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.
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