Erin’s Sojourn in Senegal

Sunday, June 28th, will mark my 4th month in Senegal. Much has happened in these past two weeks, and like most things I have experienced so far in this country, the events have been bittersweet. I’ll start with the lightest subject: work.

Now that the rainy season has begun, it is time to start preparing for Malaria, which hits people hardest August through October. This past week, I helped out with the National Bednet Distribution, sponsored by USAID, which provides mosquito nets to every child who is between 6 months and 5 years old. In Thilogne, this was successful, and everyone who was eligible for a net received one. To do my part in trying to prevent Malaria, I did Neem lotion demonstrations once a week this month, and I will continue to do them when I return from IST in August. The goal is that people will actually make the lotion for themselves and for their family after learning how to make it.

Last weekend, I attended my first Senegalese wedding. The bride was the 17-year-old sister of a girl I know from Thilogne. The wedding was different from American weddings in that the groom and men barely played any part in the ceremony, and it was almost exclusively about the bride and women. When we arrived in the village, we made our way to the bride who was getting her make-up done in a room with all her friends watching. After her hair and face were done, she had her picture taken in a bedroom alone, then with all her girl friends.

All the women then processed to the groom, and the bride and groom sat on a mat with all the guests encircling them. The marabout wed them and the bride went off somewhere while the guests ate rice and goat meat. Then, after a couple hours, all the young girls went to bathe and change outfits and redo their make-up. We then watched the bride get her hair and make-up done for the second time, and we took more pictures as the sun set. I left at 8 PM, right before the all-night dance party.

Just yesterday, Marisa’s host sister gave birth to twins. There are tough women everywhere, but I think African women take home the prize for the toughest. This woman, Penda, is 25 years old, and was giving birth for the third time. Marisa and the midwife helped her deliver the first baby in the village. When the second baby would not come out, Penda walked to a horse charette with a clamp still on the umbilical cord and rode 45 minutes on the bumpy charette to the nearest health post. Once there, she was told that she would need to go to the hospital in Ourossogui to get help. She rode in an ambulance for 30 minutes to get to the hospital, where she gave birth to the second child. There were not enough incubators for both premature babies, so the second one died. Marisa and I went to visit her in the hospital and the first thing she said was “please, sit down. How are you?” Her husband is in Dakar and said he will return in two months for Ramadan.

Congratulations to all the kids who have completd another year of school! Because school is out and Summer vacation has begun, I wanted to write a special post about the kids here in Thilogne! In Pulaar, the word for kids is Sukaabe (soo-KA- bay).  Kids have a lot more freedom than kids in America for a few reasons, and they also have more domestic responsibilities.  For example, the 6 year old girl in my compound does a lot of the cooking for her mother and younger brothers.

Kids walk to school by themselves, buy groceries for their parents, and they often roam around unsupervised. One reason for this is that we live in a village (albeit a large one) in which everyone knows each other, and to a certain extent there is the practice of communal parenting. The adults will watch out for all the kids and they will also discipline a kid who is not their own, if they see fit. Furthermore, there are not many cars that go through the village, so the only things one really needs to watch out for are the charettes, which are usually going slowly enough for people to move out of the way.

The thing I lik most about the kids here is how happy they are playing with the simplest things.  They don’t have Playstation or Wii or even board games or dolls or sports equipment.  It’s really cute to see what they come up with.  Here are a few things I have seen on a regular basis around the village:

kids attach a pole to a can push it around,

they dig a small hole in the ground and try to throw rocks into it,

they play a game similar to field hockey, except they use their flip-flops to hit a tennis ball and score a goal;

and a game of marbles is by far the village favorite.

If you are interested in donating school supplies to these kids, check out “School Supplies for Sukaabe” on the right.  Hope you all have a great summer!

It’s taken me a while update this because every time I came to Ourossogui to use the internet the power was out. Yesterday, we had our first rains of the season! It was really exciting and everyone living in our house stood by the windows and watched the downpour. Now it is hot AND humid and the mosquitoes are out.

The last week in May, in order to escape the 120 degree temperatures and to check out the Jazz Festival, the volunteers from the North of Senegal, as well as a number of PCVs from Mauritania, took a trip to the beautiful and cool St. Louis - that’s in Senegal, not to be confused with the one in Missouri. The city is great because it has both a river and an ocean, it is full of energy, not packed with tourists, and is inexpensive - I’d say it’s a cross between Brooklyn, Long Beach, and Venice, and about half the price of all three. Unfortunately, we didn’t listen to much jazz because nobody in St. Louis seemed to know when exactly the festival started and where it was. Nonetheless, I had a lot fun exploring art galleries, the beach, and restaurants.

Before St. Louis, I was a guest on the Thilogne radio show. Pierre, a volunteer from France volunteering for ADOS (a French NGO), comes to Thilogne once a month to get a copy of the Pulaar radio show that he sends back to the Ardèche region of France, where there is a decent-sized Pulaar community. We were both invited to be on the special show, which was dedicated to Pulaar music on this particular day. I listen to this radio show every night at 5:00 like the rest of Thilogne, and it’s the worst radio program I’ve ever heard. The hour consists of people from the city calling in and saying ‘hello’ to their family and friends. However, the show Pierre and I were on was actually semi-informative and interesting. Trying to speak Pulaar as much as possible, I greeted callers and explained what the Peace Corps is about.  I had a lot of fun with it, and since then, three other PCVs and I have started doing health-related skits for the radio show in Matam twice a month. To see more pictures of St. Louis and life in Thilogne click the link on the right.

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