watch out village, here comes amy (part 4)

That night, I hardly slept at all. By the time we got back, it was pushing midnight, and we all looked like zombies after the long day. To bed! Yeah, well, I ended up just lying on my bed trying to sleep with no success whatsoever. It was so hot and sticky there that me and Christine and Catherine definitely slept in our underwear, and whether it was the heat or not, come morning I had slept maybe 3 or 4 broken hours. Not cool. I do not function well without my doctor recommended 7-8 hours of shut-eye. Breakfast was the same deliciousness again, and after being appropriately nourished, we were off. That day started with a visit to the local government officials (the traditional thing to do when visiting a Senegalese village is to present oneself to the local authority, seeing as we had arrived on a Saturday, we couldn't do this until Monday). Then the bus again. We were split up into four different groups, and dropped off in four different villages to talk to the locals about stuff.



Each group of toubabs had a group of Senegalese translators, and we were to be meeting groups of women who have started different kinds of work groups. I was in the first group to be dropped off, and we had quite the warm welcome. Honestly, we really had no idea what to expect or what exactly we were doing. We had had a little bit of instruction from Waly, but other than that we were in the deep end. Our task was to find out more about these working groups of women, and it actually turned out to be really interesting. Our village had three groups of women, who all worked together to harvest and sell agricultural products. It was a little bit of a language fiasco, because our translators would speak to them in Wolof, then to us in french with a little Wolof/English mixed in, and then we would talk to each other in English. A couple of times I had minor exchanges in Wolof with the women, but it never went beyond "how are you? good..." To make matters worse, I was in a ridiculously goofy mood because of my lack of sleep, so there was lots of random comments and giggles on my part, all of which were probably lost in translation. It was very successful though, and when the bus came to pick us up we were still deep in discussion. It was way intense to hear about all the problems they have even though they work super hard. Problems with irrigation, transportation, money, etc. It was a little disheartening, because with the right amount of help they could be fine, but where's the help going to come from? And this village is the same as thousands more across the country and continent, hard working people that are struggling to survive because they simply don't have the means to be efficient. For example, even if they do have a really good harvest of onions, they might not be able to sell them right away because no one can come to buy them and so the onions go bad because they don't have a good means of keeping them and then they can't sell them at all. These are the issues that we are being faced with in this program, and it is so extremely though provoking.

We take so many things for granted in "developped" countries, that being here in Senegal, where simple things like electricity and safe drinking water aren't guaranteed, is just mind blowing. It's been pretty rough on my intellect because I want to be able to solve all the problems here, I just don't know how to do it. Especially since as a toubab, I'm an outsider. I have no right in the world to come here and say "this is your problem, and this is how you need to fix it". Ugh, these are things that clog my brain pipes on a daily basis.

The rest of the day didn't really hold much of consequence, and that night we had a soirée with all of our Toubacouta buddies. The next day we gave presentations about our visit to the local mayor type guy, and then got on the bus to head home. It was a sad departure, because we had to leave our friends that we had gotten to know during the previous four days, and it was such a good vacation from life in Dakar. But life must continue, and so it has. The ride home was just as long and bumpy, though filled with games of Mafia and stories of life in America.

Since then, we have finished up the class portion of the semester, and will soon be moving on to the internship phase. That means that in three days I will be moving away from Dakar, away from my family, and away from all my toubab friends. It will be very sad, but I am excited to experience village life. By the way, this blog might be experiencing desertification much like Senegal is, a vast sprawl void of posts. I highly doubt that I will have internet access in my village, though I will be close to a larger village that might. So if there are going to be any posts they will be very few and even farther between.

So long, for now.

Ba benoon yoon.

watch out village, here comes amy (part 3)

Our senegalese friends returned to eat with us, and then we were herded onto the bus (again). But this bus trip had a little bit of a twist. Our group had been sufficiently doubled by this point, but that was no deterrent for travelling arrangements. Next thing we knew we were crammed onto the bus with 15 toubabs and 20 some senegalese. *note* I counted the seats, and there should have only been 25 people on that bus...At least this time we had some idea where we were going and what we would be doing, thanks to a pre-departure schedule. This day was Mangrove Day! Now, for those of you who are not mangrove-saavy, let me enlighten: Mangroves are the only kind of tree in the whole entire world that survives on salt water. Their roots stand half in water, half out, and weave in and out of each other like a bunch of very tangled up octopi (octopuses?). If you look at a mangrove forest from a distance, you can see two distinct bands of color; the lighter grayish brown of the roots and a vibrant green of the leaves. Their forests must be traversed by boat because they live in water, and these mangrove forests along the coast are a popular tourist destination. It's also pretty amazing because the roots are home to entire ecosystems--tons of marine animals make their homes in the shelter of the mangrove roots. In other words, some important ecosystems would be pretty screwed if mangroves didn't exist.





