Update + Helping Senegal Connect 4 Style.

And. I’m. Back.

After an extended blog hiatus due in part to lots of travel and work in the village, but primarily because of extreme writers block……I have returned. In the following blog I’ll try to catch you all up on the random daily goings on of the village, my sister Catherine’s visit to Senegal, my work failures and successes while also interspersing the occasional anecdote to try and keep it all interesting. The following entry is less so one cohesive entry, but rather a series of shorter entries which do not necessarily follow one another in a particularly cohesive manner. Lastly, I am absolutely in love with Senegal. Well, okay, that is a huge exaggeration, but I am very happy here, and increasingly motivated by both ongoing and future projects in the village. It is my hope that such feelings are reflected throughout the following post.


1) My last blog entry left off with the construction of my demo garden and the eventual planting of my seed potatoes and assorted other vegetables. In retrospect my potato project was as much for my personal sanity as it was to benefit my village and those immediately surrounded it. I genuinely believed that potato extension could in effect double as both as cash crop as well as provide sorely needed vitamins particularly to the village’s youth population. While I still believe in the complete awesomeness of potatoes, my potatoes which initially had close to a 100 percent germination rate are now 100 percent dead. Partially this is due to the fact that I planted later than I wanted to and we experienced a couple weeks straight of 120+ degree heat (in the sun), and partially because when I left site for IST (In Service Training), the two younger guys I was working with accidently water shocked the plants by watering during the hottest part of the day instead of waiting until the afternoon.

Needless to say, when I got back to site after IST to discover my potato graveyard, I was feeling pretty down. When the project first began I had sworn to myself that if it was to end in complete and utter failure I would probably Early Terminate my service. Currently such thoughts could not be further from my mind. The potato project and demo site set up, when combined with several important external factors pertaining to the village’s shortage of cash from outright field crops, has caused the number of gardens in Saare Gagna to have jumped from 3 legitimate gardens (at the start of my service at site) to 8. People are starting to ask questions and seek answers both through myself and independently. The two young men I was working closely with throughout the potato project have successfully planted and maintained vegetable beds of carrots, onions, tomatoes, and eggplant. They now fully understand some of the inherent risks of gardening, but are quite adamant about how much they want to continue with such work.

As low as I was feeling upon first realizing the potatoes project was a “complete failure” I have never been as excited during my service in Senegal as the day both of these men approached me independently and asked if we could try again with potatoes this coming Fall. Not only will we give potatoes one more shot, we are going to do a much better job having gained a lot of useful experience from the first attempt. I feel like the potato project will always be a personal reminder of how the best intentioned development projects can fall flat, while also serving as a gauge of how much more mature I have become since my instillation in the village. There was a point when I was motivated to accomplish all sorts of new projects in the village at the expense of flexibility and catering to the actual wants of my villagers. As my language and patience have developed, however, I am now much more in tune with the expressed needs of the people with which I work with on a daily basis--which I believe in turn has made me a much better Volunteer.

Furthermore, in the past when I was still constantly nervous and unsure about my service in Senegal an event such as walking into the potato graveyard would have caused me to run for the hills (i.e. the USA), but now such setbacks only serve to make me grit my teeth, learn from my mistakes, and adapt accordingly. In summation—Senegal has been very good for me.

2) The often over quoted Robert Frost is probably best remembered for his famously penned stanzas about taking, “the road less traveled,” and how upon taking this literal and figurative road, “less traveled by,” it has, “made all the difference.” Well let me tell you……Robert Frost never traveled in Senegal. I’d go so far as to say that Frost never had the exhilarating, adrenaline pumping, stomach spasm inducing joy of suddenly finding himself on the wrong bush path, or been stuck several miles away from purified water, or being chased after by two angry Guinea Bissauans wielding machetes. No, I’m fairly certain he has never experienced any of these delights because if he had his poem would have been more along the lines of, “taking the road less traveled by is an amazingly thought provoking metaphor for person growth and attitudinal change, but this concept is entirely devoid of real life practicalities, especially when serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Senegal.” Yes, I realize this doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as the original verse, but it is oh so much more fitting.

