More on Arame Yvone

Here are some more great Arame Yvone moments:

She kept asking me if she could use my camera and my phone and I kept saying no, so she asked for less valuable things like my floss and toothbrush. Finally I said she could have a squirt of hand santitizer, which she was really excited about. Her response was: "Oh Emma, you are very tolerant!"

We went for a run, which is always a fun experience with Arame Yvone because she will continuously talk the whole time, usually about how strong we're gonna get because we're exercising. She also will often ask for a break, and then when we stop tell me that we can't stop we have to keep running. So then I make her stop to catch her breath, and then she gets mad at me and says "don't lie to me Emma, I know you want to run." One time we ran to the monument and climbed the stairs so we could see all of dakar. When I said it was time to go she took a deep breath and said "I couldn't possibly. How could I ever leave this view!"

My favorite moment was one morning at 7 am when I dragged myself out of bed and left my room to go to the bathroom. Arame Yvone was in the hallway. I was wearing PJs and had bed head and said bonjour to her in a really sleep voice, and she responded "Emma you are so pretty. When you sleep, you sleep profoundly." This was definitely not a true statement, particularly at that moment in time, but I appreciated the compliment none the less.

Back to St. Louis and Lampoul

Two weekends ago the environment class went on a field trip to St. Louis and Lampoul, but a lot of people not in the class, like me, tagged along. In St. Louis we visited a damn and learned about all of its environmental benefits and downsides.

The story of this plant is pretty cool. I forget most of the details, but I think the plant is causing a lot of problems for the environment, so this Senegalese women found out how to the use the plant to make fuel and is making a huge difference for the entire city while also making quite a profit.

We crossed the boarder and entered Mauritania! We were only there for about 5 minutes, but I'm still going to tell everyone I've been to Mauritania.

The we re-took the lovely off road adventure to the desert.

The other truck got stuck in the sand.

And they had this cute little dinner tent set up where they made us a really really good Yassa Poulet, which is one of my favorite dinners here. It is chicken with rice and this really good sauteed onion sauce.

And of course I rode a camel again :)

And then at night we made a camp fire and told riddles and jokes which was really fun.

The next day we woke up early for the sunset, but it was so foggy that we could barely even see the sun, let alone the sun set sky it usually lights up. We also went on a surprise 5 km hike through the desert to the beach. He told us it would be about 2 kilometers there and back, but that was not at all the case. It wouldn't have been too bad but my flip flop broke. It was fine for the deserty parts because you don't need shoes for sand anyway, but then the terrain turned to spiky plants and cactuses, like shown below, which was not fun. We came up with an inventive way to fix my shoe with a hair tie, but it was still hard to walk fast. When we reached a village, the professor literally bought the shoes off of a random woman in the village. I felt really bad at first, but the woman was very happy to sell her shoes and I realized we were probably paying way more for them than she bought them for anyways.

Given that the hike was so much longer than we thought, the beach was a perfect break to relax and cool down.

Shopping

HLM is the best place to go for buying fabric. My sister Therese is a really good tailor, so I have gotten plenty of clothes made here. Its also a good place to go for fo dem (henna). Someone offered to do our hand for free and I said no. Then another guy came up and did Emily's hand, and it was so good that we payed him to do our nails and feet too. Then the first guy came and was upset because he offered first, so Tomomi said he could do her nails.

The best place to buy anything other than Fabric, is the Ouakam Market that comes to my neighborhood every thursday. You can get really really cheap things there, like a nice pair of shoes for 6 dollars or a scarf for one dollar. Most of the stuff is used, but its even cheaper than good will so its pretty hard to resist. The only downside is its super crowded and people are constantly trying to get you to bargain for things you don't even want - though it's still better than the touristy markets.

Recent internship activities

I did two different Juggling workshops  at my internship. My supervisor is really cool because if you suggest a project she will always say yes and follow through and make it happen. So I told her I can juggle and i could teach the kids and so she scheduled me in for two different days. They both went really well, the kids did better than I expected. They didn't make it to three balls (we lost the third ball anyway when someone threw it on the roof) but I was just impressed they could do it with two balls. They got pretty board of it quickly though and moved onto playing soccer or their own random games. At one point in the first session half the kids randomly took off their pants. I looked at my supervisor and she just laughed. The weirdest part was when we still had an hour left in the session but had already finished all our activities, so my supervisor just said we could leave and the kids would play soccer until their parents showed up. This is something that would NEVER fly in the States. If someone came to pick up their kids form camp to find there was absolutely no supervision, there would be a big problem. Yet here we just casually left and no one seemed to have a problem with it.

One day I came into my internship as usual an my supervisor showed up two hours later (compared to the usual one). She said "sorry i'm late, I was dancing." she then took me next door to where there was a break dancing competition, which was really fun to watch.