Now, this was the first time in my life that I had ever ever ever seen a mangrove in real life. Oh man. It was a fantastic first meeting. They are so cool! Ok, enough with me rambling about mangroves, goodness knows everyone here is sick of hearing me go on and on. Our task today was to help a mangrove reforestation project. This is my kind of field trip. After arriving at this dock in this other village, we were given less than adequate life jackets (even though mine had a broken zipper and was too big, the safety whistle gave me some semblance of comfort), and prodded onto two boats. And then we were off, cruising around the mangrove forest. It took no time at all for there to be an explosion of dance and song. Apparently it's the way the Senegalese roll: to spend an afternoon speeding around the mangroves, with a bunch of toubabs, singing at the top of one's lungs and dance in the precariously balanced boats. It was amazingly fun, and much to our own disappointment, the Americans had less success in thinking up songs to sing. But most of us were happy to join in and try to pick up the words and melodies. Empty bottles were turned into drums and competition started to see which boat could sing the loudest and dance the most.



As entertaining as this was, we were on a mission, and we arrived safely (no one fell overboard thank goodness, although with the heat that day, it might not have been to bad to fall in...) on a mangrove island thing. Our first task was to collect propagules, translation: baby mangrove pods. The propagules grow off the end of the branches of the adults and then fall, grow roots, and plant themselves to grow up to be a big mangrove some day. We were collecting them to take to another area of the forest to replant. This part of the process took less than an hour or so, and was pretty easy after learning what makes a good quality propagule (no roots, green leaf, no black, got it). Then we returned with our rice bag full of propagules (yes, singing and dancing all the way), and took a bit of a break to talk to a guy who works for the local fisheries and wildlife department (ok, it's not really the fisheries and wildlife department, but that's the easiest and most efficient way to describe it). Then it was lunch and hearing from a National Park Ranger. And what do you know, time to get on the bus again. This time off to plant the propagules! The bus dropped us off in the middle of a field somewhere outside of town, and we were to walk a ways to our final destination. About five minutes into the walk, Josephine got a call from the bus driver, informing us that the bus had gotten stuck on the way less than adequate road. It had been trying to return the cook back to base camp, and had failed miserably. So they sent most of the boys (and the few girls who wanted to) to go push the bus out. The rest of us continued on our trek, and after waiting and waiting and waiting for the others to come back to us, decided to just go ahead and start planting. Once the bus was free, the others could come and join in. Yeah, well they never showed up.



The planting process to follow, I will never ever forget. We climbed through tall grass and some trees, down a little hill, across a stream, and found ourselves in an open area of sand. The fields from whence we came behind us, and rows and rows of mangroves ahead. It did look very much like your average beach, but the sand was basically saturated. My feet were crying to be freed from the constraint of my shoes, so shoes in hand, I walked across the sand barefoot. It was necessary to keep an eye out for where you stepped, because this beach is home to thousands of crabs who spend their days scuttling about and burrowing in little holes. They ranged in size from those that could suffice as a good dinner to ones smaller than a dime. *side note* by this point in the day, we were running dangerously low on bottled water, and were starting to get really really thirsty *end side note*. Dodging crabs would be the least of our problems though. This guy who runs the reforestation program gave us a little tutorial of what our task would be: he would put out a rope with marks every meter for us to know where to stick the propagules into the mud. And that's it. Easy enough, right? Hahahaha right...We were going to be venturing into the area where the water was actually water and not just wet sand, but this is also where the wet sand changes to mud. Slippery mud. Squishy mud. Mud like I had never seen the likes of before. Even with the first few baby steps, we were sliding around. Here we were, mostly girls, in bare feet, about to walk out into a mangrove forest, propagules in hand. The next few moments were pierced with squeals and screams, as one by one we sank into the mud. Each step was a step into the unknown. Would my foot be supported? Or would I be in the mud knee deep? This type of terrain is not condusive to keeping good balance. Oh my goodness, the next hour or so was spent sticking baby mangroves in the mud and trying for the life of me to not fall completely in. At one point, I did find myself thigh deep in mud. That put me about eye level with my friend Dorothy, who I promptly told that I now knew how it felt to be short like her. (She didn't appreciate the comment very much, but hey, I'm the tallest girl in the group, I can't help it...) This activity was SO fun, we all had a blast. By the end we were all covered in mud, and utterly exhausted because it was definitely a workout (of the extreme elliptical kind).



