Update from Pulaarville

The last few weeks in Senegal have been a roller coaster of travel, some work, and a lot of emotion. Since I’ve stated in my first entry that this blog is going to be very light on the emotional side of things, I’ll continue the trend by focusing primarily on the work and travel aspects in order to catch you all up to speed.

Work—My job as a Sustainable Agricultural Volunteer has a primary focus in assisting rural Senegalese men and women increase crop yields through the introduction of new seed varieties and the reinforcement of positive, sustainable, planting, maintaining, and harvesting methods. The five main field crops PC extends and works with in Senegal are rice, corn, millet, sorghum, and beans. From a work perspective, however, there is little for me to do at this time with the five main crops because they won’t be planted until the rainy season (approximately 7 months from now). Instead, in order to keep busy and keep sane I’ve been trying to maintain secondary projects I inherited from the Volunteer before me (beekeeping, fruit tree maintenance, and winter season gardening to have more disposable income, just to name a few), as well as try and introduce new vegetables to winter season gardens and improved poultry raising practices.

About two weeks ago I ran up to Dakar in order to purchase seed potatoes for my winter season garden demo plot---1,300 potatoes later I came back to Kolda with the ambition of making potatoes a potential sixth mono-crop in the southern region of Senegal. Super ambitious--yes, potentially a catastrophic failure---absolutely. I sank my own money into the project because at this stage of things I am still a new Volunteer to my village and have only just begun the process of gaining their trust in terms of my agricultural knowledge and dedication to working for and in the village. I chose potatoes as my newfound obsession because for as long as I can remember my family back in VA has grown potatoes, and because if all goes well potatoes have the potential to be not only a huge money maker, but a relatively dependable added source of food and nutrition. If all goes well the potatoes will be in the ground (and off my hut floor) in the next week or so, and harvested around the time I come back from IST in Dakar.

Poultry raising thus far has been slow going, but my first model chicken coop should be finished within the next two days. In a couple weeks the first chickens will be relocated from within my family’s compound to the new roosts, and in theory begin a more balanced cycle of protein/money generation. I’m looking forward to the work not only because of potentially very visible results, but because I’m going to be working very closely with my youngest brother in the village. Not only is this brother one of the coolest Senegalese I’ve met in country, he is only thirteen but already driven to do well in school and eventually pursue his one passion in life---helping animals. That’s right, he’s still in middle school but wants to be a vet. No matter how the project works out in the long run its going to be a lot of fun to work with him because he’s one hell of a hard worker.

Travel—As mentioned before I’ve had to travel a lot recently, both by going up to and back from Dakar. For those of you who have mentioned possibly wanting to visit me during my service, this can be an extremely uncomfortable trip crammed into a sept place, but there are definitely ways to mitigate any and all of the negatives. Lastly, having made the trip from the south to Dakar and back I can unequivocally say that I will probably never venture north of Dakar throughout the remainder of my service. Sure there are some nice beaches and St. Louis to the far north, but I’m perfectly happy with the monkeys, vegetation, and rainfall south of the Gambia.

Emotions--Having really started to settle into my site these last few weeks I’ve had a lot more down time to reflect on family, friends, and home. Whereas “home” is now a more flexible entity, thoughts of family and friends are always with me. I miss you all tremendously, but the phone calls, emails, and letters keep me on the level, and stop me from every getting too high or too low. On this side of the Atlantic things continue to improve…my host family/village feels like family more and more every day. This in turn gives me more and more motivation to work my ass of throughout my service in order to potentially improve their quality of life, no matter how incrementally.

Love you and miss you all, post general questions here, or if you’re like some of my friends and have more off the wall questions---email davidpshames @ gmail.com

PC service actually starts.

Well everyone……long time no update. Two weeks ago I was installed into my village and officially began the “real Peace Corps experience.” PC admin wants all of us in the new stage to cool our heels for three months before starting any work-related projects, but those who know me well will understand that this is simply something I am unable to do. I spent the majority of the first week at site working with the corn harvest and clearing up my backyard of overgrowth, and then spent the majority of the second week working down by my village’s rice fields where I’ve started a second garden. The work is physically demanding only because of the heat in my opinion, but entirely satisfying because I can just as easily improve my Pulaar in a cornfield as I could sitting in my hut staring at a textbook.

My family situation in the village is very similar to my situation in Mbour. Once again I have a gigantic family, but this time with 7 brothers. Some of the brothers love to work, some of them hate it, and several are currently attending school in a much bigger village 6k away. My “father” is the chief of the village and is as far as I can tell relatively conservative for Pulaars in the Casamance. He and I typically eat lunch and dinner together, which is a lot of fun because it provides time to pepper him with questions my brothers typically wouldn’t know how to respond to.

My living situation is about as close to perfection as I could have possibly hoped for. The hut is on the smallish side, but I don’t have that much stuff with which to fill it anyway. Since this is the first place I’ve ever been able to call my own I’m especially biased but I really think that waking up and watching the fog rise over the huts and fields of my compound is one of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen in either Senegal or America.

……….and then there is the food in my village. I’m not going to waste your time or my time complaining about taste, texture, or ingredients. I will simply say that I have lost a little over 40 lbs now since arriving in Senegal, and that the food is plain but has lots of carbs for energy. I definitely had no idea what I was getting myself into when I was sitting in the DC airport, but it IS a West African country and the PC is here for a reason. End of story. Complaining about the food situation is counter intuitive to what I’m trying to do here. If I want to start eating more vegetables I’ll simply grow them.

And lastly, because I’m running out of time and random stuff to talk about, after the first week at site I was given a puppy by one of my host brothers. She is some sort of Senegalese mutt, but is extremely adorable and is definitely headed back to America at the end of my service. I originally thought about not Americanizing the puppy, but rejected the idea on the grounds that my service in the Peace Corps can still be entirely successful as long as I integrate into the community and have meaningful/sustainable projects. How I treat my dog, therefore, has absolutely no bearing on my effectiveness as a Volunteer. This dog is going to be clean, well trained, and is going to eat better than I do for the next two years.

I miss you all a ton. My phone number is on my facebook page if you ever have the urge to call (something I highly recommend doing from skype). I won’t update until I get back to Kolda in another three weeks so stay patient. If any of you have particular questions just post them in the comment section………..Until next time.