Hi All,
It’s hard to believe that our service is so close to its
conclusion. With well less than
one month left at site, I’ll admit it’s impossible to synopsize how we
feel. Kait and I have both been
paralyzed by the prospect of blogging. There is just so much to say, it’s
difficult to know where to begin.
Part of the reason is because we’re still desperately trying
to wrap up all of our projects, or at least get them to a place where they can
weather the three-month gap between our replacements and us, which limits our
time for reflection and/or freaking out.
The main cause is that because our emotional state at any
given moment has little to no bearing on our emotional state 15 minutes
later. The emotional roller
coaster of the past two years continues with the same amplitude, but a much
shorter wavelength. (Pardon the mixed electro-magnetic/theme park
metaphors) One minute I’ll be
walking to buy phone credit and get accosted by children (or worse, adults) and
aggressively asked to offer them everything from money to a soccer ball to a
plane ticket to America, thinking, “I sure won’t miss this stuff in
America…” The next minute I’ll get
back to the wonderful sanctuary of our home, greeted by Papa Gorra and Fallou
screaming excitedly and asking if we can go into the garden and work, thinking,
“I’m really gonna miss this stuff in America…”
I find solace in how I reflect back upon challenging and
formative events/times in my past.
The hard, painful or sad aspects fade with time or get romanticized and
recalled as much less difficult than they were at the time. The loving, wonderful, and satisfying
aspects tend to not fade. We will
always love the Diop family and will continue to be involved in their lives,
despite the distance conspiring against us. Furthermore, I firmly believe that as time passes we will
only increase in our knowledge and appreciation of how profoundly formative our
time here has been, both for us as a couple, and as individuals.
Anyhow, enough of the reflective stuff. No time for it anyway!
This morning, sitting with the family drinking coffee, I
noticed something a little strange.
The bread came wrapped in a torn British newspaper page. I first observed that sadly the
crossword was IMPOSSIBLE.
(Apparently my handle on British idioms, puns and pop culture isn’t what I
thought it was.) Then I started
reading aloud to the kids and Yaay, which they thought was the FUNNIEST thing
since “Who’s on First?” (which
might, now that I think about it, be extra confusing in Wolof because the word
for “Who” is also a common last name).
After I read aloud all the paper had to say, which was, other than the
crossword, the beginning of a book review and the end of an article about the
resurgence of a species of Kite in Wales, Yaay gave it a go. She can’t read in the strictest sense…
or at all, but she’s a hell of a faker.
Hearing a Wolof pretend to speak English is simultaneously offensive and
hilarious. She sounded like a mix
between Beaker from the Muppet Show and a drunken goat with a head cold… except
somehow even more nasally than that.
Every so often she would throw in a nasalized “thank you very good,” as
it is the only phrase she knows in English. It makes one wonder why Senegalese venerate American culture
so much when they think we sound so, so very horrible when we speak. I guess perceived extravagant wealth
gets you forgiven for sounding like a distressed goose.
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| Storm rolling in above our house. |
The rainy season is fully here. Everything is SO green! Granted most of the green is weeds, but it’s still such a
wonderful change from the brown/tan of the nine dry months. Our garden is taking off in the best
way. All the perennials and trees
bounced back so fast. It’s a
little sad that we’ll be gone before we can harvest any beans, okra, bissap,
sweet potato, or melon. Luckily
the family has shown such enthusiasm for the garden, we have every reason to
think they’ll continue to maintain it and they’ll certainly gladly harvest its
bounty. Kait’s even been taking
our siblings into the garden and teaching them species names, so they can
orient our replacements. Even
little Papa Gorra can spout off a pretty impressive list of
species/varieties. The little
horticulturalist even seems to have given up his nasty habit of ripping up plants
when he tantrums.
