December in Review, or... COUNTDOWN TO THE FRITSCHENING 2014

It is with bated breath we await the imminent arrival of Team Fritsche.  As referenced in our last post, on December 26th, tomorrow, at the crack of dawn, they’ll be arriving in this great country.  Six people in total, making our total number when traveling come to eight.  You know what they call eight tall, white people in Senegal?  The center of attention.  We’ll be walking entertainment for just about everyone.  It’s possible that we’ll be able to convince people that John is a Naar, which is what Mauritanians are called, current facial hair situation pending.

In celebration of their visit, and also to spice things up on this here blog, we’ll be peer pressuring one of our visitors to guest write a blog post chronicling their time here.

Although we probably lead into every blog with this, I feel compelled to write it again… It’s crazy how fast this month has flown by! (this perception is likely fueled in the blog-arena, by the fact that I posted “November in Review” at least a week late, and "December in Review" is going up a few days early... Merry Christmas, by the way!)

This photo has nothing to do with the text, it just makes me smile.  Note Kait's beautiful braids. I was behind the camera making a horrifyingly ugly face, and perhaps even pretending to fart.

Some of you may have recalled that about a year ago, Kait and I went with our baay on the HUGE religious pilgrimage to Touba and Mbacké.  Fastidious readers with good memories may recall that, although it was a really interesting experience last year, it wasn’t without its challenges, dangers, and near emotional breakdowns.  This year was like last year in every way, except all the bad ones.  We were able to get all the fun stuff, and none of the bad stuff for many reasons.  We speak decent Wolof now.  We avoided Touba proper, being satisfied to just stay in Mbacké and do Baay Fall Maggal.  Our chauffeur was an adult and didn’t throw a last minute tantrum resulting in us driving 100km after dark with no headlights.  Although Mbacké is busy, it’s nothing compared to Touba.

Also different this year was the participation of our dear friend and sitemate Kathryn Harrawood. 

We’re with Kathryn so much that we’ve taken to affectionately calling her my ñaareel, which literally means “second,” but actually means “second wife.”  If memory serves it may have begun as a way to get her out of unwanted male attention, but now it has a life all its own.  I refer to her as my second wife far more often than I refer to her as Kathryn and perhaps even Arame (her Senegalese name).  This caused a hilarious stir amongst Baay’s family in Mbacké.  In PCV circles, I can refer to “my second wife” in my most earnest voice, but people still know I’m joking.  In Senegalese circles, in which some conversation participants know second wives, have a second wife, or even are a second wife, it’s not inherently obvious that I’m joking.  In short, the majority of Baay’s family was under the impression that Kathryn was legitimately looking to become my ñaareel. They were, without exception, deeply concerned.  Their concern was not that we’re from a culture where second (not to mention third or fourth) marriages are pretty darn culturally foreign (and technically illegal) but rather that first and second wives cannot be friends.  Only an idiot would marry her friend’s husband, because that can’t do anything but destroy the friendship.  Kathryn, for her part, fueled the furor, insisting that she loved me so much that she and Kait could work it out and their friendship would be fine.  Thanks to none of us playing along the gossip (and Baay not stepping in with his deep knowledge of all participant, as well as Western culture) we were able to get hours of entertainment out of this.  Even as we were wrapping up our time in Mbacké, random family members, with whom we’d not discussed our Shakespearean tragedy were coming up to Kathryn, and in hushed tones saying, “I hear you love Idi…” 

This year, partially because we didn’t go into crazy, crazy Touba the night before Maggal, we were able to have a more in-depth, fun experience in Mbacké.  Like last year we put on our finest clothes and spent the majority of the day at our father’s Maribout’s house. 

Fancy Maggal clothes.  Bottom right is Kait and Awa Gueye, her new friend and VP of the Senegales National Assembly.

Taking a standard, somber-faced, Senegalese photo.

Boroom Ngathie Fall aka Serigne Bacc was even more on point in his hospitality this year.  After the hours of sitting indoors in a comfy, cool living room, punctuated by several short audiences with Serigne Bacc, we were ushered into a back bedroom, for VIPs only, for the outlandish lunch.  For lack of a better way of presenting the information, I’m just going to list the courses… Course 1: Grilled beef with fries and onion sauce.  Course 2: Meat (sheep?) and rice with pickled vegetables.  Course 3: Chicken and Guinea Fowl (about 6 total, for a room with 15ish people in it).  Course 4: Fruit.  (Each person given two apples, and two oranges).  Course 5: Sheep. (An entire grilled sheep, minus only the back legs, that was way, way bigger than the platter trying futilely to contain it).

All of the glorious meat, and its accoutrements, were prepared in the Serigne's kitchen (i.e. side yard). 

As a pretty enthusiastic meat fan I don’t say this lightly, but that may have been the single day in which I consumed the most meat in all of my 27 years.  It was certainly the day in which I consumed the widest variety of types of meat, especially if something in there was goat, which it very well may have been.  Last year we only got two meat courses and the fruit, so I was not prepared for the extra two meat courses.  When the bowl filled with only chickens and guinea fowls came out, I assumed that it had to be the last meat course, so I ate myself beyond physical discomfort. 

MEEEEEEAAAAAT!

This wouldn’t have been a problem had the two thirds of a goat not had some ceremonial significance.  We’re unclear on exactly what was going on, but after politely declining a piece or two, I begrudgingly accepted after seeing that everyone else in the room had taken and eaten a piece.  I had the foul luck of getting a piece that was mainly fat and connective tissue, which didn’t jive particularly well with my nausea from overeating.  I knew, without any doubt, that if I put that meat chunk in my mouth, all four previous courses would be making a return trip up the esophageal highway and be deposited very unceremoniously on the bedroom floor of a living saint.  Faux pas city.  Courtesy of admittedly ham-fisted (pun?) sleight of hand skills, I was able to dupe everyone when they looked at Serigne Bacc as he exited the room, by casually dropping the meat on the floor next to the bowl.  Yalla baax na (God is good).

