Novelties

Hadiatou brings popcorn "pop-kabba" to the village. Family goes crazy and don't believe it's corn. We sit around a lunch bowl to eat it like every other meal. Kid gets slapped for dropping a piece on the ground.

They also LOVE LOVE LOVE singing cards. So please don't send anymore. The songs "Girls just wanna have fun" and "I want candy" are currently completely ruined for me and make me want to claw my ears off. But thanks for the ones you already sent! I will give them as prizes in an oral-fecal cycle quiz, with the hopes that the new owners will break them immediately.

The Tabaski Pictures That This Annoying Computer WILL Let Me Post

Tabaski: first meat in village; dead sheep; ataaya; fancy clothes; cool drum

The Fabrique of Our Lives

It takes 45 minutes to walk to our fields. They are technically in Guinea. My family knows I ride my bike 50 horrid k to and from Kédougou. They know I've done "karate." They don't know I'm planning on climbing Kilimanjaro, but I'll try to explain one of these days. Still, they could not believe I'm capable of walking to the fields. "I don't think you can," everyone kept saying.
"I have leg, yes?" I answered.
They pondered this and said again, "I really don't think you can."
It's true I can't wash clothes, cook, shuck peanuts, pull water, pound, and haali the pulaar the way every other villager can. But, come on! Sometimes I find myself starting to try hard to prove myself in each area. Then I let it go. It's the broken dish philosophy: if I suck at something, maybe they'll ask me to do it less! Plus, there won't be yet another perceived reason to worship the white. I'm trés cool with my villagers being more skilled than me at their own livelihoods. But, still, WALKING?
To heads shaking in disbelief, I suited up for the journey. I opted for Tevas (thanks, Cindy!) instead of the papery flipflops everyone else wore, rubbed in sunblock-- which they'll never understand, put a spoon in my pocket, and filled up my battered nalgene. "That's all your water?!" my jaja asked.
"Yes?"
"Hadiatou! You need more than that! Don't you have a big bottle?" I brought the big bottle. They're often right and it's kind of nice to be fretted over anyway.
We went to Guinea. They were impressed with my ability to walk even more than with skipping stones. (Tell me how generation after generation have lived next to these rivers and no one skips stones!) The cotton fields are gorgeous. As we walked towards them, I had a feeling like I was walking on the board of CandyLand, reaching fields of poporn plants-- or more appropriately, cotton candy.
We crunched over corn husks to piles of cotton that looked remarkably like snow drifts. With fields of green in the distance, I felt like we were travelling through the seasons: autumn, winter, spring... I touched the cotton. It felt like cotton. "Do you know cotton?" a girl asked.
"Yes."
"Do they have it in your country?"
"Yes..."
"They have fields?"
"No... we buy it."
I pictured the cosmetics isle of Stop n' Shop and knew that from the next time I saw a bag of pristine carebear cloud balls to the last, I'd think of this moment.
I wanted to jump in the pile, but I was nervous due to the previously mentioned snake sightings. "No snake here!" they encouraged me. It felt like a warm cartoon cloud. I could've stayed all day, but then I remembered sorpians and jumped out.
Cotton blooms from pretty pink-purple flowers that dry out and turn into thorns. After an hour or so I could almost hear my fingers say, "Dont go near that thing!" I got the hang of it. Depending on its stage in growth, the flower will divide the cotton ball into little marshmallows, or it will be one big ball of insect bed. If you pinch your fingers around just so, (careful of the thorny part!) you can grab it all in just one go. But sometimes they're stubborn to leave and the wisps string out like magicians' scarves.
I thought about slavery. People who picked cotton here were captured and forced to pick cotton in other countries. What they had to remind them of home were balls of cotton and sore fingers. All day.
Selling cotton brings my family's only income. I think you must know a person is at the bottom of the chain if he or she picks cotton. We all use it; we need someone to do it, but who wants to? I wish all the pale kids with summer jobs at fast-food joints at home could be the ones. There's no shame, but it's definitely the bottom. My fellow pickers complimented my work. One said she'd love me as a co-wife. I couldn't say that what made me work hard was the knowledge that this wasn't my life. It made me happy and guilty and sad.
Senegalese and Guinean hills watched us from under a haze like a coating of dust on an unrealistically beautiful painting.

All Creatures Great and Senegal

(Other titles: Wild Things; Woman vs. Wild; Where the Wild Things Are...)

12/3/08

Snake Peak:
I was standing with my bike outside Alexa's old cpompound, greeting her bengure and unknowingly standing a foot away from a snake coiled on a tree. "Hadiatou, come here!" They hissed about 5 times before I responded. I thought they just wanted me to sit with them so I was protesting, no, IO really should be getting home... then they pointed. I moved and hid behind neene Sow. Stick beating proceeded until thje serpent was no more. Then they just made fun of me. Fair enough!

Le Deuxieme Snake:
Mbodi no ga! A snake is here! What other words can get people moving so fast? At this point I'd reached the Dinde Felo disponsaire (Badji's) part of my journey and was awaiting Awesome Food. Then a kid comes in yelling that. I didn't even understand him but followed everyone else's lead and ran. I thopught it was for a medical emergency, actually, and maybe I could help! Wrong.
This snake was HUGE (green Mamba?) and WAY faster than I knew snakes could be-- like soccer ball-fast. I did not need top be told 5 times to move. In fact, I almost knocked over a small child in my haste to flee, 6 yards farther than everyone else. I wish I could say I'd been heroic and picked up the child or something, but he was fine. Everyone was running around, throwing rocks, weilding sticks. The sounds of their screams and the deaf guy's screams (I specify because his seemed more purely panicky and eerie) scared me the most. I don't know what it says about me that nothing puts more fear in me than other people's screams, but I don't care as long as I don't get nakiied by a snake.
In the end it was Hawa, maker of Amazing Food/ maid, who beat the snake the most and delivered its final blows. I watched in awe of her bravery as I cowered around the corner. She said she'd only killed 4 or 5. I wonder if she means This Year?
The snake's tail shuddered right before it completely died, as if it had a rattle it was trying to shake.

Dinosaur in the Douche:
Since the previous occurence, I'd been a little jumpy with critters. The mouse in my hut didn't help. When I went to my douche, (remember, this is what we call bathrooms/ holes in the ground) I thought I'd just... check. I shone my flashlight down. Sure enough, a reptillian coil. You've got to be kidding me. Three in one day? But no, I followed up the coil and saw it was a GIANT TAIL attached to sizeable lower legs. It looked like an alligator, logic told me in was a monitor lizard, and so I decided it was a dinosaur.
I made my way to my brothers, casually as can be. I picked the oldest, told him I had a question, and asked him to follow me. I really just wanted to know what it was-- it couldn't do anything from down there anyway. Instead we commenced in a multi-hour douche party.
Picture at least 5 boys holding flashlights standing around my dressed-up imam dad in my douche. They are trying to spear the doucheness monster with a homemade taped-up bamboo pole. The pointed end is getting covered in more and more fecal matter. When they bring it out, everyone has to scatter away so they don't come in contact with Hadiatou's feces. The dinosaur evades its point. I still have to pee.
It was so bizarre I remember wondering if I could possibly have ever been through a weirder experience. That might be it!
I left the boys to their potty-prodding to eat my 2nd dinner (we have food now.) When I went to bed, I implored they stop until morning, but the brother I initially approached said, "No, it's gpoing to die NOW;" I found this way more endearing than annoying so I left them to their shouting and held in my waste materials.
The "sagariwal" saga ended with quickly-travelling screams, stampeding feet, and the sounds of beating. I don't know how they got it out but it's not going anywhere now!

World AIDS Day

we face the elders
as they drink orange
soda, all dressed up they
look funny to us
we try to take a
picture but it's blurry.

the speaker's
woofer pulses like a
looney toon, punching at
our ears in
multilingual fists.
the volume legitimizes
the event. if it weren't
at least a little
painful, it wouldn't be cool.

tiny fingers cramp, slipping
over the sign
Ensemble Nous Vaincrons Le SIDA.
Préservez Notre Avenir.
they stand trying on
aloof faces, yawning
and waiting
for their pictures to be taken.
no one mentions
how they're not in school.

it is hot, beyond hot, so
hot the molecules in
the air keep fainting
and the others fan them and
faint and they keep switching and
I'm waiting for a
moment they(re all down.

nevertheless a parade was
marched, a race was run, a
sheep was won. I shake my
head at the jeans and jackets
of the city kids who look
good when I want to
be naked at the bottom
of a river.

they sweat in a line so long it hurts to
take in, stretching like a snake
filled with poison.

kids swear they're 16, sneak
in; they want the free
t-shirt and baggie of
water abd too-loud
music and another
day gone. so be it
if to get that
they must learn
their results came back

positive.

Recent Events

-Finally used demonstration penises for a purpose other than frat house jokes. The members of our girls' club know how to correctly put on a condom! They also learned about HIV/AIDS and that other STDs exist. It was super awkward to explain, but I feel great that we did it!

-Mouse INSIDE mosquito net. Gross.

