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| 7 AM start |
Book 1: A Theory of Relativity
(Previously titled Shades of Gray, until I realized a book with dissimilar content had already used my title. Wishing to avoid confusion, I yielded.)
Much to everyones joy, I'm sure, I'll try and limit this blog post to travel epiphanies and anecdotes. Reason #1: It was a LONG two week trip. (Hence, the name, the Chronicles of Legal and Semi-Legal activities; Book 1.) Admittedly, most of the activities implied in the title happened the second week, but that just means I'll leave you all in suspense.
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| Preparing for travel: the epitome of organized chaos |
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| By 7:30 AM we were gathered at Garage Pompiers to get a car to Tambacounda. |
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| 7-place to Tamba group: The Dream Team reunited |
The time has come for travel. And since the political situation pushed around our vacation dates, our rural stays and our spring break landed back-to-back. Last semester, I went to the island of Mar Lodj in the blog post titled Hyenas, Cobras, and New Friends. This semester, my friend Katie and I were packing off to a small village in the Kolda Region of Senegal. We would be living with a Peace Corps Volunteer (PVC) in a village called Goundaga, home to nearly 250 people. However, to get there, it required several stops along the way...
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Here's the plan:
Dakar --> Tambacounda (spend
the night); orange region above the Gambia
Tambacounda --> Kounkane; yellow
region south of the Gambia
Kounkane --> Goundaga
However, 7-place taxis had other plans
for us...
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| Roadside Repair Sesh #1: fixing the steering column in Kaolack |
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| Tubaabs are fascinating people |
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| Roadside Repair #2: 175 km from Tamba (not really sure what the problem was) |
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| Double-fisting the carbs! Sweet roll and chocolate cake!! |
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| Roadside Repair #3: 18 km from Tamba |
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| Pape, the PC Regional House mascot... yes, those are lines of catnip |
Once we finally got to Tamba, we waited
for the PCV posted there to show us to the regional house. Unfortunately, this
is the only picture I documented our stay with. For 1,000CFA/night/person ($2)
we could spend the night while en route to visit our own PCVs in the villages.
The house was like a dirtier version of a frat house. It is simultaneously used
as a crash-site for traveling volunteers, as well as their regional home where
they go to get out of the village once a month and have some fun. It's the kind
place where the doors/windows are always open, thus the dust is always settling
and lizards climbed around/over our packs-which rested by the front door. This
is also where we met Pape, the endlessly playful mascot. Since his hyper nature
was already our evenings entertainment, another PCV wondered what would happen
if we laid out lines of catnip. Unfortunately, with that experiment came the disappointing
realization that catnip has no effect whatsoever on cats under the age of 1
year...
The night in the PCV house is the first
example of my "shades of gray" travel epiphany. 1 year abroad is
generally considered a long time. It's generally seen with appreciation and the
result is an unforgettable immersion and mixing of two cultures. So I went into
my year abroad prepared for challenges of cultural reversal. And I found a lot of
what I was looking for. And now, in my last semester, after having seen 3
different groups of peers come and go, I confess that I feel old compared to
the new batch of students of Spring Semester. I've gotten used to being the
person some people go to for advice about Dakar living. Now, having
conversations with the PCVs in the regional house, I was facing volunteers who
were reaching their COS (Completion of Service). They had been in this country
twice as long as me, some three times as long (2-3 years). Besides that, they
had been living in villages for most of it. I live in the city, where it's hard
(but possible) to find a few nostalgic creature comforts from the US, while
they were in villages. They ate the local food no matter the season, mastered local
languages, and had a complete cultural reversal to a degree that I would find
astonishing the more the week progressed. So all experiences are shades of
gray. There are those which find the foreigner in a hut, eating bush meat and
local grains around a bowl. And there are those which find a foreigner learning
city mass transportation and city street smarts in a whole new culture. So even
though they labeled my experience as "a respectable amount of time,"
I know my experience was nothing as hard as theirs. And so the evening passed,
and for once I wasn't telling stories of Senegal, but listening to theirs. For
once, I was able to try and put myself in their shoes as they told of living in
the epitome of “cultural immersion.”
Just a side not here…let me tell you
that joining the Peace Corps does something to your sense of what is
"gross" or not. I sat through lots of descriptions of the latest
little diseases or rashes they had picked up. I heard more descriptions of armpit
hair and diarrhea than I care to repeat. Thank goodness that I worked in a vet
hospital in High School, and can therefore handle anything "gross,"
but when it started to turn into a detailed discussion of foot fungus, I felt
it was time to leave them to it.
That night we slept wherever there was
space, and the next morning we were up at 6:30 AM and on the road to
Kounkane.