Some of you may recall from last year that we do Maggal VIP style.  This year we were even bigger stuff.  In addition to Baay’s cousin, “The Captain,” who is not only a captain in the Senegalese army but also the big boss of the HUGE main fish market in Dakar, we were joined by the vice-president of the Senegalese National Assembly (analogous to US House of Representatives) who is, surprisingly, a woman, (way to go Senegal!) and some guy from TV, who performed a weird song and dance for Serigne Bacc.

Serigne Bacc’s Daara (Qur’anic school) and primary residence is in the village of Ngath, about 7km away from Guinguineo, so a lot of the people at his Mbacké house came from Guinguineo.  Included in this Guinguineo delegation were some people there representing Géo FM and Géo TV, our local stations, recording audio and video for late broadcast.  Obviously, because we tend to stand out wherever we go, they wanted to interview us.  After confirming that we speak Wolof, they interviewed me, and then Kathryn, and then Kait.  I have to admit, despite our facility with Wolof, the interviews were nonsensical.  This was partly because immediately after inquiring after our Wolof skills, the radio guy asked us questions in this approximate structure… "FRENCH French French FRENCH wolof wolof FRENCH French?"  Furthermore, this was going on outside…

So even if we could hear the questions, which we couldn’t, they were mostly in a language we don’t really understand.  We each assumed they were asking how Maggal was and what we thought about it.  We responded to the imagined question, saying that Maggal was great, Serigne Bacc was great, everyone was very happy and in peace, and our hearts were very cold (i.e. very happy).  I’m glad I don’t listen to Géo FM, because I would be embarrassed to hear how dumb I sounded.

As usual, a healthy portion of our smiles and laughs were brought to us by the animals in our life.  Happy Cat, Lady Obama, and Greta are all wonderful, wacky and weird.  Coming home is made even more special by the excited pack of animals leaping at, woofing at, mewing at, and tongue-bathing us upon our return.

Unfortunately, in our corner of Senegal, almost all of the wild animals have been killed, either directly (for food, like gazelle, or for perceived threat, like snakes) or through habitat loss, primarily in the form of aggressive deforestation.  One wild animal we do see pretty frequently is, surprising to some, hedgehogs.  We’re pretty sure that there’s a family of them that lives under Lady’s house, as the place we usually find them is inside Lady’s food bowl eating the leftover rice, fish and veggies.  This month we stumbled upon a little baby hedgehog, which was far too adorable to not pick up and go show the family.

In addition to Maggal, the other main event of our pre-Fritsche December was the Master Farmer Conference, in which all of the Peace Corps Sponsored master farmers (see previous blog post on Master Farmer program if interested) and the volunteers they work with all convene in one place to share ideas and compare results. There were about 40 master farmers and over 20 PCVs (the PCVs who recently swore in have only been in site for a couple weeks, so they weren’t invited).  All of the PCVs were ag volunteers from our stage, many of whom we hadn’t seen since PST2 and wouldn’t otherwise have had an excuse to see, so it was really great to cross paths with all of them.  My one reservation about the whole thing was that our master farmer was going to have to be away from his field for a full week at this critical time, when we’re trying to prepare him for having his first ever open field day (where we invite the community to come see all of the awesome best practices he is demonstrating on his farm, like mulching, intercropping, alley cropping, live fencing, etc). 

Master Farm snaps from before the conference.

I was scared that everything would shrivel and die in his absence, setting us back an unrecoverable distance and preventing us from having an open field day to exhibit his gardening techniques before the hot season comes around again.  Thanks to Cheikh’s hardworking wives and sons, my fears were completely assuaged.  When I went back out to Saxañ after the conference, everything was progressing well.  We remain hopeful that we’ll be able to have an open field day in early February.

Master Farm snaps from after the conference!

On our way to collecting Team Fritsche, we’ve been lucky enough to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas in Thies, with our good friend Jonathan.  It’s been 36 hours of extravagant food consumption and wonderfully comfortable (also free) accommodations.  We’re extremely grateful to have been able to spend Christmas with him, although we do miss Happy Cat.

In December...

The Biggest Challenge We Faced:  Christmas without Happy Cat.  We miss that little purrrrrmachinesnugglemonster pretty much every second we’re not with him.

The Most Exciting/Best Experience:  Since this post doesn’t include the Fritsche visit, I’m gonna say Maggal 2014.  It was a much less overwhelming time this year.  All the good things, and just about none of the bad. 

The Thing We Are Most Grateful For:  Our families' abilities to come visit us.  We’re very grateful that our families are physically, financially, and chronologically able to come see how we’re living, and to experience Senegal for themselves.  After the Fritsche visit, the Hammersleys will be joining us in February (and now it looks like even Annah and Will will be coming).

Language Factoid: Socc (pronounced “sohtch”) means “to have a cold.”  Sacc (pronounced “satch”) means to steal.  These two words came up in a semi-racist, though pretty light-hearted, joke that our father shared with us.  The gist is that a Naar (Mauritanian) goes into a store and says, “Dama socc!” meaning, “I have a cold!”  But Naars, not dissimilar from us Americans, sometimes nasalize their speech more than is ideal, so the store owner thinks he says “Dama sacc!” meaning, “I stole!”  Anyway, what results is a “Who’s on First, What’s on Second”-caliber exchange in which the Naar says repeatedly that he has a cold, and the shop owner  say repeatedly that he understands, the Naar is a thief.  The happy ending is that the Gendarme gets called and the Naar gets taken away. Get it?  Aesop’s Moral: Naars talk funny and are thieves.