-Thanksgiving: Tasty the Turkey finally served his purpose. Inexplicably, we all got a little nostalgic about the ANNOYING-@¤*§ gobble calls that will no longer wake us up hours before dawn every morning (when in K-gou). So we still immitate him all the time. Also on the plates (or pot-lids as the case may be..) were chicken, duck (all self-butchered), stuffing, mashed potatoes, salad, gree-bean salad, bissap-spinach, squash... and desserts!

-Obtained INNER TUBES from the garage for floating down the Gambia. Brilliance.

Aging Across the World

11-22-08
I asked my neene once when her birthday was. She looked at me oddly and I repeated and rephrased. She said she thought maybe some time in the cold season. December? January? Or wait, was it March? She shifted under my wide eyes, poked the fire, and said she knew she had it written down... somewhere. Maybe.
When I asked my same-ish-age-mom how old she was she said 24. In a later conversation, 26. When neene spoke of her she figured she had to be at least 29. They tick fingers, blurt out numbers, and throw up their hands. Even their official ID cards sport dates that mean nata. I've seen several proclaiming the bearer's birthdate as 00-00-00. Who keeps track of these things anyway?
I don't really try to explain the American mindset to birthdays. Whole days and huge parties and presents all for one person... It sounds ludicrously selfish instead of individualistic. Here, they focus on family and communitities and using their time for more encompassing purposes than throwing parties for oneself. I shudder to imagine seeing something like "My Super Sweet 16" from a villager's eyes.
Although, on my (real) mother's birthday in September, I tried to explain. All day, they'd been promising to guide me up the mountain we have to climb in order to get réseau (phone service). They had me wait out the heat and then it was dark and they said morning was better. I said but it's her birthday. No reponse. I said she'd be sad. Stirring. Because I was so far away from her. At this, brothers were summoned and up the mountain we went, darkness and all. Birthdays may be ridiculous but moving away from one's mother is just barbaric.
I respect this philosophy. But it doesn't mean I'm not celebrating. I'm an old dog; it's too late to change! And it doesn't mean I wasn't ecstatic to wake up in the middle of the night to Heather's traditional phonecall!
The day is no grand masquerade, but I've decided to pamper myself in every place I'd otherwise think "I shouldn't." So I'm indulging in real coffee sent by my dad, real cheerios sent by Erin, and real milk sent by Mrs. B. The coffee fills to the brim and I play a secret game-- since I'm at the mature age of 24, I must be able to carry it across the room without spilling a drop. I can. I add two sugar cubes and the meniscus domes dangerously over the edge. I lift it to the other side of the table. I impress myself. So far, 24 is good. I may just be unstoppable.
The Cheerios taste fantastic, though when I find my taste buds searching for something, I remember my childhood habit of topping them off with cheese. In sentimental moments in high school and college, and to the bewilderment of friends, I reinstated this practice. If I was nostalgic then, you can imagine how the feeling multiplies as I find myself aging in a remote nook of Africa. But mostly I just wish I had cheese.

The rest of the day got even better than Cheerios, if such a possibility is even conceivable. Roxy, Matt, Andy, Thomas, and Aaron joined me on the Gambia. We floated down the shisto-riffic currents, punctuating the sparkles with laughter and cries as we "found" submerged rocks and bushes. (When se stopped off at an overhanging tree, I was only minorly disappointed at the sign of my aging that I didn't want to try to lug myself up for a jump of questionable safety).
Later, a Fancy dinner at the Bedik-- the hotel that doesn't serve warthog and to which we therefore never go. Fish, fries, wine, crépes, awesomeness. When the crépes came, everyone started sketchily saying, "Uhh.. we need.. forks..." Matt got up to talk to the waiter and I joked that he was asking them to sing and clap to me and bring me a sombrero. It was funny to imagine anything like that here. But then out came a grinning server with a special crépe and three scoops of ICE CREAM. The PCVs sang and put 2-4 candles on top! Whoa! I was shocked speechless. This in addition to an American junkfood basket, a 6-pack of Killians, and other related amazingness brought from Dakar pampered me perfectly. This was NOT what I pictured in my first African birthday!
It's crazy to think I might not set foot in the US for the whole age of 24. But if Doritoes can keep miraculously finding their way to me, I think it's possible. And starting off scrumptiously.

Prefer Ribs

November 11, 2008

Ate pig testicles

No Boys Allowed

Roxy and Kay's First Kedougou Girls' Club Schedule:
-name tag decoration
-name game (I was by far the worst!)
-human knot game (didn't work so we ended up trying to explain how three tangled rings showed our inter-connectedness... not that I can say any of that in french...)
-stereotype excercise: girls places words (ex. marriage, violence, education, love, farming, cooking, money, sex) under either homme or femme, according to their automatic response. Then we discussed why we had those connotations and the difference between biological and societal traits or abilities.
-Collages about ourselves! (mostly from old Economists and Newsweeks, but we had a few popular cosmo's which we had to edit before distributing)
-Presentations
-Lunch!
-short rest to give a few girls time for prayer
-gave little notebooks and pencils and talked about club's purpose (social craft/game time, and to learn about careers for women)
-phone tree set-up
-SUCCESS

The french was a struggle but the girls were so great that it still worked with flying colors.

Obama, My bama

11-5
In my hut, by candlelight, I've pointed many a time to Obama's bright face. It shines from the cover of a Rolling Stone magazine (curtesy of Becca G!) over which every villager has huddled 5,000 times. I've proudly bumbled through explanations that HE cuold be the next US president. Mostly people didn't believe me or understand. He's one of two... he could... the first... what??? And the appropriate joyfully surprised reaction came a smattering of times.

I can't wait to return à la village with some concrete news. From Dakar to Guinea, people shouted "Felicitations!" to me and we high-fived and shook hands and grinned mirror-images. I can't wait to be wholely proud of my country and not have to clam Canadian citizenship.

I've slept for about 3 hours. We held up a bar (I'm in Dakar) and got CNN on a slide projector until 6 AM. I madly texted updates to village-bound unfortunates. I'm thankful I wasn't on of them, cranking my radio in the dark, pulling the antenae out of the moquito net, biting my fist, and lacking company apart from the Rolling Stone cover. It would have been more romantic in 50 years ("Where were you when you found out?"). Still I'm glad I could be with visual coverage, electricity, friends, a cold drink, a full stomach (contents including tuna and octopus! delicious!), and a crowd of British, French, Wolof, Pulaar, Sereer, and our US democratic MAJORITY, bien sur.
I don't know how it felt in the States at your reasonable hours and live rallies and all. When we left the bar, shaking arms around one another, the morning prayer calls sang and bodies folded over mosque mats in the dark, pious as the day before. Did any of them know?
I voted around 2 months ago on an official ballot that Senegal's humidity warped so I had to rip open the envelopes and glue them back shut. I resisted including a post-it explaining, I KNOW THIS LOOKS BAD/ TAMPERED WITH BUT PLEASE SEE RETURN ADDRESS AND CUT ME SOME SLACK. I'd only had snatches of updates. Ridiculous things like "polls down because McCain called Obama a socialist." I know I've been gone a while but statements like this confused and worried me to such a point that after seeing the results I'm still skeptical about the reality of all this.
Can they take it back? Just kidding? Incorrect counting? Overthrow? Or is this all a mephloquine dream?
I allowed myself to unclench a bit once Obama took the stage. People around me had been cheering for a while but I'd been sipping iced paranoia, thinking jinxes. He looked different than he did the last time I saw him. More tired, like a man whose grand prize happens to be All the Problems of the World. And, like my next president. That's him, that's really him. Obviously a crowd of screaming goosebumps and parades of tears made the next appearances.
It's a gorgeous day. I have hockey bags under my eyes as I wander in a daze. People randomly shout OBAMA! at me and I stop to high-five them. Everyone's happy, sometimes just because he heard Obama is a black dude! One paper's headlines got straight to the point, "NOIR!" And a lot of people have clearly followed the news, policies, and their personal investments and connections.
Whatever it is, today I stand tall.

Me Meeting Meat

One can only be
So Masochistic.

12.5 years of tofu
until October 30:
I lose my veg-inity
on a warthog sandwich.

Chewy.
Stomach confused.
No regrets.

Someday,
I will have a corn dog.





(Here are some from today of a Gou Crew butcher and the future bacon I will eat!)

Mostly Me

Meditations on Dengue Fever

It sucks.

