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As you cannot comment on other people's comments on Blogger, I will comment here in response to my mom's comment to my last blog post. I hear you. This information web is totally valuable, and sometimes numbingly overwhelming. I also think it's an admirable goal to put laptops, particularly with internet access, in the hands of children in developing countries. However, before this could possibly do any good, we must ensure that these children can read and encourage them to be the principal actors in the development of their own lives and communities. That is, we must do these things in order to further my personal agenda of having their lives be lovely in one of the ways my life has been lovely. In other words, you are also completely correct that this is not implicity necessary to having a beautiful and full life. However, I believe that there is no stopping the change of the world. No stopping the "development" of the world. I would love it if the directors of that development were the people it affected rather than the people profiting from those it affects, and for that reason, I would like the people of my small village to be able to read and access the network of information so widely shared in the world in the form of books and internet sites like wikipedia.

The Inexorable March of Technological Advancement

As the economic gap widens, leaving the poor relatively poorer and the rich relatively richer, with a shrinking middle class, and as technology leaps forward at an ever increasing rate, where does that leave people like my Senegalese village friends?

Most of them Literally do not have the means to complete anything beyond an elementary education, and even that has only been available for about a decade. Many of them cannot read or write, and the basic mathematical skill of addition is a struggle. Though nearly every family has one television and at least one cell phone between them, they get two channels on a good night (reception of whatever-waves is sketchy at best), and frequently can’t afford to put credit on their phones (yes, they’re pay-as-you-go). So, while in America we’re discussing whether we should save up for a new flat-screen real-color display television, and if we’ll be able to buy a new iPad when the prices go down just a little bit, here, most people have never touched a computer and don't even own any books other than the Koran.

What, then, are the implications of this lag in technology? As the speed of technological improvement advances, the developing world lags ever further behind in their ability to share in our world of rapid information exchange. What impact does this have on their ability to self-determine their development, or to experience development at all? I can only speculate, and all speculation comes from a firmly grounded culturally instilled belief that knowledge is power and there is no greater human gift than that of new insight. I’m scared of Kindles because I believe the printing press was the greatest invention of all time, and books are a divine gift to humankind. So, please, give a moment’s thought to what it actually means to be illiterate—to be unable to share in the vast amounts of information exchanged through the printed (or typed) word.

...(This is a pause for you to stop reading, clear your mind, and Really think about what that would be like.)...

...(Seriously, take a minute :) )...

What can we do about it? I’m not sure. Part of my mind is screaming “HEY AMERICA! SLOW DOWN!!! Give people a minute to catch up!” But of course, slowing the progress of technology won’t happen, nor is this a reasonable solution. What is?? Promoting literacy, promoting education, promoting the exchange of new ideas (if you’ve never heard of it, check out TED. Google it. Great stuff). How will this impact my work here? Stuff’s-a-cookin’. It’s hard enough to work with the local kids to encourage them to fight for their right to be educated, but to convince the older members of society who have rarely left the village in their lives that the world IS changing, and for Senegal to be a part of that they MUST be proactive in seeking to increase their literacy and education opportunities… See, what they see is that in America and France, everybody has a computer, everybody has more money than them (I know, its not true, but its the media image they receive), and when development forces have come to their village before Peace Corps, it has been to dump some money to build something-or-other (needed stuff, mind you), the get the * out of dodge (dodge is a hot, buggy place, of course), nowhere in that schema has the idea been conveyed that you must BE the change you wish to see in the world. That no one can help you until you help yourself. And if you don’t know how to help yourself, you look into it. You learn about how other people have gone about helping themselves. You SEEK KNOWLEDGE. But where do they have to look?

Mmmm… I fear this is a self-centered view point, and obviously just a baby idea that has not been so well thought through as to be entirely coherent, but I think there’s some serious seed of truth here.

So, thoughts? I plan to talk to other PCV’s about this at our Summit, starting tomorrow, and perhaps organize literacy classes in my village, perhaps even try to organize a literacy campaign in the north with other volunteers culminating in a book distribution funded by YOU GUYS (that’s how Peace Corps money actually works, turns out) through Books For Africa. For more information about that aspect, google Books for Africa or Peace Corps Partnership funds. I'll keep you guys posted.

Sending Love to my waa Amerik, always.

Happy Birthday to me!

In a week, I will have lived in village for five months. As of now, I’ve been in country for seven. Wolof comes more easily now, though I am still far from fluent. I can carry a pan of water on my head at a quicker pace now, without spilling. And the coolest thing to me, right now, is that I’ve seen baby Aida learn to sit-up and now to crawl (walking unaided doesn’t seem far away), and a few days ago little Djibi said his first full, clear sentence to me. I brought candy back for the kids (this is a fun diversion, occasionally), and he said to me, “Rama, may ma tangal” (literally, Rama, offer me candy). I flipped a little, and told everyone. It’s also nice to see everyone putting a little weight back on after slimming down during Ramadan. It was a gradual but noticeable change, and everyone already looks much healthier after a month of eating.