Only a couple of weeks after installation I was biking back from the regional house to catch up on protein intake and catch up on emails when I found myself headed down a bush path towards Guinea Bissau. This misadventure had all started when my closest Volunteer neighbor Anna and I were discussing how I had absolutely no clue which bush path extending out from the city of Kolda was the appropriate path to take directly to my village. I determined that rather than taking a wild guess and possibly biking 8k to my site, I would ride with Anna to her site 10k away from the regional house, then ask villagers to show me a supposed 6k trail that eventually would intersect my village. Things were going well early into the trip up until the point Anna and I took a wrong branch of her trail and ended up getting lost. Out of water and with what I thought was a totally busted bike chain I ended up walking about half of what turned out to be a more circuitous 13k route to her village. In no way to I blame Anna or myself for this mix-up. It was early in our service, all the roads were still unfamiliar to us, and frankly the Casamance region of Senegal goes from looking like something out of Jurassic Park during the wet season to National Geographic Africa (sans lions) once the rainy season ends which can throw off anyone, Senegalese included.

Upon reaching Anna’s site we said our goodbyes and I (bike chain now back in place) set off to my own village. Things were going well for about the first 2k into the trip when I reached an actual crossroads of donkey/horse cart paths. I was actually so stunned and fatigued I stopped by bike at the intersection and had a 10 minute internal monologue/crisis as to which of my three choices I should take. Had the villager I spoke with a Kilometer back said take the right at the intersection? Take a left? The path straight ahead more comparatively less overgrown….did that mean it led back to the city of Kolda rather than occasional villagers traveling back and forth from our two Volunteer sites? Due largely in part to exhaustion, lack of water, and the fact it was starting to rain I opted for the rightmost path…….that’s right, the road less traveled by.

Unfortunately, however, after another 5k down this path I ran across a very startled illegal charcoal burner who after initially trying to whip his donkey cart away from me, realized I was white (and therefore no real threat), and informed me I was heading into Guinea Bissau. The correct path to my village had actually been the path MOST traveled. Damn you Robert Frost. I backtracked to the original crossroads, proceeded to get lost yet a third time later in the day, but eventually made it back to my village whereby I proceeded to sleep for the next 10 hours. Looking back to that day I can barely remember how scared, frustrated, and dehydrated I was, but none of this really matters. What matters is that I now am absolutely, positively, 110% certain of which bush path will take me into Guinea Bissau, and am therefore 110% sure which path I will never take again during my service here in Senegal.

3) As an extension of my previous story about getting lost and almost accidently heading into a country plagued by political upheaval and daily violence, here are another three quick comments about general travel in Senegal.

A- I don’t’ recommend talking on the phone while trying to bike a bush path. Bad things usually happen. While talking to my friend Kevin from back in the states I actually crashed three times during the course of the conversation, the last crash was particularly bad and had my friend completely confused as I laid there next to my bike mumbling curses in the general direction of my cell laying in the dirt near my head.

B- Never travel during the middle of the day to my village. Over a month ago (sorry I didn’t tell any of you about this until way after the fact), I was recently back from Tambacounda for a general Ag sector meeting when my host brother and counterpart called me to ask where I was. The phone conversation was somewhat garbled because of the connection but I thought he was asking me to come home to the village right away rather than wait until the day cooled off and biking was more manageable. Turns out he was actually warning me not to come back right away and was encouraging me to cool me heels for 3-4 hours before getting back. Whoops. Long story short, what ended up happening was just after the halfway point from the Kolda regional house to my village I heard shouts and loud sounds of movement from the woods to my left.

