My house!

It’s almost been 8 months since I’ve been in Senegal… its incredible how time flies here. Though I may often complain about things here, I really do love Senegal and the Senegalese people. I contemplate returning back to America at least once a day, and it’s nice to know that I always have that option, but when it comes down to it, I don’t think I could leave this country right now.

So, many people are still questioning me about my living arrangements… I live in a small building that is approximately 5 feet away from the main house that my family lives in. I have a bedroom, a living room/kitchen/guest bedroom, and a bathroom. The walls are made of cement, and the roof is tin (when it rains, even the slightest sprinkling sounds like the world is ending… it is so loud!). My bathroom is the least attractive room in my place… the toilet is nothing more than a hole in the ground with porcelain surrounding the hole. Toilet paper is super expensive here, and most volunteers go without it. Instead, we use water to cleanse ourselves after we use the loo. I have to fetch water every day from our household faucet to use for showering and drinking. I have to walk to the other side of the compound and fill up two buckets of water (probably 3 gallons a bucket) and carry them back to my room. I usually stand inside of another bucket as I shower, and I dip a cup into the bucket of water and I pour it on me. That is how I shower. I usually pour water all over me then I soap up, then I pour water on me again to rinse off. My purpose for standing inside another bucket while I shower is to conserve water (it is a PAIN to have to fetch water every day!) I usually use the used water to flush my toilet (there is no running water for the toilet), or I use it to water my garden. I go through maybe two gallons of water a day- and that includes bathing, toilet and drinking. If I wash my hair (which I do maybe once a week) then I use a bit more water than that. I have electricity, but I can’t really ever depend on it… it comes and goes all the time. I have a small refrigerator, and a fan. I use the fan every night, mostly to drown out the noises of my town rather than to cool off. Senegalese people are SO loud! When they speak they sound like they’re yelling at each other, they love to turn the TV on very loud, and whenever they have weddings/baptisms or parties they hire out massive speakers and blast music. My ears are often ringing by the end of the day due to the constant loudness. My family is always awake before I wake up (I usually get up at 7am), and they’re always up much longer than I am at night (I usually go in to sleep at 10pm). It is still a mystery to me when they sleep… If I didn’t have a fan to drown out their noise, I am sure that I get a lot less sleep than I do now.
I have a small garden outside of my room, but I believe that it’s currently struggling with fungal problems. I planted okra, tomatoes, cucumbers, ginger, basil, flowers, beans, lettuce, pumpkin, a banana tree and mint. Only the flowers, mint and banana tree seem to be doing really well… the rest of the items either shriveled up and died immediately, produced a small amount then died (the okra) or is growing but can’t seem to produce fruit (the tomatoes). A tree in my yard has mushrooms growing off of it, and my gardeners and I assume that the problems stem from that.
My yard is really small, and surrounding it is a feeble chicken wire fence. The fence has holes in it, and on one side it is collapsing quite a bit onto its side. Because of this, I have a constant stream of chickens, ducks and Guinea Foul roaming about my yard. They don’t seem to do much harm, but sometimes they kick up the dirt and kill my little plant seedlings (the goats and sheep try to get inside my yard, but they haven’t managed to do that yet).

My Family

My family’s ethnicity is Ballant, and they originate from the Cassamance region of Senegal. They speak mostly Wolof at home, but they also speak a lot of Ballant, so it’s hard for me to understand them. We live in a Ballant neighborhood, and the Ballant ethnicity is often a lot calmer and more relaxed than the often high-strung Wolofs. My family is pre-dominatly female, and there aren’t that many kids (which is rare in Senegal) My family consists of:

Malamine Mossley-My dad. We call him Baba. He works for the Agricultural department. He is very kind and he loves to talk. He is very secretive and funny when he asks me to pay him for rent… he always takes me off to the side, and he whispers that he needs one or two months rent in advance.

Khady Biaye- My mom. We call her Na. She loves to participate in community events. She travels to another town every Sunday and sells frozen bissap juice and bon-bons (sort of like donuts) at the weekly market there. She is a very loud talker at my house, and it always sounds like she's yelling at family members.

Mama- One of my sisters that I haven’t met yet. She married a previous Peace Corps volunteer and now she lives somewhere in America (my family isn’t sure where in America she lives). She moved to America about 2 years ago, and she has a daughter.

Mari- My sister. She is currently living in Dakar, and studying law. She left Sokone shortly after I came here, so I don’t know her too well.