Rural Visit

Unfortunately my camera card is having issues and I lost all my pictures from my rural visit, but it is an experience definitely worth describing. As part of our program everyone spends a week in a rural area in Senegal, either with a host family or with a peace corps volunteer, who also has a host family. Me and my friend Emily went to stay with a Health peace corps volunteer named Faith in Kaolack, the region highlighted below.

The first memorable experience started before the trip even began. Every single person who I told I was going to Kaolack responded by saying "oh it's really hot there." And when a Senegalise person thinks it's hot, it is hot, because they think 75 degrees is cold. They were correct, Kaolack is hot. At one point it got up to around 115 degrees. Without electricity there was no fans or fridge to freeze some ice (though if we were lucky someone would come from the city selling ice some days). So basically mid day, when temperatures were at their highest, we had to just sit in the hut fanning ourselves because we could not handle any physical activity, including walking anywhere. The one time of day it wasn't hot was about 6 am which I would purposefully wake up for just to enjoy the only moment in the whole week where I could be cold.

The adventures of Kaolack really began with our sept-place ride there. Out of Dakar and for the first few hours it was a smooth easy ride. Then at some point the roads just turned awful. There were pot holes about every 3 feet, so that cars couldn't drive straight but they actually would drive zig-zag, just weaving in and out of pot holes. It became just one big game of chicken because if two cars were going in opposite directions, there would only be one strip of the road where they could go through without hitting a pot hole, so they would just drive straight at each other until one car gave up and drove over the pot holes. Multiple times our driver decided it was quicker to off road it through the sand next to the street than to swerve back and froth across the street. This is why a journey that should have taken 4 hours took about 7. 

As bad as this sounds, it was worse going from the city of Kaolack to our actual village. The roads weren't any worse, but the driver decided the best strategy was to just drive straight over the pot holes as fast as possible, making it quite a bumpy ride.

When we finally arrived at our stop, we still had a 25 minute walk to get to the village. Our peace corps volunteer, faith, said we could either walk or take a Charette, as shown in the google image below:

Charettes pass through Dakar all the time but we're not aloud to take them, so we happily jumped at the opportunity to go to our village by Charette. This was the first experience we had with Faith speaking Wolof, which was really cool to hear because she was basically fluent after spending just one year in Senegal. The Charette driver was joking with her that we had to pay, so Faith said that they must not be friend then if they were trying to charge her. Then the other lady on the Charette said we didn't have to pay, so Faith joked that they were now best friends. I could pick up a few words in the conversation but it was pretty fast. While on the charette I successfuly said "can I take a photo" and understood the response "yes" or "waaw" as it is in wolof. '

Little did I know that would be one of the most sophisticated conversations of the entire trip. Here are some of the most common conversations I had with people:

Them: "You're sitting?" 

Me: "Yes, I'm sitting" 

Them: "That's good"

Them: "Where do you live?"

me: "I live in Dakar"

"Is it nice?"

"Yes, it's nice"

"That's good"

Them: "Is it hot?"

Me: "yes"

Them: "your braids are pretty. who did them?"

Me: "My sister's friend"

Them: "That's good. They are pretty"

Them: "Are you going home"

Me: "no"

(every time we walked anywhere in the village their first question was always if we were leaving already. Faith said this is probably because we were the longest staying guests she's ever had, so after the first day they just kept expecting that we would leave at any point. She also said that the villagers remember and ask frequently about every guest she's ever had, so they would probably be asking about us long after we left, even till the end of her service.)

As basic as these conversations were, the repetition of them actually did really help me improve my wolof. Mostly because the problem is not that I haven't learned the words they're saying, but that they say them too fast for me to process and then give a quick enough response. So the repetition basically just helped me automatically recognize certain phrases. 

I especially improved on greetings, because in the village you say hi to everyone. Whenever you are walking some where you have to say hi to people passing you or people you pass on the side of the road. Even if the people are sitting really far away from where you're walking, you have to shout hello to them or you are being really rude. And you don't just say hi, you have to fully greet them, meaning you say "Hi, how are you, how's your family, are you in peace, how's the day been, are you in good health, are you having fun, etc.?" And then you also have to respond to their string of questions, and at the end of the greeting you usually say "Alhamdililey" which means "thank god." 

I also got used to saying my name is Kumba Diop. Many peace corps volunteers don't go by their real name in the village (or just 'in village' as the peace corps people say) but their Senegalese name. It does make things simpler because it is easier to pronounce and remember a Senegalese name for our host families and all the other villagers. One day some random person at my internship gave me the Senegalese name of Kumba, which I liked so I decided to go with that. And my host family in Dakar has the last name of Diop. So for one week, I was Kumba Diop. I've now started telling people in Dakar that's my name too. They seem to appreciate it when we have Senegalese names which makes sense because it shows were integrating into the culture. Emily's Senegalese name is Aida, which also happens to be the name of a near by volunteer. So every time she said her name was Aida they would say "oh Aida Champ." She would say "no Aida Faye." And then they would respond "Oh, where's Aida champ" which we never really had an answer to. They tended to assume we knew all of the other peace corps volunteers, because they would always ask us where they were.