Luckily I was going down the path a lot faster than I usually do because right as I passed a very slight curve in the road two men with machetes came tearing out of the woods hell bent on stopping me (or maybe they just wanted to have a friendly chat). I started biking faster and they very quickly slowed down to a jog and then a walk. I couldn’t understand what they were shouting at me, but it really doesn’t matter. What is most important is that 1- I set a new land speed record to Saare Gagna via bike, and 2- The safety and security coordinator in PC Dakar is an amazing guy who followed up on my situation and found out that several Bissauans had been arrested shortly after my encounter for robbery and attempted robbery along the same trail. I know feel totally safe biking to my village, but in the future I will only do so during the early morning and late afternoon hours when foot and bike travel is relatively heavy and therefore safety is guaranteed.

C- And lastly, never freak out while traveling in taxis or sept places in Senegal. My sister Catherine visited Senegal a little over a month ago and turned out to be a complete trooper the entire time in country. I think she realized without having to be told that freaking out or becoming anxious about travel arrangements in this country serves little purpose other than to make yourself less happy. In Dakar after picking up a taxi from the sept place garage, we got the joy of experiencing the wheel of our taxi flying off from under the car while on the interstate. Had this been America I might have blinked, but because it is Senegal nobody in the car even flinched. Amanda, another Volunteer from Kolda actually calmly said, “I think our wheel just came off” right before the wheel actually rolled in front of the taxi and our axle sparking against the road brought us to an abrupt stop.

4) So my sister Catherine visited Senegal in early January. To this day I’m still not exactly sure how much she enjoyed the experience, but my villagers at least will never forget her. I could write all about how awesome she was for bringing all sorts of delicious food products from America or spending 5/6 days in my village, but instead I’m going to write about her lasting legacy……Connect 4. Yes, you read that correctly, My sister single-handedly brought the game of Connect 4 to the Casamance of Senegal, and although initially hesitant, everyone in my village is now intensely in love with this game. I’m seriously considering writing to Hasbro for a possible donation because after my sister and I explained that Connect 4 was a “thinking” game that was good for mental development, adults and children alike got on board quickly.

Now that physical labor has evaporated with the oncoming hot season, men and women constantly drift in and out of my compound and take turns playing the game from 10am to 3pm every day. Sometimes the games get heated and words are exchanged, but more often than not two men or women will be playing with a crowd of 5-10 others loudly groaning, hissing, or clapping depending on their particular opinion of a previous player’s move.

Originally I was considered some sort of Connect 4 oracle in my village because I simply did not lose, but increasingly this reputation is becoming harder and harder to maintain. Although I shudder what will happen when they eventually start to routinely kick my butt, I still consider the game to be one of the greatest things that I could have introduced to my village during my service. It helps them think strategically and therefore to plan one move, two moves, or ten moves ahead, while it also provides a captured audience. As much as the men of my village want to strangle me when I casually (but repeatedly) bring up the topic of how bad mono cropping nothing but peanuts are for the village’s economy, when they are absorbed into a marathon session of Connect 4, they can’t very well get up and walk away, can they? 

This blog is now going to come to an abrupt halt because I have been feeling under the weather and writers block has struck once again. But I promise in the very near future I’ll post another entry completely catching you up to the current. Topics will include In Service Training, attending the new group of Volunteers’ Pre Service Training, The Pilot Farmer project, my impending vacation to America, and thoughts of possibly staying in Senegal beyond the 27 month mark.

Love you all. Keep the messages coming!

Life in the village

The Story of David, His Friends, and Their Splendiferous Garden

The Story of David, His Friends, and Their Splendiferous Garden

Real names of anyone mentioned in this blog have been altered as I lacked the Pulaar to ask their respective permission.

I came into Kolda this morning with the intent of sending off a work related email to my boss in Dakar and then immediately biking back to my village when I realized my gmail inbox was semi cluttered with several requests to “stop being lame, and update your blog more regularly…you’re only 5ish miles away from a computer.” The following blog is therefore a tribute to the kind-hearted souls behind such malicious attacks. You remind me, and I will update. You forget, and I will forget. I recommend leaving such encouragement on the comment section of the blog itself, however.