CamParfait

10-18

Last week I helped with Dan and Willie's environmental leadership camp. It was tremendous. Suspiciously perfect.
The first known camp of its kind here, it was big news. In fact, a reporter followed everyone around with a tape recorder in their faces the whole time. This was quite awkward during the (cross-dressing!) skits and campfire solos, but worth the nightly readio spot and hour-long summary that airs tonight. Kids were chosen from across the region of Kédougou based on school performance and who was thought to be able to most benefit.
The kids were AMAZING. You know all the problems in US camps? Fights, gossip, homesickness, bullying, not following the rules, hooking up, phone-calls from parents? None of that here! Not even a single complaint about food (which was heavily composed of the cow). Not a single tear-- until they left on the bus. This was so unexpectedly moving. This culture doesn't exactly encourage open greif-- except at funerals-- so to see almost every girls and boy wipe embarassingly at their eyes and turn away-- produces a reaction I don't even have the strength to name.
Hopefully some from this group will return to next year's camp as CITs, since we want to make it annual. Though a bunch of volunteers came to help, the real counselors were amazing Senegalese leaders-- mostly teachers. They did a superb job. Camp activities included fun trust-building and team-bonding games as well as constructing tree nurseries and making/marketing/selling neem lotion. They decorated the bottles and frames for themselves in arts and crafts. One of the frames says "I like Obama." We hiked to the waterfall and source, including the kid with crutches and the girls who insisted carrying their water bottles on their heads the whole climb. We had super cross-cultural dance parties and limbo. As fun as it all was, I'm almost more sad to believe it really was THE Time of Their Lives.
Regardless, it was fun and I think they all took a lot from it.They were so serious about learning, we caught one kid taking ferocious notes as we explained how to roast marshmallows! But I can testify that each of them became more confident and made friends across the region they would enver have otherwise met. I would not have guessed the amount of difference this little thing could make.

On the Death of a Cow

All men slaughter cows,
he said; I chortled
You will watch too?
bemused; now I had to,
A five to ten minute
Process
of sucking, smacking, gasping
coughing, wheezing, moaning,
writhing, wrashing, sounds
of fluids seperating
Furrowed faces cried sweat into
the pools as red as paint
They undid ropes and the corpse
heaved again, a cinematic
bad guy that won't stay dead
They wiped the bright knife on its cheek
as it spluttered a cow's last words;
the final insult
And it fell, finally, like a sigh
its skin immediately snipped
torn, already a beautiful
blanket or rug or
Dissection had begun and I
channeled my high-school biologist
self, labeling livers, impressed
with the heart
The flies gave a festive funeral
the sun grieved loudly so no
one could ignore her
The former cow had five robot men
empty its shit, squeezing
intestines, slicing stomachs
reuniting new grass with old
We would eat around it.
Captivated children ran to help,
brought leaf fans to
plate organs, like jungle china
Hours of this
and she's gone.

Corny Story

10/2
The corn is down and rivers rage where there used to be paths. I could almost scoop a cup into the well for a drink and I'm afraid of my douche overflowing. That would be shitty.
My fingers smart from working with corn: picking it and kicking down the empty stalks (helugol), shucking it (sekugol), and seperating the kernals (hogugol). Is there not a word in english for "sqeperating the kernals"? Thus another opportunity to ponder how my elusive language fluency here doesn't translate-- so to speak-- for potential useful fluency in the future. I know "to carry water on head" (rondugol), "to help someone take water off her head" (rotiragol), "cloth between head and what is carried" (tikawol), "to carry a baby on back" (bambugol), "to cross a river" (lumbagol), and "to tie skirt up" (hadagol). Somehow I can't hear these words frequenting the conference rooms of the UN. I think of all the words on my french vocab lists: to shop, top go to the movies, to order food... Learning the life is more difficult than learning the language.
I'm a little sad the corn is down. I liked the kids' scarecrow calls from their seperate stick table posts for the babboons across the land. I liked corn closing in on every foot, making me think both, AHH, Children of the Corn! and WOO, Hide and Seek! I enjoyed laughing crazily to myself every time I made jokes in my head about the corn "stalking" me or a maze of maise... On second introspection, it seems the corn was not aiding my sanity any. A change could probably do me good. But I do hope the wonder that is fire-roasted corn stays with us a bit longer.
I was complimented, bemusedly and appreciatively, for my shucking skills. Even though two shopping bags of corn had been my previous high in the States; shucking hundreds wasn't bad. I found the work soothing, even when interrupted by biting ants and pincer bugs. Eight of us unwrapped the cobs of gold under a mango tree with a blue mountain backdrop and a soundtrack of laughter. When walls of corn and husk grew around us and I felt like we'd buried ourselves in our sustainance, I grew a bit weary of the children who kept reviving the pile in the center.
But roasted corn and ataaya kept me going. I had the most of these things by far. While everyone else shrunk their stomachs during the Ramadan fast, I made 8 mille for prevailing in a bet that I couldn't eat 24 consecutive vache qui rit cheeses after a full dinner. I never want a Senegalese person to learn of this feat. I can't keep pride over gluttony before a nation both starving and poor. You Americans, however, I fully expect to be fully impressed. I mean, I almost vomitted after #5. Proceed to shudder with disgusted admiration.
The final step to harvesting corn besides hobugoling, unugoling, and actually cooking it: storing it. "Yougol" means to take cobs from the ground of a hut and bail buckets of it into the attic-ish space above. Ousman and I climbed up to this space from a giant pîle of corn and took bucket after bucket of literally thousands of ears of corn. There was some sort of magic feeling about it all. Firstly, the dark crawl-space pressed the childhood magic-attic button. We could peel through the bamboo that made it to see sunny lines of the room below. They filled buckets from a slowly diminishing pile of corn so bright it made me think of bars of gold. It was perfectly safe, but as a testament to my age, I suppose, I fielded thoughts that started with things like "from this height" and ran through barely-possible scenarios of random bouts of fainting or sudden explosive diarhea. In both cases I decided I'd perish.
But I did not. This may or may not relate to my refusal to attempt to be as acrobatic as Ousman in my descent. Instead, I made girly scared noises and everyone laughed. Baaba comforted me that O would bring something to aid my efforts. Relieved, I pictured somthing truly useful like a chair or ladder. Instead, a giant stick came to my rescue. Of course! I laughed in bewilderment and they laughed at my confusion and there were as many laughs as corn in the room, but still I was not on solid ground. "It's to help you get down!" They propped it at a 45 degree angle. Apparently I was to scramble down with my monkey feet. No matter, I'm at least not too old to make do, albeit ungracefully and with a few elbow bumps.

Jolies

CasKate

You have never seen a waterfall like My Waterfall. And, unfortunately, due to the black diamond trickiness of getting there (we almost get swept away by rapids), I probably won't be able to bring my camera to fix this. So take my word, it's the best waterfall I've ever seen, around 80 feet, complete with pond placids and crawling caves on the way. There's even a bit of a throne behind the sheet of water for one to channel her inner Sports-Illustrated-Of-the-Year-ness. Gorgeous.

Ingle has another magnificent 80-or-so-foot fall of which I do have photos. It's the biggest water-wise in Kédougou, too powerful to swim beneath and with too much misty spray to bring a camera very close. It falls in a mesmerizing pattern of curved arrow-heads that appear to be magically set in slow beautiful motion. The breaking pool beneath it turns to rapids turns to gentle water-beds next to which I camped. The trees on top and on the rocks framing the seperate pools look like pretty little bonsais next to it. Dragonflies circle the Eden scene in crayola-bright blues and reds like something from "What Dreams May Come."

Sitting in mermaids' pose in the mist facing the giant cascade, I beat my Best Rainbow Sighting record of a previous entry. This one reached around in a full circle that met at me and colored the cool white water around. I'd never realized that the arch of rainbows hints at their preferred nature to circle completely. (Can anyone tell me why?) It also boasted a double arch.

I slept next to the hushed roar of the fall, the trickle of the streambed, the finger-tapping of rain-on-tent, and a distant rumbling of thunder. People at home buy special machines to fall asleep to just one of these sounds and I got to have them all! AND wake up to sweet Cinderella birds. (The babboons only added to the symphony during the day).

Jealous beyond the power of speech yet? I suupose I can divulge a few unfortunate details as well. For example, the trip. THANK YOU, mother, for those shoes, without which I'd surely now lack feet. Through knee-high boiling mud, sand, animal poo, wretched flies, everyprickerbushIcouldpôssiblydriveinto, cornstalks, cotton, rocks, vines, rivers, rapids, and more spills than I care to admit-- I felt like a testing pilot for the most extreme conditions the shoe company could find. Think they'd care to have an insane PCV's endorsement ad? My bike didn't fare so well. I pulled out fist-sized clumps of mud and human-lengthed vines, and my tire tore sustantially even before it managed to wrap itself around the gear wheel and obtain even more holes beyond hope of repair. Luckily this transpired upon reaching the edge of my village. Before this, the trek involves crossing a strong-currented river (lumbagol) of water that now happens to go to my chin. This happens to be difficult with a bike (see photo). But, where there's a will that's lost its reason, there's also a way!

Other than the slight bodily harm that comes with such a trip, and two snakes I missed, there's not much else that was bad. I learned I can't fire-roast corn as well as my family (SO GOOD), but the packet of trader joes indian food (THANKS dad and MB!) fully compensated. We didn't have mugs the next morning, but using the nescafé container was funnier anyway (see other picture).

Also, if any of my villagers somehow didn't think I was crazy before, they definitely do now. The concept of camping seels to be difficult to get across. Without a translation for "tent", I'm left with telling them I slept in a "cloth room". Scandels abound!

