Baaba Maal

CNN is currently hosting Baaba Maal's newest single, and you should all check it out. I saw him play at 2:30 am in the tiny Senegalese village of Aram, which is literally in the middle of no-where, and it blew my mind. There was no power in this village, so they had to bring in generators and cobble together a stage for him and his dancers. It cost me 2,000CFA (about $5 CND) to see him in Aram, which is crazy as two weeks before he played to a sold out show in London where nose-bleed tickets were going for £50. He is a fantastic musician, and people here in the Fouta go crazy for his music. He sings in Pulaar, which is the dominate language here in the North, and the people take great pride in the fact that he sings about their history and traditions. Here is the link so you can experience it for yourself: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/05/15/baaba.maal/

Baaba Maal's the one with the sweet shades...

And the Skies Turned Red...

In addition to being 45C, it is also dust storm season. Today it's so bad that no one is going out if they can help it. See for yourself - fun times here in the desert!

This was taken at 10am this morning

What's outside your window?

This is what was outside mine last week, and yes, that is an antique rifle that requires gunpowder. Sharpe would be proud, as would Lawrence of Arabia.

Please notice the ram-rod...

Some quick numbers

237 - the number of days I've been in Senegal
45 - the temperature in my room right now (and this is just the start of the hot season!)
29 - the lowest temperature it's supposed to get down to tonight (there's a reason I wake up in
a pool of my own sweat)
4 - the number of times the power's gone out today (and counting)
60 - the average time (minutes) of the power outages
19 - the hour that the internet cuts out every night, without fail
6 - the number of times I've had to get up during writing this to answer the office door
3 - the number of times it's been kids who want to play/talk with me
2 - the number of times it's been work related (1 who wanted some info on the tournee I just
organized, 1 who is going to spend the night in the office)
1 - the number of times it was actually 2 goats fighting against the door. Go figure.
1930 - the hour the sun goes down and I'm left sitting in the dark because Seydou hasn't had the electrician fix my light.
7 - the number of nights I've been sitting in the dark
5 - the number of village portraits I'm supposed to write while sitting in the dark
3 - the number of showers I've had today so I don't smell too "ripe"
2 - the number of minutes I have to let the shower run for so I don't burn myself
62 - the number of days left until I leave the fouta
32 - the number of days I get to spend in Linguere/travelling before I go
3 - the number of episodes of Biggest Loser Sarah and I are going to watch at the Peace Corps house this weekend while eating brownies (thanks Mom and Dad!)
12 - the number of times in the past hour I've salivated at the thought of anything cold (ice cream, perrier, sam adams, ice, etc)
0 - the number of times I've regretted being here

It's a crazy life, but it's the life I chose...

I say tomato, you say tamaate

A while back, I headed out with my adopted family here to help them harvest their tomato crops. Given the poor quality of the soil here in Ndioum, all of the fields are located on the other side of the river (which is crossed in a rickety ferry), followed by a 30 minute horse cart ride to where the soil is richer/where an irrigation system has been installed connected to another river. Since most of the tomatoes harvested in these go to a nearby factory and get turned into tomato paste, this factory sets "collection" days, when it will send it's huge trucks across on the ferry to pick up people's crops. This means that anyone and everyone is out in their fields on these days, putting together as many crates as possible. Any tomatoes that don't make the factory's cut (they prefer ripe to over-ripe) are then sold at the market and on the side of the road, where 6 tomatoes (the most I can eat in one sitting) go for about 13 cents. I love tomato season.

THat day we were all up at the crack of dawn (very literally - it was still dark out when I headed over to their house), and after packing up the horse cart and picking up some of the neighbours, we were off to catch the ferry. Ndioum's ferry is one of the few mechanical ones in service, so it's extremely expensive to operate. This means that they have had to resort to a (relatively) fixed schedule, which results in a crazy gridlock of horses and donkey carts, intermixed with over enthusiastic children and tired adults.

Waiting for the ferry to load


Didn't quite fit on the first one...



Not gonna lie, it was a little cramped...

Once we got to the other side, it was off to the fields for us! After the 30 horse cart, we hopped of and headed into the fields. It seems like the entire town shares the irrigation system, so everyone's crops are connected in these giant fields. You have to balance along thin strips of sand/dirt until you make your way to your own little section of the field. I was definitely not very graceful at this! I should also note that the strict (for my region at least) "no showing your knees" policy for women does not apply when you're harvesting - it was quite entertaining to see all of my friends take of their pagnes (long skirts) to reveal soccer/basketball shorts!

