Thursday, April 7, 2011

Gardens, Gardens, and let me think.....Gardens!!!

Okay here goes an update. I will have hit the 8 month in country mark in 2 days and can't believe it. Time flies so fast, especially now that I've been so busy. The second week of January I started a women's garden in my village. Its been a both a blessing and a curse as is any project with about 20-25 women. The garden is about 20m x 30m and includes cucumbers, okra, lettuce, carrots, eggplant, tomatoes, cabbage, squash, a little hot pepper, and bitter tomato. The lettuce is already sold out and we've been selling okra and cucumbers for a few weeks now. Now if only the bugs and the weeds would go away, the garden would be perfect. Inshallah (God willing) the women will begin to use the natural pesticides I've been encouraging for months (free and are not bad for your health) and the bugs will trot off on their merry little way. Lets just say watering the garden Senegalese style is much more difficult than turning on a hose. The well is 22 meters deep making it quite a tedious chore to pull water. The buckets we use to carry water on our heads hold about 25 liters of water (approximately 6.6 gallons). Lets just say after about an hour and a half of carrying these buckets on your head (approx. 30-40 buckets per woman helping) the watering is complete. The hot dry season is beginning (i'm not sure it ever left as its always hot, hot, hot!!!) and with it means the ground sucks up water like a Muslim during Ramadan for break fast. (For those of you who don't understand this, during Ramadan, Muslims fast sunrise to sunset of all food and water for an entire month.)

Just as I did in college, I want to make sure I don't run out of things to do, so I caved to the pleas of a neighboring village 2km away and am helping them as well with a second women's garden. Lets just say by the time the hot seasons over, we might have something growing. The women in this village often don't show up after I make the 30-40 minute walk there to teach/help them. I gotta say it is hard for them though as they have 9 million kids, and sometimes they are on breakfast duty so they are cooking when i show up, and then theres a baptism, wedding, or funeral about every other day around here. Them not coming combined with them not understanding or listening to much of what I say is making gardening very difficult. Also, chicken managed to eat all but one small pepiniere of tomatoes and lettuce. The women decided to transplant and redo pepinieres in a new location. When the had the fence "ready" we dug and transplanted. The next day when I arrived goats had eaten everything we transplanted. So, at this time the garden amounts to about 20-30 plants and the women still have no idea what I am teaching them. Hopefully it improves with time.

If I thought I was going to have any chance of free time, it vanished when I started a 3rd garden. These women live in the same village as the second garden and are not involved in that garden because they refused to show up when they were called. Sound like a recipe for success to you???? But, one of the women were named after my dad's mother in village and so of course he sided with them and a 3rd garden was born. (The funny part is, my dad keeps saying I'm working too hard and I need to rest more. I wonder how resting and walking 2km to help with the gardens about 4 times a week adds up to resting???) These women at least are determined and they do show up and are learning more quickly it seems than either of the other two gardens. The only problem is that if they had their say, I would show up 2 times a day every day. (Sick or healthy, busy or not!!!) I'm curious how they would hold up in my position. An hour and a half of walking 4 times or so a week is not exactly something any Senegalese person would take up.

For those of you who may think I'm just off vacationing in Senegal, don't worry, I'm not running out of projects yet. I had a meeting with my village and am going to be starting trees for 3 live fences, 4 windbreaks, and trees for erosion control. I am also hoping to get a mango and cashew formation in my village inshallah. Oh and I can't forget about the latrine project I'm beginning or the business lessons I hope to have with the women in the village. If I get to bored, I've got a few health projects on the back burner as well.

Sorry if this comes out a little bitter or as a little bit whiny. I really am happy here and enjoy what I'm doing. Dealing with people in any culture has its pluses and minuses, frustrations and joys. Cultural differences, language troubles, and human nature itself tend to cause a hard situation to become a little bid harder. But as another wise Peace Corps volunteer advised me, we didn't come here as an easy way out. Being a Peace Corps volunteer is anything but easy, but it is a chance to develop and to grow and to change. Its an opportunity to see the world in a different light and expand your worldview. I've also heard a quote about Peace Corps being the worst job we'll ever love. And, when you are walking home frustrated because goats finished off your garden and see about 10 monkeys jump out of a tree and run off less than 1km from your site, your day gets a little better. Or when you are tired of people yelling at you and calling you toubab instead of greeting you and using your name, you might give them a little lecture that has your Senegalese friends rolling they are laughing so hard and you will undoubtably join in. (By lecture I mean I said, the word toubab is bad, my name is Yumma, and if you call me toubab I'll hit you till you die.) (P.S. Only in Senegal do they say I'll hit you till you die or I'll hit you till you poop a threat for constant use.) Or when you get so frustrated with the people not listening, you start yelling in Pulaar and saying your leaving to the result of the women laughing, saying you really do understand your language, and occasionally finally listening to the point you were making. Their are little blessings hid in everything.

