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