Sophia- My sister. I LOVE this girl! She is so patient and kind to me. She is probably the closest Senegalese “friend” that I have. She is very open-minded. She is 25 years old. Her husband lives in the Cassamance and works for the Club Med that is there. She has a 6 year old son named Oussman. She is super skinny, and she loves to sit and talk with me. She also loves it when I have guests over.

Oulay Maya- My sister. I love her as well. She is 21 years old, has a 4 year old son called GB, and an 8 month old daughter called Nazarine. I REALLY want to adopt her daughter, she is BEAUTIFUL!!! Her husband currently lives in a town called Joel, and she recently moved back to Sokone because she wants to try to get a divorce from her husband. Her father forced her to marry after she became pregnant the first time…

Anto- My only brother. He is super sweet. He is 19 years old, and already he owns 2 donkeys. He still goes to school, but when he has free time he transports people from one end of town to the other on his Moto. His sister in America sent him her old Ipod, and he LOVES it! He is always listening to music on it. His favorite music is Beyonce and Akon (fyi…Akon is Senegalese!)

Sally- My cousin. She is fantastic! She is always smiling and dancing. She often cooks for us, and she’s the one who does my laundry for me (I tried doing it on my own, but she might start doing it regularly now… she says that I’m going to ruin my clothes because I don’t know how to wash them properly by hand). She has a 3 year old son named Moustapha (we call him Tapha). She was married before, but her husband was in the military and died while fighting in the Sudan a year and a half ago.

Yay-Fatu- My sister. She’s about 13 years old. She is super energetic and fun. She loves to dance, and watch movies, and she’s always smiling. Sometimes she goes running with me when I need some exercise.

Mamiko- My sister. She is super quite, but really kind. She is somewhat tom-boyish. She likes to play handball in school. She’s about 15 years old.

Oulay- My youngest sister. She’s about 8 years old. She is also super quiet around me, but when she thinks I’m not paying attention to her she opens up.

There are also a few other people living in the house with us (they are not our immediate family, nor do they live there permanently)….. there is:

Mere- She is an elderly relative of ours that comes from the cassamance. I believe that she is my father’s aunt. She only speaks Ballant, so I never understand her, and she doesn’t understand me. We try to communicate to each other through hand gestures, but usually we just talk to each other in our respective languages. I hate when she sits next to me at meal time, because she always scoops up and eats all of the good sauce and I’m left with none! (But i feel bad getting annoyed with her... she is after all super old and skinny, and i'm able to buy more food if i need to...)

Mama- She is Mere’s granddaughter. She’s about 10 years old, and she came from the Cassamance with Mere (the older lady). Everyone in my family jokes that she’s going to be Anto’s wife (my brother). It’s funny though, because I really do think that they have a crush on each other, even though he’s 19 and she’s 10.

Amy Turrey- She’s about 19 years old and she is living with us during the school year because Sokone has a private school that she goes to (and her village is quite a ways away). She is a BIG girl, and wow can she dance! She is always smiling and dancing and laughing.

Senabou- She is about 19 as well, and she is another girl that lives with us only during the school year so that she can attend school.

Babacar- He’s about 20 years old, and he’s a sweetheart. He is another student that is staying with us. Upon several occasions he has confessed his dying love for me, so it can be awkward for me. He loves to work out and play soccer.

Sharing

One thing that I really love about the Senegalese culture is how they share what they have. For example, if you give one person of the family an orange, instead of eating the entire orange himself he will break it apart and give everyone in the family a little piece of it. The same goes with cookies, bread, fruit and even beverages… everything is shared amongst everyone. It’s really quite beautiful… especially when you see a 5 year old child willingly give up candy/food/drink to another child, or even to an adult for that matter.
People here also share work it seems… for example, in my family, one girl is in charge of sweeping the floor after we eat, another is in charge of getting the spoons, another in charge of whipping the bissap (a condiment of sorts). As for the cooking, the ladies alternate days in which they cook… the same goes for doing laundry. I’m not sure how or when they organize themselves to do such tasks, but it seems to work out very logically.
People here are constantly asking me to give them my bicycle, or my sunglasses, or my jewelry, or money, or even my hair… and it can get so frustrating sometimes. What makes them think that I will give them, complete strangers, any of those things? But instead of getting upset with them, I tell them to give me their jewelry, or to give ME money… thinking I’m giving them a dose of their own medicine… but it always backfires because as they look at me somewhat quizzically, I look down and they are actually handing me their jewelry (or the last bits of change that they have in their pocket)! THAT is the Senegalese culture. It can drive one crazy, but it’s also so very beautiful.