Over the past 5 weeks or so my garden has morphed from a place of solitude and relaxing/mind-numbing physical labor to a two-a-day wrestling-match-fueled garden arms race. About three weeks ago I was plugging along in the garden, increasingly convinced that I wouldn’t have anything in the ground in time for the winter gardening season, and that even if I did somehow pull off the impossible, nobody in my village would give a damn if anything short of a magical money tree sprouted from the soil. I was staring at one clogged well, one dry well, villager apathy, an unfinished fence, and an increasingly annoying monkey situation. My compound’s horse had recently died (taking use of a plow out of the equation), my highly motivated counterpart was swamped with peanut harvesting, and my younger brother Cy was plugging away with his studies 6k away in order to pass his current level and attend the high school in Kolda next year. Both my counterpart Tom, and Cy had repeatedly expressed sympathy in my overall situation/garden project, but there was no viable answer to my woes in sight (cue violins). My garden had become my own worst enemy….a half-finished, ugly looking money pit of Senegalese development. I was humbled. Dead on my feet from perpetual stomach bugs and down a total of 67lbs from arrival in country, I was more than ready to throw in the towel….(cue “Eye of the Tiger”)

Fast forwarding to the present --I’m still in shock that after roughly 40 days from this lowest of lows, more than sixty villagers have stopped by to see the finished product (raised beds, seed beds, demo plots for new varieties, re-dug well, semi-finished water cistern), composting system, over 1,500 potatoes, green peppers, tomatoes, carrots, onions, bell peppers, eggplants, cabbage, lettuce plants in the ground, cow-proofed fence etc.

The following is the story of David, his two Senegalese friends, and their Splendiferous Garden. It is told in an overly dramatic fashion not only because I’ve had a sh*t- eating grin on my face the entire time I’ve been typing this up—not only because I’ve regained 7lbs in country (you read that correctly, GAINED)—not only because I’m floating on a sugar high of a liter of genuine Coca-Cola while listening to Eye of the Tiger on youtube repeat—not only because while biking in this morning I set what I consider to be an unprecedented land speed record from my village of S.G. to Kolda (31 minutes)….but mostly because I’m damn proud of my village and am relishing drawing out what I consider to be a sure sign that my village wants to continue working with the PC. This is a village that wants to continue having the sh*t developed out of it, and I’m stoked to be here and in a position to help in my own all-or-nothing, no-such-color-as grey-way.

The back story has already been listed above. For the reasons mentioned, and some more personal ones I have chosen to omit….the beginning of my story involves coming back from the garden one day totally exhausted, frustrated, bitter, and overall angry at the world. To escape from reality for a little while, I filled up a water bottle from my filter, purchased a pack of 75 cents cigarettes and climbed the village water tower. In the past I had used the water tower as my own personal tree house. Nobody in the village ever seems interested in climbing up there, so I’ve always been able to just sit alone and reflect against the background of my country music-loaded ipod. This particular day, while Johnny Cash was doing his thing with Rings of Fire, a soccer game developed on one of the fields near the tower. As the music transitioned into an even more depressing Eric Church single, I stubbed out my cigarette and climbed down the tower to get a closer look at the game. Somewhere between guitar rifts and stale tobacco fumes, I reached the conclusion that I was going to pawn my last remaining soccer ball in Senegal to the local soccer team in order to try and pay someone in my village the exorbitant fee associated with re-digging a dry well. This depressed me on multiple levels, not only because I knew the fee was outrageous only because of the color of my skin, but because I knew paying the fee myself would leave me dead broke.

And then…….drum roll……something miraculous happened.

Just as I reached the field, the team’s soccer ball performed some sort of spontaneous combustion. It literally seemed to blow up in the midst of a penalty kick. This act, accompanied by my presence on the field that day, represented a catalyst of bizarre and entirely fulfilling acts to come. First, the soccer team held a meeting right there on the field and determined they would rather help dig the well themselves in exchange for the new soccer ball (rather than pay my asking price). In my mental state at the time, I was 99 percent sure they were full of it, and headed back to my hut wondering if maybe, just maybe I was wrong.

