So remember how I was hardcore complaining about eating rice all the time??? And how I was referring to my training site of 16k people as a “village?” Yes, well in hindsight those statements are ridiculous!
This past week we did our “volunteer visits” where we briefly saw our future sites and met our host families. The rest of the time we stayed with host volunteers. My village is 25k off the paved road meaning I can claim the hardcore status of living out in the bush. My hut is bigger than I expected and the well is right outside my door, which is such a relief. I would have bought a donkey to carry my water had my well been outside the compound. I might still use one to pull my water because the water table is 30m down!!! Maybe I’ll just have man arms when its all said and done. My family seems really cool. My dad is the village chief; he has two wives and doesn’t know how many kids. Can you imagine??? Its part of my job to find this out so this should be an interesting survey. Most villages of similar size to mine only have a health hut or health post but the French NGO, Kinkilibe, just built a really nice hospital in my village! And by hospital I mean a 2000 sqft building, but it has solar panels for electricity and an actual doctor. There’s also a Kinkilibe school in my village. I’m excited to swear-in and move to the village, but now that I realize how far it is from everything and how little Pulaar I speak at this point, I’m no longer counting down the days til swear-in. I’m enjoying every moment of time with these other 44 Americanos and the delicious food the training center is providing.
Oh, so about the food. I now see the progression and I’m glad they let us down slowly. When we first arrived here and were eating the training center food, we all thought it was pretty good but we would kill for pizza, salads and hamburgers. Then we moved to our training sites and started eating the real-deal Senegalese food with gluttonous amounts of rice and we couldn’t wait to come back to the center to eat their swanky food. Now that I just spent 4 days in a real village, eating nothing but pounded corn and millet with watery leaf sauce I’m so appreciative of everything else I just mentioned. Pounded corn literally tastes like saw dust. No lie. And there is rarely any meat or vegetables involved. Just saw dust and watery sauce. Mmmmm….
My host volunteer, Amanda, warned me that it would be hot in Tamba so I was aware but… actually I don’t have the vocab to explain it. Weird things start happening when its that hot. The first day that I was there during the heat of the day, I seriously spent the entire 4 hours laying on a mat in her back yard area, under a shade structure, carefully making sure that no part of my body was touching any other part of my body. I took a shower 3 times that day. Ha, shower; I still use that term so loosely. Bucket bath, I took a bucket bath three times that day. The second day wasn’t as bad. The sad thing is that it was only 105ish those days and eventually it will reach 120. I heard after a certain temperature it doesn’t much matter if it gets hotter because you can’t even tell.
What else? I forgot to make a list this time. One of the days I was with Amanda we rode 7k to the nearest health post so she could show me what it was like there. While we were there she sees a lady from her village that had a baby two days prior. We talk to the lady, blah, blah, blah. On our 7k bike trek back, 1k of it being off-road, the same lady who popped out a baby two days ago, passes us sitting on the back of her husband’s bicycle! She was straddling a 3-inch wide, metal luggage rack while holding the baby! I couldn’t get over it! Most women in the States don’t leave the hospital for 2 days after having a baby and this lady is off-roading it on a 3-inch saddle. Unbelievable! Being here is definitely desensitizing me. I feel like anything is possible here. If a man walked through the door wearing an actual horse’s head as a hat, you wouldn’t get a rise out of anyone here. Anything is possible. Earlier we passed a bus with no front to it. Just the driver sitting behind nothing, driving down the road, working his route. That being said, its difficult to tell people back home what’s going on because I no longer realize what’s interesting to others. Does that make sense??? I’d probably tell you about the man wearing the horse’s head if that were to happen but less crazy things don’t seem note worthy anymore when 6 months ago I’d be excited to blab all kinds of stuff. Hopefully that makes sense.
I have to give a quick shout out to the bestest friend a gal could ask for, my main man, Donnie Vann! He sent me the coolest care package ever!!! I'm telling you it included a 3lb bag of Haribos, people! Among many other great items! Love you to pieces, DV!
Ok well, I can’t think of anything else right now. I’ll start keeping the list again. Tomorrow we go back to our training towns for 5 days. We come back to the center for a counterpart workshop for a few days and then we go to the beach for the weekend. Each stage rents a beach house at the end of their PST and throws a “rager.” Should be interesting with all 45 of us in one gigantic house. At least we all get along…
Hope everyone is doing well and enjoying all kinds of American pleasures. xoxo
Being a good southern girl, you should know that ground corn is nothing more than the old southern staple "grits". Just boil, salt and pepper, then you should have a very good meal, to bad you don't have any shrimp to add to the meal.
ReplyDeleteDo you have the ability to find shrimps or shrimp like things? :-)
ReplyDelete