Small Victories

So I finally have a few projects that I’m working on, I’m really excited because I am finally feeling like I have a reason to be here. One of the projects that I am working on is teaching my counterpart’s employees what a business is and the different aspects that go into a business, such as marketing, planning, productivity, etc. My counterpart’s hope is that by them understanding how a business functions they will see how their lack of productivity or their constant mistakes costs the company money. Sounds like it should be pretty easy, but as I mentioned before I am teaching this to a room full of men who do not live in a consumerist society, so what seems basic for us such as the need for marketing or keeping track of income and expenses is not, so I have my work cut out for me. My first class was quite interesting, I spent the day before class preparing, trying to think of how to explain everything in what I thought were simple terms, and mind you this was all done in French. So I walked into class the next day feeling prepared and ready to go, thinking for sure that by the end of the hour they would all be able to tell me what a business is and give me examples. Well after spending the hour talking to the guys and thinking they really understood it I asked them to give me an example of what a business is, they then proceeded to look at me like I had a third eye. So guess all my hard work didn’t pay off. So now what, back to the drawing board I guess. So for the next week I stressed out about how to get through to these guys, I was stuck as to how to explain this any easier, I mean my definition was somewhere where you can buy goods and services. However, after working for a while I found a way to reword this; I then proceeded to translate it into my broken Pulaar (the local language) thinking that this might help. So off I went to my next class, nervous and not that confident. I told the guys we were just going to sit and talk, I then read my spiel in Pulaar and asked them if they understood, even though they said yes, I had a feeling that they didn’t. I told them that much and asked them what part they didn’t understand, finally one brave soul said it was the word “service”; they didn’t know the meaning of it and so it was blocking their understanding as to what a business was. So I spent the next half hour explaining, re-explaining, using my broken Pulaar and numerous examples to try and get them to understand what a service was. And at the end of the hour when I asked them to give me an example of what a service was, they all gave me examples!!! I was so excited that they got this concept down!!

Now this may seem like something insignificant to you, but as I said these guys have no formal education, some barely understand English, and they live in a society that doesn’t understand consumerism. To me this was a little victory in what is going to be long but worthwhile journey!!

Here are some of my students working. It's a metal shop and waste removal company.

Here is my counterpart (the one in the green hat) teaching one of his employees how to make a gate.

Dinner with the Ambassador!!

So after getting back from Dakar I took some time to just relax a bit. The following weekend was our regional retreat, that’s where the whole region goes off somewhere and it’s a time to discuss house issues and just bond. We ended up going to Mako, which is about 40km away from Kedougou. We stayed in a campment, which is just a series of huts. It was nice to be with everyone from the region. The last day of the retreat was my birthday so it was perfect timing to celebrate because everyone was in town!! We made a huge Mexican feast and partied all night. The only unfortunately thing is that when we went out later in the night, my bike ended up getting stolen. Luckily the country director was heading down to Kedougou the following week so brought me my replacement bike. To this day I still haven’t found my bike but I filed a report with the police and they’re looking for it. We’re all just hoping that whoever took if hasn’t crossed the border into Guinea and is trying to sell it there.

Our country director came down here with the US ambassador to Senegal. They came with a TV crew and were filming some of the volunteers here and what projects they are working on. Unfortunately, I was not part of the group because I don’t really have any projects going on, but I was able to sit down to dinner with the Ambassador three nights in a row. The first night she asked to have dinner with some of the volunteers here, so since I live here I was asked to join. The second night it was just a couple of volunteers that were asked to come to dinner. Only of few of us were asked to come because it was dinner with not only the ambassador but also with the mayor and a lot of other important Kedougou government people. It was a nice traditional dinner with a traditional dance troop performing at the end. Unfortunately I forgot my camera at home so I didn’t take any pictures or video. Now the third night’s dinner was really fun, the ambassador heard that David built his own hut and decided she wanted to see it for herself. As she was there she noticed the pizza ovens that he built and was told how we have pizza parties there occasionally. She decided that she had to stay one more night and participate in a Kedougou pizza party. We provided the food and she provided the beer. It was a nice evening because we really got to sit down with the ambassador and just talk. She’s a really nice, down to earth woman who rolled up her sleeves and helped make pizzas!! Making good contacts as I go!!