Time to get cracking!

The trick to tomato harvesting is to not fall over into the mud (I wasn't so good at this part), and more importantly to try to gentley twist off all of the ripe (and even over-ripe) tomatoes. Since there were so many plants, we had to make sure that we didn't miss any tomatoes, so there were a lot of impressive acrobatic moves that took place as we twisted around the plants. Once your bucket was full, you then lugged it down to the clearing at the edge of the field, dumped it out on some old rice sacks, and then headed back to do it all over again.

Cartons being filled up in the fields

About 4 hours later, when we had harvested all of the tomatoes, it was time to sort them. As I said before, the factories prefer the ripe/over ripe ones, so we had to separate them out into the big black crates. The slightly less ripe ones went into the plastic buckets to sell and to eat at home. It was quite the time consuming process, and by the end of it we were filthy, exhausted, and extremely pleased with ourselves for getting it done so quickly (we were one of the first families to be finished - rather impressive I thought!). We then lugged the big crates to the side of the road where they would be picked up by the trucks later on in the day, loaded up the remaining tomatoes, and headed back to the ferry. After an hour's wait (the ferry was having some mechanical difficulties) it was back to the house, where we got to enjoy the fruits (pun-intended) of our labour. So delicious!

Sorting out the tomatoes

Just Keep Swimming, Just Keep Swimming

I know that I've lapsed lately in my blog writing, but it's been a rather crazy month. There's been a lot of lows lately mixed in with the highs, and it starts to creep up on you. The weather situation has not helped either, for as the Senegalese like to say, "the heat has arrived", with most days averaging around 42C in the shade. It feels like living in a convection oven - even the wind is burning hot. The frequency and duration of power outages have also increased, and we now spend most of our days without power (and our nights without internet, due to a bizarre missing DNS address between 19 and 23 h). I had never passed out before in my life because of heat, yet it happens on a daily basis here. It's truly that hot.

Work never ends here - I'm off again tomorrow to a meeting in Fanaye (about 4 hours away by public transport) regarding a mural painting project I'm working on with a Peace Corps Volunteer, where we hope to train Tostan participants in how to create permanent visualizations of the human rights lessons they're learning. Images are already an extremly important part of the Tostan program, so we are hopeful that this will serve as a reminder of those lessons, even after the classes are over. It's one of my "baby" projects that I've started to keep me sane, as well as to keep me from being stuck writing "portraits" (donor "fluff" pieces) on various villages. I love visiting villages to see the work that takes place on the ground, as I'm very aware now of the challanges that they face, and which successes are "real" versus the exagerated ones that they think I want to hear. I love being able to include these experiences in my reports, to be able provide indepth details that highlight the realities of the region. I'd rather write a constructive, factual, accurate, report any day then a emotion-laced, "Oprah" style piece where I work to tug on the heart strings of donors by talking about the brave struggles of the women and poor malnourished, unclothed children running around. That is a damagin, misleading over-simplification of the problem, and it glosses over far too many elements. Development is about successes AND failures: it's about learning from your mistakes, correcting what went wrong, and continiously working to improve those things that went right. There is good work that is done on the ground, and it should be embraced, warts and all.

Sorry - that was my exhausted and somewhat nonsensical rant for the evening. There's been a lot of things pent up in my lately, and I'm working to excise these frustrations in the hopes of making Tostan a better organization by the time I leave, at the very least in the Fouta anyways. It's hard to believe how quickly the time has gone, and to realize that I've got just a little over 3 months left before I head back home to law school. Scary. Anyways, I'm completely exhausted and sweating buckets, so I think I'm going to hit the sack. I'll update when I get back again, inch'allah...

Never Again...

I woke up this morning at 2:30am to a beetle half the size on my pinkie trying to crawl into my ear. Definitely the worst way to wake up ever - it even beats the time Emily woke me up when we were little to tell me that she was feeling sick, only to then be sick on me. I really hope I get a bed soon - I'm just glad it was a beetle and not a scorpion...

