My Walk Home

Last night I had one of the most inspiring walks back home, but first a little background info before I go into more detail.  I am still living with my host family in M’Bour.  My day normally starts off with an egg sandwich and a cup of Sengal’s best….instant Nescafe, sans sucre. I’ll then walk across the street to my language facilitator’s house where we peacefully have class under a mango tree.  For anyone who is wondering, the mangoes aren’t ripe yet, but they are looking better and better each day.  We’ll normally run class for about three to four hours depending on how restless I get, and surprisingly I’ve been very attentive these past couple days.   After class I’ll go home and eat lunch around the food bowl.  My sisters must have read my last blog post because we finally had a delicious chicken for lunch!  The combination of a full stomach and the heat puts me into a pretty deep food coma, so I’ll nap for about an hour before heading to an elementary school that’s about five minutes away. 

For the past couple weeks we’ve been starting a garden, complete with three garden beds, a tree nursery, and a compost pile.  The concept behind the project is to prepare us for our actual volunteer sites where we can start women’s gardens or plant specific tree nurseries to improve the nutritional health in our communities.  Our garden here in M’Bour is slowly coming along, and in my opinion is doing very well considering we started this garden in what seemed to be a giant sandbox. 

So anyway, back to my inspiring walk back home. I am walking home from the elementary school last night when this young man in a soccer uniform approaches me.  Side note: while we work on our garden in the afternoon there is always a big group of guys playing soccer at the school. I also don’t know how to start this story off without it sounding super creepy, but the setting is me walking down a street that’s hosting a baptism so there are a lot of people around.  So this guy comes up to me and starts speaking French; I’m trying my best to keep up with what he’s saying but all I manage to understand is that he wants to show me something at his store.  At this point I have my guard up and I tell him I need to get home before the sun goes down.  He totally disregards what I just said and insists that I go with him, he seems genuine and there are other people around me, so I go. We only walk about ten feet when he unlocks this gate and we walk into the most majestic garden.  Now you have to imagine the type of neighborhood I live in, it’s Africa and there is sand everywhere. Only the main roads are paved, so I’m mostly trudging through sand everywhere I go. This garden was impressive; there was lettuce, tomatoes, eggplants, okra, and a bunch of other vegetables he was naming that I couldn’t translate.  He explains to me that this is what his dad and him do for a living.  At that second, a neighbor walks over and buys two heads of lettuce from him.  It was neat to see that type of community support, especially knowing that my permanent site will be in the southeast where many of their vegetables are imported from other parts of the country. I say bye to “Chris,” as he had introduced himself as, and continue my walk home.

Five minutes probably pass by when I see this couple cross the street in front of me.  The girl turns around and starts speaking to me in English.  I explain to her why I am living in Senegal and that I am starting to learn Jaxanke, then she starts speaking to me in Jaxanke! It was crazy because I introduced myself and tried to use as much of the language I had learned in the past couple weeks.  She encourages me to continue studying the language and she also reminds me that I’m doing a positive thing for her country.  Her and her brother walk the rest of the way home with me.  I walk into my house to the smell of fish cakes being cooked….mmmmm!!!

I am going to leave you with a few images of what’s been going on the past few weeks. My computer finally decided it wanted to upload pictures from my camera! 

The sandbox we started with.

Our compost pile!!!

Building a fence around the garden.

Me and all the helpers!

My room.

One of my sisters preparing a lunch bowl...fish.

Our mural at the school.

My patient language partner Chrissie under the mango tree.