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.

Bubacar, Fish, and Beyonce

I just got back to the training center from my home stay so please excuse me if this blog post sounds scatter brained, but there is so much running through my mind!!!

For the past five days I’ve been living in M’Bour, a larger beach town, with the Signaté family. I have a dad, mom, five sisters and a younger brother, and we all live in a four-bedroom house with electricity, but no running water. I’m sure you are all wondering what the bathroom is like and if I have to share a room with other people. Luckily I have my own bedroom and also a western style toilet! It doesn’t flush, but at least I don’t have to squat. I’ve already heard horror stories of money falling out of people’s pockets when using their squatty potty.  Within the first hour of meeting my family I was given the name Bubacar, pernounced boob-uh-car, which is my host mother’s father’s name.  It took a couple days for me to get used to my name and recognize when my name was being called, but I’m getting more and more comfortable with it each day.  My host family has been very welcoming to me and makes sure I am comfortable at all times of the day. I’m not going to lie, I’ve been pretty spoiled. My mom warms my bucket bath for me at night and my sisters do my laundry for me! I also sit at a table for my meals with the adults, while the kids sit on the floor to eat.  Speaking of eating, all I’ve been eating is FISH! Smoked fish, fish balls, grilled fish, fish rice, fish salad….GIVE ME SOME CHICKEN! Don’t get me wrong, the food isn’t bad, but I would appreciate some variety in my protein selection. Meals are normally served on a large communal platter, where the majority of the plate is rice, or some other sort of starch, and the fish and veggies are in the center for everyone to share. My first night we ate salad and it was the first time I had to eat with my hand! Luckily it wasn’t rice. 

Home life is really interesting too. The five girls do EVERYTHING. They fetch water in the morning, clean the bathroom, make lunch and dinner, and do the laundry.  It’s crazy how much responsibility they have at home, but in Senegalese culture this is normal.  At first I thought that my host mom was just really strict, but after talking with my peers I realized this wasn’t the case.  When the girls aren’t working they usually have friends come over and I can’t tell you how many weaves I’ve seen be put in!! I also don’t think I’ve ever watched so much TV. They watch everything from music videos, to Bollywood films that have been obviously dubbed over in French. I also found out my sisters love Beyonce and Rihanna, so we have a lot in common.  Communicating with my family has also been very interesting. I’ve been speaking a lot of French with them, even though the point of the home stays is to work on our local language skills. My family knows this and told me that I have to start using less and less French each day.

Other than adjusting to a new home life, I started to learn one of the local languages in Senegal called Jaxanke.  It’s spoken mostly in the southeast region of Senegal, so that will most likely be the region of my permanent site. I normally have language class for a few hours at my language coordinator’s home stay, which is conveniently located across the street from me. It’s just me and one other girl, Chrissie, in my language group so we get a lot of one on one time with our teacher.  That’s definitely helped with learning the language faster because if I forget something I am quickly called out. With all of these new changes, it’s definitely been a hard transition. They say that the first night at our home stay is the hardest and so I’m hoping that is true. I am only back at the training site for 48 hours, then I go back to M’Bour for 13 days…aka more fish and Bollywood films. I am hoping to post some pictures soon, but for some reason my camera isn’t transferring pictures to my laptop.  Until then, that is all I got.  I appreciate and I thank you all for the continual support from home.  Even though it’s only been two weeks since I arrived in Senegal, it seems as if I’ve been here for a month.  Your words of encouragement are really helping me get through this pre-service training that seems like it is going to go on forever. Seven more weeks to go!

So I finally made it to Senegal!! What a surreal experience getting off the plane, walking onto the tarmac, and then realizing you're in Africa. We took a red eye out of D.C. Tuesday night (March 6th) and flew directly to Dakar. I kept myself busy watching "My Week With Marilyn" and drinking Tanqueray and tonics, which were complimentary I might add...best gin and tonics ever!

Once we arrived in Dakar we went through customs which surprisingly didn't take as long as I thought, and I was greeted with my first Senegal welcome, a security guard calling me "Jackie Chan!!" and sticking out his hand for a fist pump. The funny thing is--is that we acted out a scenario in orientation about an Asian American guy being called Jackie Chan and how we should appropriately react. I clearly went along with it and gave the guy a fist pump...sorry Peace Corps.

I'm currently in Thies, pronounced chez, where we are staying at the Peace Corps training center. The set up is much like a summer camp complete with a dining hall, and boys and girls cabins. My first real culture shock was during lunch yesterday where we had to sit around a very large aluminum bowl and eat out of it community style with spoons. They served what looked to be small grain rice, beef, and assorted veggies. It was very delicious, but also a very new experience. Cutting beef with a spoon took a lot of team work with the others sitting at your bowl. I would not suggest this type of meal for my germaphobe brother.

Other than that, my last two days have been filled with a lot of orientation material and interviews on what kind of sites we wanted to live at. I also had a language interview in French, which seemed to go well, but we get our results back later. The other volunteers are also really cool and I seem to be getting along with them. It's crazy to think that these are the people I will be spending the next two years with! I will hopefully post pictures soon, but until then hope everyone is doing well back at home!

Also, if you know a cheap/free way to text/call international, my number is:
221 77 883 8432

Just keep in mind, I'm 8 hours ahead of the west coast. 
 

4 days left

Yesterday I cut my hair. It was a sad event, so I want to dedicate this first blog entry to my beautiful hair. Hair, I'm sorry I had to cut you so short but know that you will grow back even more luscious and healthy one day... 

The last picture with my hair.

I can't believe it's come down to this. Four more days and I'll be on my way first to D.C. for a quick one day orientation and then off to Senegal for two years! My emotions this past week have been changing about every 10 minutes. One second I'm excited, the next I'm scared, the next I'm stressed, but I'm mostly just trying to keep myself occupied with packing and saying goodbye to my friends and family. On Monday I did a Costco/Target/REI run to get some last minute things for my big adventure. A few highlights of my shopping list included: taco seasoning, baby wipes, a new camera, lots of deodorant, and instant mash potatoes. It's crazy to try and plan a two year stay in a third world country. You are never going to be fully prepared and you most definitely won't know what luxuries you're going to miss until you're there. My friend Sinae, who served in the Peace Corps in Ghana, has been such a big help with my packing list (shout out to NaeNae)!

That's probably enough of an update for now. I just wanted to get my blog up and posted while I have time and before I actually arrive to Senegal. Thank you to all my friends and family who have been supporting me over the past few months. It's been quite the emotional roller coaster, and these last few days aren't going to be any exception. Check back often, I hope to update my blog as much as I can! Email me too...I will appreciate all the communication from back home. Love you all!

-Chip
chip.p.ko@gmail.com