Please notice the ram-rod...Thursday, April 30, 2009
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...
Please notice the ram-rod...
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
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...
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.
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
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 tomatoesFriday, April 24, 2009
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...
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...
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
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...
Monday, March 30, 2009
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'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...
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...
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