In the end of December and January, we are looking forward to:

THE FRITSCHES! (and John and Miles)

Our cool season garden.  We’ve started a new vegetable peppiñeer, and excitedly anticipate what will manage to grow.  This time we’re watering half of it with well water and half with robiné water.  We want to see how founded in fact people’s belief that the robiné water is so chemical-laden (chloride, fluoride, sodium, etc) that it destroys plants is.  We’re hoping the difference is negligible, because getting well water is a pain in the butt when the water table is from 50-90 meters deep.

Other things probably, but with the Fritsche visit so imminent, it’s a bit hard to see past it!

Jamm Rekk ak Joyeaux Nöel,

Peter/Idrissa

November in Review

November has really felt like two months.  Not because it has dragged out in any way, but rather because it was so cleanly bisected by our visit to America.  The activities that happened in the first half of the month, back in Senegal, feel like they occurred well over a month ago. 

Let me start by saying it feels great to be back on the blog-writing train.  Over the past few months (several, if you ask Kait), when on the computer, I have been fully immersed in graduate school applications.  This left me no screen-time to put up any blog posts.  Luckily my wonderful wife was able to pick up all of my slack, keeping us up-to-date with our blogs while simultaneously being critical to my application process.  So, with the help of my chief editor, advisor, writing coach, and #1 fan, I was able to complete all of my applications well ahead of the deadlines.  I’m applying primarily to masters in civil engineering programs, all over the country (from San Fran to Boston, and a great many places in between).  We’re both excited to find out about if/where I am accepted, and how much (if any) financial assistance I’ll be offered.  More than that though, I was excited to have everything submitted, so it would be out of my hands, and our America time could be fully dedicated to relaxing. 

However, our time in America is chapter II of this dichotomized post, and though it feels like it comprised more of the month than the Senegal chapter, November was pretty evenly divided.

November opened on a wonderful note: the aforementioned submission of my grad school applications.  We were certain that I would be mucking about with the applications right up until we got on the plane to America (Kait even thought I would still be working in America) so the unexpectedly prompt submission opened up a lot of time that we didn’t think we would have.  Instead of wedging trainings and meetings between marathon application sessions, we were able to maintain our sanity, and be fully present in everything we did. 

This month marked a milestone in our training of farmers/gardeners.  At first blush, the milestone might seem to reflect poorly on us and our service, but when fully understood, it is not only not embarrassing, but actually a little gratifying.  The milestone is this…  On November 5th, 11 months after coming to Guinguinéo, we conducted our first technical training within Guinguinéo.  (All previous trainings have been in outlying villages.) It boggles the mind slightly that we’ve been in our town nearly a year, and we are only just now doing our first training for people who live in our community.  However, it is indicative of our very intentional approach to our work.  We have been careful to not aggressively seek out work partners and to not unilaterally identify and pursue projects.  Rather, we have encouraged people to come to us with ideas for projects and trainings, and then helped them realize their plans.  This has certainly resulted in “stats” that might not measure up to our peers (e.g. trees planted, people trained, etc) but we’re hopeful that this will also result in an impact that survives our departure in a year.  Time will tell.  Anyhow, on to our training…

The rain has gone, and won’t be back for another seven to eight months, but, praise be to God, the cool(ish) weather is coming.  The last of the field crops are being harvested, and as that work is wrapped up, people begin to have time to garden.  We hope to have a series of gardening classes for a few groups in town.  We started with a women’s group presided over by the wonderfully reliable, competent, and friendly Dialikhatu “Lemu” Ba.  The group specializes in cereal transformation (turning millet, corn, sorghum, and beans into flour and the like) but is enthusiastic about the prospect of learning how to garden, and perhaps eventually having a secondary source of income.  Our first training focused on how to make a vegetable nursery, and prepare/amend a garden bed.  It was also the first training we did jointly with my counterpart who works at the local agriculture office, El-Hajji Cissekho.  He is incredibly competent, and was a huge asset in many ways.  He clarified and expounded on what I explained.  Though my Wolof is decent, explaining, for example, the intricacies of how each type of amendment (manure, wood ash, and charcoal powder) brings nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and/or micronutrients and why that’s important is more elegantly said by a native Wolof speaker.  He also gave me credibility by proxy.   Having an official presence gives any training we put on a lot more status in the eyes of the participants.   It also goes a long way to connect farmers/gardeners to people in the community who can serve as resources long after we leave, which furthers our aforementioned goal of having an impact that outlasts our presence.  The training went really well.  About 15 people attended, and by the end there was a completed nursery and garden bed and, even better, it seemed everyone had a solid handle on the concepts and techniques. 

Tamxarite, perhaps the most colorful Senegalese holiday, Halloween being its closest American analog, was celebrated in standard Diop fashion, with lots of family time and multiple chickens for lunch.  Girls wear boys’ clothes.  Boys wear girls’ clothes.  Everyone goes house-to-house, dancing, hitting drums, and singing for which they are given small change or candies.  We took this opportunity: a funny-dress-based holiday that happens at night to give the kids glow-stick bracelets.  Not much in the world looks cuter than a quartet of glowing, cross-dressed kids. 

Some of you Facebook-savvy readers may have already seen some posts about our recent awards ceremony for our recipients of the Michelle Sylvester Scholarship.  As explained in a previous post (i.e. plea for funding) this scholarship is awarded to outstanding and motivated female students whose families lack the means to pay their school fees.  Each scholar had their fees paid, and was awarded a backpack filled with school supplies (generously donated by the American Embassy) and, perhaps most exciting of all, a certificate of achievement (I say “most exciting” because Senegalese love certificates more than almost anything.  Most meetings of serious professionals, like teachers, politicians, etc, begins with everyone pulling out their folder of laminated certificates from various things they have attended or won.  It’s one of the more humorous cultural differences in professional settings.)  The girls were all really excited, although their enthusiasm and alertness waned slightly when the ceremony took the standard form in which every person present, mostly the participants’ fathers, in-turn, explained how great they thought the whole thing was, how appreciative they were, and how we don’t ask for anything in return, but Allah will pay us.  About a dozen people shared their heartfelt thanks, which was really gratifying.  Among these people were our friend Kathryn Harrawood’s host mother, who is a midwife, and another midwife from her village.  This was especially cool because they are both educated with real jobs, and were thereby able to share poignantly on the importance of completing one’s education, as a female.  The whole scholarship process, from beginning to end, was a surprisingly large amount of work, but it’s impossible to say it was anything but worth it after seeing how happy everyone was.

