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.