Erin’s Sojourn in Senegal

The past two weeks was spent in Thiès, at the Peace Corps Training Center, learning about gardening, tree planting, teaching in the village, grants, Pulaar, etc. - things to help us be more effective and competent volunteers. Below, you can see us at work during a session on how to make mango jam and Bissap Juice, in the case we want to work with a woman’s group and try to sell it. Right after the picture was taken of me, I was told I was not stirring the bissap well enough, and the trainer lady took over, lol.

Last Sunday I went to Keur Moussa, a monastery near Thiès that was founded in the early 60s. There was some nice artwork in the church and they sold really good goat cheese (I was told), jam, and not-so-good (in my opinion) bissap wine.

The whole second week of training I was sick, but I’m proud to say that it’s the first time I’ve been sick in-country. I had diarrhea for 6 days straight, and I couldn’t keep any food in my stomach for longer than an hour. I’m finally better, however, just in time for the 2-day health summit on the beach in Joal and English Camp at a lycée in Dakar - I’m really excited about the coming weeks. There are not too many extra pictures this time, but they’re there on the right.

For the 4th of July, the majority of the Senegal Peace Corps volunteers headed down to Kédougou to celebrate all things American. The weekend started with a 5K race and ended with my being exhausted, to the point where I actually enjoyed the 2-day crammed sept-place ride back to Thilogne.  Kédougou is where I had pictured I would be when when I was told I would be going to West Africa.  The area was beautiful and green with hills and plateaus, waterfalls, monkeys and warthogs - a lot of life in general compared to the desert, where I live.

On July 5th, a group of us biked 28k to the village, Dindefelo, where we hiked to a nice waterfall. We then biked 7K to a neighboring village to look for the Ségou falls, where we found a guide - a 10-year-old boy who almost got us lost on the way back but who was otherwise really good.  The hike was one of the funnest hikes I’ve ever done because we got to climb over a lot of rocks and hold on to vines and follow the river through a tropical forest to a falls which few tourists would ever be able to find.  We also explored some caves that hid many people because they were along the slave routes.  They hid the Bediks, fleeing the Jaxanke and the Pulaars, and at one point, the caves even hid the Pulaars who were running from Guinean colonialism.  We were lucky to have Daniel take us everywhere - he is the PCV in Dindefelo and consequently knows the area really well.

That night, as we were eating with Daniel’s host family and explaining the day’s activities and our plans for the morning, one of the brothers said, “hold on, let me get this straight:  you biked for two hours this morning, hiked to the Dindefellow falls, biked to Segui and to to another set of falls, and tomorrow you are going to hike to the top of the plateau before sunrise before biking back?

“Yeah..why?”

He laughed and said, “Only an American would do something like that.”

I thought it was a pretty accurate statement.  I can only think of Americans (and a few of my Canadian family members) doing something like that.  Now, I am back in Thies for in-service training (IST), which will last two weeks.  The pictures of the Kedougou explain things better than I can, so check them out (click on Kedougou under ‘photos’ on the right).