Tackling the Development "Boulder"

I know I haven't been updating as regularly as I should be lately, but it's been rather crazy (though to be fair, when has it not? I do live in rural, sub-saharan Senegal after all...). I've spent most of my time lately running around the region (an epic 6 hour trip to go the 250km to Ourossogui, several trips to Podor, and a couple more to Gamadji Sare), avoiding large groups of people during election time (though I did score an awesome campaign tshirt), organizing the office (a constant uphill struggle), entertaining the Belgians (a film crew came to survey for a documentary, as one of their exact quotes was "so you actually live out here?!?"), cooking with Cruger during his visit (I was finally given a hot plate, so we christened it by making some mean pasta dishes), typing up village portraits in french (I have 3.5 books filled with notes from my 3 week tournee), and struggling with a monster of a UNICEF report (due in a couple of days, despite the fact that we're still missing March's statistics). That's a lot of stuff to be juggling on top of the 40+ degree celcius heat and lack of water!

I'm happy to report that while I'm still slaving away at most of the other things (with the exception of the cooking as Cruger had to head back to Linguere), I have just finished my 28 page UNICEF report, entirely "en francais", complete with beautiful pictures from my tournee, a table of contents, a list of abbreviations, and an index with excel sheets. My anal-retentiveness paid off, as my boss said it was the most detailed and thorough report of the region's activities that he's ever seen. While that's at least one task down, why am I starting to feel like Sisyphus?

I Shouldn't Have Made All Those Dune References...

One of the most frightening things that can happen here, other than almost stepping on a scorpion the size of your middle finger, is turning on the tap and nothing coming out. Oddly enough this normally doesn't phase most Senegalese out here in the fouta, but it does scare the you-know-what out of me. I thought that I had left the lack of running water and bucket lugging behind me when I left the metropolis of Ourossogui (population 12,000) for quiet, reliable Ndioum (population 4,000 on a good day) but the water gods apparently had other plans for me. We are currently on day 4.5 of absolutely no water coming out of our taps. That's right, not even water in the middle of the night or the occasional trickle - there has been NOTHING for 4.5 days. It's brutal, and people are starting to smell rather ripe around here (myself included of course).

I helped Ndeye get water today - it took us close to an hour and almost killed me. We had to walk and walk until we reached a well that was still working (that's right - a bunch of them have dried up. WHY IS NO ONE WORRIED ABOUT THIS BUT ME?!?), launch a bucket down a 80 foot concrete shaft (it gave me intense vertigo) several times to fill up our plastic buckets, and then lug those back to the house. I tried to carry one on my head for a while (I singlehandily provided a large portion of Ndioum with its entertainment for the day), but I had to give up halfway as I thought my neck was going to crack under the pressure. Those things are unbelievably heavy! Ndeye, on the other hand, managed one on her head (no hands) and another in one hand - she is my new hero. I've never felt so much respect for someone before, as this is what she has to do coutless times a day during these droughts, and this is what women do on a daily basis out in the villages where there is no such things as running water. I stand in awe of them.

Strangely enough, this whole process has made me love Ndioum even more, as while life here is far from a walk in the park, it is normally a wonderful combination of modern conveniences (that's what I call electricity, running water, the occasional access to cold beverages that come from fridges, having my own room, etc) and rural realities (these include the power/water regularly going out, herds of goats and cattle everywhere imaginable, horse/donkey charettes as the main form of transport, everything stopping during the harvest season, etc). I am forever grateful that I'm stuck out here instead of Dakar, though I'll admit that on mefloquine days I do have very vivid dreams of enjoying cheesy pizzas and ice-cold Sam Adams, only to awake to ceebujeen (fish and rice) yet again for lunch, with room temperature water to wash it all down. Guess you can't have it all...

Here's the dust storm, now where are the Sandworms?

As part of my epic, 4 week tournee to all sorts of remote villages in the Fouta, I often was required to take whatever local transportation was available. This included dugout canoes, motorcycles, old bread delivery trucks with wooden benches in the back, horse and donkey carts, school buses, and finally having to perch on one of four 4x4's attached across the back of a pick-up truck with 15 other people. With 16 (I counted) goats beneath us, nibbling at our feet (they seemed to REALLY like the sunscreen around my ankles). For 1.5 hours. Across the desert. No roads. In a dust storm. Is it weird that I had a blast?

Pictures

Rabbits! I've been out on a tournee for the past week and about to head out again early Monday morning, so I haven't had much time to myself. I did get a chance to upload photos on my Picasa work account, so now you can all see some of the stuff I've been up to in the villages. Just click on "Work Photos" on the side bar or go directly to http://picasaweb.google.fr/volontairematam . I'll try to write more about my crazy adventures when I get back - they involve 55km on the back of a moto, crossing the Senegal river in a wooden dugout canoe with a horse swimming beside us, and dancing "like nobody's business", among other things. It's certainly quite the life here!