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| Our banana area at the beginning of the rainy season |
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| Our banana area ~1.5 weeks into rainy season. The Italian basil and sweet potatoes are exploding |
Unfortunately we have another plant-ripping-out problem
plaguing us, and you can’t get them to stop destroying everything by shaming
them in front of their siblings and kicking them out of the garden. You may have actually seen news of this
little turd in various media of late…
PCVs call them cat rats (because they’re about that size)
and in Wolof they’re called kaña. Here,
they thankfully don’t have any mines or tuberculosis to sniff out. Unfortunately, this means they get
their super sniffers to work on our garden. They like the way roots smell… and taste. Funny thing about plants: they need
roots to live. Ever since Lady
Obama went to live with her new family, the cat rats have taken over the yard
under cover of night. We wake up
most mornings just hoping they didn’t dig up anything we’re especially attached
to. Most people here, when
confronted with a kaña problem, just leave out poison, usually dissolved in
water. Neither one of us really
has the heart for that, though.
Especially in light of the fact that they’re so dang smart, despite
their appearance. Also we have way
too many cats in and around our compound for leaving any poison and not fully
expecting to also take out a couple cats and/or kitten, which wouldn’t feel
super-great. So our solution is to
fill in the burrows that they dig (and pour gallons upon gallons of dirty
dish/laundry water in them) and cover the things we want to protect with thorns
from the desert date tree (they grow up to six inches long and are mean as
hell).
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| Aloe looks like a tentacled alien when looked at from above. We brought this specific aloe from America and it was about 3 inches tall, now it’s mighty enough to devour a platoon of Space Marines. |
Other than that little (giant) rodent-monster mucking up our work, our
garden has been a delight. The
rainy season this year is shaping up to be better than last, which means the
garden is pretty self-maintaining.
This is especially true because instead of seeding the free-standing
bigger plants (okra, bissap, hot pepper, etc.) we just grabbed them from where
they naturally germinated, and transplanted them where we wanted. It’s indicative of how much we grew
last year that we were leaving fruit on the plant long enough to dry, and drop
its seeds. The rain does mean that
we have to weed, but it means that everything is SO green and happy. It’s a fun time to be a gardener here.
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| Kait hard at work in the garden. |
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| Happy Cat continues to help us in our gardening endeavors from his special spot in the corner. |
When we haven’t been having fun in our garden we been hard
at work with trees. Having
completed our tree nursery creation and seeding trainings before we went to
America to visit, we’ve just now completed the final loop of nurseries and
trained everyone in how to outplant and maintain their precious trees. Some groups have been more committed
and successful than others, but all in all, we feel great about our
contribution this year.
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| Teaching the finer points of tree transplantation. |
Kait’s counterpart, Mackiny, continues to be the shining star
beyond compare. He is so
motivated, but also committed to raising up his whole community with him. He had in his personal tree nursery far
more trees than in the rest of ALL of our nurseries combined. We teased him that he was the Nguick
branch of Eaux et Fôrets, the official government tree service.
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| Mackiny pointing toward trees in his nursery… like a BOSS |
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| Eaux et Fôrets Nguick: Note the child in the humorously numbered jersey. |
Kait’s been far more adventurous than me in the past
month. She got weave put in her
hair for Korité (end of Ramadan).
It was about a four hour process, but everyone thought she looked so
dang pretty and should leave it in for months!
She left it in for nearly a week. Something about getting heat rash on the back of your neck
from the irremovable 6lb hair-pulling polyester fur hat you’re wearing doesn’t
scream, “keep me in forever!” It
was a cool look while it lasted.
Even I thought so.
When she went out on tour with Eaux et Fôrets, they came
across an illegal charcoal-making operation. Charcoal is tightly controlled, as it is one of the leading
causes behind the rampant deforestation.
It was about a week before Korite, so we can safely assume that after
the men got busted, their Korite was ruined.
Sad, but Boniface Gomis, the new commander of E&F Guinguinéo
enforces the law with a pretty
iron fist. It’s too bad the trees
can’t thank him, because the people whose charets he impounds sure don’t. He also gave a huge bag of charcoal to
Baay, since Kait took part in the bust. All she did was tackle and cuff one guy though, so an entire bag was very
generous. I am, of course,
lying. She actually unmasked Old
Man Diallo who was pretending to be a genie to scare Eaux et Fôrets away from the operation. To which Old Man Diallo said, “And I
would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you meddling Toubabs!”
