The Baptism

The Senegalese have the tradition of baptisms like many western cultures. Since the baby was to be named after me I got a bird's eye view of the ceremony. For the actual baby naming all of the men sat outside on mats while a man from the village said a prayer and the baby's name outloud three times. Dienaba Sow, Dienaba Sow, Dienaba Sow. That is me and now this little rugrat too.



All of the old ladies were sitting in my mom's hut with the baby. In a large gourd they mixed water, kola nuts, oil, and some tree bark. When they heard the baby's name they began to shave the baby's head. The scraps of oily hair were gathered and rolled into a ball, passed around to be hand-rolled by various women who recited a prayer. I too said this prayer while balling up the baby hair and understood one line, 'May she know laughter'. So I laughed. The women who shaved the baby's head chewed up some of the kola nuts into a paste and marked the baby's head with what I would describe as a star.

After the ceremony they passed out a candy paste made of rice flour, honey, and water. Local honey is smokey and flavourful, not sugar syrup. For the next few hours I sat on a carpet playing cards with the men until I got bored. After sundown one lightbulb and a boombox were animated by a very noisy generator. I hung out for awhile, danced a little, sat with my friends while they prank phone called eachother from across the party. Turns out for people who just got cell phones for the first time in their life, prank calls are like the FUNNIEST thing ever. I fell asleep early in my party clothes to the sound of music and the hum of a generator.

After being out of the village for four weeks, I returned to my dusty hut. I spent the first day and a half sweeping up piles of dirt that had fallen from my thatch roof, mud cacoons of giant wasps used to trap and eat fat juicy grubs.



My bathroom as bloomed into a tropical paradise. I must have the nicest squat toilet in the country. Passion fruit vines climbed up my walls and tangled with the squash vines and two papaya trees provide some nice shade.






The weather has turned cool, getting down to 55°F at night. The leaves are turning gold and falling off. Birds sing in the trees and hop on the ground. Hornbills, starlings, weavers, birds I cannot see only hear. I like to sit and watch them. It is better than TV. Rather it is like buying tickets to see the nature channel performed live. All the corn is cut down inside my compound and the cows come up to my hut to graze. The grass is high and drying, exactly like when I came here this time last year.




My host mother is always so welcoming and delivered the great news that I have a namesake. The night before my sister Maimouna had a baby girl and named it Dienaba after me. She says it is because the girl was red like me and has my lips and nose. That won't last long.



This week I worked out some of the details of my dad's trip to Senegal. One of the major one's was buying a cow. I had to ride in a crowded bus 38km into the bush and pick out a cow from the herds tied to the trees. I know nothing about cows, so I brought a guy from my village and a guy friend from Peace Corps help out. In the end I got a nice looking heffer that will feed a lot of people at the upcoming holiday.



Although it is kinda hard for me because I really like baby cows...



The dirtiest part of the trip was coming back in a crowded bus loaded with sheep, goats, chicken, raw milk, and for my added enjoyment a live and kicking goat under my seat. I sat all the way in the back and the driver was hauling down the dirt roads covering me in red dirt from head to toe. When I got off I looked pretty disgusting with rotten milk mud down my leg, goat piss in my hair, and red dirt covering every inch of my body.




I just got back from a crazy bike and camping trip out to the falls called Toumania. The ride took 5 hours including an hour of literal bush wacking to get to the crystal clear pools a whopping 45km out of town. We set up our hammocks in the trees and started a fire, drank wine and whisky, ate raviolis from the can, sang, danced, did some yoga under the full moon and called it a day. Did some cliff jumping the next day then packed up camp and made the three hour ride home (mostly down hill). Was a great trip.





That is all for this week. Hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving.

A Long Hello

After one year of silence I have decided to start writing again. Coming to Senegal overwhelmed my senses and I found it difficult to write anything other than facts or fantasies. Facts concerning my whereabouts or fantasies of the future mixed with stresses of the present. Nothing new, creative, complete, and especially not anything I would ask others to read. I don’t want this only to be a travel log; a series of pictures and reports of locations so far away that there is no hope to see again.

But that is where I am… far away.



I am in the Peace Corps. That overarching statement envelops a huge portion of my current existence. Peace Corps requires a complete transformation in order to survive. I have come to the point in my cultural immersion that I have been able to chill out and relax. Up until this point my body was under constant duress. If the mind is not at ease the body will not be either. Due to language constraints everything was stressful, exacerbated by the paranoia that everyone is talking about you. Then there is the constant shout of ‘Toubab’ from children on the street. That gets really old, but I just pretend they are telling me that I am pretty and it makes me feel great.

The weather plays its ridiculous and often cruel effects. In the year I have been here I have seen hot dry days of 120˚ and humid rains of 88˚. Both seasons are dramatic and inspiring. When I have come back from an 80km bike ride in the mud and rain or heat and sun I know that I have changed. And I am proud of who I have become.