We still hadn't heard much from the others, except that they had yet to succeed in rescuing the bus. But by the time we got back to them, they had just freed it. All it took was our group of fifteen+ tall and strong boys, half the local village, and some guys from the local gas station. Yep.



The bus drove down the "road", while we walked to meet it on the pavement on the other side of the village. There we were met by Maman Honorine, Professor Sene, and a cooler full of COLD bottles of water. I don't know that I have ever been thirstier in my life or more excited to see water. Between me and Paulina, we downed a 1.5 liter bottle in less than five minutes. Exhausted, muddy, and minorly sunburned, we piled back on the bus to be returned back to the auberge. Now it was our turn to sing. However it started, I have no idea, but soon a whole lot of toubabs were singing disney songs at the top of their lungs. I'm pretty sure the Senegalese had no idea what to do with us.



Back at the auberge, we showered and changed and rested up as well as we could before the events of the night. After dinner, we were taken away to enjoy some more local entertainment. No dancing tonight, no, instead we were given the honor of attending a traditional bout of African wrestling. Apparently we were the guests of honor because when we arrived at the makeshift wrestling ring in a village a couple of miles away, we were pointed to chairs that lined the front row. Oh man. We sat down and waited for it to start. Even though I had liberally applied my precious DEET to protect me from menacing mosquitos, I still spent the entire time fighting off the dreaded black beetles and earwigs. I have never had so many bugs down my shirt or up my pants. How they managed to get up my jeans, I will never know, but it was definitely NOT comfortable. After a while the festivities began, and we had the unique opportunity of seeing men, wearing the Senegalese version of booty shorts, trying to grab each other and pin their opponent to the ground. Having nothing better to do, me and Dorothy would make our picks and root for which ever color we had preference for. While this was all happening, the crowds were growing around us, and I soon found myself with a bunch of kids sitting around my feet screaming for the fighter they wanted to win. Much like the dancing spectacular, african wrestling is hard to imagine if you have never seen it yourself. And all I could think to myself at that point was "what a bizzarre day..."



Just at the point that I thought I couldn't take anymore bugs or half naked men, we were told it was time to go back for the night. That night, I hardly slept at all.



Stay tuned for the next episode, when you find out how crazy Amy really is when she doesn't sleep.

watch out village, here comes amy (part two)...

Dazed and slightly confused about the presence of these 15 odd Senegalese, we piled off the bus and stood awkwardly awaiting further instruction. Without further ado, there appeared a line of these men passing all of our luggage and other miscellaneous objects off of the roof of the bus. Okay, sweet. Then like the herd of toubab sheep that we are, and always will be, we were told to pick up our bags and as many bottles of water as we could carry, and follow them down this muddy, overgrown road path thing. Desperately hoping that we wouldn't have to go far, we walked past some little houses with little kids running out to see what was happening. In five minutes or so we were in the compound of our home for the next four days. Our auberge (a motel type thing), had a total of five bedrooms, a nice little patio and courtyard, a kitchen, and a real toilet and shower :). Our group completely overtook the place and had total privacy there. I took the opportunity, upon arrival to take a nap under a mosquito net in the ridiculous heat. Having to be shaken awake by one of my roomies Catherine, I groggily came to and stumbled out into the sunlight welcomed by many platters of amazing looking food. And it was even more amazing to eat...Maman Honorine's cooks came along for the ride/to cook for us and let me just say that I never felt hungry at all that entire trip. The only damper on the meal was that we were eating with these people that we didn't know yet, and were kind of forced into awkward small talk conversations. But hey, I am all about awkward small talk. After eating, we hung out for a while until Ataaya was served. Ataaya is the definition of the word marvelousness (thank you Jessica). To describe it simply: Tea. But not just your average tea. It is traditionally served in three rounds: Bitter like death, Sweet like life, and Sugary like love (this is roughly translated of course, and the Amy translation is this: strong and sweet, strong and sweeter, strong and sweetest). It is served in shot glasses, half tea half foam. It is so absolutely amazing, and I have enjoyed it many a time here. But this was my first time helping make it. Oh boy. So the actual like boiling of the water/adding tea/adding sugar is really easy, right? It's the foam-making part that's the issue. The technique is basically to pour tea from teapot to glass, then glass to glass, until you have foam. Seeing a Senegalese do this at full speed is awe inspiring. Seeing an American attempt to do it at a decent speed is comedy. I'm still at the point in my Ataaya skills that I end up with a tray full of spilled tea and very sticky hands. But it's worth the mess and grief to drink it.