Tomorrow I have my first business training class. It’s quite a challenge because I have to explain what business is and business concepts that go with it, such as marketing, pricing, planning, etc. to people who don’t have never been to high school, some of them can’t even read! I’ll update my blog with how it all went. Wish me well!!!

Dinner with the US Ambassador to Senegal!

Apparently the ambassador was so impressed by my friend's pizza ovens that she felt she HAD to come and make pizza with us. So here I am supervising her work!

I am working the ingredient assembly line with the Ambassador.

Zack, a fellow volunteer, decides to serve the woman while the men cook the pizza. I think he was just showing off because the ambassador was there!

Our whole pizza making group with the Ambassador and her press secretary!

Random pictures and observations

So I have noticed that during my short time here I have become used to things that I would normally have found strange. I want to share some of these with you and as time goes by I hope to show you more such things. Also, because I know some of my readers like to see street scenes from Senegal, I have included those as well. Please let me know if I'm starting to get a little weird for thinking this is all just normal!!

My brothers and some of their friends hanging out in my compound playing a card game. Behind them you can see my well so when running water stops we have a back-up; however, when the well drys up, well guess we'll figure something out!

this is the front of my compound. The pink building is the one I live in, not only do I have my own room and bathroom, but I have a rooftop which is where I'll be sleeping come the hot, dry season!

This is one side of my street. It's a quiet day because it was taken on a Sunday. Usually there are people, bikes, goats, sheep, and cars along the road.

This is the other side of my street. If you look at the pile of white dirt on the right-hand side you can see some goats chilling in the dirty. I've just become so accustomed to seeing goats every where that when I walk into my compound and find 10 goats there, none of them ours, I don't think twice about it.

So I was sitting by the pool with one of my friend yesterday and we happened to notice a goat jumping around, neither of us thought anything about it till I realized, I would be quite surprised in American if I saw a goat jumping around a pool!

This is David chopping some wood for out pizza party. The hut that you see behind him is his hut that he built himself!

I am preparing my pizza with some garlic, tomatoes, cheese, and thanks to David's father, pepperoni!!!! YUM!!

And how do we cook our pizzas? In the clay pizza ovens that we built! Who says you have to eat poorly in Africa?

Here is picture of my old host mom, the reason that I have it here is because I want everyone to look at the amount of makeup that she put on (the picture doesn't do her justice) and Senegalese women wear this much makeup and think it looks good. Guess they don't understand what the natural look is.

And where do you get the best food in Senegal, the garage of course. The garage is where all the buses and sept-places leave for Guinea or Dakar, we grab a seat where you can and dig into a communal bowl. Trust me, it's good!!

Here is a typical family's "common room". It's outside and it has mattresses and mats thrown about so that there is always room for everyone to sit or nap.

This is a typical family meal, find a place to wedge yourself in and dig in!

Here is a typical street scene in St. Louis, I included these so that people can see what an average city here looks like. Not too bad, right?

Well not all the parts of a city are nice, here's what the other half of the street looks like. Unfortunately the Senegalese haven't figured out a good way to dispose of their waste so it usually ends up strewn all over the place.

Since fishing is a the major industry in St. Louis I thought that it was interesting to notice that they don't use any fancy gadgets to find the fish, they just take out a boat, like the one above, cast their nets, and hope that something bites.

Another picture of the low-tech, but very efficient boat.

Another typical street up north.

My first Christmas and New Year in Senegal!!