How to Distribute Mosquito Nets

Giving away 3,000 bed-nets to people who need them most in the world... doesn't sound too bad. I think I would have pictured myself with a clipboard, posing, shaking hands presidentially with village cheifs. Maybe they'd have funny hats, and maybe I'd have a superhero cape. 3,000 is a big number, but I'd probably have pictured us rolling through villages in a jeep, tossing them to overjoyed crowds like old kings with gold coins. Or to hut doors like newspaper boys. But... NOPE. Here's how it's really done:

1) Get a group of insane masochistic volunteers
2) Make shifts, rotate team members to decrease probability of in-group massacre
3) Somehow sweat through obtainment of funding, nets, number of nets needed, and transportation of nets to at least the region.
4) Bring extra: drink mixes, nescafe, oatmeal, MAYONAISE, peanut butter, energy bars, candy, rice, other beverages of your choice (remembering you've got to bike it..)
5) Make sure people putting you up (ASC/ Dr in our case) know you're not fasting and will actually pay anything for meals
6) Sleepover party!
7) Curse the roosters from 3 AM on, finally giving in and getting up at 6. If you're like us, you'll stir awake on your last morning to a sound sequence that goes something like this: rooster-from-hell clears throat and crows, team member curses, rooster crows, team member stumbles out from under net, rooster crows, team member trips over stuff and down hall, rooster crows, door swings open, rooster crows in a scared and surprised way, shuffle, squawks, flaps, struggle, team member stomps to other building, rooster shreiks get louder, sounds recede, more flapping and screeching, silence... team member returns to bed, silence again... some nervous muffled laughter from nearby mats. Turns out he didn't kill it, but tied it to the owner's tree, away from us.
8) Strap nets (in rice sacks) to your bikes and waver and fall until you can figure out how to stay balanced with them
9) Use up bandaids
10) As you grunt and sweat, pray that this is the hardest biking you'll ever do in your life
11) Take a moment to sigh appreciatively at the mountains framing the fields of gold-haired grasses that part in ripples and waves like your bike is its comb
12) Pick yourself up off the ground and vow to keep your eyes on the rocks in front of you from now on
13) Unwrap nets, write on them the village name and year, and try not to touch your face unless you want it to sting from the chemicals for the next 20 hours
14) Repeatedly tell villagers one-at-a-time, please sit down, hello hello, peace only, no we're not fasting today, please don't yell...
15) "oversee" the ASC questioning each person: name? ID card? #of family member? #of beds or mats? # of current bed nets? are you telling the truth? You'd be surprised at how confusing these few questions seem to be
16) Set up assembly line of name/card-checker, and net-labellers. This gets tedious quickly, so I recommend substituting first name initials for foods or dirty words or even a sick combination of the two if there's a middle name. For example, O. Diallo becomes Oreo Diallo, or...
17) Don't expect too many thank you's. It's Ramadan so everyone is hungry, and you're doing roll-through impersonal work anyway
18) Not being thanked is one thing, but kids crying at the sight of you every single time is another. I recommend you just OWN it. Practice your creepy face, growls, teeth-bearing, and how to say things in local languages such as, "I'm going to eat you! Come back here, food!" The kids may wet themselves, but you feel more proactive about causing it, at least. And even the mothers will laugh hysterically. I know this sounds cruel and unusual, but THEY'D CRY ANYWAY, so lay off! We all need our destressers, mine happens to be terrorizing toddlers, and remember, we're potentially saving them from malaria anyway!
19) Try to return to slumber party ideally before dark. The way is much more trecherous by headlamp
20) Good luck trying to go to the "bathroom." Holes I can take, paper not necessary, and maggots I've seen before. But this was the worst I've ever seen. Going to the bathroom for these 10 days have been like entering a sick horror movie. The worst was when a frog slipped down into the clogged and squirming puddle and kept trying to climb out. I don't know if I felt worse for the frog, the maggots, or me. Wait, yes i do.
21) Fix your bike, go home in better shape, pat yourself on the back (or partake in a massage exchange), and you're done!
22) Sleep!

Jaynay/ Sappo e goto (9/11)

9/11/08 I didn't think of digging spines from rubble, smoking skies, and falling towers-- too much. That seems so far away, a scene reproduced on my flip-flop (WTC flipflops are all one can get here besides jellies and when your feet wear into them, the scene rubs off and disturbingly resembles smoking towers). A story of the past.

Here I feel like I can barely remember myself, sobbing for strangers, candlewax dripping down my fingers on the Gunnery quad. Here, death descends regularly, quietly. A village wails, for a night, often.

We're giving out mosquito nets. Sometimes I forget what this actually means. Statistics could change. A week from now, every bed in the arrondissement should be covered. Will the wails lesson?

But today we gave ourselves the day off. We slept in until 8, through rooster and prayer calls, feasted on BREAD AND MAYONAISE (I am insanely and unhealthily enthusiastic about the presence of this combination in my life) and even TIGA DIGA AND JELLY! SO0OO good! Then we biked back to Kafori and seriously bushwacked to les cascades. Pretty tricky to get there but incredibly unbelievably worth it. Walt Disney would have moved in. Angels might as well circle. I don't even know how to attempt to describe its perfection. Pool after pool, fall after fall, a giant angel staircase of cascades. Rocks just tricky enough to climb without being suicidal. Pockets just deep enough and cliffs scarily high enough for Matt to jump while the rest of us screamed. Splish splash siiiiighhhh.

Jumping on each other in the water, singing at the tops of our lungs to compete with the roar of crashing water, floating with views of the falls and blocks of cliffs above, pressing up against rocks' edge to let the water fall in front of temporarily private lairs... Thinking over and over- see? It HAS been worth it. Whatever pain, loneliness, and hunger preceeded this blissful moment-- how could it NOT be worth it? All those taco-eating Americans I've been envying have no bloody clue! They are missing an earthly Utopia AND the invisible badge of mosquito-net bearer. Where else could I possibly be?

We had leftover cheb jen for lunch, in a bowl we'd biked and rondugol-ed over. And cliff bars and package candy, mmmmm. Our guide (random village kid) killed a fish with a single sling-shot.

We returned through man-high grass, river-roads, mud sand rock cliff loose stones cows no hewi! AND through golden-headed fields, green fringed mountain frames, timeless serenghetti trees, singing greetings from underneath head-held buckets...

We returned to the Dimboli disponsaire (where we'd been slumber-partying all week) just as the air turned rosy and people rushed home with bundles of hot bread in their arms to break their fasts. We had more BREAD AND MAYONAISE ( YOU HAVE NO IDEA) and jam and "cheese sticks". We grinned over our day. When the sky pinkened our faces, we ran out to the road to catch the peak point of the setting sun. Appropriately, it seems, the cloud cover disallowed a single spot to take all the glory. Instead each second turned new shades of pink, red, purple, passion. Black ink sihlouetted trees, tiny bats, a suggestion of a blurry moon in the east. Matt said the moment needed a painter, poet, writer to immortalize it. We said nothing could ever do it justice. Nothing could.

Bikers passed us, thrilled to get home and take that first bite. We greeted each other noticeably more enthusiastically than ever. The joy was palpable. The senegalese don't know how beautiful this is, we sighed. Easter egg colors darkened behind the trees, not easter colors at all with those trees in the same picture.. instead of the world that has such a thing as easter egg colors. A world with cartoon bunnies, plastic water parks... falling towers...

Snapshots: Parking Dakar

-I could not stop smiling when I had my first Nice Cream cone. My eyes welled up. I did several happy dances. It was the best ice cream cone of my life, hands down. Before this ecstacy, the server dropped a scoop on the counter and hesitated over it. I surprised her, the surrounding customers, and myself by yelping, "Non! C'est bon!" and gripping the counter in panic. Too late. She'd wiped it off. She could then only stare at me in bewilderment until I dropped back down to my heels.

-Dakar is food heaven.

-How fortunate to be in Dakar for Obama's party nomination acceptance speech! Someone downloaded it at the PC office so we didn't even have to deal with skipping or sweaty kids playing obnoxious video games, Akon, or porn. Just about 10 PCVs sitting on top of each other, hanging on every word from our (INCH ALLAH) next president. It felt so lucky and monumental.

-NGO (people-with-money) meetings to get the ball rolling on slowing Kgou's AIDS rush. It was cool to see our PCV role at its best. We may mostly look like kids but we know our stuff, have access where others don't, and clearly have no ulterior motives. We can swing in non-threateningly, tell these people how to do their jobs, everyone is happy and things get done. We're like volunteer spies who can bridge the gap between people who need help and people who are supposed to be giving it.

It was strange to sit in a comfortable chair in a tall air-conditioned building and look at paintings and framed family portraits like you'd find in American offices. The women wore pristine white western clothes, drank coffee that wasn't nescafé, had American salads for lunch. They said they'd been here for five years, ten years... I felt the familiar bile of resentment well up as I pictured them and their families swimming at Club Atlantique, eating hamburgers with their all-American friends, and still calling it Living in Africa.

Then I pictured Pellel's rolling slopes of green. Carrying my bike over my head to cross rivers, the waving African stick bridge, sunrises to the sounds of pounding, my little brothers giggling in mazes of corn stalks 5 times their size. And the bile evaporated. There are moments when I swear I'd kill for such things, but really, they can keep their air-conditioning, and those other volunteers can have their eggplant. I don't care if our résumés say the same thing. My piece of Africa is worth it, in the end. I pity the people who don't even know what they're missing.

