Pre-Service Training

Hello friends and family!

We miss you all, but we are having a wonderful time in Senegal! Peace Corps has made the transition very gentle. PC staff and current volunteers met us at the airport and we were transported to Thies in air-conditioned vehicles. They even had water bottles waiting for us in the vans! So considerate, given that we were all sweat-soaked by the time we waited in the long customs line, wrestled with our luggage, made it through security, and trekked the 200ish yards to the parking lot. Phew!

Our days have been full of orientation sessions, interviews, and cultural training.  However, PC has graciously included rest time in the schedule. A lot of people have been playing soccer, frisbee, or basketball during this time, and many take the time to just chill and get to know other volunteers and staff.  Peter has established himself as a good basketball player, which is pretty hilarious (for those of you wondering how this can be true, I’ll just say that he is the 2^nd tallest Trainee, and that may have something to do with it…). I think I may try to play today. We’ll see.

During our first full day here at the Peace Corps Training Center in Thies (pronounced, Chezz), much of he day was spent rotating through various stations of the cultural fair, which was facilitated by the Senegalese Language and Cultural Facilitators (LCFs) and current volunteers. It was awesome! We learned about Islam in daily life (and how to be respectful), the holidays we will celebrate with our host families, items of note in Senegalese culture (kola nuts are great gifts, cowry shells and animal horns can be used as a talisman, acacia gum is used to starch clothing, incense is used as an aphrodisiac (!) (and to make the home smell good), the different types of fabric and what type you should wear for different occasions (dress/appearance is very important in Senegalese culture; we even learned what Senegalese lingerie looks like! It’s like netted fabric worn under a skirt. Not very risque compared to the American stuff…), the importance of greetings for establishing relationships and safety and security, the types of foods and juices common in Senegal (we got to taste hibiscus, ginger- another aphrodisiac!, and baobob juices- yum!), and how to eat meals and slurp tea properly. 

I’ll go into the eating and slurping tea a bit more, since it’s an interesting basic difference between Senegal and America.  Here, food is served in a giant bowl that is placed on a mat on the floor; many people gather around the bowl and eat together. You are only supposed to eat from the imaginary triangle of food right in front of you; it is rude to reach across the bowl and take food in front of someone else. Women are supposed to sit Ariel- style (yes, this is a Little Mermaid reference), with their knees bent and feet over to the side, and men squat rather than sitting. Some people eat with spoons (we have been doing this at the center), but most eat with their hands.  When eating with your hands, only use your right!  Your left is your poop/devil hand (used for wiping and seen as unclean) and does not have a place at meal time beyond stabilizing the bowl. When you are done eating, you should lick your right hand clean before rinsing with water, so you don’t get any chunks of food in the bowl.  Mom, you know being required to lick my fingers after a meal is pretty much a dream come true! I’ll fit right in!  Also, when drinking tea (which is a very important social tradition that happens many times a day), it’s important to slurp the tea loudly, to show that it is delicious, and to cool it as it enters your mouth so you don’t burn your tongue.  As you might imagine, this is also something that Peter and I are showing a great aptitude for. I should mention that the food has been delicious!  Most meals have been rice or bread-based, with lots of good vegetables and meat. Great spices, not to greasy, and d-e-lish! We have bananas or watermelon for dessert after lunch and dinner. We’re told we will appreciate the food here even more after we come home from our first week with our home stay families…

On Wednesday, we will begin our Community Based Training  (CBT).   We’ll live with home stay families and begin language immersion; Peter and I will be in a home stay together, which will be nice. There will be 3 to 6 of us in each community, with 1 or 2 Senegalese Peace Corps Language and Culture Facilitators (LCFs). We will have sessions with our LCF Monday-Saturday, both class-based and activity-based, to learn culture and a local language, and we will spend our “off” time with our host families. The LCFs will also be living with a home stay family, so we’ll all be in it together!  The LCFs have been here at the center with us since we got here and they are all very accessible and knowledgeable. We’re all excited to learn which local language we’ll be learning, who our LCF will be, and which CBT community we’ll be placed in (we find out on Monday)!  Between now and swearing in (when we will graduate from Peace Corps Trainees to Peace Corps Volunteers, inshallah) at the end of November, we will spend 35+ days/nights with our CBT home stay families and 16+ days/nights here at the Thies Training Center.  During that time, we will also take a few days to travel to our permanent sites, once we find out where they are, and we will also be rewarded with a beach weekend toward the end of our Pre-Service Training/before swearing in.  We have lots to look forward to!

Another highly anticipated event is the walking tour of Thies on Monday. We have not been allowed to leave the center and explore Thies yet, so it will be fun to see what’s beyond the compound’s walls!  I’m trying to enjoy this time of [relative] calm and simplicity, before we enter the “real Senegal.” It’s a great environment for us to get our bearings and get to know the staff (there are 15+ staff, plus 17 LCF’s), current volunteers (there are around 10 at the center now), and other trainees (there are 66 of us!).  Plus, there are 30 or so volunteers from all across Africa here for a malaria conference. Needless to say, there are a lot of names to learn and people to meet in these first days!

We got some relief from classroom sessions today with a “work party,” where we helped harvest seeds from dried tree pods, prune trees around the compound, build an earthen wall to divert roof runoff, and prepare a bed for moringa trees.  Peter and I planted an aloe plant that we brought with us, stuffed in one of our water bottles; hopefully it will make it! Tomorrow we’ll have a full day of technical training in the gardens. It’s about time we got our hands dirty!

I’ll end with a note on water. It’s something we Americans usually take for granted, but it’s been at the forefront of our minds the past few days. A major water line burst in Dakar last week, which has created a major shortage in the city. In an attempt to relieve the issue, some of Thies’s water was diverted to Dakar, which created a water shortage here at the center. Given the huge number of people we have on site, you can imagine that we use a ton of water! The center was well prepared, with water reserves on hand for drinking, and well water (that we PCTs drew up) for flushing toilets (there are a number of western toilets here, as well as some squat toilets) and showering. Thankfully it rained yesterday, so the plants got a good drink.  Everyone is wondering if each rain shower we get will be the last, since we are nearing the end of the wet season. The water shortage was good practice for CBT, where we will likely be without running water, and will wash hands in bowls, take bucket showers, and haul water from the well for drinking. We all received and tested our own personal water filters yesterday, so we’ll be well equipped for CBT. 

Cheers!

Kaitlin

p.s. We received our malaria pills yesterday, and Peter and I will both be taking malarone, which has very few  potential side effects. As many of your know, I was anxious about one or both of us taking Mephloquine/Larium/the crazy pill.  Glad we dodged that bullet!