I'm baaaack

Hey. I got in today from demyst, which is ten days in a village with current volunteers so we have a better idea of what we are getting into in a few weeks. The village I stayed in is about 150 people with no running water or electricity. In the morning we biked 15 minutes to a neighboring village where two more trainees were staying for training.

I’m tired and reading a good book, so I’ll just post some random thoughts here as they come. I am not going to write about the food situation though, it is just too depressing.

1. Everyone who said they want to visit my village in Senegal might want to rethink that plan. I’m sure I would love to have you and enjoy showing off my place, but getting there was hell.  Don’t forget this because I WILL LIE later in an effort to get visitors.  On the other hand, if you know this going in and feel you are up for it don’t blame me.

We left Thies at 7 a.m. and didn’t get to my area until 10 p.m. The mode of transportation was a sept-place, the nicest way to go unless you want to rent a private car. The sept-place literally means that, 7 places for 7 people. It’s cramped (it wasn’t actually on my ride because the Peace Corps rented the entire car, but it was still uncomfortable) and the road is legendary. It is a main thoroughfare, but Dufferin, the bastard road of Sarasota County, receives more maintenance.  In fact, a good portion of the ride was off-road because it was smoother - I’m serious.

Broken down vehicles and cattle are an added delay. We clipped a calf on the way down which I thought was unnecessary. Also, I’ve never seen partially decomposed livestock. Did you know they split open and look hollow? The hides look like they are melting off the carcasses.

2. I was tired when I did get into the village and my first impression was breasts. I’m a little embarrassed to write that, but there wasn’t a whole lot to see when it got dark, and when the headlights panned the village the first people I saw were groups of women sitting topless on wooden platforms.

Bare breasts lost their shock value pretty quickly. (Not everyone is topless, during the day most aren’t.) There’s nothing sexual about the breasts here, nursing children just walk up to their moms and latch on when they are hungry. The children aren’t gentle either, and I winced a lot the first few days when I saw the way they attacked their mothers during feedings.

One day we took a half hour bike ride to a village with electricity and got some cold drinks. We were lounging around drinking them when an old woman walked up and started greeting us and shaking hands. When she turned to leave (mind you she already shook my hand), she sort of cupped my breast and squeezed as a last little “bye.” It was brief and I almost didn’t believe it happened until I looked up and saw the others gaping at me.

Another note on the women, some of them decorate their faces with black markings. They stain a wide area around the mouth and sometimes a vertical line between the eyebrows.  I imagine this is an old practice, and I don’t know what they used to use to make the stains, but nowadays they use melted tires.

3. I saw the biggest scorpion ever, and I'm including pictures I’ve seen in National Geographic. It stung someone else, not me, so I don’t feel the need to exaggerate it's size. It was the length of a dollar bill and I think it’s claw span was wider. I’ve always had a special fear of scorpions, since Mrs. Shultze brought one into my first-grade class. I remember she seemed especially terrified of the (now tiny) scorpion, even through the plastic box, and that fear transferred itself to me.

The scorpion in the village stung some guy who had just burned his entire face the day before (yeah, bad run of luck). It seemed like everyone turned out to see it; someone told us as they brought our dinner bowl and we all sprinted out to join the growing crowd. Two men teased it out into the circle of villagers so we could all admire it, before they all started whacking it toward a violent death.

4. Everyone I met was nice. Genuinely nice, and I have to say that was strange. The evening before we left everyone gathered around to hear us say goodbye. I thought it would be an in and out sort of thing, but after we thanked everyone the villagers started getting up one by one to make little farewell speeches of their own and thanked us for coming. I looked hard for sarcasm, but detected none. I feel like it should have been there; we are all poor communicators (I’m the worst, by the way) who pretty much sat in the middle of their village taking language classes all day, drinking the tea and eating the meals they prepared for us. All I did was help some of the schoolchildren plant a tree nursery, and believe me when I say I brought no special skill set to that particular project.

So the sarcasm should have been there! Except sarcasm supposedly doesn’t exist in the villages, so at the very least they should have just let us say thank you and walked off. But no, they thanked us too and then the village elder led a prayer for our safe return to Thies and a successful service in Senegal.

I hope some of this niceness rubs off on my while I’m here, I really do. It’s still pretty foreign, but when I move to my town I’ll have lots of time to absorb it and become a better person.

5. Lots of animals roaming around in the village. The villagers can hear a car coming for miles, but they sleep right through the chickens, donkeys (my God do they make disturbing noises, and they set each other off too - like a chain), lambs, etc… They are all entertaining during the day, but while I can sleep through traffic sounds I have trouble ignoring the roosters before dawn.

The cattle are all over the place, including bulls. Now, I’ve always had a healthy respect for bulls and feel they deserve their distance. Anyone who has read A Land Remembered will recall that scene when Zech‘s wife is impaled by the Texas Longhorn he bought. Great scene. I don’t recall her last words as she hung there dying, but it was a memorable and vivid death.

I don’t know my bulls, but these bulls sort of look like I imagine (smaller, slightly undernourished) Texas Longhorns to look, with huge horns and strange humps  (-- Update, I just looked them up and I was way off, humps aren't comparable.) I casually brought up the bulls in conversation and was told they are usually tied up because they sometimes get aggressive. Fair enough. But who tied them up to the community well?

6. One Sunday our group biked two hours to my new home and I am feeling pretty good about it. My priorities might be a little skewed here, but I can get cold coke in my village and that does wonders for my moral.

I met my host “dad,” a really energetic guy who made an impassioned welcome speech that lasted about five minutes when we met. Told you the people are nice.

My hut’s nice too! It’s huge by volunteer standards, and I don’t have to bend over to enter. I’ll write more about it later, I’m answering e-mails now. I miss you all.

Comments

[mom]

this is so informative. what a good idea a blog is.

i am glad there is electricity in your village. is there phone and computer service???

keep writing