PS: I've also updated the Tanzania photos in the "personal photos" section - enjoy!

Random Dance Parties

So the day after I got back from WAIST (West African Invitational Softball Tournament) in Dakar (a 14 hour sept-place ride - very painful), a random dance party sprung up outside of the office. It was organized by the town and local women's group as a "welcome" for Tostan (even though the office has been here for 4 months now), to show their support for our work, and express their interest in creating a partnership. My host family was heavily involved in the event, with my host father speaking about the importance of education and literacy, and my 3 sisters either did makeup (Maman, who sat with me on the roof for the show), sang (Aby, who is seated second from the right in the photo), or coordinated the singing/dancing (Ndeye, who is in the gold outfit in the middle of the photo). It was a lot of fun, but very random how so many people could spring out of nowhere and then disappear so suddenly after the whole thing was over. Here's a taste of one of the musical numbers. It was really nice to feel like part of the community, but still a tad overwhelming with the chaos!

Jessica, Queen of the Desert

I'm sick with some kind of nasty cold/strep throat and teaching a 3 day computer seminar over my weekend/monday, so I'm afraid I haven't had much time to write or even do my laundry. That being said, here are some photos from a wedding I went to a couple weeks back. I was made to look like a drag queen - the photos really don't do justice to the make-up. It was a wonderful experience though, so if you are able to, it would be amazing if you could print some of these pictures off and send them to me in the next package out my way. Thanks so much guys, and hope you all are happy and cozy warm back at home!

The Animal Kingdom's Personal Paparazzo

As many of you know, I tend to get a little carried away when we go on vacation taking pictures of all the animals - the Canon Rebel XTI is just too tempting, and I always manage to fill up the entire 8GB memory card. I've tried to pare it down to the "best of the best" so to speak, which I've uploaded to my picasa site. Click the link to the side of the blog or go directly to http://picasaweb.google.com/jess.hamilton . Happy viewing!

3.5 Months Later...

Cruger and I, September 6th, 2008 in between Thies and Dakar


Cruger and I, December 22nd, 2008, in between Thies and Dakar


A lot dirtier, skinnier, and with longer, greasier hair, but still having an awesome time.

Of Mutant Mice and Rats....

Some of you may already be aware, but I was having quite the problem with mice out here in the Fouta. It started off with a harmless, rather cute little mouse in Ourossogui which rapidly grew into a raging, adolescent hulk of a rodent that ate my granola bars, chewed up my clothes, pooped everywhere, and ran around like a heffalump all night. Having already experienced a cockroach trapped under my sheets, I was not eager to repeat it with something furrier, so Jenna and I set about trying to rid ourselves of our unwanted room mate. Unfortunately, the Senegalese are rather apathetic towards mice, and the guard litterally laughed in my face when I told him we were trying to get rid of it. The only good part about our mouse (or "Sancho" as I liked to call him) was that he was very territorial and would never let another mouse enter his territory. He would actually conduct full-on, blood-sport death matches with other mice in the middle of the room - Jean Claude Van Damme would have been proud. When I left for Ndioum, I thought that it would be the end of my mouse problems, as I was moving even deeper into the desert. It was not the case, however, as Africa seems to have produced some of the scariest rodents in existance (just ask my mom and Cruger - in Zanzibar they mistook a rat for a large cat. That's not a happy mistake to make). My room was invaded by two mice this time, whom I refered to a Boris and Natasha - while they were very good at getting all of my food from inside sealed containers, they were exeptionally loud about the whole process. I had a couple of mouse traps sent over to me by the Zukotynskis, how ever Boris and Natasha perfected the art of stealing all the food without setting off the trap, which is the ultimate mouse caper. They were still running loose when I had to leave for Christmas, and I had visions of protein bars strewn all across the floor and my cloths ripped to shred. Imagine my surprise instead when I found these two camping out in the back of our compound:
They must have been born sometime while I was away. I call them Themistocles and Thermopylae - don't ask - I'm the only toubab living in Ndioum, so I'm a bit worried for my sanity as well. They have singlehandedly decimated the mouse and rat population of the office, so I try to sneak them left over fish when I can. They're rather feral - they run away at the sight of people, but I suppose they are the best pet I could have hoped for here in Ndioum. Next up is convincing Seydou (my boss) that we need a dog as we don't have a guard...I'll let you know how that one goes.

I saw Santa....in Dakar?!?