After Ataaya, we walked to town to visit La Poste de Santé (the local health center). (This is where my friend Eva is going to be doing her internship for the rest of the semester and I am super jealous that she got to see it and her village already) We heard the director guy talk about what they do there and what it's like to take care of public health in a Senegalese village. As you can probably imagine, Malaria is a huge issue (don't worry Mom, I'm still taking my pills). But he told us about how a campaign for the usage of mosquito nets reduced the number of malaria cases tremendously. It was pretty cool. After this little visit, we walked through more of the village before returning to our Auberge.

And then came the bugs.

Our Senegalese friends left for a while to return to their appropriate abodes to shower and change, and we were left alone to do the same thing (two showers for 20 people, you bet we needed a while...). By that time it was getting dark, and most of us were just lounging around outside, playing cards and what not. I don't think I can even find the words to describe what happened next. All of a sudden these little black beetles started appearing around the courtyard. First it was just a few here and there, and then there were enough to be annoying, and then....then there were GAZILLIONS. I'm not even exaggerating. Now, these bugs can fly, so not only were they all over the ground but they were in the air too flying around the lights. It didn't take us very long to realize that they were attracted to light, so we of course turned out all of the lights. This was not before we got to witness a black beetle tornado of them all flying in circles under the light. And the ground was so covered by them in some areas that you couldn't walk with out hearing them crunch beneath your feet. Now would be the time for a gag reflex from those of you who are not so fond of these invertebrate counterparts. Luckily, for some of us, we had kept our bedroom doors shut and mosquito nets in place, so at least my room was essentially bug free. Others were not as lucky....and I remember my friend Mairéad describing it as having to "scoop thousands of bugs from our bed". Oh another characteristic of these bugs is their stench, which smelled something like weird cilantro according to my friend Jessica (be glad you weren't there, Katrina). For the rest of the stay there, we spent the evenings in the dark, no lights except when absolutely absolutely necessary so as not to attract the little stinkers.

Now for a little disclaimer, I have been in the routine of going to bed by 10 and getting up around 6. Decent schedule, right? Well apparently, that's not how things roll on MSID field trips. That night we were scheduled to enjoy a traditional dancing and drumming spectacle, which didn't get going until well after 9. It was fantastically indescribable, even pictures of the event do not do it justice. There were maybe 8 or 9 guys on drums (tamtams and djembes), along with 9 or 10 dancers (of the male and female variety). All of the performers looked like they were doing it with every fiber of their beings. Lots of arm flailing and drum hitting and body movements that I would never be able to recreate in a million years. And to top it all off a guy who eats fire...wowee acha. At the end they had all of us toubabs get up and dance the awkward dances that we dance. It ended sometime after 11, and we still hadn't eaten dinner yet because the general consensus had been that we were way too full from lunch so we wanted to save it until after the performance. So we ate (there were tomatos and cucumbers!!! p.s. I might become vegetarian when I come home just because all I'm going to want to eat are fruits and vegetables, they are so not a regular part of the diet here), and the clock struck midnight, end of the first day.

My other fieldtrip roomie, Christine, and I had cooked up a fantastic plan to beat the shower lines in the morning which we immediately put into action. It was to get up at 5, shower, and go back to sleep until breakfast. It worked amazingly, and so come 8 we were already fresh and showered and ready to start the day. Breakfast consisted of baguettes with jam/chocolate/butter/cheese (of the spreadable sort of course) and tea/hot chocolate/coffee!!! (for those of you who know me in my american life, you know how much I adore coffee...yeah well coming here to Senegal, I subjected myself to going cold turkey and now the only coffee I find is instant Nescafé. So not cool, but the price I am willing to pay for cultural experience) Considering that at my house here I only get bread with butter and tea (not coffee), this made the trip that much better. Our senegalese friends returned to eat with us, and then we were herded onto the bus...

stay tuned for part three to find out where the bus took us...

watch out village, here comes amy (part one)...