After the MSS awards ceremony, we were pretty much home-free until we left site to begin the long journey to America.  After saying goodbye to the pets, and collecting the coffee that Baay roasted with cloves and cardamom (traditional Café Touba) as a gift for Kait’s parents, the last thing we did was say goodbye to our family, and shake hands with them, using our left hand. 

“But wait!” you say.  “The left hand is the one you wipe your butt with!  You’re not even supposed to hand people money or wave with your left hand!”  “Thank you for paying attention, faithful reader!” I say.  “You are absolutely correct and have clearly been reading quite thoroughly!”  When you go on a long trip, it’s traditional to shake hands with your left precisely because it is a faux pas.  Since the last thing you did was commit such a horrifying act, you have no choice but to come back so you can rectify the mistake.  It’s a way of showing that although you are traveling, you will definitely be returning.

The pets all collapsed (and/or licked their butts) in anguish upon hearing we would be gone for two and a half weeks.

We left Guinguinéo a couple of days earlier than was strictly necessary for our flight to America to help the Peace Corps Senegal community cope with a tear-jerking loss.  The old agriculture stage (group of ag PCVs with whom we overlapped for a year, who were replaced by the new group that came to Senegal in September) were all COSing (Peace Corps acronym meaning “completion of service”) in Dakar right when we were going to be passing through.  It’s crazy to think that we’ve only known them for a year, as we have come to adore several of them beyond belief.  It was unreal to think that they wouldn’t be here when we got back from America.  Even now, as they are sitting in various places in America, and we’re back here, I still see them in their Senegalese settings in my mind’s eye, and Kait still occasionally starts a sentence, “I think I’m gonna call…” before realizing that person’s not in Senegal, much less still on the free-calling plan.  However, our time in Dakar was nice.  Grandiose plans were hatched.  In short, upon our return to America and said Peace Corps friends, we’ll all be living on a commune, or at least abutting lots so we can raise our odd, but impressively athletic, and perhaps English/Wolof bilingual children together.  That might not end up working out, but I do know there’s a kickass pantheon of aunts in our children’s future.

Our travel home was about as fun as chewing glass.  Due to our finite financial resources we were unable to get a direct flight from Dakar to NYC, instead settling on a layover in Paris.  Hardly sympathy inducing, as I’m sure de Gaulle airport has better pastries than every bakery here, and most bakeries in America, however, it gets worse.  About two hours out of Paris we were told our plane had a technical problem, and had to return to Paris.  When we deplaned, having received no information about anything, we joined a fustercluck (I’m told children might read this blog) of a line to get rebooked on other flights.  We were about midway through the line at the beginning, but ended up being literally the last people rebooked through a combination of those behind us joining the “priority” line despite definitely not being “priority” and the profoundly incompetent, and yet simultaneously super-snotty ticketing agents.  We waited in a line before even speaking to anyone for more than three hours.  Our total amount of time wasted neared five hours, for all of which we were standing, obviously, when our ultra-French (in that everything she did annoyed me) ticketing agent took over an hour to get us booked onto a flight to Atlanta.  A flight we barely made it on to because of how long the whole flipping bungled process ran. But don’t worry.  We were totally compensated for all the inconvenience.  They gave us a ticket voucher for 0 Euros ($0 US) and a meal voucher for 0 Euros ($0 US).  Right after she finally gave us our tickets for the Atlanta flight, she offered me a croissant on a napkin, then shouted, “Just kidding!” stuffing the whole thing in her mouth, and flicking her cigarette in my face. (disclaimer: this last sentence may be exaggeration, but that was what it felt like)

But, we made it on the flight, and something completely novel to me happened.  I was thankful to be on a flight run by Delta.  This was purely because I would have rather swam to America than deal with another Air France employee, but to be grateful for anything even peripherally associated with Delta was pretty weird. (Obviously other than, “Oh my God!  This time they actually didn’t lose my luggage!  Way to go, Delta!” which happens about one flight out of five.)  The rest of our trip was pleasantly uneventful, and due to the flight change, we flew into Sarasota instead of Tampa, and miraculously ended up arriving at Chez Hammersley only about five hours later than we would have with our original flights.

If one photo could synopsize our time in Sarasota, it might have to be this one...

Our plans for America were almost exclusively fun-based.  Eat and drink whatever we want, whenever we want.  Enjoy being outdoors without being sweaty and dirt-covered instantly.  Spend time with family, friends and the Ty-beast.  Relish internet that’s not pay-by-the-minute.  Drive a car places.  Take hot showers.  Watch some TV.  Be clean.  Eat and drink more.  There were some non-fun, or work items on our list (e.g. getting Florida driver’s licenses, shopping for gifts for our Senegalese family, etc) the most involved of which was a trip up to Gainesville for me to meet with some University of Florida professors and check out the facilities of the program to which I’ve applied there.  Three days after arriving, I felt a little ill, but it seemed my health was improving, so we decided to not scrap the trip.  After arriving at our AirBnB place and chatting with our host for an hour or so (He and his wife are RPCVs from Mozambique) I decided I felt too ill to go out to eat.  I stayed home and Kait went out with Lucy Diagne, a manatee researcher who just finished her PhD at UF and cousin of our good friend Rodeo.  She’s married to Senegal’s own Tomas Diagne, one of the leading turtle researchers in West Africa, and will soon move to Senegal to continue her manatee research there.  Obviously Kait was chomping at the bit to geek out with a fellow animal-ophile and lover-of-Senegal over a burger, and I was sad to have missed out.  Another, “it’s a small world,” moment.  Anyhow, I woke up at about 2am that night, my head in far too much pain to go back to sleep despite being on about every over-the-counter pain med available, and a couple of benadryls to sleep.  I finally agreed with Kait that it was time to go to the hospital.  We both thought it was malaria, as I had forgotten to take my prophylaxis for a couple of days in the shuffle of traveling, and I showed all the symptoms: fever that comes and goes, body aches, and an unimaginably painful headache.  Although the hospital in Gainesville is much better than the one in Sarasota, we decided that we really wanted to be close to home, in case I was going to be staying for a few days.  So Kait drove the three hours home in the middle of the night, with me holding my head and moaning, just trying to breathe evenly in the passenger seat.  Not fun at all.