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| Bagging and loading the contraband |
The saddest thing about leaving so soon is how much we’ll
miss our family, and how much they’ll miss us. For this reason we’ve been spending more time hanging with
the Diops than in the past. We
play soccer in the evenings. We
roughhouse after lunch.
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| We have ugly face contests. Which I usually win, or mash Papa Gorra’s face all the way into the winner’s circle. |
I think the kids will really miss us, but they’re young and
resilient. They’ll latch onto our
replacements quickly and hopefully our replacements will be open and quickly
accept them into their hearts. I’m
more concerned about Yaay. She
doesn’t really have that much social stimulation. She goes to the market, and sells fatayas at night, but she
can’t really speak frankly in those settings about the things vexing
her. Kait has become a real
confidante of hers on all matters: child stuff, health issues, even marital
problems and beyond. I don’t know
where Yaay will go for sympathy and commiseration after we leave. I hope she’ll be able to find another
patient ear and compassionate shoulder to cry on after she loses her Ndey
Penda. Time will tell. Anyhow, Kait’s making an extra effort
to make Yaay feel special in this last leg of our service. Yaay taught her to cook Maffé (peanut
sauce that goes over rice) as it is Kait’s favorite dish here, and as any
good wife must, she must be able to cook her man some solid lunches once we get
back to America.
I think we'll be able to translate her knowledge into a pretty excellent Crock Pot Maffé recipe.
I guess I didn't write anything about our time in
America. Here goes: It was
great. Saw beloved friends in
Boston and New York. Beloved
family in Rhode Island. Met Mira
MacArthur Jost for the first time.
Maaaaaaan is she cute!
Didn’t get any spinal meningitis! Drove a car. Ate food. Drank
beverages. Great time all around. We’re about to live in that country for
the foreseeable future, yadda yadda yadda.
This Past Month...
Biggest challenge:
Wrapping up everything before we have to go. Relationships.
Work projects. Our lives
for the past two years. A lot of loose
ends need tying up. Not a lot of
time left to do it.
Most exciting/best experience: Even though we saw it last year, so we should be somewhat
less impressed this year, seeing the garden explode with green after the first
few good rains has been so fulfilling.
All the trees and little perennials are covered in leaves. Everything just grows with so little
effort. A cat rat hole filled in
here… a dozen caterpillars smashed there... is such a manageable price to pay
for the level of satisfaction we, our family included, get out of the
garden. To say nothing of the
produce.
Thing we are most grateful for: Wonderful work partners. Not everyone we work with is a rock star, but some of them
really are, and it’s hard to imagine working here without them. In them, if nowhere else, we know our
work will carry on beyond our departure.
Mackiny Tall, Mariatou Diallo, and Lemu Ba: THANK YOU ALL for being the best!
This coming month we’re looking forward to…
The last of the tree outplanting, including a
municipal tree planting project in which we’ve served as primary coordinators
and liaison between Eaux et Fôrets and the Mayors Office… i.e. cat herders.
Continuing rainy season and beautiful green-ness. Hopefully without the accompanying
staph infections.
Maybe a big party for all of our work partners and friends,
akin to the party we hosted when team Fritsche was in town.
All of our final meetings/clearances. Will Med say we’re healthy? Will our bosses say we were great
volunteers? Will the grants
coordinator say our grant is all squared away? Will the bike guy say he has our bikes? For all this, and
more, (like the results of our poo samples!) STAY TUNED!
COS. In less
than a month, we will be RPCVs bound for America. Crazy town.
Wish us courage and strength as we close this chapter and
get ready for a new one. We hope
to see you soon, those few of you who have actually stuck it out with us, and
didn’t quit reading the blog after the first few posts! Congratulations! You too should get a cool new acronym
to describe how you’ve committed the last two years of your life to reading our
blog, even when it was boring or light on visual media. Perhaps RPCVSTBR for “Returned Peace
Corps Volunteer Supporter Through Blog Reading.“ Bit verbose, but if I know one thing from Peace Corps, it’s that
no acronym is too beefy for the US Government. Thank you for your readership.
Love,
Peter
Peter