Happy New Year!! I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year. I just want to take a minute and share something that I realized while I’ve been here. I know most people look at the holiday season and think what a headache, all the things to do before Christmas and then there is the family to deal with. Being here has made me realize what a special time the holidays are, once all the hassle of pre-Christmas is over with and you’re sitting at Christmas dinner with your family it’s really a wonderful time and we need to take a minute and cherish that time because we never know where we will all be for the next holiday season.

So my first Christmas in Senegal was really nice and I got to spend it with some great people. After I left Dakar I headed up to St. Louis to visit my friend Julia. I arrived on the Wed before Christmas and she took the next two days to show me around the city. Everyone talks about how St. Louis has this great European influence, it was the former French capital of West Africa, but unfortunately any of that influence has fallen into disrepair. However, it’s still a nice city that sits right on the beach. We went walking around one of the islands of St. Louis, it’s referred to as The Island and it looks similar to the French quarter in New Orleans but a dirtier. After two days of walking around the city and The Island we were ready for Christmas. On Christmas Eve we spent all day shopping for ingredients for our Christmas day meals, so when dinner time rolled around we really didn’t feel like making anything. Instead we went out to a delicious Moroccan restaurant. We were hoping that they might do something special for Christmas Eve but alas they didn’t. After dinner we roamed around until midnight mass. The funny thing about that was that Senegalese are notorious for being late for everything, but their midnight mass starts at 11pm!! So we stroll in at midnight an hour late and they were half way through the mass!! Oops!! However, it was really nice and I really liked the choir singing carols with African drum beats to them. After midnight mass we decided we had had a long day and headed home for bed. On Christmas morning we got down to some cooking, I made potato pancakes, but I’ll admit, I had to call the expert, my Mom, to get some help (Thanks Mom!), another girl made a frittata, and we had a fruit salad. Everything turned out wonderful and I got quite a lot of praise for the pancakes. After that we just sat around and watched a movie. Around 7pm we started to prepare Christmas dinner. We had shrimp scampi pasta (fresh shrimp!!), pesto pasta, bruscetta, and a cucumber salad, might I point out that everything was made from scratch. We figured out that you don’t need a food processor to make fresh pesto, all you need is a hammer, a plastic bag, and some time to just pound away. Once again everything was great!! I spent another few days in St. Louis where Julia and I decided to treat ourselves with pedicures. My feet have not been completely clean since I got to this country so I figured they needed some well deserved scrubbing. The next day after the pedicures, Julia and I headed to Dakar to ring in the New Year.

In Dakar we met up with our friend Lyzz and her friend who came in from the States, it was nice because we got to do some tourist things. On New Year’s Eve day, we went to Goree Island, this is the island where the slaves from West Africa were housed until they were ready to be shipped to the Americas. Also, this island house different militaries throughout its history because it was the entry way into West Africa. It was controlled by the Dutch, English, Portuguese, and finally the French. Even though there is some terrible history behind the island it really was a beautiful place. We walked around a bit and lucky joined up with a tour group so we could find out a bit more of the history behind the island. They haven’t really figured out how to make tourists spots in Senegal; we had no idea what happened on the island or where anything was, there weren’t any descriptive signs saying “such and such happened here”. For example, our map said there was a castle on the island and we walked around the whole island looking for it but couldn’t find it, it wasn’t until we ran into the tour group that we found out that at the top of the island there was the “castle” but it was actually bunkers that were used by the soldiers that tried to control Senegal.

After visiting the island we all returned to our places and got ready for New Year’s. We joined Lyzz and her friend in their hotel room for a few drinks and then we headed to the main square in Dakar to ring in the New Year. I must say that New Year’s here is a bit lackluster, we got to the square a little before midnight and waited for the countdown. I realized that they don’t really do that here when I looked at my watch and realized that it was 12:03am. So we all said our Happy New Years, hugs all around and then we figured it was a good idea to head out of the square because even if the Senegalese don’t do a countdown for New Year, they do like to shoot off fireworks. Now I was in the Netherlands one New Year’s Eve and they too have the same tradition, however, in Senegal they haven’t really figured out that you’re supposed to shoot the fireworks into the sky and not into the crowds of people on the street. After that it was just going to some bars and clubs, it was fun but nothing out of the unusual. The next day we headed off to the beach for some much needed relaxation. For dinner we took Lyzz’s American friend for the food court in the mall and then we went bowling, OK maybe that was more for us then for him, but it was a lot of fun to feel for just a few hours like you’re back in the States. The next day Julia left to go back and I hung out at our regional house till Tuesday when I took the overnight bus back home.