We were prepared for the reaction upon our arrival.  Fever.  Aches. Came from West Africa. EBOLA!!!  Thank God I wasn’t vomiting and pooping my brains out or else it would have taken them a lot longer to figure out that it wasn’t Ebola.  They told us they even called the CDC, who presumable said, “Unlike America, Senegal’s Ebola free you dumdums!  Give him a room with a TV and a real mattress!”  As it stood, we only had to spend about five hours in isolation before they moved us to a normal, only slightly more comfortable, room.  Unfortunately, we had forgotten our instant malaria test, so we had to wait for blood tests that took hours upon hours (apparently there aren’t many malaria cases in Sarasota these days… weird).  Thankfully, they put me on good pain meds pretty soon after I arrived.  This reduced my severe pain to mere discomfort for a few hours before the pain came roaring back, like clockwork, about 45 minutes before I was allowed to have my next dose.

Having fun in Ebola isolation!

Me in isolation, getting the party started.

After one negative malaria test, they took blood for another, and decided I needed to have a spinal tap to check if it was meningitis.  Let me tell you about spinal taps.  Not fun at all.  The needle going into the spine isn’t so bad.  They do it on an x-ray table, to make sure they miss the bones.  However, when they remove cerebro-spinal fluid (“brain juice” to laymen) too quickly, your leg nerves protest (“Hey! Our juice!”) by making your legs have little, twitchy, seizure-y nerve jolts, and kinda feel like they’re on fire.  The brain juice shot out like newly tapped oil well, which indicated inflammation (i.e. meningitis), and also relieved some of the pressure on my brain, which instantly reduced my headache for a little while.  After testing the fluid, it was clearly meningitis, but what kind?...  Bacterial meningitis can kill within a day of showing symptoms without intravenous antibiotics.  Viral meningitis has no treatment other than pain management and letting one’s immune system do the heavy lifting.  My dilemma was that I had just finished a course of antibiotics for a skin infection, so my sickness, if bacterial, was “partially treated,” meaning the antibiotics suppressed, but did not cure it.  We had a dilemma.  Our options were… Treat for bacterial, which is two weeks of IV antibiotics, or assume it’s viral and do nothing but monitor my progress, knowing that I could take a quick turn for the worse.  We were leaning towards assuming it was viral, because two weeks of IV meds (i.e. no beer and no appetite, while in America) and having to pay a monster change fee to move our flight to Senegal back a week or so seemed about as crappy as dying, so I might as well risk it.  In all seriousness though, Kait was sleep deprived and stressed to the max about making such a big decision. Just in the nick of time, my infectious disease doctor came in and said that a random test he ran for a virus that accounts for about 10% of viral meningitis cases came back positive.  It was viral and I wasn’t going to die.  They gave me a bottle of Percocet, spanked me on the bottom, and said, “get out of here you crazy kid!” and like that we were out of the hospital, a mere 36 hours after being admitted to the ER. Back in reality though, it was a very long 36 hours for everyone, and they were hesitant about letting me go home so quickly after being admitted, but we insisted Tybee snuggles and the ambiance at Chez Hammersley would speed up the recovery process.

This is how I felt after being the center of attention while simultaneously feeling like crap for 36 hours.  Please note the posh, non-isolation decor in the room.  Oo la la!

One fixture of the Great Florida Meningitis-aganza of 2014 is conspicuously absent from the above rendering.  How much of a badass my wife is.  She was such a great advocate for my wellbeing and for getting doctors and nurses off of their butts to actually follow through on what they said they would do make me feel less crappy and figure out what was wrong with me.  I truly cannot imagine how much worse that whole thing would have been had I been solo.  I guess I can… way, way, way, way worse.  She was also a total champion at navigating the sea of red tape that is Peace Corps’ health insurance coverage in America.  Peace Corps also needed to re-clear me medically to make sure I was fit to return to service.  They did clear me in time to return on our original tickets, thanks entirely to Kait’s tireless pursuit of all the proper delightfully bureaucratic papers and forms.

After leaving the hospital, I was only on Percocet for about a day until I felt good enough to downgrade to Tylenol (on Meemaw’s orders, of course).  After 48 hours I felt well enough to crack a beer and eat a slice of pizza. I was ready to continue my vacation. Despite the stumbling block, there was still plenty of vacation to be had, though for me, at a slower pace than planned, as my sickness left me quick to tire for the rest of the vacation. Aunt Deb and Jamie came down from Boston.  Annah and Will came down from New York.  Nana was greatly missed, but we were thankfully able to Skype with her a few times.  We did “Christmas in November” since Kait and I will be away from Sue and Phil for Christmas.  It was really more like “Everyone Watch Kait and Peter Open Their Christmas Presents in November” as we totally cleaned up, and everyone else got a Senegalese present from us, and maybe one other.  Sue’s work at the consignment store, The Women’s Exchange, has resulted in the past couple gift cycles being filled with cool antiques.  This year our big gift was a beautiful oriental carpet.  Thanks Sue and Phil… and Women’s Exchange!