Don't worry, folks, I am still alive and well. Though lacking pretty seriously in the areas of time, internet, and electricity. But I am back and want to crank out some blog entries for you, because in a week and a half's time I will be on my way to another part of the country. As far as I know I will be entering a vast void of grass huts, sheep neighbors, and no internet. Who knows really...

To bring you up to speed a little bit, we've been taking classes all this time, and are rapidly approaching the end of the classroom phase. My weeks are spent at WARC, and weekends spent doing things like visiting markets, friends' houses, and the other normal galavanting of an American student in Africa. Two weekends ago, was the grand field trip for MSID Senegal. The whole lot of us, 17 MSIDers, one independent student researcher (yay Paulina! *side note* Paulina is a Mexican student studying at Colorado College, who has come to Senegal for a month to work on research. She stumbled upon our group on day at WARC, and has since spent almost every waking moment with us, eating, field tripping, walking, etc. I have to mention her because she has been my walking buddy every day since we discovered our close living proximity to each other... *end side note*), 4 program staff, two cooks, and one driver set off to go to Toubacouta, a village located south and minorly east of Dakar.

This story must be told in multiple parts, for the sole reason that I do not have the time nor the stamina to type it all out right now...

We were scheduled to leave at 7:00 Saturday morning, and so Friday night was spent getting ready and packing. The next morning I woke up somewhere around 6:00, to a sunless world (not even the crows were up yet! I swear everyone sleeps late here...). This was a little inconvenient, considering the electricity was out (again), and I had to finish packing and get dressed. Trying to be as quiet as possible, so as not to wake the fam, I lugged my duffle down the stairs and through the narrow hallway to the door. Now, I have learned the hard way, many times over, that the front door of my house is very finicky and won't just let anyone out when it's locked. My plan to be as quiet as I could was soon thwarted by the door, and the next thing I hear is my mom grunting sleepily through the window to see who it was. I whispered that it was Amy and that I was just leaving. Sounding a little confused, she let me off with out any of the regular "be safe and don't get mugged" lectures. As I walked down the dark street, it was a scene very reminiscent of the fleeing one in Sound of Music. You know, the one where the family is fleeing the Nazis in the dead of night, and they try to push the car down the driveway...Yeah well, it may not have been the middle of the night, and I don't think I was fleeing the Nazis, but it was a little weird to be walking down an empty street with a duffle bag and no lights. I met Paulina on our regular corner and we started walking in the right direction before finding a taxi to hail and take us the rest of the way.

Once assembled at WARC, we all piled onto one of our favorite buses as our luggage was being piled on top of the bus. The voyage that followed was one filled with lots of bumpiness, very little sleep, and lots of bizzare random occurences. We were stopped on an occasion or two to tell a police officer where the bus of toubabs (toubab=white person) was going. We passed through Kaolack, a city that looks like a garbage dump and had a man standing on the side of the road butt naked. We actually spent more time than expected in Kaolack because the road we were supposed to be going on was blocked or something, I don't really know. Actually, rarely did we know what was going on that whole weekend. We were a herd of toubab sheep being led around to do different things in different places with out being the wiser. C'est pas grave, we've sort of gotten used to it. Our bus was stopped at different points in Kaolack, and we were constantly being bombarded with kids begging for money or people wanting to sell us things. ayeayeaye. But then we were on our way again, and unfortunately, we hadn't yet learned the definition of bumpy roads. The road from Kaolack to Toubacouta was utterly indescribably. We're talking potholes the size of a Honda Civic, scattered over what used to be a paved road, so that the bus had to slow down to a turtle's pace and weave all over the place. And those of us in the back definitely got some air at some points.

The last rest stop before our final destination consisted of a rundown gas station in a village with a market that we were going to be visiting. The toilet was one of the squat pot variety, with a door that barely closed at all. For me, it was just like home sweet home, but for others in the group it was a first time experience. And after being offered a ditch as the other option, everyone turned out to be good sports, and there was a communal bottle of Purell being passed around after. We walked around the market for a couple of minutes to see all of the local products being sold. But after being harrassed by kids and women selling peanuts and men driving by on mopeds offering us rides, we were ready to get back on the bus. Finally, we were arrived in Toubacouta approximately seven hours after departure. We were met by a group of Senegalese guys, all standing along the side of the road where we pulled over just outside the village. Dazed and slightly confused about the presence of these 15 odd Senegalese, we piled off the bus and stood awkwardly awaiting further instruction....

Stay tuned for Part Two to find out who the strangers were and how we survived the Plague of Bugs.