While we were there we got done fo dem (kind of like henna) and my friend got her hair braided. These were the times where we got practice wolof the most because the people doing our hair/henna would ask us questions. It sometimes got uncomfortable though. They would keep asking us why we don't speak as much wolof as Faith no matter how many times we explained that we'd only been here 2 months versus a year. Also one girl who spoke french critisized us for not drinking their water, saying we though they were "dirty." We tried to explain that we didn't think that its just the water made us sick, but she seemed to be set on the point which was very upsetting.

One highlight though was the food. Faith does not like couscous (which is for dinner every night in the village) so she makes her own dinner. She is a really good cook, so we enjoyed stir fry, spegetti with tomato sauce, fahitas, and breakfast for dinner (my favorite). The other great thing about dinner was that because there was no electricity and no lights, there were always tons of stars by the time we ate dinner, which was a great view. And there were barely any mosquitos! 

We helped Faith with several of her projects. One was painting a mural in the local elementary school. She is in the health sector, so she recently taught the kids at the school about health, particularly hygiene and the importance of washing your hands. So we took a charette to a city just bordering the Gambia to buy paint. We got some people in the village to help us paint a mural showing a person washing their hands with soap, and said "wash your hands" in both french and wolof. None of us were good painters so one of the guys in the village painted the picture, and he was super particular and perfectionist about the painting, which made it take a while but it looked really good in the end. 

The other project we helped with was the "girls club" that Faith just started. The first meeting was the friday we we were there, so she needed help making notebooks and planning. She got the idea of the club from some previous volunteers who had done similar things. Basically it is a once a week meeting for some girls in the village who had not gone to school, to teach them to read and write. Its also supposed to be more than just learning though, but a space for the girls to talk and hang out and share jokes and just generally have fun. The gender roles are very traditional in Senegal, particularly in villages. Elementary school is free and this village even has one, so there isn't even a cost for transportation, yet still an enormous amount of girls don't go to even elementary school. The reasons of course vary by family, but in many cases it's because they think the girls should stay at home to help their mom do housework. For some people its also a resistance/protest to colonialism. Secondary school isn't free, though it's only 10$ a year. Though this is a lot of money for most villagers, they will spend 10 times that on weddings, which just shoes where they're priorities are. Though all of this obviously goes against my morals, we also had a lot of discussions with our peace corps volunteer about the fact that as westerners we don't have the right to tell the villagers how to live. That is the biggest dilemma that peace corps volunteers face - it is hard to find the balance between challenging the villager's beliefs/telling them to give up their cultural practices yet still trying to guide them in the direction of gender equality and whatever other customs you personally believe are right. I personally think faith's choice of a girls club is the perfect balance. You are not telling their parents what to believe or do for their child and you are not asking them to pay for school, you are simply offering a small but hopefully effective alternative to full time schooling.

So, Faith invited 8 girls in the village who are approximately ages 16-19 (they don't keep track of birthdays in the village so their is no way of knowing exactly how old they are. one girl we talked to didn't even know what a birthday was, or a month for that matter) who have not received any schooling but are dedicated and hard workers. At the club they learn how to write and read and we also did some fun activities like drawing and making beignes (really good pastry things). the club will also become a space for the girls to talk about whatever they want, specifically topics that are normally not talked about much with their families. This way they can share stories and emotions towards their lack of education without being criticized by anyone. 

We also went to visit the village farm, which Faith had heard a bit about but never been to. The farm was really big and well run, there tons of tomato and herb plants growing everywhere. All of the villagers contribute to the farm and in tern get to come and pick their fair share of plants. Faith was extremely impressed with the farm. She had previously tried planting a garden in the village of a plant that can help children with malnutrition. The mothers in the village were at first very into it, but after a while just stopped watering it and said they didn't really have the time or energy to keep it up. Faith didn't want to be the only one taking care of the garden because she wanted it to be a sustainable project that lasted after she was done with her service. So now she thought if the garden was with all the other plants it wouldn't be too much extra work to water it. 

We also helped faith's mom teach an adult education class teaching some of the villagers how to read and write. There were many problems with this class. One, faiths mom barely knew how to write and read herself. Two, everyone showed up at least an hour late. Three, no one had brought notebooks or pens and most people didn't really pay attention. Faiths mom was really too sweet for the job, so luckily there was another woman who stepped up and lectured everyone on how they had to take the class seriously or they were never going to learn.