Elliot and Tybee helped us celebrate Christmas in November.  Tybee by wearing a festive collar and snuggling.  Elliot by wearing a festive collar, then ripping off the collar and attacking the wrapped presents.

There was a fun Thanksgiving meal at Aunt Janet’s house, which included Meemaw, Aunt Mar and Uncle Larry, and even a whole host of friends and relatives I hadn’t yet met.  We also spent a day in a rented boat out in Sarasota Bay.  It was really fun to get out on the water, and made me miss Maine.  While on the boat we saw a big pod of dolphin (probably 10-15) playing and frolicking.  They were jumping, doing flips, and surfing boat wakes.  It was like Sea World, but without the requisite self-loathing for giving financial support to such an abhorrent, exploitative industry.  Also, no Orcas.

Perks of coming to Sarasota: Boating, Beers, Beautiful Bay, Bottlenose Dolphins, Bridges, and alliteration.

Our time in America flew by, but left us feeling recharged and happy.  Huge thanks to Sue and Phil for all of their hospitality.  I think to genuinely enjoy spending time with one’s in-laws is rare, so I feel pretty lucky.

In November...

The Biggest Challenge We Faced:  Definitely my meningitis.  Super not fun.

The Most Exciting/Best Experience:  Definitely being in America.  This was an easy choice this month.  Great hospitality.  Great hospitals (compared to Senegal, at least).  Great weather.  Great family time.  Great food.  Great beer.  Great animals.  Great everything.

The Thing We Are Most Grateful For:  Each other.  I can’t imagine what my hospital stay would have been like without being there nearly the whole time with Kait.  Neither of us can imagine how hard it would have been to vacation in America amongst people we love, but who don’t understand the ins and outs of our daily life in Senegal, or to leave family in America and come back to Senegal if we weren’t able to bring our closest family member and friend along with us.  We both feel so, so lucky to have each other.

Language Factoid: Serice (pronounced suh-ree-chey) is the Wolof word for the gifts one brings when visiting someone or coming home to thank the people you stay with for their hospitality.  This month, due to our travels, we had many run-ins with this concept/word.  We brought Senegalese serice back to Kait’s family.  We brought American serice back to our family/friends/colleagues here.  The funniest encounter we had with serice was on our flight from New York back to Dakar.  Because the huge religious holiday, Maggal Touba, about which we blogged last December is coming up in less than a week, the plane was filled with Senegalese who live in America going home to their families, to then go to Touba.  People had so much luggage (thanks in large part to all the serice they are obliged to bring) that after the overhead compartments were filled many people attempted to explain to the flight attendants that keeping suitcases in the aisle and by the emergency exits was totally fine.  This jockeying resulted in an hour delay on the tarmac.  Perhaps worst of all, when we got to Dakar, they casually announced that there had been more luggage than the plane physically hold/carry, so they just left a bunch of it in New York.  Luckily, our checked bags, mainly filled with serice from America, made the flight.

In December, we are looking forward to:

Repeat performance of Maggal Touba with Baay.  This time we can actually communicate our thoughts and needs, so it should be a lot more fun and less stressful. Hopefully Kait won’t end up in tears in the middle of a crowded mosque this year!

We will not be having out Open Field Day this month, as various things didn’t come to fruition in Cheikh’s field.  We will hopefully be having it in January or February.  This has admittedly been a weight off of our shoulders in an already over-programmed month.

Master Farmer Workshop in Thies.  All of the Peace Corps master farmers across Senegal, and the volunteers who work most closely with them will all be converging in Thies for a summit.  It should be a fun time to see volunteers who we normally don’t cross paths with and to discuss how projects at other master farms are going.

Round two of the gardening training for Lemu Ba’s group.  We’ll teach them how to outplant into the garden bed, proper spacing, and garden maintenance.  Perhaps we’ll do round one for the other group, but Maggal kinda throws a wrench in everything, as just about everyone who is financially and physically able to go, goes for as long as they can.  Most things come to a screeching halt.

Fête Nöel!  We’ll either be in Dakar or Thies for Christmas in order to meet…

The Fritsche crew when they come to visit on the 26^th!!!!  Mom, Dad, Sally, Betsy, John and Miles will all be making the journey to see how we live (and also do some touristy stuff) for a couple weeks.  Conspicuously absent will be Carrie, who, due to her most recent hobby of growing another human inside of her, will be unable to join us.  Our thoughts will be with her and the little ball and chain she’s bringing into the world.  We look forward to lobbying John to gain influence over name selection.  Dearest Older Sister:  I know for a fact that neither Idrissa nor Penda will be one of those names that gets really popular right when you have your child and results in you kicking yourself when you take the lil’ one to preschool and he/she has to go by her first and last names because there are like 9 Emmas or 12 Liams  in the class.  Think about it!

Jamm ak jamm,
Peter

October in Review

It feels like time is speeding up each month! October flew past, with each day on our calendar filled with “To Do’s.” In part, it’s been so busy because every spare minute not spent on agriculture work or family time has been spent on Peter’s grad school applications. He’s been fastidiously researching programs, writing and re-writing résumés, statements of purpose and statements of work history, getting his recommendations in order, and communicating with various program staff to clear up questions. This is also the reason he’s been conspicuously absent from the blog world the past few months. He’s planning to submit applications for M.S. in Civil Engineering and Construction Management programs in the next few weeks, with the intention to defer his start until Spring or Fall 2016. So have no fear; he’s planning to be back blogging soon!

A selfie in a field. Yeah, we're getting kinda weird out here.