-One last picture: our sept-place ride down to Tamba. Well-fed and slightly hungover bodies of volunteers returning from vacation, sprawled over each other. I-Pod earpiece sharing, many games of humdingers, lip-sync, would-you-rather, never-have-I-ever... and off-and-on dozing for 13ish hours. Quiet moments filled with thoughts like, "How did I ever get used to this?" Remembering the unbelieving hysterical laughter that f*accompanied the first introduction to the awful road. And nopw, nothing; we're accustomed. Peaceful, even, over all the bumps. But Africa has its ways of reminding you you can't ever be fully jaded amidst its ingenious spectors of ridiculousness. This reminder came on this ride in the form of a drop of red flying in the window to land on my neighbor's face. Then another, and another. By the end we were back to stiffling, shaking our heads, as blood dripped from the mystery meat bags tied to the roof, down the closed windows in horror movie rivulets. At the time, I was the only one laughing...

Snapshots: Not So Mbour-ing

-How nice to have a party in which you can sweat up a dance storm and then jumpin the ocean for a bad song and come right back? Dripping -with a better excuse.

-Theme: Vegas. My costume: Slot Machine. Contents: Apple, star, apple, jackpot. Use your imagination to guess where these were placed.

-Bean sandwiches were served at the party. I love Senegal.

-I hope there's Not a picture of 7 of us sprawled out on the beach as stars gave way to sunlight. Good times.

Snapshots: Toubab Diallaw It!

SO much fun

-You can't even picture how cool the campement is from architectural quirks alone. I'll just have to take you there if you visit and you'll have your own photos!

-Assy and me, talking up the fishermen in Pulaar, french, and sign language. Too bad they only spoke Wolof. But they still offered us boat rides and free fish!

-Roxy got bird pooed in the face. This is way funnier if you know Roxy. Ten minutes earlier we both got a little doo on our shirts so we'd used our last napkin for that. So she wailed and I laughed, and she spit into her hand to clean it off. Nothing but class here in the Peace Corps.

-It may not be appropriate to picture our midnight swim (ahem Booboo and MB), but you can picture how cool thunderous black waves looked when lit periodically by distant lightening

-The old guy trying to pick me up while I ate an omelette. Since he was overly confident in his english, I toyed with him. I got him to sing "hotel california" and then proceeded to drill him on the song's pôssible metephors. I told him I was staying at said hotel. When he expressed great interest in joining me, I suggested he go ahead and wait for me in CA. Once he got that this was a joke, he grinned and asked brokenly if I was playing cat-and-mouse. I'm only the cat, I said. Mice are delicious. I usually eat them with chopsticks (new vocab for him), but it just so happened I was having a mouse omelette at that moment.I love being dominant in a language. Life is more fun when you're fluent.

-Lunch at the hotel: Assy and I found ourselves in the odd situation of being surrounded by vacationing toubabs. We kept starting to talk about them in front of them in english, because this is a privalege we take for granted in the rest of the country. Too bad that doesn't fly here. Luckily, we realized we could just switch to Pulaar and babbled hapily away about everyone around us.

Snapshots: Thièssed Out

It's amazing how little time one has to write when not sitting alone in her village. The past few weeks are now a blur of fun and fattening up, with a few noteworthy snapshots:

Thiès-ed Out
-Picture the cat-sized rat (genus species catus ratus). Picture the bite mark on my foot. It started to swell with infection, but I got some meds and it's good now. My other scar from TDIDD still bulges nearby.

-Next shot: at Aissatou the tailor's. She makes clothes for us and is awesome and has cool hair. Not so awesome when we have to go next door to try on the clothes in random bedrooms. It's not as sketchy as it sounds, but one morning Mary (senegalese name Assy) and I were brought to a room with FIVE sleeping people of mixed ages and genders. We laughed, but still changed and conducted our tailoring consultations in their boob-grabbing entirity. My dress makes me look like I'm 8 but it was still worth it.

-Now picture me sitting with my Thiès family, watching hookers on the night street while my sisters lit their faces blue as they scrolled through their cell phone playlists. My forehead is wrinkled. "Buguna... Naka wa... Sama.. Baxna... Waaw..." I've just realized that the reason I've never really understood my family's Pulaar is because they actually only speak Wolof. Except when they speak slowly to me, "Sit dooowwwnnn. Eaaaatttt!" This epiphany actually makes me feel better.

-Senegad Fuki-Jay! aka tag sale for a cause. Found some hideous old volunteer clothes that I now wear all the time. The women who work in the training center kitchen rumaged next to us. One was thrilled to discover a flimsy swatter the shape of a hand that said, "Gotcha!" every time it made contact. We got giggley about it, but then I instructed her to spank Assy with it and she wouldn't stop! "GotchaGotchaGotchaGotcha!" Assy was sporting a purple swimsuit with a goldn buckle and a leather skirt on top of her regular clothes at the time. It was so absurd I nearly wet the 5 outfits I was wearing from laughing so hard.

-The Pulo Futa language trainers were supposed to help us translate all the technical terms we wanted. Instead, they mostly said they forgot the word or just became embarrassed at any sexually-related term. It was frustrating to be told to say stuff like "his thing" because we shouldn't be using the real words. Finally we got some out, but it was a shitshow of arguing giggling guys who had trouble spelling. The women poked in and left, save Houssay, who answered mostly modest questions and pretended not to hear some of the others. My favorite part was when a bunch of awkwardly grinning men were passionately arguing about how to say breast-feeding or something while the lights were out (common), and we were sweatily trying to transcribe. Houssay waddled her newly preggers self around the table answering, "Funky b!" (a non-english letter description) once and then just repeating it over and over to herself until she was able to ease herself into a chair. Funky b, funky b funky b...

Foods That are Better in Senegal: A Self-Moralizing List

-peanuts. raw or roasted, my allah, you have no idea. I eat them more than anything else. Except corn mush of course

-mangoes

-mayonaise

-bean sandwiches

-the automatic addition of egg and french fries to burgers. I did this in the States and was weird. I must have always been bound to Senegal..

-bissap and baobab fruit/juice/frozen bliss

-Morroccan cous-cous

-thiakary de millet

-attaaya tea

yeah that's about it... but it's somethings!

Spike Your Nalgene, We Suggest

8/17
We came back to Thiés to recieve further training now that we have a better idea of what would benefit our regions. I'm attempting to brush up on some french, learn about so,e NGOs, tree nurseries, gardening, baby-weighing, school lesson plans...

An unintended result of being here is that Roxy, Mary, and I have discovered we probably have the worst food situations in country. We had some classes on addressing nutrition in which other volunteers expressed concerns about having too much oil, fish, sugar, rice, eggplant, etc. in their diets, or getting kids to eat more of the vegetables already IN the bowls. I found it impossible not to become embittered. On the other hand, it's partially gratifying. I'd been struggling this whole time wondering how everyone else was doing all this without complaining. Now I know they're NOT doing the same. I will pat myself on the back and suck it up. I can't really complain when this is just a temporary lifestyle for me. My villagers are stuck with it.

Anyway, a perk to our 20-hour-away placements is that no one in Thiès speaks our language. Well, in itself, that's not a perk.. But everyone else has to actually practice their languages in nearby villages. We get to rock around Thiès and buy ice cream whenever we want. It works out appropriately since we all lost weight. And, Thiès is fun! We recently discovered a small swimming pool and BUMPER CARS. The name of the latter misleads since NO ONE BUMPS. People are so unused to driving that they prefer to just drive serenely around in slow circles. Then we came in. They didn't seem to appreciate our pro-contact method. When the attendents had to keep coming to fix our circuit poles, we realized that these not-so-bumper cars really just aren't meant to bump. Shame.

The highlight of IST thus far would be our volunteer talent show. Ris MCed and there was talent no hewi. Mary, Roxy, and I performed an altered Disney-medley with some noteworthy dance moves. Are you imagining insane amounts of talent in that? You should be, because WE WON THE TALENT SHOW. That's right.

LYRICS OF WINNING NUMBER:
¤to the tune of Aladdin's "I Can Show You the World"¤
I can show you my world
Sweaty smelly and diiiiirty
Tell me toubab now when did you last
Let your sweat get dry?
I can see my demise
Standards lower and lower,
Taxis, alhams go slower
Than a dirty sept place ride
A peace corps world
(K:) Don't you dare shit your pants!
A hundred ice-cream fantasies
I'm like a shitting star (¤great dance move¤)
I've come so far
I cant go back to Les Etats-Unissssss
(K, M:) Can't go back to Les Etats-Uniiiiiiiiiiss!