Overall, the I learned an enormous amount about the peace corps in just the week that I was there. The independence of the volunteer was something that shocked me, nothing she did was decided or regulated by the peace corps administration - she was completely on her own to come up with projects and apply for grands and follow through with them. The independence is really cool but intimidating. She also said that it took her until now to actually really start doing any effective projects. The first year of peace corps is more about learning the language, the culture, and getting to know your village and establishing a trust between you and the village. The second year is when stuff actually starts happening. I got this sense when Faith would talk about how productive we were on a day where we did one thing and then slept and read the rest of the afternoon. After this experience I think the peace corps is definitely something I could do eventually, but I am not quite ready to go from the overly stimulating college life to the isolated and tons-of-free-time life of peace corps.

Post braids poof

It took about 5 hours to take my braids out, but luckily I had some help from the kids :)

When they were finally out I had super crimped hair.

Papa Sene visit #2

I went to Papa's house again to visit. This time I brought my friend Emily and he got mad at me for only bringing one friend instead of a bunch. We ate a reallyyyyy good Yassa Poulet (one of my favorite dishes here) and he again gave me a dress and gave one to Emily.

This is Papa's nephew, or Samba's grandson wearing Emily's sunglasses. He also liked to steal the knife that we were using to cut fruit and run away with it. 

When we left his house we walked about 15 minutes to the bus stop and waited for the bus to come. As we were waiting we saw Papa's two nephews hiding behind a building. They had followed us all the way to the bus stop. When they were caught Papa wasn't even mad he just laughed and told them to go back home.

At one point Papa said we could lie down on a bed in the living room and take a nap (see right to rest post). We took the offer, and there was a Senegalese show called "Attaya" (tea) which was just four people sitting around a small pot of tea on a gaze (I don't know the word in english) talking about random things. Senegal TV in general is very strange. They have a lot of reality TV and a lot of ridiculously overly dramatic soap operas. 

The Right to Rest

There is this fabulous concept in Senegal called "the right to rest," which is exactly what it sounds like. Basically people believe rest/relaxation time/sleep is a necessity that everyone deserves. For example, one day I was at my internship and a yawned, so my supervisor said if I was too tired I we could stop for the day and finish next time (2 hours early). This is also why Senegalese people tend to take 2 to 3 hour lunch breaks, including big businesses such as supermarkets and post offices. Although this can be quite an inconvenience, I appreciate the concept as a whole enough to not care too much.

Teaching

Every friday me and my friend teach english for one hour at a local elementary school. I originally signed up to volunteer with a program that works with girls after school to encourage them to stay in school and value their education. But when the teacher who was going to place students in this volunteer site went to the school to suggest the program, the principle just said "we don't have a fourth grade teacher, can you fill in?" The school system clearly needs some work here if they are okay with having random American students with no qualifications come in and teach a class period.

The class I teach actually does have a teacher, who seems very caring and motivated to teach, though the other volunteers either don't have teachers in their class or don't have motivated ones. One thing that is not lacking, however, is the motivation of the students. After all that I hear I came into the volunteer service expecting to face an unruly class of wild children who won't listen and refuse to learn anything. Instead I was pleasantly surprised by how incredibly well behaved and excited all the kids were to learn english. They all payed attention, took notes when we told them too, raised their hands to answer questions (though timidly at first), and best of all were really really quick learners. 

A perfect example of this is one friday when we came in and could not find the teacher. The kids were all running around outside so we asked them where the teacher said, and they said they were on vacation and they were just here to play. So we said "oh okay so we don't teach class today" and they said "no you can teach us" and they all ran into the classroom and took a seat. Thought they were more restless than usual, the fact that they actually wanted to spend their vacation time learning english was incredible to me. In the states if I asked some random kid if they wanted to come to school and learn even though it was vacation maybe one in everyone 100 would actually say yes. 

Below is us playing their favorite game, memory. The first time we played I explained the game to them and then asked who wanted to go first. One person timidly raised his hand and walked up to the board to choose two cards. When he finished I turned around to see 40 students standing out of their chairs raising their hands to go next. I think once they understood that it was a game they all went crazy and wanted to volunteer.

 They all went crazy over wanting to take a picture with us. We're also kind of maybe the same height as the kids.

One day a few weeks ago I was walking down the street in Ouakam to go to the super market and I randomly heard a little girl call my name. Then I heard a bunch of kids calling my name and turned to see about ten kids on the other side of the road waving to me. I recognized some faces and realized they were all kids from my class that just happened to get out of school while I was walking by.

As wonderful as this teaching experience is, it has actually turned me off from wanting to be a teacher. Before this I had had many experiences in the classroom, but always as an assistant or a one on one tutor. Being the main teacher is an extremely stressful experience that takes an enormous amount of planning, endurance and improvisational skills. That being said I would not take back this experience one bit. I enjoy my classes with the kids very much, I just don't think I could do that multiple hours a day 5 days a week!