So, two days ago was my birthday. I think a totally of five people wished me a happy birthday, two young students at the high-school in the city, and one friend who I told literally four times, “just say the words ‘happy birthday.’” It’s not that they don’t care about me, it’s just a foreign concept to even know your birthday past a certain (young) age. In fact, a lot of people don’t even know what year they were born, or if they do they aren’t sure how old that makes them. So, despite all that, my good friends Ami Kole and Maguette decided I should have a party. I went along with it, cause hey, why not. After changing the date/time twice, it was set for yesterday at five. Here’s a little story about time in a Senegalese village. At five, I closed my door to take a shower, just after one woman came by to say she had to go to her field, but would come later. At about 5:15 I opened my door and Seynabou was getting ready to help by cooking the shrimp chips I bought (surprisingly a common party food here). I went to buy ice to make kool-aid-like stuff. When I got back, Ami Kole and Maguette were here along with my community counterpart who was cooking the shrimp chips. We made the drinks, they finished the chips, we put them all in my room, and then they all left again—to get ready for the party. People started showing up at about 6:00, and the party began about a half hour later. Maguette and Ami drummed beats on overturned metal bowls while the women took turns dancing. Senegalese dancing, which is like, keeping your core strong and still at a 45 degree angle to the ground while flailing (in time to the complex beat) all four limbs, and getting a good butt-jiggle going on. In the company of friends, I humiliated myself trying to learn. It was a blast! After pretty much everyone had shown up, kids and women only (none of my male friends came, not sure if that’s a cultural thing I’m not clear on…?), and after much Amazing dancing on their parts, I showed them my American dance moves. They loved it! I loved it! Cannot express how much I’ve come to love dancing… Funny that for all those years through middle and high schools (even some into college) I convinced myself that I wasn’t into it, to ignore the fact that I was too shy. Well, ::shrug:: now it’s now, and Man! Mmmm… So, just at sunset, we served the shrimp chips and boissons, under the condition that if you don’t dance (or, okay, drum), you don’t get snacks (my rule, lovingly enforced by my lovely party hostesses). Fun fun fun J

Now it’s down to work. The school has just opened, and I met with the teachers and director this morning. They’re lovely people, and I consider a couple genuine friends, and I think the meeting went well. It gave me an opportunity to teach them the three goals of the Peace Corps (for those of you who don’t know, 1.Send people to teach people to teach their countrymen/women things, 2.Learn about another culture and share what you know with Americans, and 3.Share American culture abroad), and emphasize that giving them money to buy things is not on the list. However, as it is a possibility, and some good things can be done that way, I will (inshalla) be doing some of that. BUT the most important work I think I can do has nothing to do with money. For example, yeah, it would be cool to have a computer room at the school. But in a community where not everyone even finishes elementary school, is it a priority? I’d rather focus on ways to teach people the importance of an education so they can prioritize spending 100 cfa on a pen rather than on four pieces of candy. This is obviously a VAST oversimplification of development, but ya dig? Anyway, I’m really excited to start working with the kids here, particularly with a group of girls to encourage self-confidence and creative problem solving through crafts like crochet and design. So, as always, onward!

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.

P.S.

After spending an hour trying to fix my background, trying to use a picture of Khatete, unsucessfully, I resorted to this.

Girls Camp and stuff...

Fun times in Saint-Louis. I just got back to the apartment from running some errands. Just as I left the bank I saw a fellow volunteer, and as we were talking a cab stopped by us. I was thinking, “should I tell this guy I don’t need a ride, or just ignore him?” But as we finished our conversation, I looked at the cabbie, which was by then shouting to me. It was a friend from my village! There are several men from Khatete who drive taxi’s and buses here in Saint-Louis, and I’m always scouting for them, but never seem to find them.  My friend gave me a ride for free to my next destination, and en route, we greeted a friends husband, and my drivers brother, another friend. Crazy! Wonderful coincidence! I’ve been away from site for six days, and I miss it. This always happens.  I was going to go home today, but might wait an extra day to get dinner with a friend here in Saint Louis.