Normally the bus is supposed to leave Dakar at 10pm and arrive in Kedougou at 10am, however, I didn’t get back to Kedougou till 5pm the next day!!! It took me 18 hours to get home! The bus kept breaking down and they kept trying to fix it and once the other passengers started to get angry they sent another bus to take us the rest of the way. However, the second bus didn’t have enough seats for everyone so the other Peace Corps volunteer and I got the company to take us to a garage (their bus/sept-place depot) and buy us 2 seats in the next sept-place leaving for Kedougou. When we finally made it home I came home to a layer of dust about an inch deep on everything, it’s the dry season so everything is always covered with dust, and a new roommate, a mouse!! I’m still trying to find the mouse to shoo it out of my room and trying to wash everything that’s covered in dust, it’s still a work in prgoress. All in all it was a good trip and a nice break, but it’s also nice to be back in my own bed.

Here is a view of one of the islands, in St. Louis, from the apartment I was staying in.

My friend Julia and I at a Moroccan restaurant on Christmas Eve.

Julia helping me prepare Christmas breakfast. She's grating the potatoes for potato pancakes.

Here are the potato pancakes, delicious!!

Julia and Sarah making Christmas cookies from scratch. Their butter cream frosting was awesome!

Every girl needs a day off, a relaxing pedicure :)

Here is the final product of the pedicure, nice, CLEAN feet (Finally!!)

Leaving the port to go to Goree Island (aka Slave Island). Note that the temperature is 35C that's 95F, HOT!!! Sorry about the pic for all of you on the East coast covered in snow!!

Julia, Lyzz and I on the boat to the island.

I'm pretty sure that this is the westernmost house in all of Africa. I liked that it was nice and secluded.

Just wanted to show how amazingly clean the water is!!

Here is the skyline of Dakar for Goree Island.


Sitting at the top of the island overlooking the few houses that inhabit it.

I thought this nativity scene was pretty interesting. Note that none of the characters have faces!!


The view while leaving Goree.

Julia and I heading out for New Year's Eve. Happy New Year!!!

Leaving my mark in Africa, little by little

Ok, so in Sangalkam, my training village during Pre-Service Training, I had an aunt there who was pregnant, Fatu. During the first few weeks I thought either she didn’t like me or that she was just always angry because she had a permanent scowl on her face. However, as the weeks went by and I learned how to say some things and could actually have a basic conversation with her, it turned out that we got along very well. She was due to have her baby in October, the month I swore in, and I was hoping that she would have the baby while I was still living with them, but alas she didn’t.

So when I came back up to Thies for our all-volunteer conference I decided to go and visit Sangalkam because I really liked my family and they are genuinely nice people. They had no idea I was coming for a visit so it was a big surprise to everyone when I just showed up on the compound. When I got there I was warmly greeted by everyone, my host mom even came out running and gave me a hug, which Senegalese people do NOT do. Of course Fatu was there and no longer pregnant, so we began discussing the baby, she is a healthy little girl. Fatu asked me if I wanted to see her and of course I did. As I was led into the baby’s room she asked me if I wanted to know what the baby’s name was, what I heard next just stunned me, she told me she named the baby “Alexandra!!!” That’s right she named her baby after me, I was so touched that I had no idea what to say. I spent the rest of the day with my family and my namesake, whom I must say is one beautiful baby! My own namesake in Africa how cool is that??!!

