First Weeks in Nianghe

 For the last week and a half I have been living in the village of Nianghe.  It has been challenging, frustrating, encouraging, and joyful.  I guess it would make the most sense to start at the beginning, so as such, I installed on a Thursday.  The whole ride out towards Nianghe I wasn't sure what to feel.  I guess you could say that so many thoughts were running through my head and I was experiencing so many contradictory emotions that they sort of canceled each other out, likes waves out of phase.  However, as the car got closer and closer my doubts started to dissipate, being replaced by excitement.  As we finally arrived at my village there was a large crowd clapping in beat and saying "Corps de la Paix!"  It was quite overwhelming.  The whole installation went really fast, and before I knew it I was watching the Peace Corps car drive off.

Now what?

My first day in village has actually been like most of the days since.  I went around and greeted people.  I talked to old people.  I drank ataaya (which is tea).  Yeah, it really hasn't been that eventful, so I guess I'll share a few anecdotes and a few pictures.

This is what the typical compound in my village looks like.  It's generally a few huts surrounded by a wood fence (I believe the Pular word is "hogo").

all those black spots on the ground are cow dung.  Seriously, it's everywhere

As for my hut, it's the typical village fare, it looks like this: (that's because this is a picture of my hut)

 That's Assane Diallo, my counterpart, in my hut.  He eats beans.

So you will notice the fence behind my house, that's my backyard!  Yeah, I have a backyard.  Also in my backyard is the latrine area, which is basically a hole I use for the bathroom and to shower.  The thing is, the fence isn't tall enough.  I can look out at the whole village, and that means they can see my head.  This was at first disconcerting, being able to see my whole village as I shower.  People even greet me while I'm showering.  They can only see my head of course, but still.  Yeah, it's still disconcerting.  Tall people problems I suppose

 this is my view when I'm taking a shower

As for the rest of the town, there aren't many landmarks except for the mosque.  Whereas during my volunteer visit the mosque was just a rock circle, they seemed to have built one since then.  It even has a tin roof!  Of course, this also means that they have a place for the call to prayers (they have a solar panel for electricity, they spared no expense).  This wouldn't be too bad, but the call to prayers start at around 5:00 AM, blasted on loudspeakers.  My hut seems to be the closest to the mosque.  I'm not sure if this was on purpose with some ulterior motives, but what it means is that I get the full prayer blast early in the morning.

It's so shiny!

Anyway, it's getting late and I need to leave back to village before the sun goes down, so I'll share one experience in village so far.  So I am basically the most popular person in village because my parents (thank you) sent me a soccer ball.  Being the only soccer ball in the village, the kids are always asking to play with it.  One day I was playing soccer with about 20 people when a man rode up on his bike.  He seemed upset and yelled some stuff in Pular.  Of course, I could not understand it, but it seemed to end the soccer game.  As I looked around in confusion someone came up to me and spoke to me in French.  All I really caught was "une vache est tombee".  He also used hand gestures getting the point across that the cow seemed to have fallen in a hole.  That couldn't be good, there were pot-holes everywhere, easy to sprain an ankle in.  Sprained ancles aren't good for livestock.  Everyone started walking over to where the man had come from, and they told me to follow them.  As I approached the hut I didn't see any cows anywhere, all I saw was the hut, the fence, and a well...

Everyone was gathered around the well.  Why would that be?  Peering down into the well, I saw the cow sitting there knee deep in water.  Well, that's a problem, how were they going to get the cow out of the well?  How had the cow gotten in the well?  Apparently it was an unobservant cow and had just fallen in.  Or, it could have been seeking a thrilling watery adventure.  As a fellow PCV Courtney said, if it wanted a watery adventure it could have headed over to the seasonal river.  The cow must have realized that the seasonal river hasn't filled up yet (but it's starting to).  Regardless of the bovine motives, the fact remained that there was a cow 40 feet down a well.  I don't know how, but they had tied a rope around the top of it's head, around the horns.  (A note about cows here, the males and females have horns, I don't know why).  Anyway, everyone lined up along the rope to play some tug-of-war against a gravity-bound cow.  I thought that they couldn't be serious, they'd pull the poor cow's head right off.  I could just imagine it lying limp being raised out of a well with a rope around its head.  Of course, I'm not a cow expert, so I went along with it.  With shouts of "Allez!" we pulled and pulled and pulled until the cow emerged from its watery prison.  First its head, then its body, then it was on the ground.  Everyone looked happy and the cow was still in one piece.  People were shaking hands and I turned around to congratulate the man behind me.  As we shook hands I heard shouts of "Dogu!"