We kicked off October with Tabaski, or Eid al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice or Greater Eid), one of the biggest Muslim religious holidays, which honors the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son Ishmael as an act of obedience to God. God intervened to provide him with a ram to sacrifice instead, thus the tradition of sacrificing and eating a ram on Tabaski. Our family slaughtered a ram AND a turkey! It was glorious! Plus, it was all made sweeter by a visit from Caitlin, our “big sister,” who trekked down from Dakar to spend Tabaski with the fam. She is the one whose big shoes we are constantly trying to fill with our work here in Guinguinéo. Caitlin served here for 2 years, and extended her service for a third year to work on The Yaay Project, a mobile conversation about motherhood across generations, across languages, and across Senegal. I can’t imagine our Peace Corps service without her friendship and guidance, and it was so much fun to have her here in Guinguinéo for Tabaski.

I had over 200 photos from Tabaski, and they all seemed important, as did the order in which I took them. So, instead of making a bunch of semi-chronological collages, I made them into a fast slideshow, which shows the progression of the day. Think of it as "a day in the life" sort of thing; it shows the good photos and the bad, and what I felt warranted 10 different shots from slightly different angles. [WARNING: there are a lot of photos of the sheep slaughter in the slideshow (yes, in hindsight it’s startling how many graphic photos I took….oops). Watch at your own risk!] The photos tell the story of the day, which began (photographically) with Fallou and Peter getting ready to go to the mosque to pray (Baay was up all night making sure nobody stole our sheep, so he wasn’t feeling up to it) and ended (again, photographically) with the kids dressed up in their nice clothes, getting ready to walk around and ask for coins (candy money!). In between, the turkey was slaughtered, prepared, and cooked, the ram was slaughtered, skinned, processed and grilled, we ate grilled ram for breakfast and turkey for lunch, the kids danced, and the adults rested. It was a wonderful day of uninterrupted family time.

A few days after Tabaski, the kids went back to school. This means the mornings are a lot quieter around here, which is a welcome change!

First day of school. What a good lookin' bunch!

We’re in the transition between the rainy season (or hunger season) and the cool season (the season of abundance), which means the farmers are harvesting their field crops (peanuts, millet, corn, sorghum, and beans), and transitioning to the gardening season (lettuce, tomatoes, hot pepper, eggplant, and okra).

This means Peter and I are busy with wrap-up work on our tree planting and field crop extension projects, and starting to prep and plan a series of gardening trainings for the upcoming months.

The garden continues to produce delicious things. This month we’ve enjoyed cucumbers and melons in addition to the okra, bissap, moringa greens, malabar spinach, aloe vera, and endless basil. We’re still waiting patiently on the tomatoes though! The rains have stopped, and we are seeing this reflected in droopy leaves in the garden, despite our watering efforts. The tap water just isn’t the same as the rain!

Who knew cucumbers were so exciting?!

Last month I mentioned our garden marketing scheme: free basil if you come see the space! Well, it’s working. People are talking about our garden! We’re hoping that this talk leads to others taking the leap to creating small gardening spaces in their compounds, perhaps with the help of our upcoming gardening classes.

In addition to maintaining our own garden, we’ve led a series of trainings this month: a seed selection and saving training in Guinguinéo, and micro-gardening with recycled containers and tree care and maintenance trainings with a women’s group in a neighboring village, where our friend and fellow Peace Corps volunteer Tesia Eisenberg lives. We’re also starting to plan an Open Field Day for the Sakagne Master Farm, tentatively scheduled for December.

In the midst of it all, we managed to sneak away to the mangroves for a couple of days for Peter’s birthday. We indulged in luxuries like hummus, burgers, beer, and whiskey, and took advantage of the quiet to get a bunch of computer work done as well. Bam!

Enjoying some peace and quiet in the mangroves. Happy 27th Peter!

I finished the month with a much-anticipated field trip. I brought my counterpart, Mackiny Tall; my 3 work partners, Mbaye Ndiaye, Modou Ndiaye, and Samba Ndoye; Tesia’s host Dad Ibrahima Diouf; and a student from Tesia’s village, Cheikh Faye, to Beer-Sheba, a Christian agroforestry demonstration and education center. We visited Beer Sheba back in February during PST2 in Thies, and I knew immediately I wanted people from my community to see it. Lucky for us, the third-year Peace Corps volunteer working with Beer-Sheba graciously offered to host us for the day to tour the facilities and discuss how the farmers might implement similar systems in their fields and villages.

This field trip was also an important event because it really solidified for me what a special and committed group of people I am working with here. As you must have gathered by now, the Senegalese perception of time is very different from the American schedule. I asked the driver to be at our house by 5:20 am, the Nguick guys to be ready at 5:30 am, and Tesia’s Dad and the student from her village to be ready at 6:00 am. Not only was everybody ready on time, in the dark, we made it to Beer-Sheba TWO HOURS early! This never happens. Granted, I called everybody at least 3 times in the days leading up to the field trip to remind them and make sure everything was clear. But still, this never happens. I assumed we’d have a series of delays, as we generally do in a day. But everything (the car, the road, the breakfast lady) and everyone (my responsible driver and friend Dame Niang, my exceptional counterpart, and my 6 wonderful work partners) was reliable. I was glowing with pride when we arrived so early!

At Beer-Sheba, the staff fenced in 100 hectares of land, and let it grow back the way it wanted to, with little to no human intervention. The trees regenerated on their own, once they were protected from people and animals. One of the first things we did upon arriving there was climb the 2-story water tower to get a view of the 100 hectares. My counterpart, Mackiny, commented that the Beer-Sheba forest is what Senegal looked like when Modu Ndiaye (an Nguick elder who accompanied us on the trip) was a child. In addition to the naturally regenerated forest, Beer-Sheba staff have cultivated a diversified garden under a canopy of native acacia trees. The trees stabilize the soil, provide dappled shade, and aid in water retention. The garden is likely much more productive because of their presence.