Update from the last two weeks

Hello everyone, I know I have been MIA for a while but I have been in In-Service training for the past two weeks and after sitting in a classroom for 8 hours a day I haven’t been very up to writing on my blog. So here is a summary of what has happened. I got to Thies on Dec 2nd to attend our all-volunteer conference. Seven of us from Kedougou rented out a sept-place and headed up north. After 12 hours squished in the car we got to Thies only to be overwhelmed by all the people that were there. There were over 200 volunteers at the conference, it was nice to see some friends and it was really motivating to see other volunteers’ projects, but that’s a lot of people. The conference was interesting because we got to choose what sessions we could go to so that was nice change from just going to sessions you’re told to. After the conference my stage had our in-service training which consisted of technical training for 2 weeks. It was a very long two weeks. For the SED (business) volunteers we sat around looking at powerpoints all day long, not the most exciting thing in the world. Some of the sessions were interesting, such as one where we had local and international NGO’s come in and talk about what work they do in Senegal. It was really nice to hear what other work is being done to help the Senegalese people. Other than a few sessions that were actually stimulating, it was pretty boring. However, I did entertain myself by designing some clothes. There’s a tailor in town who is supposed to know how to make more Western style clothes, so everyone bought fabric and went to her. I designed a dress for myself that came out rather cute and I also designed a pant suit for my friend for New Years that came out really well. I’m quite proud of myself.

I had a really nice weekend in Dakar during training. It was our first weekend and there was an artisan expo that the SED volunteers set-up since we are the new volunteers and we were in Thies, we got to go. It was really cool seeing all the different Senegalese artists. Also, while in Dakar I decided to treat myself and I got a hotel room, it was so nice!! It really made me appreciate what we have in the US.

I’m going to take a moment and point out some things that we take for granted but really shouldn't.

1) Water coming out of your faucet. Think about this, when we turn on the faucet in the US we’d be surprised if water didn’t come out. Here people are surprised when it does because it cuts out so frequently.

2) Hot showers/baths. If you have a shower with running water, you never get to experience a hot shower because we don’t have hot water tanks. If you don’t have running water however, you can always leave your bucket out in the sun to heat up the water

3) The option of whether you want it to be warm in your room or cool. The temperature in my room is dictated by the weather outside and if I don’t like it there isn’t much I can do about it.

4) Appreciating the quiet as you go to sleep. For some reason the Senegalese feel the need to make as much noise as possible, either with their mosques’ loud-speaker going all night or their TV’s blaring.

5) The ability to keep your food preserved in a fridge and not worry about it spoiling overnight due to it being too hot or some animal will eat it.

6) Knowing that if some emergency arose help would get to you within minutes as opposed to hours/days.

7) The ability to drink water whenever you want and not having to wait 5 hours for your filter to finish.

8) Being able to sit down at a restaurant and order off the menu and not having to ask “What do you have today?”

9) Not having to decide in the morning if an outfit is appropriate or not by how much of your knee is showing.

10) Street names and addresses. “Keep going till you get to the third mango tree and make a left” is NOT an acceptable form of directions.

Ok now that I have given you some food for thought, I shall continue my store of Dakar. Not only did I get to stay in a hotel, but I got to visit their mall and feel like I was back in American for a few hours. It was nice. After my little American vacation I had to head back to reality and finish my training in Thies. The second week was hard because it seemed like we had been there forever. However, there was a nice little surprise mid-week, it was Tamkharit, the Muslim New Year. One of our trainers invited us to his mother’s house for the New Year to celebrate. We ate some delicious food which consisted of couscous with lamb and chicken, it was amazing. After dinner his family surprised us with ice cream!!! Now the Muslim New Year is interesting because it is a mix between Halloween, Thanksgiving, and New Year all rolled into one. It’s like Halloween because the kids dress up like old people and men dress up as women and they walk around asking for candy, it’s Thanksgiving because you a LOT of food, and it’s like New Years because they party till the break of dawn. It was great to experience it!

