Two-fer shorties

9/26/11

This is a day that deserves a party! This is a day that deserves a new outfit and a feast of yapp! But I’ll settle for a pint of orange juice and a bag of cheetos in a pair of jeans and a ¾ length sleeve tee. Hence the party! Its fricking COOL!! It rained from about 5 yesterday ‘til about 11 this morning, and it looks like it’s not done. Having not rained for ALL of September until now, the heat had become exhausting. I was so excited to get back home from the University and have my fan to keep me cool while I slept (note, I got bedbugs somewhere along the way, so am itchy Everywhere, and it was so hot there, with no air movement, that I barely slept for the week) but last night, it was so cool having the fan on required a sheet and pants!! Freaking AMAZING!! I passed out at about 9 while “ascending” in bed, and slept until 9:30 this morning. No joke.

Being back in village is lovely as usual. It’s impossible to keep the grin off my face as I walk around greeting people, seeing the smiles on the kids who still call me “Rama toubab” ::shrug::. Yesterday I told a few women about my bed bugs and showed them my riddled sides. Strangely enough, they seem to think that when I get bit by bugs it’s hilarious… This began when some kind of small ant wasp bit my inner thigh while we were sitting on mats during Ramadan. It hurt! Aaaand they were keeled over in laughter, unable to catch their breath.  Of course, in that case, I think the humor was more from the location of the bite… Then, last week when we were standing around at night something bit me on the butt. Yet again, location related humor… especially as I shook out my skirts violently and spent the next five minutes rubbing my butt where it burned to a radius of five inches. This bed bug situation however has nothing to do with location. They’re Everywhere! And itch like fire. This is so much worse than mosquito bites…  Maybe not… maybe it’s just like having hundreds of mosquito bites all over your entire body… Yeah. It’s awesome.  ANYWAY, Bintu has decided I’m a comedienne of bug bites. Awesome. And true to the warning that everyone in village knows everything about me, as I walked around this morning, random people requested to pull my shirt up and look at and touch my bites, which, duh, makes them itch!  Yikes. Silly. Fun morning…

9/29/11

Today I had a realization of how magical this job is. I’m still doing my baseline research in order to develop an action plan that will actually be valuable to my community. Last night I realized I have yet to reach out to the local Imam’s (religious leaders), so I made that my goal for today. I go to one of the imams houses regularly because his daughter-in-law sells ice (chyeeeaaaaaahhh…), but have yet to talk to him for any length of time. Right now, pretty much everyone spends their mornings in the field unless engaged in some other form of labor, so I wasn’t sure I’d find anyone there when I went. But sure enough, as I approached his neighborhood, out paths crossed. He was just returning from the field with a large pile of bissap leaves perched on his head, somehow balanced on top of a “pulaar hat” (like a Chinese straw hat, woven to a point). We did the whole formal greeting thing, he asked where I was headed, so I just told him: actually I was headed to your house. He gave me the single chair in the compound and sat on a plastic brick (insisted upon it), and the conversation began as 10 or so other family members crowded around to listen. Turns out he’s a totally nice guy. Aside from the chair thing, he was all smiles, all “as long as you try, whatever you do will be great.” So, he approved of my plans, mentioned that it might be nice to have a well added, as there isn’t one near their house, and that was that! This was an overdue visit, and I’m grateful that I finally had the realization that I needed to spend some time there.

Here’s where Peace Corps, working here in Senegal, is soooo much cooler than a similar job in America. In America, if for my work I had to meet with a higher-up in the institution within which I was working, it would have likely been talk, get the business over-with, maybe offer a glass of water or coffee, then out and on to the next piece of business. But not here. Next they brought out the beans! Where in America, people often offer to share while internally hoping you will politely decline, which you often do even if you’d rather take them up on their offer, because it’s the “nice” thing to do, it’s the opposite here. The polite thing to do is eat, even if you’re already full, you’re supposed to eat at least something to show appreciation of the teranga (hospitality. Senegal is, remember, the Land of Teranga). So I ate. And ate. And when I considered stopping, I was told that I had to eat until the bowl was empty.  YIKES. But yummy… Fortunately this was before lunch. Once I went to visit a friend’s house after dinner, and literally ate beans until I hurt. Ooooh Senegal.