Oh and I now have a new friend in village. His name is Sidibe and he's never mad at me, his only desire to increase my work load is to spend a little time with him, he listens to me complain, and he is learning both pulaar and english. I am his favorite person in the world, he chases off goats, licks my wounds, and loves me unconditionally. He also had four legs, a waggly tail, and an aversion to goats, donkeys, or any other four legged animal. He's an adorable little dog.

I'm thinking Gary Allan made a great point in his song "Songs about Rain." I accidently only put 102 songs on my mp3 player and that was one of them. So for the last two weeks, I was going crazy listening to the same songs over and over and over. When that song, "I Love A Rainy Night", and "Like The Rain" keep coming on and I know I won't see rain until the beginning of July its a little depressing. It hasn't rained in my village since I arrived in October.

Oh and good news!!! Med arrived at the Kaolack house today and so I will now be taking a whole pharmacies worth of drugs. I'm taking Erythromycin for my gazillion cuts that are all infected, Fasizyne for giardia, and Intetrix for amoebas. Any bacteria or parasites in my body are going to be screaming for mercy. After this I should be healthy as a horse. Although with the amount of tree sacks and baggage in general i'm taking back to site tomorrow, I will probably be dreaming of chiropractors.

Well thats all for now! Tomorrow I'm back off to the grindstone.

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Ko mi suka! Ko mi nayeejo!

Hello strangers. I am going to use my first blog in about 3 months to explain a little about my day to day life. In this explanation there will be very little description of my daily activities. So what, you may ask, am I to say. Every day (maybe this is exaggerating a little) I am asked why I am not married when in villages near me girls marry at age 15. Therefore I have passed the date by 7 years. My response is always "Ko mi suka" which translates to I am still a kid. I figure if I play soccer with the kids enough, join in the kids dance parties, and act anything but my age it will help. But no! These days, as a worn out Peace Corps volunteer my tune hasNchanged a little. My new excuse to getting out of things is "Ko mi nayeejo" or I am old. Why the change in opinion you may ask? I was pondering this very question as I walked the 2km walk to my 3rd garden for the 4th time in a week. Sorry if this comes out as a complaint but it seems to me to be more of a normality of life for those of us overseas deal with daily. Picture the human body. Start from the head and move down.

*Head- headache daily from trying and failing to effectively communicate a single point you were trying to make in the local language as well as the stresses of every day life.
*Nose- Allergies off and on due to the dust and sand everywhere!!!
*Neck-Lets just say carrying 30-40 10lbs buckets of water on your head in order to help water the womens garden twice a day is not a great friend to your spine.
*Elbows and wrists- If you are denied the joyful opportunity of carrying water on your head, you will be wielding a watering can for approximately 1 and 1/2 hours twice a day. A watering can doesn't seem that heavy but you might change your mind after watering for that long.
*Back-In addition to the water carrying, the bed you sleep on at night is a 5 inch foam mattress laid on a cement floor or a cot. Not very accomodating to a tired and weary body.
*Stomach-Lets just say us PCV's are known to have giardia here and amoebas there. I don't think my digestive system has been right for a solid two weeks since I've been here. This leads to the fun symptoms of bloating, stomach cramps, and oh so lovely diarrhea.
*Thighs-Well in the case of a giardia episode you may be squatting over a latrine hole many times a day. Lets just say for those of you unexperienced in squatting over a latrine hole, it only takes so long before your legs ache.
*Feet-Lets just say my feet happen to look like they went through a meat grinder most of the time. We all know my family is accident prone and now all of my village knows it as well. They report to me daily about new cuts or scrapes I have managed to acquire. I have more sores on my feet, ankles, and calves than I do toes on my feet. I do wear shoes but flip flops are not very accomodating to keeping out thorns, corn stalks, and every vicious article laying in my path. Oh and if they healed it would be a different story, but the tend to become infected and hold on for dear life. Maybe I will become the worlds leading doctor in foot infections when I finish my service. Added to this is the fact that I have a tendency to take a lengthy walk nearly every day. If I'm not seed collecting far out in the middle of nowhere, I am walking to the other village to work on the garden.

I don't know about you, but I think this might have a little to do with my newfounded opinion that I am no longer a kid, but that my age is nearer 80 now than 8. For those of you who do have more years than me and suffer from aches and pains, I apologize. It just amazes me that the things that would make many people call into school or work sick tend to be a fact of daily life. I am not asking you to feel sorry for me, it really isn't that bad. But if you send a package, bandaids, bandaids, and more bandaids would be a lifesend.