Usually I hate being wrong. Hell, I almost always hate being wrong. But the next morning I was thrilled to be wrong. Almost 20 younger men in my village made the trek over to the garden, and after about 5 hours of brutal physical labor in the field, we all chipped in to re-dig the well another 2 meters. This might not seem like much work, but digging 2 meters down, a meter/meter and a half wide in already saturated clay is extremely difficult. The entire morning as we worked, I preached the word of gardens. They were a captive audience, wooed by the promise of not only the soccer ball sitting in my hut, but promises of more soccer balls to come if they didn’t give up. While we worked, I railed on the injustices of peanut harvesting in Senegal. I spoke the word of peanuts as pure evil, weakening the soil at the expense of very little cash profit and months of sore bodies. I talked of unhappy wives, mothers, and children who depended on the mens’ peanut fields as a once a year influx of cash for everything from food to schooling and medicine. I spoke of diversification of gardens, of vegetables, of different cash crops with lower labor inputs and much higher potential gains. I was in my element, and sensed blood in the water.

With the well dug, I was then approached by my younger brother Cy (age 18) who had come up with a very creative proposal involving a micro loan in order to buy a bike. Cy and I hammered out the details over 4 cups of attaya whereby I would float him half the money for a new bike in Kolda as a loan, and present the other half in exchange for one-on-one Pulaar tutoring sessions to be held in the garden every afternoon. The bike would give Cy the ability to return home each afternoon from school, rather than spending the weekdays in a village 6k away, which was something both of us really wanted. Cy wanted to be closer to home, and I wanted someone to help me with the garden. We agreed to split the future profits of the garden 50/50 up until the point I had been reimbursed for what I had purchased as inputs, with anything remaining going towards his future high school expenses.

A couple of days go by and Cy mentions a friend of his in the village who is interested in working in the garden. I am still extremely skeptical, but the two of us are fighting an uphill battle to get the land cleared, fence up, and seeds in the ground in a timely fashion, so I agree to hold a meeting with the newest character of this agricultural saga. Stage Left, enter Funny Man.

Funny Man is Cy’s best friend in the village. They both have a million brothers, but their connection is one forged by countless hours hanging out in the village since they were both old enough to walk, mutual girlfriends/exes, attending the same soirees in nearby villages, and the occasional trip to Kolda to loaf about and try to impress girls. Funny Man is 20 years old, and at this point in Senegal, I trust him more than anyone I’ve met. His mother has been blind for almost his entire life, and the two of them live in a nearby compound with extended family. This past growing season Funny Man worked 6 months and will make a projected 80 dollars for the year. This is his only source of income. While other men in the village will travel to cities like Dakar and Thies to find work in the hot season months, Funny Man decided it would be better if he stayed in S.G to take care of his mother. I liked Funny Man immediately upon being introduced. I like him even more as I write this.

Funny Man, Cy, and I became equal part owners of the new garden. Cy continued to tutor and work in the afternoons on weekdays, while FM and I worked both mornings and afternoons. Future profits were discussed, and the same deal as previously organized between Cy and myself was agreed upon by all three parties. Failure to show up to work would result in a verbal tongue lashing, with repeated offences being followed by a threatened ass kicking, and eventual dismissal (these are Funny Man’s terms, not mine). Our rules were/are simple, and in my opinion something all Fortune 500 companies would find beneficial if adopted accordingly.

We started by breaking the soil with picks and shovels, then making mounds for the potatoes 40 cms in height. It was a lot of hard work, but we somehow developed the tradition of breaking up the monotony of it all by having two-a-day wrestling tournaments. Win or lose, all of us would grin, slap hands, and get back to work as soon as the 5 minute battle was over. The third party/ref would usually replay the skirmishes out loud for the remaining part of the morning or afternoon, but the loser and winner alike never took it personally. My Pulaar went from being extremely stilted in mixed/older company to conversational trash-talk. I can now say socially useful things like, “I’m going to hit you so hard you have to change your pants,” and “maybe you are too tired to work and wrestle today because you are an idiot and decided to go to the dance with your girlfriend last night.” Functionally limited Pulaar, but emotionally satisfying, as far as I am concerned.