Everyone left motivated and excited about all of the possibilities they witnessed. I asked the men to take a few days to digest what they’d seen, and think about what principles or technologies they’d like to implement themselves, and what they need from me to make it happen. I’m hoping that this trip spurs some of them to make changes, even if it is something relatively small, like mulching a corner of their garden to see if there is a difference in how the mulched and non-mulched plants perform. We’ll see what happens!

Nana, I want to thank you for your encouragement of this field trip! I couldn’t have made it happen without your support.

Finally, of course an update on the pets is warranted. Happy Cat remains at the nexus of the furries. He and Lady are the best of friends (until Lady gets too excited), and he tongue bathes her several times a day. Greta and Happy Cat are constant playmates, and they have started to snuggle more frequently when napping. Adorable! Greta and Lady are cordial, for the most part, but Greta wouldn’t hear of snuggling or playing with Lady. Coexisting is enough for her, thank you very much! Those three remain an important source of entertainment and snuggles, and we feel grateful that the Diops put up with our bizarre animal antics.

 

In October:

1.    The biggest challenge we faced: Rainy season ending. Our beautiful garden is starting to wilt and thirst now that the rains have gone. We’re watering with the robinet (faucet) water, but it’s just not the same. We’ll get some relief from the heat soon, as we transition into the cool season, but it will likely be another 8 months or so until we get rain again.

Just before the last rain. She was a beauty!

2.     The most exciting/best experience: For me, it was the trip to Beer-Sheba. For Peter, it was turning 27! He sure felt the love this month. Thanks to Lisa and Kevin, sister Sally, Sue and Phil, Uncle Dave and Aunt Caren, the Santos crew, Grandma and Grandpa Gardner, Kathie and Greg Bergman, and Betty Cramer! It was a ton of fun to get so much mail, so thank you all for your kind birthday wishes, and for spending so much on postage!

3.    What we are most grateful for: My parents booked their tickets! They are coming to Senegal in February- Alhamdoulilah! While we are happy and fulfilled here in Senegal, we deeply miss our American families. We feel so grateful that we will get to spend quality time with them over the next few months, and that our American families will get to meet our Senegalese family.

4.    Language factoid (by Peter): Fecc, pronounced “fetch,” simply means “to dance.”  Unlike many words in Wolof, there is no second meaning,  (Picc, pronounced “peach,” means both “bird” and “zit,” depending on context. Weñ, means both “housefly” and “metal,” not to be confused with wen, which means “breast,” and wañ, which means “to wring,” and waañ which means “kitchen.”) Sorry for the lengthy sidetrack, but the point is that fecc, as Wolof words go, is unambiguous.  However, for such a straightforward word, over here, fecc means a lot of different things to a lot of different people.

To Kait it means a way to relate to those around her.  She uses dancing as an incredibly fast way to put people at ease while simultaneously demonstrating her cultural competence. Preceding one of our trainings at the nearby Seereer village, she spent about 10 minutes with all the women present, discussing the differences between standard Wolof dances and standard Seereer ones...  through dance.  (Wolofs dance like this…  But Seereers dance like this!...)  Kait showed herself to be a master Wolof dancer.  In the end, she was pretty good at the Seereer moves, but more importantly everyone around was trying to wipe the tears of laughter out of their eyes. Perhaps even more importantly, we knew, that they knew, that we know and respect Senegal and its culture.

To me, a person who would rather die than attempt dancing in front of a pack of laughing, clapping Senegalese women, it means yet another reason I am grateful for Kait. Not only because when dancing comes up, she quickly volunteers (and saves me from the spotlight so thoroughly that people are left thinking, “Idrissa? Idrissa who?”) but also because being married saves me from being put on the spot.  Here (at least in our community) dancing is for women and young people.  In America, despite my marital status, I’m probably still considered a “young person.”  Not so here.  Having a wife is akin to having a silvery beard, not in that it means you’re old, but that it means you’re simply on a different level, community-respect wise.  It means I’m not a member of the group who should, and do dance.  Rather I’m a member of the group that, at a wedding or naming ceremony, sits in plastic deck chairs, hands folded, and comments on the frivolity of women, watching some of them dance, and the rest cook dinner and take care of the children.  Women, am I right? Not a care in the world.  (I participate in a condescending and sexist conversation only as far as it gets me out of dancing.)

To Ouli and Soda, our eight and nine-year-old sisters, it means a way to express themselves with moves that would get them kicked out of every single middle school dance, and probably even a very loosely chaperoned senior prom. 

Things we’re looking forward to in November:

- Tamxarite: The celebration of the Muslim new year.  In Senegal it takes on a decidedly unreligious bent, making it much more akin to Halloween than anything else.  Kids cross-dress, powder their faces white, and go from house to house singing and dancing for money and candy. Fun night.

- A celebration for our Girls Camp and Michelle Sylvester Scholarship Program participants in Ndiago (pushed back a few weeks, from October to November).

- A series of gardening trainings, teaching Guinguinéo residents how to work with the challenging water and soil conditions we have here. We’re hoping that several small kitchen gardens will be established around town this “cold” season (November-February).

- We’re not looking forward to this, in fact I’m dreading it, but it’s notable. The “Old Ag Stage,” who are a year ahead of us in their service, are finishing up their service and heading home in November. The new group of Ag Trainees that Peter and I welcomed last month will be the Old Ag Stage’s replacements. While we’re excited for the new Trainees to transition into their roles as PCVs in December, we are sad to see so many of our friends and mentors move on.

- Going home to America for Thanksgiving!!!! We’ll be in Sarasota for about 2 weeks, for some serious R&R and Hammersley family time (including Tybee!!!). We hoped to get to the West/Midwest and New England to see family and friends there, but flights were outrageously expensive and other PCVs have advised that it’s important to keep it simple and stay in one place if you’re only going home for a short period of time. So, a Florida vacation it will be! We’ll be back in Senegal a short 3 weeks before the Fritsches arrive in December. It will be a family-filled Holiday season!

Jamm Rekk,

Kait