The pular didn't really register as I was tired from pulling a cow out of a well.  Of course, Dogu is the imperative form of the verb "dogugol", which means "to run".  Looking behind me I saw men running away.  I also saw the cow with it's head lowered, preparing to charge.  The cow was visibly pissed.  Seriously, pulling a cow out of a well by the head does not make for a happy cow.  As people ran it mock charged, but never really committed.  We all got away and the cow went back to pasture.  Anyway, a typical day in village I guess, time will tell what the next few weeks have in store, Inshallah.

Ready to Install

I haven't written in a while, and a lot has happened since I last wrote.  Last Wednesday I took my language proficiency interview.  This is a pass/no pass test that measures your capacity in the local language you are learning.  If you pass you are sworn in as a volunteer and leave for your site, if not you stay in Thies for another week and then take it again.  Thankfully I passed my Pullo Fuuta test, meaning my path to volunteer-hood was set.  Last Friday we went to the Ambassador's house in Dakar and swore in as peace corps volunteers.  On Sunday we all drove to our separate sites, myself and 4 others going to Kedougou.  Since then I have been chillin at the regional house waiting for my installation, which is tomorrow.

When I last wrote a blog post I had just learned what site I would be going to when my pre-service training ended.  I had just learned I would be going to Nianghe, a small village of around 300 near Bandafassi in the region of Kedougou.  While at the time it seemed like an eternity away, the time has come and passed, and I am now a sworn-in Peace Corps Volunteer.  When I last wrote I was imagining what Kedougou would be like, and as I write this I sit in the regional house of that town.

Needless to say, a lot has happened over the past month.  Though I could write entire blog entries about all the things that have happened (and at the time I'd planned to), it seems more fitting in my current mindset to simply recount some of the more interesting experiences of the last month.

The first event that really stands out is our volunteer visit.  This is a time when every trainee takes a trip of around 5 days to their future sites.  This meant that I and the other four Kedougou volunteers would be traveling down to visit our sites.  However, since Kedougou is one of the furthest regions from Thies we had to leave at 6AM.  I'm not sure how well you know my morning habits, but it would be safe to say that I wouldn't be considered a morning person.  Thus groggily I arose at 5:45 less tired than I was excited to see where I would be living for two years.  The trip down took only 9 and a half hours, which meant we made great time.  Our peace corps driver Idrissa is quite the speed-demon.  As I drowsed in and out of sleep I saw the Senegalese countryside change from brown and sandy to slightly less brown and sandy.  An interesting fact about the road from Thies to Kedougou is that it goes straight through a national park (that is also a UNESCO world heritage site) between Tambacounda and Kedougou.  This is about 2 hours out of Kedougou proper.  The second we entered the park we saw warthogs and baboons and all other sorts of monkeys.  While this was still sinking in we drove over the verdant Gambia River.  It was then that I knew I was no longer in the desert.

As we got closer and closer to Kedougou where there was once brown shrublands and sand there was now green shrubland and trees.  The flat elevation rose to rolling hills.  And all at once we were at the end of the road, entering Kedougou and arriving at the regional house.