(To tune of Little Mermaid's "Part of That World")

(R:)I've got ameobas and rashes a plenty
(M:)I've got schisto and shits galore
(K:)You want parasites?
(R:)I've got 20!
But who cares? No bit deal,
I'll get moreeeee
I want to be where the pizza is
I wanna see, wanna see it cooking
Drinking a lot of those,
(R:)What do you call em?
(K, M:) FLLLLAAAAGGGSS!!!!!
Up where they eat shit tons of meat
Up where they cover up their teets
Laundry is clean, wish I could be
Part of that worldddddd

(¤To tune of Beauty and the Beast's "Be Our Guest"¤)
(M:- making O with body) OOOOOOOOOOOO
(K-same:) RRRRRRRRRRR
(R:) S!
O R S!
Puts our fevers to a rest
Tie your pagne round your waist cherie
And zen lift up your dress!
Leaf du jour, not superb
But we're only here to serve
(M:) Try the Kossan!
(K:)It's suspicious!
(R:)On my stomach it's quite vicious!
(M:) Think it's tasty?
(K:) Not a chance!
(R:) Once again I've shit my pants!
And the dinner here is always such a messssss
(¤running man dance, usually where we lost it¤)
Come on lekkal cheb jen
Clean your pants and then
(¤miming wiping butt, also impossible not to crack up¤)
Have ORS! If you're stressed
(K:) Spike your nalgene we suggest!
ORS ORS ORSSSSSSSSS!

(¤To tune of Lion King's "Hakuna Matata"¤)
Si Allah jabbi, it's a Pulaar phrase
Si Allah jabbi, it's what errrbody says
It means 'god willing'
For the rest of your stay
It's a don't-blame-me
Philosophy
Si Allah jabbi!
Inch- Allah! Inch-Allah!..........
(¤free style woo's, tapering off¤)
.........................................................................

There's probably a lot in there anyone outside Sengal will not get... I feel like it probably even needs a glossary. But I'm not making one. Just figure it's funny and know that the references you can understand are not exagerated. Feel free to ask questions if something in particular baffles you. Until then, I'm much too busy and talented to continue...

Talentedly Yours,
K

Sorkhna

Sorkhna,
my most beautiful host sister,
never fully warmed to me
she curves over a bucket and throws her
thin limbs into cleaning clothes,
brown water, peanut soap, squishy
sounds I still can't make, we are so
different. Between us stands a
boy who towers over her, grinning; and I
brush my teeth, glaring, wondering what
he says as she scrubs and cooly shuts
off her beautiful face. I am angry for
her because we are women, but she
is hunched and he is between us in
a language I'll never know and really,
we're not the same or even close. Sorkhna,
I want to help you, and you're the one
who doesn't even talk to me. I think this
has something to do
with your beauty against my whiteness and why
is it that that makes the picture of you sadder,
is it that retired americans would send you
their savings if only
they saw your face? you could be
a model, after all, and for some reason,
this is heart-breaking, as
you wash my
jeans and I
spit.

run on rain

The tree cowers, dripping and
dejected beneath
(sky flashes) (sky flashes)
hanging like the head of
(sky flashes)
a guilty dog
its feet lost in a lake that
used to be ground where
heavy drops bounce so hard it
looks like a thousand creatures
poking fingers up
from beneath, frantically,
testing and prodding an air so
suddenly cooled with stripes of
monsson sliding down from
corrugated tin rooves
while all else is lost in
its noise.

Senegal Soundtrack '08

"I think I must have a more complete sense of my total song inventory than anyone else has of theirs, except for professional singers. I know roughly which songs I know only the choruses of. I know which songs I know but discovered I couldn't stand to sing in the desert, You Are My Sunshine being a prime example of a song I loathed suddenly to which I had never had any objection previously... Songs help when you're under duress, which is undoubtedly why Boer geniuses of cruelty forbid people in solitary confinement to sing.
"I was singing so continuously that I began to find I disliked it when I stopped... I disliked the ambiance. I was briefly an aide in a nursery school for neglected children, and the best-adapted, happiest, and smartest children in the place were three sisters who had been taken from a mother who kept them chained to a radiator so they would be safe while she was out circulating, and who when I asked them what they did all the time when they were alone said We sang... On I sang."

from MATING, by Norman Rush


SENEGAL SOUNDTRACK '08

1. HOT HOT HOT- Sebastian the Crab?
2. INDIANA JONES (Stones) THEME SONG
3. BEAUTY & THE BEAST SONG (the one that starts, "Little town, it's a quiet village. Every day like the one before. Little town, full of little people, waking up to say... Bonjour!")
4. BIG BUTTS- Sir Mixalot (JAY FUUNDE if you will)
5. STUPID AMERICAN- Eddie from Ohio
6. I WANT CANDY- I forgot who sings this
7. THE ROAD IS LONG- Beatles?
8. I'VE GOT A BIKE (you can ride it if you like... who sings this?)
9. RIDIN' DIRTY- OK I need to learn my singers...
10. HEY, HEY, WE'RE THE MONKEES- Monkees
11. PEPTO BISMOL- Symptoms Jingle
12. SHOO, FLY- Your Kindergarten Teacher
13. DON'T GO CHASING WATERFALLS- TLC
14. STARRY, STARRY NIGHT- Don McLean
15. RIGHT SAID FRED, HAVE ANOTHER CUP OF TEA, WE WAS GETTIN' NOWHERE... (I don't know what this song is but my mom always used to sing it and it gets in my head all the time here)
16. BICYCLE RACE- Queen
17. OLD McDONALD HAD A FARM (see #12)
18. IT'S GETTIN' HOT IN HERR- Nelly
19. PRAYER CALLS- speakers all over ever Senegalese city seemingly planted right outside my windows
20. FAVORITE THINGS- Sound of Music (as per other entry)
21. IT'S RAINING, IT'S POURING- (#12, 17)
22. JAMMIN- Bob Marley (Jam tun! This English term actually came from West Africa!)
23. J'AI BESOIN D'AMOUR- I don't know, but the music video is hilarious
24. (anything)- Akon
25. COEUR DE PECHE THEME SONG- Brazillian Soap Opera with a cult following here
26. ------- Youssou N'Dour
27. SENEGALESE NATIONAL ANTHEM- ("Salut Afrique Meeeeeeeere!")
28. YOU'RE MY LITTLE POTATO- Mary's Mom and Minneapolis National Radio
29. I'M GOING SLIGHTLY MAD- Queen (my village will learn this before I leave)

Songs of a Disco Hut

(I don't know why, but we have meeting huts in Thies and Kedougou dubbed The Disco Hut. I think this is probably just a PC thing, but I kind of hope not. This is about the Disco Hut of the Gou.)

Track 1: RESPECT- Aretha Franklin
Girls' Leadership Camp 7/26

Awa, probably my favorite Senegalese woman, descended upon the Hut to run this shindig. We invited about 20 middle and high school girls from a scholarship contest in the Gou to participate. Some had scholarships, some were married, all could benefit. Awa transformed a whispering self-conscious gaggle of girls into smiling and loud women. By using examples from her own life of things she'd gone through like them, she could empower these girls way better than any toubab could. She's survived a young arranged marriage, sexual assauls, and roadblocks all along the way when she just wanted to go to school and make her own choices. Now she's happy and successful (not that PC pays that well..) and chose her own husband in the end. Awa is an example of amazing triumph with a light about her that makes you love her right away because you subliminally know this all about her.

The girls were great participaters and acted out fabulous skits and everything. They broached all manner of subjects: family obligation, how to stay in school, harassment from anyone but especially teachers (who are infamous for shopping for their female students), available life choices, supporting each other, feminism in Senegal... Many things of course don't have solutions, but it's just as important to Start these conversations.

Track 2: IT'S RAINING MEN- Weather Girls
House Meeting and Farewell Party for COSers 7/27

After a feast of freshly slaughtered pig (in which I have yet to participate but am Truly on the brink) in every form, we lay around holding our shocked and overstuffed distended village-bellies, moaning, and happy. A bunch of Guinean PCVs were visiting as well. We were about to call it a quiet night... but this Allah did not will. Thirty seconds of wind and we were up from our candlelit hammocks, running to grab sheets off the clothesline and bring beds into the Disco Hut (because it has more rain coverage than the other structure.) We moved like frenzied ants and impressed ourselves by actually making it before the hard rains came. Then the dark and stormy night raged outside while we had a slumber party in the hut of soggy satisfied volunteers, 2-per-ill-equipped-beds and no space in between. Once in a while, Gujo (our dog whose name is Pulaar for "theif") or Henry (our new dog) came in to wet-dog-shake or drop off a pile of bloody pig skin. Perhaps not your average sleep-over. Better!

Track 3: LET'S TALK ABOUT SEX- Salt n' Peppa
AIDS NGO meeting 7/28

Senegal's AIDS count: 1%. Kedougou's: 8%. We have an apparently energetic migrant population and sizeable prostitute community. Now, we have grant $ to do our best to combat these forces. The meeting, run by Matt, hosted NGO's and anyone doing anything to teach about AIDS- to see who to train more, what they're doing now, who could/would use more funds, what methods would work... It was the preliminary meeting of many to come, but it went well. I just tried to understand as much as I could while mostly thinking of slogans we could use in the future. "Wataa Sodu SIDA!' = 'Don't Buy AIDS" (re: prostitution). "Voulez-vous transmitter avec moi?" "Preserve ta sensation? Preserve ta sense! Preservatifs: Pour Preserver La Vie." ... Unfortunately I don't think everything translates, like: "Wear a condom: Everyone's Doing It" or "Don't Have Sex with Miners" --meaning someone who MINES since they're major carriers in the area, but also because of the baby-bride phenomenon. Clearly, it was an eventful meeting for me.