A 4-hour 7-place ride later, we get
dropped off in Kounkane. Our PVC's name was Ally. She found two extra bikes for
us and we biked 7 km into the bush. But here's the thing, I forgot how hot it
gets when you're more than 10 km from the coast. It was now nearly 1 PM,
hitting the hottest part of the day at roughly 41-2 C. And not only did I
realize how heavy my own body was, but I was also propelling the weight of my
myself and my heavy rucksack through occasional troughs of sand. Katie and I
labored along after Ally. Who, being acclimated the climate, hardened after
18th months in the village, and unencumbered with a large backpack, barely even
broke a sweat. My journal entry for that moment reads: "Heat. Thirst.
Pain. How is Ally not even tired??"
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| Road town of Kounkane! Strapping my backpack to my back for the 11 km ride to Goundaga |
On our first afternoon, we went on a
walk around the village and visited her Master Farmer Project. She works with
the local farmer to implement new gardening methods and introduce other
food-plant species.
Unfortunately, a random bush fire wiped
out nearly half of the garden. All her hard work of the last 6 months was
gone-leaving her to wait until the next planting season to begin her project.
It was a sad story to hear about, the destruction of all her work. But it was
one of those things no one can control.
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| Ally's Master Farmer project |
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| My fellow pirate |
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| Master Farmer project, with the river in the distance |
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| Tree used to cross the river between the women's gardens |
Nearly everyday of our stay, we walked
to the river. All long the banks, with wells dug to about 7 feet, were the
women's gardens. Older women have large plots with huge plants and produce.
When women get married they get their own plot, but before then, they work on
their mother's plots. Okra, tomatoes, eggplant, and some squash could be seen.
As we walked between the rows of plants, the soft conversation of working women
mingled with the smell of wet earth and the sharp tangy scent of tomato leaves.
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| Dual tree examination |
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| The leaves fold up when you touch them!! |
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| Housing Tour: path to the bathroom (hole in ground) and shower (bucket/cup of sun-warmed water) |
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| Housing Tour: Back door of Ally's hut (about 10' across) |
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| Mud bath! Essence of hippo poo. Swim back from the island washed the mud off |
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One afternoon, the heat chased us to
the river. Topping 100 degrees does that to you. So we packed up some mangoes,
a can of Pringles, filled our water bottles, and headed off. Before the
relaxing swim could take place, however, you had to walk about 30 feet through knee-deep
mud. And once we were out there, why not swim to the island??
With two local village boys in tow, we
followed hippo tracks to where it sleeps at night. On our way back, Ally and I
slipped in the mud, and discovering its "fine quality," we decided to
smear it all over our bodies. I mean, exfoliation, right? Katie waited until
Ally and I had spread the mud on every part of ourselves that we could reach
before casually mentioning the correlation between hippo tracks and hippo poop.
After a moment’s pause, it took Ally and I only a few short seconds to convince
ourselves that-of course!-hippo poop has hither-to unknown curative
properties...
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| Katie thought I was crazy |
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| Kids getting us some mangoes. :) |
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| Mansang and my fiancée |
The patterns of our days went a little
like this...
7 AM- wake up when the rising sun
spiked me in the eyes.
8:30 AM- breakfast of oatmeal or bread
with water
9:30 AM- emerge from hut for various
morning activities (see the gardens, swim, etc)
1:30 PM- drag ourselves through the
heat back to the village in time for a short nap before lunch
2:30 PM- eat lunch
2:30-5:00 PM-
nap/journal/reading/talking time. Too hot to move.
5:00 PM- leave the hut for evening
activities. (Soccer games, walking along the river)
9:15 PM- dinner
10:30 PM-bed!!
It was during these cement-floor naps
that Ally and I had time for some great conversations. But also some not-so-great conversations. She told Katie and me about the high level of domestic
violence that took place in the village before she arrived. Husbands beating
wives/daughters, mothers beating their children, or any elder beating anyone
younger. She was uncomfortable with the state of the violence that she told
them she would leave the village (taking all of the PC resources and projects
with her) if they didn’t stop. The assistance of the PC has had a huge impact
on the village, so her threat was taken seriously. Now, the beatings take place
where she can’t see them, as she knows they are still occurring.
Her other struggle is with the
disparity between women and men. The expectations for a young woman are very
clear. They are “supposed to” study until the end of primary school (elementary
school), or until they are married. Marriage occurs between the ages of 12-20.