The storage center of the regional house

I have been at the regional house for the last few days and I thought it would be an interesting place to talk about.  The Kedougou regional house has one of the most unique feels of any place I've ever been to.  If I had to describe it, it would be a frat house meets a summer camp.  All the volunteers here are very welcoming and cool people.  So the regional house isn't really a house; it's a series of huts.  Here is the sleeping hut:

It's actually called the "Disco Hut"

Please note the Bassari style roof thatching, as opposed to the Pular style which is apparently inferior.  I guess I haven't provided a picture of the Pular style to compare it, but just imagine this hut with thatch that doesnt look quite as good.  We also have an extensive library:

Apparently there were some Hawaiians who dropped by

My actual site visit was amazing.  I'm not sure if you remember from my previous post, but in Senegal there is a tradition of having a joking relationship with people of a certain last name.  As a Diallo up to this point, I have a joking relationship with the Ba's.  I could say something like "ko honto woni be'i an?  Hari o wujji be" (I think this means "Where are my sheep?  You must have stolen them", of course my Pullo Fuuta isn't great so it could mean something else).  In my stage there are two other girls who are Ba's, and I've been making fun of them for most of PST.  Well, when I arrived in Nianghe I learned that of the 300 people there, half of them are Diallos and the other half are Bas.  Like, no joke.  It's the most hilarious thing.  They literally spend the whole day making fun of each other over odd things like sucking roots or stealing mangos.  In the spirit of this they decided to give me a new name.  This is done in a ceremony called a "denabo", or a baby naming ceremony.  Everything was going well until they had to actually chose a name for me.  Half of them wanted me to be a Diallo, the other half wanted me to be a Ba.  It got rather heated.  Understandably, being a Diallo up until this point I secretly wanted them to name me a Diallo, but I had no say in the matter.  After a while of uncertainty they called the village Imam over.  He then gave a lengthy speech and gave me the name Hammidy Ba.  That's right, I'm a Ba now.  It's like a little piece of me died.

An amusing note about the Denabo: it's supposed to be for babies.  There are specific prayers you say when performing a Denabo.  I was wondering why my volunteer host was trying not to crack up during the prayers, and I only learned after that it was because the whole time the Imam was calling me a baby.  Things like "may Allah bless this little baby, born here only weeks ago.  When he grows hair may he become big and strong".

Another interesting story from my visit to Kedougou:  We were walking through town to get some hamburgers (yes, the regional capital has just about anything you could need), when all of a sudden we saw a large procession going through.  It was obviously some sort of celebration.  As we walked on we saw men dressed up in grass shirts and wooden masks and carrying bamboo sticks walking with the procession.  My volunteer host says

 "oh shoot, these guys are gonna hit us".

  I was confused at this statement, as the bamboo armed men approached. 

"yeah, you gotta dodge these guys, those sticks really hurt"

I manage to get away from all of them, but one of them clearly caught eye of my volunteer host, something that wasn't hard to do since he's white... and we're in Africa.  He lifted up his bamboo bludgeon, pointing it at my host like Babe Ruth calling his next shot.  Though he dodge, the stick was too fast.  Anyway, I learned after than apparently these men are traditional parts of celebrations and they drive out evil spirits from people by whacking them with sticks.

The next eventful... event of my pre-service training was the Popenguine weekend.  POPENGUINE!!! It was fun, we swam, sat on rocks, look at my facebook photos.

Next was the counterpart workshop.  It was intimidating.

If my writing gets more brisk, or perchance more pedestrian, I apologize.  I'm getting tired of writing, but the show must go on I suppose. 

As the weeks flew by, the end of my CBT approached.  CBT was the time where I lived with a host family near Thies and they helped me learn the language.  It was an odd sensation.  For the last 2 months I had been living with this family and slowly getting to know them as my language improved; but just as I was getting to truly know them I would have to go.  It was a struggle at times, but my CBT family were always inviting, welcoming, just all in all good people:

looking sharp

I am going to miss my CBT family.  Also, I am going to miss the food.  It was seriously amazing.  As an example here is one of my favorite dishes.  It's rice and fish balls and carrots and stuff.  The fish balls are like meatballs, they really are delicious

mmm fish balls

So here I am now.  In the regional house in Kedougou.  Tomorrow morning I go to my site to begin my life there for 2 years.  It is exciting and terrifying.  I've heard that it's a formative experience standing in your village, watching the peace corps car drive away, and thinking "now I truly am on my own".