Track 4: HELLO, GOODBYE- Beatles
COS Discussion of floor of a gutted Disco Hut 7/29

The room was Alexa's Opium Den... and it was Robyn's and Amy's. They're all leaving. We looked up past our knees at the haphazard hatch ceiling. Alexa noticed for the first time her old friend's name graffitied on a beam. It was his hut too. Now it's mine. For a while, at least. Usually, it seems like it will be for an eternity, but someone also a flash.

Dorm rooms, streets, and restaurants you leave... You know the feeling of unintentionally leaving something of yourself in them... The sad fact of the invisibility of this piece drives into you like a stake that won't stop until it's gone all the way through you and come out on the other side. That place was YOU, your pain, your thoughts, your LIFE, it held so much, you held each other... It boggles your mind that it could exist in a similar capacity for someone else. You can't admit it's like an old love being with someone else. It's just a place, after all.

I think this dischord must multiply fanatically for places, for example, in Africa. They're not recyclable dorm rooms but tiny unique pieces of a corner of the world untouched by anyone you know in your previous lives. Stakes are higher. They hold more sweat, tears, soaring passion.

It's two years and many tracks away, but I'm a little afraid to leave this place of extremities, this room, this Disco Hut.

Thies again Thies again, Jiggity Jig

8/3 Back in Thies for IST and happy to see my host family even if they are my "throw-away" family. They've grown, and I know how to say things like that. Baby Ami doesn't cry anymore and reportedly has been chasing every toubab on the street shouting my name. They seemed happy to see me too. They even painted my room for me, put up hanging hooks, and gave me a door curtain! They asked a lot about the ville and it was strange to be in a position of authority as a legitimate resident of their own country. But village life really is a world away from them. Neene told me my body left and I must not be eating. Like a true neene! The boys snuggled up on me as much as they could before getting scolded.

Then something remarkable... With my 1st African host family, huddled and crowded on the ground around the family dinner bowl... we watched Jack Bauer save the president of the US. "24" has come to Senegal and they eat it up faster than cheb jen. Jack's french dramatics struck me as riotessly funny several times as I watched, grinning. I used to watch this in my Kirkland dorm room! So much better now.

Milking It

Just as I was thinking how nice it was that silly US taboos don't exist here... my feelings changed. Specifically, I was thinking of breasts which are always out there for all to see, and represent proud motherhood rather than shameful sex. Little Saliu was petting me as per usual and when he happened to brush my breast in passing, I thought how nice it was that that could just happen without shame or awkwardness or a meeting with the parents. Then he sweetly told me he liked my breast. He said this in the same way he tells me he likes my hair (head or leg). This felt weird. Not as weird as when he and Boobacar then suddenly proceeded to pretend to be suckling babies. I had to push them off and squeal that I wasn't their mother and, "No milk here!" I guess I'm still American.

Giving Away Mosquito Nets to Needy African Villages

... isn't quite the party it sounds like. Unless your idea of a party involves leaving the splendors of Cake-A-Day to bike 4 hours up the mountains, lose one member of the team to a bike fall after the worst hill of my life (she's fine now), eat only a dirty sachet of roadside peanut butter to fuel you, and sleep on the floor. And that's just to get to the party.

The day of, it poured through the early morning as we pushed and slid our bikes to the first village. We arrived dripping, muddy, and famished. There was rumor of a breakfast in the midst of bread and mayonaise. We gasped with excitement and promptly reminded each other not to get our hopes up. A little American portion of my brain that hasn't yet been scorched out realized how sad we were top be so sincerely impressed with the idea of bread and mayo. That portion shut up when we found out we really shouldn't have gotten our hopes up. No bread. Or mayo. Or dirty baggies of PB...

We finally had someone bring us kossan. BAD IDEA. Kossan is pretty much a bowl of gross sour milk with chunks and sugar in it. Flash-forward to a sequence of Alexa and me vomitting repeatedly en brosse and in the middle of the night for the next several days, with fevers, and even a gold star for me (PCV's should know what this means...)

What makes it worth it anyway?

• amazing beautiful villages with waterfalls and kind people
• the BEST RAINBOW OF MY LIFE seen on our way back to our host's village. We made most of this trip in the dark, walking our bikes and singing for a couple of hours. Anyway, the Rainbow TRIPLED and stretched all the way across the sky. I even got extra time to marvel at it while waiting for Alexa to finish puking in the bushes.
• A ride back to the Gou! I could've cried with joy. Granted it was in the back of a pick-up along with a man, four women, a gas tank, three chickens, our two bikes, and over ten bags... down those same horrid hills... But we sported our helmets, gripped the side, tried not to boot, and appreciated that we didn't have to pedel ourselves. And for free! Because people can be so nice!
• learning about another village/planet that doesn't speak any of our languages, has weird greeting rituals involving young men turning and squatting before old women and exchanging "Ohh" "Eeee" "Ohhh" "Eeee" "Ohhh" etc., and where they perform a sort of step-team clap rhythm to show agreement. All in favor say clap-clap smack clam smack-smack clap clap-clap!
• saw the biggest moniter lizard dinosaur ever
• mountain-top sunset
• I was still sick and pathetic when I got back to the Gou, with nothing to help but... THREE PACKAGES! Thank you MB, Tessa, and Mrs.B! You made me SO happy!

Most of all, the project itself satisfied. It was mostly well-organized so we had an accurate number of nets to distribute so each bed in the villages could be covered. We explained how to use them (I put on a little snoring-in-bed act while Matt the mosquito hot the treated net and died. Then I used my steller language skills to exclaim, "No malaria here!") We wrote their names on the nets so they'd be less likely to sell them, and weeded out a few people who were just trying to get extras. For the most part I support the idea that net usage rates will be higher when nets are not given for free and thus taken for granted. Studies support giving them to health huts and having workers there explain and sell thel for a small price with a commission for incentive-- as well as through private more expensive avenues for wealthier people. But neither of these apply to the gorgeous and dirt-poor Fungo area.

It was good to feel useful.

Eat Your Peas; There Are Starving Kates In Africa

excerpt from Mating by Norman Rush:

"In Africa, you want more, I think.
People get avid. This takes different forms in different people, but it shows up in some form in everybody who stays there any length of time. It can be sudden. I include myself.
Obviously I mean whites in Africa and not black Africans. The average black African has the opposite problem: he or she doesn't want enough. A whole profession called Rural Animation exists devoted to making villagers want more and work harder to get it. Africans are pretty ungreedy-- elites excepted, naturally. Elites are elites.
But in Africa you can see middleclass white people you know for a fact are highly normal turn overnight into chainsmokers or heavy drinkers or gourmets..."

I get by with a little help from my friends... Alexa and I have adopted a cake-a-day regimen and have made it a whole week from her packages. My weight is coming back, along with my greed. It's amazing how quickly you get used to things no matter how difficult the transition. In the village I'd gotten used to corn mush. Now, cake.
The villagers will probably always be satisfied with corn mush ("lacirre"). They don't have time-consuming fantasies of tacos and oreo milkshakes. Sometimes I envy them.

Are You There, Allah? It's Me, Hadiatou

I very much enjoy that Allie's Senegalese name is Fati (Fatoumata) and mine is Hadi (sounds like "hottie"). I also enjoyed her visit. I didn't completely enjoy feeling like a sadistic personal trainer from hell on the bike-ride in, though. Let me take a moment here to remind and emphasize to potential visiters that this is not an easy bike-trip. It involves carrying your bike through rivers, heat, rockiness, and not a whole lot of what you would consider "road." So you have to be kind of in shape or else have enough money to hire someone to drive into the bumpiness of my Guinean shire.
Luckily Fati was a grade-A trooper. She survived a scorpian-siting, tuti flies, red ants, and corn mush. We christened ourselves the DindeFelo-ship and went to the waterfalls there (Dinde Felo) before failing to find the ones in the shire. We also gave an info and question and answer session to a group of visiting American high-schoolers. (Alexa the 2-year volunteer, novelle moi, and Fati the Fulbrighter.) It was pretty fun to feel so cool and make me realize how far I've come already.
The other members of the DindeFeloShip took some great pictures so you should bother them for them...

My Beautiful Face

To see photos of yours truly, stalk Jarred and Marissa through their blog albums! Links at the bottom of this page... Some day I too will have pictures...

When the Dog Bites...

Getting out of the ville has been fun... nutella fights, dancing with Trever and Amber, singing rap-ballads with Jarred, watching lightening over the ocean from Jen's roof, making reeces-banana pancakes with Allie, and Kédougou's famous 4th of July party complete with canaries of palm wine, frozen gin-bisaps, a pinata, water balloons, fireworks (that still made me miss VT), river-swimming, and homemade ice cream. I tried not to let the fun be spoiled by the fact that most of it was made possible by cancer. Not to mention that nothing even came out of the trip on that end. Anyway, good times.