So, the reason I’m here is because of our regional girls’ camp: Camp Gem sa Bopp (believe in yourself)! Definitely a good experience. We brought girls in from villages where volunteers did the Michelle Sylvester Scholarship (helping middle-school girls with good grades, motivation to stay in school, and financial need with the means to pay for school.) Hopefully over this year I can establish a relationship with the middle-school (college) in my road town to do the scholarship there and bring girls from my village/region. It was really a trip being there for the first day, because two things I’m quite familiar with—university campuses and youth camps—were placed in a completely different context. So many similarities with just enough of a difference to be unsettling. The dorms had decent beds, and there were toilettes (of the un-seated variety so common here in Senegal) electricity and running water, but there was no air flow in the building. So, at night it was stiflingly hot and I think I got about 3 hours of interrupted sleep per night. Still, there was a lovely garden right next to the cafeteria where I was able to lay on a concrete bench, still cool from the night, and ascend every morning. In the afternoons, there was  a well ventilated room with a ceiling fan to ascend and nap to make it through the day. And, though I’m not sure how much help I really was, with no official role but “helper-with-stuff,” it was an experience I am glad to have been a part of. We had speakers about women in business, female specific challenges in Senegal, and women’s empowerment in education, and visited a great volunteer’s garden in Saint-Louis. We also made friendship bracelets and tie-died. And, since its camp, and in Senegal, there was a decent amount of singing and dancing.

My favorite moment at the camp was yesterday morning when I and another volunteer led a yoga session. We agreed to have a ten minute meditation at the end. While the other volunteer was walking among the girls explaining what they should do to meditate, I was sitting up front. I tried to interject, but it didn’t work. No problem. But the girl right in front of me wanted to hear what I had to say. I told her: there are no good thoughts. There are no bad thoughts. They simply come and go. So, you will have a thought. Just watch it. It will go. Then there will be another, so again, just watch it. Dropping for that blessed moment into beautiful stillness, and feeling it burning in our eye-contact… So, ya know, that is what it is. It was lovely for me, and who knows, maybe it will plant a seed of awareness. It’s impossible to know. But we sat there. I kept my eyes closed and used my first ascension technique. After, another volunteer said she’d opened her eyes to see what was happening, during the meditation time, and all the girls actually had their eyes closed. They were into it! Pretty cool!

I also just finished reading “Half the Sky”, so my brain is all into gender stuff right now, and I feel like I’m seeing some pretty surprising stuff that I had just… immunized myself to? But also, I feel like I have a blockage to truly seeing some stuff that’s going on around me. Like, even at the camp, they did a session of theatre about women’s challenges here: young girls being sexually harassed by teachers at their schools, women being expected to marry at 14 and give up schooling, that sort of thing. Even the basic fact that girls are basically Cinderella-ized here… I fell like this wall pops up inside me when I think about these things or am faced with them. What is that?? Nothing to do but let it be at this point. Keep aware of it. Anyway, for those of you who haven’t read it, it’s an excellent book. One point I’ll pass along: people who care about the suffering and oppression of women should not be called feminists. They should be called compassionate. Humanists. We don’t call people who think the holocaust was an abomination Jewists. We don’t call civil rights advocates racists. Wait, that’s what we call the people who hate people because of race… Point is, the term feminist is a misnomer that creates a negative association. People who support the freedom and empowerment of women would support the same for men who are mistreated or enslaved. But the fact is, women make up about half of the planet, and in many many places are at worst enslaved, or at least marginalized to the point of disempowerment. Okay. So, read the book. There are depressing part, but the overwhelming sense of the book is one of possibility and the goodness of the human heart. The power of one individual to see injustice and do something to correct it.CHYA!

Learning about Love in Africa (not what you might expect)

I just finished “Awareness” by Anthony deMello. Challenging book. Great book. How do I talk about it? In talking about it I am just passing thoughts along, and not passing along his message. Or can I? I don’t know. I’ll just talk about it. It’s a challenging book because it is a ruthlessly compassionate reminder that to be free, you have to drop EVERYTHING. No exceptions. I seem to have compromised my freedom by getting caught in unawareness that instead of dropping concepts, I was swapping them. Maybe I was swapping little concepts for bigger ones, but a bigger box is still built of walls. It’s a challenge because it talks about that time Christ said you have to hate your father, hate your mother, hate your brother, to truly love God. And that time some zen master said If you see your father, kill him. If you see your brother, kill him. If you see the Buddha, kill him. Only then will you be free. This stuff used to really bother me. What is this all about? Is it not right to love your family? To love Jesus, love the Buddha, LOVE people?  Well, yeah, of course it’s all right. But it’s tricky. Just like any other concept, love can become an idol. And any defined thing is restrictive to the truth. deMello advocates an exercise where you visualize someone you love, someone you think you can’t live without, surely can’t be happy without, and to say to that person “I don’t need you. My happiness is not in you. You cannot make me happy.” And in doing so, you are free to actually enjoy that person. To renounce clinging. This is majorly challenging to me, as I’m sure to most people. How could I live without the support of my parents? How could I live without the love of God? But the fact is these questions reveal the presence of expectations! The real question I have is, how could I live without the Approval of my parents. How could I live without the love of God looking exactly like this, or like this, as my little needs are in any given moment. And that “need” kills my freedom. And it’s false! It’s a lie!  deMello also reminds that Eternal Life is NOW. It can’t be eternal if it’s not. … It’s like, I know that true joy, true happiness, true peace, whatever word it is, even those are restrictive and misleading, lies only in complete surrender to God, and still I buy into these little thoughts of what I think I need specifically to make myself feel whole. What I need in order to rest into the Eternal NOW. It may sound like I’m being hard on myself, but I promise I don’t feel that way. I’m not having any negative judgment of myself in saying these things. In fact, I feel GREAT saying them. For whatever reason, whatever past associations I formed, I have formed a groove around what Love is. And if God is love, that means I’ve decided what God is. And That leads to suffering in moments when I think it’s real, but MAN, the FREEDOM when I see through it!! deMello mentions that he did his “I don’t need you” exercise with GOD. WOAH, right?? But I mean, in doing this exercise, you’re addressing a concept. I tried it with love. And seriously, I’ve considered myself a hopeless romantic for I don’t know how many years. Sure, an exceptionally enlightened one, but … okay, I hope you’re laughing with me-at me for that one. I know.  Okay, so that’s a lot of mental activity surrounding what I read about awareness. 