We finished planting absolutely everything in the garden a couple of days ago, and word quickly spread around the village. A side benefit of working with these two very colorful guys is that they are both extremely popular in the village among the younger crowd (4-34). They like to talk a lot, and have spread the word of our hard work. Yesterday when our last seeds were in the ground, several men from the village and a handful of women drifted over to chat with us and compliment us on the progress. Many expressed interest in building their own gardens if ours was found to be successful, and even more spoke with me about working under similar group arrangements the following year. There were old men, young men, and children who came to look at our progress. To each, Funny Man and Cy had spread the word about the evils of mono cropping, and the wasted time and effort on peanuts.

I’m not sure how much, if any, will actually sink in over my next two years, but at this point I’m more than content to wait it out. I consider the new garden to be the first of my projects in S.G., and as I build upon my technical and language skills, I imagine in the long run it will prove to be one of the least impressive. With that said however, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget the last couple of the months at site, and the sometimes painful, sometimes funny, and always challenging creation of the Splendiferous Garden.

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.

Who is coming to visit me?

The following blog is being written after about three hours of sleep and because it has been so long since my last update is extremely random. Be patient...I miss you all.


So life in Mbour is almost at a close. My host family has been nothing short of amazing, but at the same time I'm extremely excited about getting the heck out of the North and getting to work in Kolda. Whereas Mbour is 200,000 and a fairly big tourism draw, my village in Kolda is approx 250 people. Whereas Mbour is nothing but sand, cars, and what seems like a million Wolofs, Kolda is all about clay soil, rice farrows, forests, and monkeys. Anyone who calls me might be subjected to more Kolda-awesomeness....so be warned.

Personal notes. I'm extremely happy in general thus far with my training with the PC in Senegal. Training is training, however. The sessions end up running a lot like certain classes at UR. But at the same time I'm learning a lot of about how Senegalese people go about things like meetings and trainings in general. Language training went from being a really miserable experience that I would dread each day to something I have started to really look forward to. My increased interest in Pulaar has definitely translated to better results. I went from Novice Mid on my first language test (terrible, and definitely at risk of not swearing in on time) to Intermediate Low on the second test, and a virtual lock, Incha Allah, for reaching Intermediate Mid and swearing in after the third and last test. Totally unreleated note, I've lost 25 lbs to date, and am growing a beard. The projection is to be down another 25 lbs by IST which will be in early January. At which time I will probably shave.


Random story/observation time.

Gatorade drink mix is absolutely incredible.

I paid an 11 year old to drive myself and some friends across a four lane highway with a horsecart. The total cost for 7 people to travel roughly 3.5 miles was a whopping $1.20

I dipped into my personal money for the first time to buy fencing for my own garden in Kolda. It wasn't cheap but I worked out a deal with my counterpart whereby I'm basically renting the land for the cost of the fencing. Since field crops extension work won't really be kicked off until the next rainy season which is 8 months away, I should have a good deal of time to work on my Pulaar and work in my garden.

I'm thinking about extending if I make it a full 24 months down in Kolda. If I extend it would be to work in Dakar for an additional 6 months with someone in the PC main office.

My compound was semi flooded with human waste about 4-5 days ago. It is an epic story and extraordinarly worth of a man blog, I simply don't have the space, and most of you won't have the stomachs to read it. Call me, and i'll promise to make you laugh or gag.

Lastly, cause i'm running out of juice. There are things I might have complained about in Amuuurika that I will not EVER complain about for the next decade.

Love you all.

Return to Thiès

Back in Thiès for more training - will visit Kolda for the first time on Saturday.

Loving life and feeling excellent!

Received 3 letters - merci!!

-David