I decided to go to Dakar after IST, where I am sitting now writing this, which getting here was an adventure in and of itself. We found out that a train left Thies to Dakar at 6am so we decided to take the train in. We woke up at 5am to finish packing, by 5:45 we were on our way walking to the train station, only about a mile and a half away, with all of our clothes and books that the Peace Corps gave us stuffed into backpacks and suitcases. Once we reached the train station we were informed by some random man sitting outside the train station that the train doesn’t run on Sundays!!! So 17 of us were sitting outside the train station trying to figure out how to get to Dakar. ***(Note to my family: It was like a scene out of the book “How do we get to the zoo?”) Luckily, some of the other volunteers were lazy and had a cab take them the station so we explained to the cab driver our dilemma and the driver told us he could get us a mini-bus to take us. So we all piled into the bus, baggages and all, and headed off to Dakar. We got here around 8am and are just relaxing for the rest of the day. So that is what has been happening for the past two weeks. I will update my blog after the New Year with what I did for Christmas, still not sure what I am going to do for that. Hope you all have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!

Here were our sleeping arrangements in the hotel. I took up the space that is left on the bed!

Here was part of the view from our hotel!

And here is the Dakar skyline!!

And here is our wonderful New Years Eve dinner!!

Note how excited we all are for the food!

Here are some of the kids "Trick-or-Treating"

Simple things, such as ice cream, bring us great joy in Senegal!!

My Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!! I hope that everyone had a great day and shared it with good people. As for what we did here, well we tried to recreate Thanksgiving as best we could. Everyone in the region came to the regional house to help celebrate. We couldn’t get a hold of any turkey so we bought 10 chickens and 5 ducks. Luckily we had more than enough people willing to kill the animals (frustrations with work and people run high!) so I was spared that task. On Thanksgiving Day we were told to pick a bird and season it, so I head to the cooler and pick out a nice juicy chicken. I took it out of the bag and noticed that one of the guys was nice enough to clean out the insides but to my surprise they did not remove the head nor the feet. So what is a girl to do but grab a meat cleaver and behead the bird herself!! After a few whacks my dinner was no longer starring me in the face. I then proceeded to season the bird and let it marinate. Throughout the day it felt like a real Thanksgiving because there was a lot of food preparation and delicious smells coming from the kitchen. At about 3 pm the guys started throwing the birds on the grill as our final food prep. Around 5 pm everything was done and we had a LOT of meat, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes and gravy (I can say that I had a hand in the gravy, but it was just adding hot water to McCormick gravy mix), sweet potatoes, stuffing, biscuits, pumpkin pie, apple pie, and chocolate pie. Now, everything sounds really authentic but I can tell you that all these dishes had a bit of a twist on them, but we did the best we could with what we could find here. After stuffing ourselves silly we did what any other family would do and napped!! Then we played a fun game called Pit which was explained to us as a commodities exchange game with a bell!! I know it sounds like “What the???” but it was actually a lot of fun. After hanging out some more it was time to call it a night and head off home. All in all it was a fun day and we all got a little taste of home.

Starting the preparations for Thanksgiving dinner. Please not the beheaded duck with it's feet off too, that's what I did to my chicken!!

The chickens marinating, some people were inventive and came up with Thai peanut marinade!!

If you think making Thanksgiving dinner in the States is hard, try doing it with no running water and three burners working on the stove. Here some of the girls are helping out by washing dishes so we can continue cooking!

Everyone chilling while things cook and bake.

Here I can contributing my culinary skills by making the gravy :)

The boys grilling up the chickens!

Yummy looking chickens!!

We're about ready to start feasting!!

Everyone sitting down at the dinner table with their plated piled high. Mine's the blue one with everything swimming in gravy. I LOVE gravy!!!

And here is a great picture of one of the volunteers in an after eating food coma, we invited our cleaning lady with her son to come and I guess he picked up the after food coma tradition too!!!