The best part might have actually been that after the tourist city bustle of Dakar, the bratty white kids at the American club pool, and needing a moment to remember where I am every time I wake up, I was actually excited to return to the village. Corn mush and all.

What made the homecoming even better was that Annicka joined me. OK, so the bike ride was rough, she got sunburned, had a fever and upset stomach, we got caught in a thunderous downpour on the way to a waterfall we never found, and ever single person she met made the same lame joke about her being a theif because of her last name (oh senegalese humor)... but I still think it was a good visit!

My favorite part was probably the first night when it started raining. We were talking in my hut and in come all my little brothers and sister. I started to feel a little annoyed since they didn't knock and just made themselves comfortable on mats and all. I'd been planning on setting some privacy buondaries. But then they just looked so cute, all excited to be in my room and scared of the thunder.

When they started covering their ears and putting their heads on the floor because of the thunder, it occurred to me. I am Maria von Trapp.
"Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens!" I sang to a room of confused faces.
"Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens!" Annicka gamely chimed in.

Once we finished "My Favorite Things," Annicka suggested they sing a song. Shyly, they said they didn't know any. "Oh my god, they are the von Trapp children!" This started off more reenactment ("Let's start at the very beginning...") which of course didn't work since they don't speak any english. This minute detail in not way diminished our efforts. After much prompting and bossing, we finally got a few of them to sing, "Do- a deer, a female deer," and one kid to sing, "Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do" -- though all in the same note.

At this point they remembered they were not von Trapps and did in fact know songs. So they all sang a different one at once. It was pretty adorable. But as Annicka and I were not done with the spotlight, we answered with at least 10 disney songs until the rain stopped and the kids politely excused themselves.

Good times. Next, ALLISON is visiting! Hopefully, she'll fare better than Annicka. At least we have one less huge thing to worry about...

PELLEL KENDESSA HAS WATER!

Alhumdulilai! I can take on anything now.

Mammo Wammo

7/1/08


So I've taken several guilt-ridden weeks away from my village, language, family, JOB-- to take the pricey trip to Dakar with Mariama to do something about her 4 year old gigantic breast tumor... And how glad am I to have done this only to have the hospital send us off each 30 mille poorer with the advice, "Drink lots of milk and don't eat spicey food"?


That's right. Take down your pink ribbons and stop the marches. We've found the cure for breast cancer right here in Dakar. Milk and no spices! Who knew? The doctors who gave Mariama a mammogram and ultrasound (not biopsy), that's who!


To be fair, they also said she could get medicine in Kédougou, but did not five us a prescription. I couldn't get anything else out of them. I'm wondering if they knew it was so far gone it was a lost cause? Maybe they said the milk thing just so Mariama wouldn't lose all hope? So I tried to stiffle my rage and disbelief... but... REALLY?



MILK?



It feels insensative and inappropriate to write this now, but the trip wasn't a total lost cause for me... I got to have FRENCH FRIES, ICE CREAM, PIZZA, FALAFEL, COLD DRINKS, MOVIES, TOILETS, SHOWERS, and FRIENDS. Of course, I'd prefer sound medical advice, but since I have no choice, I'll accept the consolation prize.

Plea From a Toubab

When you take those exciting trips to third world countries (as you should), do us all a favor. Don't givethe cute kids candy. Don't give the skinny beggers money. You've got extra coins and granola bars, sure, I get it. You're onlythere for a few days. You think- why not? They want/ need it, you don't. They'll smile and you'll feel fuzzy inside. What's wrong with that?

Too much. There's the incessant expectant ringing of, "Donnez-moi un cadeau!" (give me a present) that will assault the ears of any and all westerners that come after you. NOT TO MENTION the poor innocent volunteers who are JUST TRYING TO LIVE IN FREAKING PEACE WITHOUT KILLING ANY OF THESE ANNOYING KIDS. But beyond that, there are larger issues of not-so-developing nations. There is so much work to do, living is HARD and tiring and uninspiring. And America represents a kind of fairy land of money piles, swimming pools, ice cream, and amazing doctors. The differences of our worlds are astounding and we all know it.

It's easy for the 3rd world people to believethat the reasons for their poverty and America's wealth are inert-- Americans are smarter, god favors white people... It's easy to lose hope, decide things will never change and stop trying.
And the problem with well-intentioned foreign aid or cadeau-givers is that they reinforce these feelings of dependency. Throwing lollipops out your car window or throwing up a water tower that will break in a month (sound familiar?) may seem to do more good than harm. But it makes the floating-through foreigners the capable heroes, and the third world residents the damsels in distress.

You may be thinking candy has nothing to do with empowerment, but that's where it starts. Kids see the white skin and stick out their hands. How nice that they seem to like you and think you're generous, right? Wrong. It may sound cold, but this starts kids on the path of thinking that things can be handed to them. Then to water towers, adults see that foreigners gave it, so they start to think that's how it works. That they can't do it themselves. (And once it breaks, maybe if they just wait, the people who know how to fix it will come... But they don't. True story.)

I'm not saying that people shouldn't help people everywhere. I'm saying that just dropping off gifts doesn't help. Talking to people, working with them, listening... ok well I guess that sounds like the Peace Corps... but back to you tourists:

You've got extra money and candy. Don't teach kids to be obnoxious, stick their hands in your face, and be forever expectant of other people helping them. Shake their hands and be on your way. Put the candy in school houses and check out. Leave the money anonymously. Don't pretend to be a hero. You're not.
(I'm not either. I've given out plenty of granola bars before leaving a place forever. But now that I'm staying, I'm starting to see what this really does. Furthermore, it would be AMAZING not to be harrassed everywhere...)

As I write this from the Dakar regional house, I hear right on cue, "Toubab, donnez-moi un cadeau!" (always this exact phrase! remarkable!) I can tell whenever another volunteer is coming because this shout rings as dependably as a doorbell.

MAKE IT STOP

a product of rain smells

soak me, wet me through, fill my bones
with a rain that plays morse code
promises of life
wetting wood smelling like rotting tool sheds and
pearl-beaded grasses of vermont
clinging clothed children with mud
for shoes tapping their mouths with
their hands to make politically incorrect
indian calls under silver strings
threaded through shining trees
dripping, plunking, slapping
the air is clean mud
immitating the changing rooms of
connecticut's cream hill lake
where ghosts of my mother's sisters and
cousins snapped straps of bathing suits that
never had time to dry and whispers
that never give way to silence years
later when wet wood carvings of ancient
dates, love declared boldly in swiss
army graffiti the water can't wash
away
and today
heating tea sighs steam that meets the
moisturized african air and feigns disappearance
as black feet shuffle to boombox beats
every color of loudly mismatched cloth
silenced by the volume of laughter
echoing in a world hollowed out by
the weight of long-awaited rain
attaaya leaves couple with beads of sugar
and cling to the wet wood scent of
water from the sky
just another rainy day
that tells me I've lived a thousand
lives and my blessed bones only
make room for more.

I am Paris Hilton

I'm feeling a strange affinity for Paris Hilton. Indeed, I NEVER thought I'd say that. But I feel here the way she must feel in most places outside her circle. People staring completely, utterly, unbelievably unabashed like I'm a TV, men with empty proposals of empty love because they think I could fulfill a world of unattainable possibilities that have nothing to do with my character... And Paris, too, is probably unused to being made fun of to her face (though I can't relate to internet scandals), but that doesn't mean people don't want to-- very much like a toubab woman waiting with a group of tired senegalese to pull water with her softunworked hands that could hold a plane ticket to escape whenever she wills it. Like the witch-faced woman who laughed and laughed once she heard I cried when I was lost. "You cried?!" she repeated over and over. I still don't even know her name. And the woman who say, "You can't speak Pulaar," when I struggle, even though they know I can understand that. Do babies cry when they see Paris Hilton? Maybe not, but surely someone must. And girls must look up to her with no idea why-- like the ones who looked at me, giggling embarressedly like I was a boy they liked. Then they'd unugol extra hard if they thought I was watching, clapping the whole way, as if I were a talent scout who might sweep them away on a toubab horse to an American castle. And the conversation circling around and whispered behind poor poor Paris. Oh and how could I forget the dciding similarity: our ineptitude at anything and people's simultaneous forgiveness and resentment for this. Indeed, I imagine she'd look very much like me carrying water on her head. Lastly, if Paris were here in my stead, I think our thoughts would match better than her shoes and dog purse. Hotel sheets with mints on pillows, movie theaters with giant tubs of popcorn we couldn't finish, airconditioned rooms with recliner chairs, chocolate chip cookie dough milkshakes, fancy restaurants in brand new dresses...

I tried to analyze my absurd fixation with frappucinos and I think I came up with something semi-profound but forgot it under the pull of the fantasies. I didn't even have them that often in the US. I was joking when I said I'd miss them the most... but now I hear myself making promises that I'll some day live a life in which I'll have one every day. I brainstorm career options which would allow me to afford that. What is wrong with me?
Even Paris would have more class.