Most of the time the marriages are arranged between families with no regard to
the personal attachment of either bride or groom. Once marriage takes place,
the girls are expected to produce as many children as possible, all the while
working her garden and supporting any family that might be in need. In terms of
education, a girl who finishes middle school is unusual, and even that feat requires
her traveling to the road-town 7 km away every day. In terms of health, death
in childbirth is common. Just in the 5 days that Katie and I stayed in the
village, there were 3 funerals in the area for young women who had died in
childbirth. Husbands are unwilling to spend the money to send their wives to
bigger towns for healthcare. Some families don’t have the money, but for those who
do, births happen far too frequently to send mothers to hospitals (or even
health clinics) every time they are due.
But these disparities are not the fault
of the society, but of the system. Rural educational and health resources are
minimal in Senegal. Senegal has great statistics for education in terms of the
number of teachers and schools in rural areas. It’s true that a lot of
Senegalese villages have schools (at least, primary schools) with in walking
distances of villages. However, when it comes to resources or the quality of
the teachers, they are as bereft as ever. What use is a brand new schoolhouse
if there isn’t a qualified teacher to run classes?
And more often than not, it is NGOs
from "1st world" nations that swoop into these villages and build
schools/medical clinics/wells. Their cause is noble, and their aims are
admirable, but it breeds a culture of dependence in the villages they are
trying to help. The villages begin to assume that, of course, the “white”
people have nothing else to do than run around the country building things they
want. What do they need to do? Sit back and watch it all happen. They are not
empowered; they feel no sense of responsibility for that schoolhouse. But at
the same time, substandard teachers are still teaching, and unqualified health
personnel are still healing. So what has really improved in that community besides
a new cement building and a tick on that NGO’s checklist? I hate to bring up
the “it’s the system” rant again, but IT’S THE SYSTEM. Change the system and
you change the world. Educate the educators, and teach the healthcare workers.
Involve villagers in projects, empower them in change and they will change.
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| They loved my water bottle |
(As a side-note. The little boy on the
left is my husband, which my boyfriend, Max, will have to come to terms with.
The boys are deathly afraid of frogs- the big ones. And by the river, there
are a lot of them. So just to freak them out, I told them a story of my friends
and I in high school. During a bonfire one summer, we wondered what frog legs
taste like. So we ran down to the pond, caught and killed some frogs (humanely,
don’t worry), stole some tin-foil from a friend’s burrito, then stuck the legs
in the fire. I told the boys they tasted like chicken. Well, once their mouths
closed, the little boy on the left said, “if you were my wife, I would cook you
A LOT of frogs legs.” Who can deny true love like that?! So, we were married
with a high-5, and from that moment on he was too shy to get near me. Until I
left, and I got a hug.)
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| Slipperiest mud EVER. Waiting to cross the river |
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| Helping the ladies in. |
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| Ally's awesome Pulaar hat |
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| Ran into some boys on the other side of the river... who then requested a picture... |
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| Oh the violence... |
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| Soccer match |
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| The sunset boat ride back, bailing out the boat with each trip... |
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| Waiting for my turn in the boat. |
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| We spend an afternoon working on the world map mural. |
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| Babies!!! |
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| Swim spot. Where Ally and I amazed the boys by swimming across the river and creeping out some neighboring gardeners as we emerged from the water... |
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| We seem to have found a fishy. |
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| Some boys found an old canoe to play King-of-the-Ship with, some things are international. |
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| Our afternoon snack spot: the cashew-apple tree |
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Leaving
the village was complicated. Of course. We thanked our host family for opening
their homes to us, and set off down the track with our bikes and backpacks.
Since it was early in the morning, I was now able to appreciate the way the
early morning light fell across the grass, and how the trail would its way
around fields of mango trees and wild bush land.
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Throughout this particular week,
everything threaded together in my mind. A thousand tiny details linked
together, a thousand tiny pieces that fuse to form a whole. Whether it’s these
people in the village, with Mansang and his goofy tricks, the mothers dying in
childbirth, or the importance of local soccer matches. Or whether it’s the life
of a PCV, Ally’s daily rice and fish ration, or her never ending love of the
outdoors. Or whether it’s my life, the mixing between city and rural, between
American and Senegalese cultures. All these circles of norms intersect and
overlap to create an ever-changing sense of time. For although I have left the
village, their lives are, and always have been, just as real as when I was
there. And the PCVs lives move at a rate seemingly slower than normal, yet each
day brings them closer to the end of their service. All the tiny details of
this week, all the tiny memories that could easily fill these pages beyond capacity,
form a link and a whole memory that cannot be created again. And as I sat in
the 7-place, finally on the way to Tamba, I realized how lucky I am to play the
role of a lens. I am a lens that can travel over these different lives, and
then I move on. Which is a bizarre feeling, as I sit here writing this blog on
a bullet train crossing Italy, feeling how far away these experiences feel,
when I know that their lives are continuing just as I left them…. Which leaves me to see that Life is
nothing more than overlapping norms relative to each other. That's it. It's all relative.
