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.