Village Life

The past 5 days have been an emotional rollercoaster.  Last Friday we packed up enough stuff to last five days and left the training center for our villages. The Peace Corps bus pulled up in front of each of our houses and one by one were led away by swarms of children. My host family is wonderful. They’ve never had a volunteer before but you’d never guess that. As soon as they saw me they started yelling my Senegalese name- Mame Gueye Cisse. Bintabay is my mother and Masul Cisse is my father. They both don’t hesitate to make sure I have everything I need to be comfortable. Although I don’t understand most of what they say, they’re patient and seem to understand how hard it is to learn a new language. Maguette is 18. If I don’t catch something important in Wolof he fills me in in French. Mame Gueye is my namesake and little sister. She goes on 10 minute runs with me since I’m not allowed to go by myself. She also does my hair, shows me how to do chores, and walks me to school. Keur Madaro is our village. There’s only 2,500 people. There’s a little market by the main road. People sell veggies, fish, and watermelon. A couple boutiques have cookies and pop. Other than that food selections are limited. I never thought it’d be so hard to find fruits and vegetables. Every meal is oily rice and beans with fish. It gets old real fast.

Even though our stage has only been in Senegal for two weeks it seems like forever (not in a bad way). Home in America is just a completely different world. I have to keep reminding myself that I’ve only been here for two weeks so obviously I can’t communicate well yet. I just want to be able to express myself so badly. Sometimes I feel like I can handle this. Other times I get overwhelmed and break down in the privacy of my room. It’s ok. Things will get easier!

For those of you curious about the toilet paper situation, the latrines here have kettles. You pour water into your hand and flick it up at yourself to get things clean. I’m still trying to master the technique. There’s also no trash collection in our town- people just throw things on the ground. It’s the same way in the house, except at the end of the day dirt courtyards are swept clean and any trash fed to the goats. Casey, Leigh, and Kristen, my fellow PCTs, and I, spend our days building our practice garden and under the mango tree practicing Wolof with our instructor.  We made 3 vegetable beds, a compost pile, and a pepiniere behind the elementary school. It was a ton of work double-digging all the beds and finding enough charcoal, manure, and wood ash in the village to amend the soil (actually sand). Next time we go back and it should be easier because we’ll just be planting. All the hard labor is over. Two more days at the training center then back to the village for two weeks so if you want a quick reply to an email send it soon!!