Tree Grafting Training

I completed my first real project here last week! I did a big two day tree-grafting training for about 30 people. I had to write a grant to obtain funding for the project, and then I had to organize the lunches and the chairs and the materials. It all ended up being quite simple… but it was highly successful. There were many times that I thought we were going to have problems (lunch on the first day wasn’t ready until about 4pm for example), but as Senegalese people are so laid back, everything worked out smoothly. I had Demba Sidebe, the head of PC training in Senegal, lead the event. He is Senegalese and he studied at Cambridge in the UK, and he is quite possibly the best tree-grafter in all of Senegal. I also had 3 other volunteers come to the training, and each of them brought about 2 or 3 farmers from their respective villages. We also gave each of the participants a small mango tree, and two scions to graft onto that tree.
I hired the women in my family to cook the lunches… and the women were AMAZING. Not only was the food delicious, but they managed to cook in a way that I don’t think American’s can even fathom. It was easily 100 degrees out (possibly 120 in the direct sun), and they stood in the direct sun and cooked food for over 30 people in a large iron pot over a small wood fed fire. There were no tables for them to chop and peel vegetables (they sat on plastic chairs and cut the items into a bowl that was on their lap), there was no cold water to drink, no electric mixers, no sharp knives (the knives are all fairly blunt compared to American standards), no air conditioning either… they had chickens and ducks and sheep and goats running about all around them, they had sand under their feet and some of the women even had babies on their backs as they are doing all of the cooking! These women were amazing… And after the whole process was over, they still manage to smile and shake their booties to music.

The end of the rainy season

The rainy season in Senegal is just about over. Lately we’ve been getting about 1 day of rain every two weeks… the rain immediately cools the weather down, it’s amazing how much so. I’m somewhat happy that the rainy season is ending, but also somewhat sad about it. I’m happy because it means that the cool and dry season is soon approaching… which means no more mold! It is so hot and humid here that when I take my clothes off the shelves to wear, they have a slight moldy scent… a pair of my shoes that I brought from the states were actually covered in a dusting of white mold! And I just opened up my wallet and pulled out a piece of paper, and that piece of paper was speckled with mold. It’s disgusting!! But there isn’t really anything I can do about it. I also want the rainy season to be over because my garden springs up weeds like crazy during the rainy season! It’s virtually impossible to control. As for the good things about the rainy season… the tiny stink bugs that infested my room prior to the rainy season disappeared (and it seems like they are now slowly making their come-back… grrr… I really can’t stand those bugs!). The rainy season is also good for what us PCVs call “guilt free reading”.

Fuggy-Jaaye

Another thing worth mentioning in this blog is something that in Wolof is called the fuggy-jaaye. (But before I go further on that topic, I would like to quickly note that the shoe of preference for Senegalese villagers when they play soccer is nothing other than jelly shoes! Yes, the celebrated shoes from my childhood are enormously popular here amongst the male athletes!) There are also many knock-off Dolce & Gabanna items for sale in this country, from sunglasses to t-shirts to bags… but apart from traditional Senegalese clothing, the majority of people here wear clothes that have been donated from America and Europe… and the medium in which they are sold is called the fuggy-jaaye (which literally translates to SHAKE and SELL…because you need to shake the dust off the items that are found in the piles of used clothing). Most of the time the clothing that I see on the streets is cute… I often see kids wearing old Boy Scout button-down shirts and the teenage girls often wear what looks like old prom dresses (they LOVE those dresses!) But sometimes the clothing that I see on the streets down-right embarrasses me. Once I saw a little girl of about 6 years old wearing a t-shirt (she was so tiny it fit her like a dress) and in big letters the shirt said “I’M A VIRGIN” and written in small letters underneath that was “This is an old t-shirt”. I’ve seen old, wrinkly grandmothers wearing highly obscene t-shirts as well… and the thing that bothers me is that these people have NO IDEA what they are wearing. In a way it’s funny (comparable I guess to someone getting Chinese characters tattooed on their back to only find out later that it means something completely different from what they were told), but in another regard I find the whole thing to be completely disgusting and even sad. The clothing is sold at the fuggy-jaaye for about $2 an item… I’m not really sure who the money goes to once it’s sold… it is blatant that the clothes being sold are gently used donations… but the fuggy-jaaye seems to be a fairly steady source of profits. I’m sure that a percentage is used for transportation, but I am interested to know where the rest of the money goes.