I have been on a brief sojourn around the country blowing off some steam. After one year in the village and Senegal as a whole I was in serious need of some R and R. So I went to the capital with a pocket full of cash and the intention to indulge in every food and drink fantasy that I had had during the last year. It was a very worthy goal.

Food in the village is the same lunch and dinner everyday. Lunch is white rice with a watery peanut butter sauce and dinner is a finely pounded corn powder with watery leaf sauce. Both meals are consistently disappointing in my family compound because 25 people eat of one person’s pay check. There are other family compounds that eat meat and veg in every meal, but that is not mine. When I give food they ration it out. So after a few months in the village with nothing satisfying to eat but care package goodies, I get a little crazy for food. Every once in awhile I try to splurge and find a hunk of cheese or a wart hog sandwich.

I also have been to some incredible beaches and mangroves lately. There is an island off Dakar called Ile des Madeleines that has a very cool lagoon to swim in. The island isn’t more than a rock off the coast covered in baby Baobab trees and birds, but the swimming in the cool blue water was fresh and fantastic.



I went down the coast to Poponguine to help in the filming a documentary. I am on the board of directors for SeneGAD, a Peace Corps association for Gender and Development in Senegal. See the website www.senegad.org for more info. I have been helping a couple of friends shoot footage of successful women talk about their education and careers to use as a tool in middle schools and high schools. The coolest part of the project for me so far was getting permission for two of Mali’s most popular musicians to use their music in the film. Amadou & Miriam are a blind couple from Bamako, their style blends traditional village beats and melodies with European and American influences. They were very gracious to let us interview them and record their concert. Not to mention their music kicks ass!



As a final trip to the beach before I returned to my mountainous enclave I went to a special little island located comfortably off the beaten path. I took a horse drawn carriage through the bush to the coast, where I found a fisherman to take me out to the sparsely populated island. Once there I realized what paradise looks like. Coconut trees, cool villages, and a long stretch of sand beach with no other creature on it but cows. I did yoga with the sun setting into the Atlantic and found the peace of mind I had been looking for. But after two days of bucket baths and village food on the island, I was ready to start the two-day journey inland to the inclines of Kedougou where my work lays waiting for me.







Now I am back, staring down the barrel of my second year in Peace Corps, confident that this year is going to be even better than the last. I invite you to read my installations as I tell you current and past stories of varying temperaments and tones.

Bismillah

Bassari Rights Initiation

We went out to the Bassari Tribe's rights initiation festival in Etchelo. It was one of those, "Oh my god I am in Africa" weekends.

Check out these pics...

I am the White Phantom

My inner dialogue gets so out of whack, so introverted that sometimes I lose track of who I am. I have different names depending on my location, languages float, mix, and fall out of my head. I remember who I was in California, I can remember who I was in France, but here in Africa who I think I am is not so. Yesterday I took a picture with my host family and when I checked the shot I saw how white and bizare I look. How ugly I must look to them. Yet I am desirable to them if only for the money I represent. Men want to marry me. My brother told me he was going to go online and meet and American and ask them for help. He said that the American would send him money. I asked him why he thought that. He said that is what white people do. I tried to explain the concept of self-help and defeatism, but he was lost. This is a generation a people raised with the idea that the only way anything can be done is with the outside help of rich people. All the village has to do is put out their hand and voila, there is the cash. I am here as an aid worker and I can't stand the culture of aid giving.

So you want to live in a hut, eh?

Kedougou, Senegal
West Africa

As you see this is my blog from two years ago, when I started this adventure. To update regarding my whereabouts, after 10 months in Europe I went home for 8 months and worked in San Diego. Last year in April 2006 I headed to New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, and India for a total of 4 months. I was home for 6 weeks before I made the biggest change to my life. I moved to Africa to live in a hut for two years, to serve a developing community, to develop myself and become who I was meant to be.

I have been here in Senegal for 8 months working for the Peace Corps. I have had total writer's block for approximately six months. There is so much stimulation in my life, so many weird things, that I just cant seem to verbalize my analysis. But I will tell you what my life is like, and how my choice to serve in another country has effected every aspect of my existence.

Physically speaking, this is a hard job. I bike everywhere in extreme heat and am subject to nasty rashes and bites. There is often no water to wash with during the day and electricity is something I can only get when I come into town. The food is miserable most of the time. But this was all expected and I deal with it. That is all I can do.

Six months ago I was dropped off in my village with a few belongings and a bike. What seemed weird then seems normal now. I may have become a bit strange. I am very interested in the secret life of cows and often watch them when they aren't aware. They lick their own nostrils in the most delicious manner. I have 2 or 3 cows that regularly find shade in the shadow of my hut and sometimes swing their horns in my front door just to check in on me. We are mutually interested. Goats and sheep have mock human voices and when they cry out it sounds like a child imitating a goat. Chickens are disgusting dirty animals. They are so tasty in America but are tough and scrawny here. Same with the cows. They are malnourished like everyone else.

My dog got in a fight with a monkey. How many people can say that?