is actually given away to those less fortunate.  Outside of the meals, the day was spent relaxing and spending time with family in addition to sipping on cold sugary drinks (generically called the French word: “boissons”).  The following days would consist of a lot of leftover meat (for better or worse) and more family time. Some people continued to take time off work; others looked forward to working the family fields with their brothers, uncles, and or father while everyone was in town.

Cheesin' with my name sake (Babacar, right) and my host dad (Mor Talla, left)

Setbacks and Dakar

With the good comes the bad. The day of Tabaski, I woke with a rash on my face.  Not thinking twice about it, I emailed a picture to our med team and went on with my day.  It wasn’t much later when I got a call from the Peace Corps doctor saying the picture is representative of shingles and because of the location, it could affect my vision if not treated.  I should note now that everything is fine and I am healthy. However, I was told I needed to get to Dakar to receive medicine that is sometimes hard to locate in Senegal and see an eye doctor as well. Being a holiday, transportation was nonexistent and I had to pay a healthy sum to get out of site the next day and meet a Peace Corps car in Kaolack, a larger city a few hours away.  The meds were quick to act and I was feeling just fine, but being such a large holiday and with so many people off of work, I was not able to get a medical clearance from the eye doctor until over a week later. It was frustrating feeling healthy, but unable to do the work at site for such a long period of time. Nonetheless, I made the best of my situation, enjoying time in Dakar with friends that were also passing through, soaking in the beaches, and reminding myself how bad I am at surfing haha.
Similarly frustrating, after being in site for a couple of weeks, my eyes again began to act up. This time, less serious but because of the recent shingles episode, the med team insisted I return. Having spent most of my last paycheck during the last visit, I was living more like a broke college student rather than a surfing, sushi eating tourist haha.  However, this visit was short and I got right back to Gainth Pathe.
I am thankful for such a proactive and hardworking Peace Corps med team. They're out here, behinf the scenes, doing the most and keeping us volunteers afloat :)

Life in the rainy season

My last couple blog posts have been reflective of the dry season. Starting this past July (sooner for the south and much later for the north), the rainy season came and it came in a blazing. There is never just a drizzle, but rather, first you feel a wonderful breeze. It has its own special name in Wolof: xeen. It’s followed by dark clouds and the occasional lightning show. And next, is an act of god; some of the heaviest deluges I have every experience have happened in the last month. The streets become rivers, the lightening makes the night look like day, and being outside is near impossible. I happen to be on a run during one of these and the rain was so strong against my skin it felt like hail (truthfully, getting caught in a storm was my own doing ha).  It also brings out all the bugs.  The flies are everywhere, the mosquitos are hatching, beetles I’ve never seen before fly into your face because they are distracted by the lights, and even the infamous blister beetle managed to grace my skin with its toxins.  All that being said, it is beautiful. Rainy season has turned the bland desert into a green wonderland.  Everything is blossoming, the crops are growing, and the sunsets are radiant as they clouds shine with every color on the visible spectrum.  This rain should last up until sometime in October, and before long we’ll be back in the dry season. It has its downfalls, but we have to enjoy it while we can.

Getting ready to rain as the dark sky moves over my friend Michele's site