One of the first things that Cruger and I did when we got to Dakar was go to the brand new Casino, a french chain of super-markets. A new one had opened up near to the hotel where we were staying, inside of what can only be described as a mini strip-mall, complete with a dry-cleaners, sports store, Diesel outlet, and coffee shop. It was completely surreal - we could have been back home, which is exactly what drew us to the place. While it's a terrible symbol of consumerism and the divide that seperates the average Senegalese from the middle-class/wealthy Senegalese and ex-pats, it's something that Senegal needs in a strange way. It's an escape for people, a safe haven and an example of why multi-nationals should invest in the country '- it's where they can go to get away from the crowded streets, the talibes (young boys who beg in order to theoretically" learn humility and the Koran), and garbage/human waste pilled in the streets. If it is a reason for them to stay and invest in the country, so much the better. I'm not condoning it necessarily, but I certainly understand it (for the record, I live on less than $2 a day out here, and the Casino literally blew my mind). The best part about the whole experience, however, was the fact that they even had a Santa at the entrance to the mall. A skinny, slightly sullen, black Santa with a fake beard and white rain boots. It was a wonderful reminder that despite all the glitz, unessessary packaging, fois gras (?!?), and well-lit, sterile aisles, we were still in Senegal. I think our enthusiasm to have our picture taken with him pretty much made his day too.



PS - Cruger did cut his hair about a week after this photo was taken, just in case you were wondering...

The WORLD-wide web in Ndioum

Internet just came to Ndioum today, which is a HUGE deal. I was talking with my neighbor last night, and even though she is just about to finish up high school (she's 18), comes from a well off family (her father's the principal of the local school and they own 5 horses), and is very articulate and well read, she's never been on the internet before. It's funny the things that we take for granted back home - it's been a wonderfully purging experience not having the internet, but it also made me realize how much we depend on it to stay connected not only to our loved ones but also to the events that are happening in the world around us. Living here, the only source of news is either gossip or the journal on RTS1, and extremely edited, regulated government station. News of the world has been which foreign dignitary the president of Senegal shook hands with, a short bit on Obama's African ties, and then occassionally a 1 minute peice on Gaza, if we're lucky. I couldn't imagine being that shut off from what's going on around me for more than a couple of months - it's been one of the hardest part of living here, even though I knew that the lack of connection was temporary (though temporary is a highly relative term). I'm going to start to take my laptop over to her place whenever I visit - hopefully that will give her a taste of what's out there. Plus we'll get a chance to download the latest Beyonce and Akon songs so she can impress all of her friends - she'll definitely be the coolest kid in the schoolyard.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

We've got a quick layover in Dakar before I head back to Ndioum and Cruger heads back to Linguere, so we wanted to wish everyone a merry Christmas and happy New Year. We had an amazing time on Safari in Tanzania with my family, and it was wonderful to be able to spend some of the holidays with them. We saw over a dozen lions, half a dozen cheetas, two leopards, three rhinos, and innumerable giaraffes, zebras, water buffalo, etc. It was spectacular. I'll upload photos when ever I have internet next, which I'm hoping will be sometime this month (though you never know - it's hard to predict out in the desert!). I'm getting a new mail address soon, so I'll make sure to update that ASAP. Happy holidays to everyone again, and big hugs from Senegal!

Somewhere in the Desert

So I've moved to Ndioum, which is 200km to the Northeast of Ourossogui. While I don't have the internet, I do at least have running water (no more bucket baths!) and my own bedroom, which is pretty exciting. After cranking out some UNICEF reports and getting the office set up, I'm currently in the town of Medina, which is a 6km horsecart ride away from Aram (where my boss in Ndioum is from), where I'm spending Tabaski, followed by a concert by Baaba Maal (a very popular Senegalese singer). There's no power or running water in Aram, but I'm staying in Sarah, the village's Peace Corps volunteer's, hut, and we've been having a blast. I'm the first visitor she's had (she arrived at the same time as Cruger), so we've been going all out. It's going to be an interesting 9 days in the village, but I'm hoping that some Pulaar will start to stick, and it will be quite the adventure for Tabaski. I may or may not have access to the internet until after Christmas (when we will be getting it in the office, inch'allah) so in the meantime if you need/want to get a hold of me give me a shout on the cell phone (+221771409072) or give cruger a shout at cadnnfl@mta.ca and he'll try to pass along the message. Happy holidays to everyone back home!

PS; I almost got run over by a camel in the market today. A camel. How cool is that?!?