Here’s a fun moment I had with it. I was journaling last night about my experiences with just watching. And I wrote the sentence: Awareness is hard… blissful… some other descriptive words, and then immediately noticed awareness, realizing it was absolutely none of these things. These were the things I was observing. The things I was aware of. Awareness itself had not changed in the slightest. Is completely uncharacterizable. It’s not even alert! You can have an alert experience of awareness, but it is not that.

Hmmm… So, some background? I was having a hard time finding peace, and thinking a lot of things were wrong with that, wrong because of that. Thinking a lot of “I need” kind of thoughts. I turned to my parents. My dad advised taking two days at site to be in retreat. To ascend as much as possible. To re-form the basis of connection with peace/silence/awareness in this context. So I did. And thank God for that. I remembered that I have the choice, when silence or peace presents itself to dive into it and rest there. Drop an attitude. Stay with it for as long as it stays. To nurture that awareness. Bjork said “I can decide what I give, but it’s not up to me what I get given.” Gandolf said basically the same thing. Yes, these are two great spiritual guides. Bjork and Gandolf.

So, as I’ve heard a million times, if you want to change the world, start with yourself. And as deMello and my dad say (among others, of course), if you want to change yourself, you just have to watch and stop trying to change anything. I got in a fight with a good friend here a couple days ago. Got Maaaajorly unconscious for that one (::shrug::) and the next day I was pretty down, registering problems with other people in village as real things (even when they had nothing to do with me), this or course on top of moments of feeling wretched about “myself” for the way I handled the argument. I didn’t know how to resolve it, especially in this cultural context. I was sitting, eating beans with my family, thinking “try to just watch. Try to just watch” (isn’t this hilarious?) when I was graced with a deep wave of stillness. And again, by grace, I was able to choose to give myself to that stillness. I said an attitude, stopped everything I was doing and sat with it. When I looked up I noticed a beautiful sky line. Gorgeous bird songs. The community of family and friends sharing a meal. Peace only. Jamm rekk. Only minutes later I had the chance to talk to the person I had fought with. I won’t go into details, but suffice it to say there was only love and peace there in that moment. Throughout the day, I noticed things being perfect and only then realized that earlier in the day I had been projecting an imperfection on them.  What a gift. So, … mmm… wild. I was so sure I needed people! My brain is still saying “hold on, are you sure you don’t?” And ya know, I could probably argue both sides of that. I think it’s another paradox, where the meaning gets twisted by the word “need.” AND by the idea that people are these separate isolated entities that can either “do it” by themselves or not. One thing I really liked this deMello book is this line: “You aren’t even a dancer! You’re being danced.” There is no individual dancing. There is only the dance. So yes, sometimes part of that dance is people supporting each other. And sometimes part of that is being perfectly okay alone. Thinking you need something that is currently NOT a part of the dance is just a denial of the truth.

To give a fair representation of my experience I could share how I sounded when I journaled at the depths of my freaking out before my “retreat”. But… I don’t even want to read that again. Why would I share darkness instead of light?  Oh I can be so cheesy J

For a more practical update, my work is coming along. I’m developing my action plan, and let me tell you, it’s going to be a busy two years. Now if only it would cool off a little bit, I’d go plant some trees…

P.S. feel free to call me out in comments if there’s something in here that seems clear to you and seems unclear to me. Reflect me! Be my mirror! If you feel some truth, share it.