My Eyes

And my mouth

Get me into a lot of trouble.

Hades, as in 'Hotter than...'

Kedougou, Senegal

Average High for past 7 days: 110°F
Average Low for past 7 days: 78°F

It is 2:30pm and I raise my head to check the thermometer as the immortal words of Janis Joplin drift from my iPod, I'm gonna try just a little bit harder. The mercury is bubbling under 106°F and I drop back into my sprawled pose. Words like these come to mind as the heat passes over my body and reduces me to a puddle. Hot winds from the Sahara blow through town, whipping up dust devils so hot it feels like standing down wind from an inferno. Days are spent like collapsing dominoes, sweating in the shade, soaking my clothes with water only to evaporate within minutes, drifting in and out of sleep. The water shortage has begun again. Water dries up after 8 am, not available again until night. Each day, a half of a bucket to wash, a half of a bucket to drink. I have been finding solace floating down the Gambia River in a life vest. Sure there are crocodiles and schistosomiasis, but it seems like a reasonable risk to take for a moment of relief. Children gather on the shoreline to watch us swim as women beat laundry on the soap splattered rocks. I have abandoned and boycotted the pool in town at the French resort. Too much colonialist snobbery, I prefer the river and the locals. Laying on my flotation device calling Pulaar greetings to those on the river banks sends laughter to echo as the sun turns my skin a sweet caramel brown.

What it's like to be famous

Last night I had the most bizarre experience. I felt what it is like to be famous for no good reason. One of Senegal's most well-known singers, Baba Maal, played the National Theatre last night to a packed crowd, including many dignitaries. I had met the MC earlier in the day when I went to buy my ticket. We chatted a little in the local language Pulaar and he told me to come back early to get a good seat. I was one of the first people to arrive and grabbed a seat right behind the VIPs.

Mind you I thought this was a normal concert so I looked like this



Yet as the crowd filled in, the women were showing up dressed like this





Needless to say I was a little underdressed. I would have been cool with being the one person in jeans and a tshirt, if I hadn't been included in the program at the last minute. There must have been technical difficulties and the MC panicked so all the sudden I see him walk over to me and call out "Hey sister, come up here and speak some Pulaar for the people!" Can I reiterate that the National Theatre is full of very important people covered in very expensive fabric, the tv cameras are rolling, and I looked like a a scruffy Peace Corps Volunteer. I felt 2000 eyes bore into the back of my head and rose to my feet, convinced I that could and must say something to save face for the MC and myself. I took the mic from the MC and faced the audience, when all the sudden my radio personality took over. I have had a weekly radio station in the local language for the past year and a half, so all the sudden my schpeel came flowing out of my mouth. "On Jarama Dakar Nabbe, min ko Dienaba Sow, volunterjo e Kedougou. Mi salmini on fow! " Literally translated as "Good evening people of Dakar, my name is Dienaba Sow, I am a volunteer in Kedougou and I greet you all" The crowd collectively gasped and broke into applause. I felt ten feet tall and bullet-proof. After the show people came up to talk to me in Pulaar and I felt such a sense of belonging to my Pulaar people that I must have exuded nothing but love. Last night was amazing and I will never forget it.

WAIST Pics

Here are some pics of the softball tournament

On the sidelines


Watching the game, that's me in on the end in the overalls


Peace Corps attracts America's finest college grads, can you believe it?

I lag, I know

All my apologies to my readers, all three of you. I have had a bit of a lack in interest posting to my blog cuz I have been out of my village so much. I just figured that you would have a lack of interest in reading it, but I guess I was wrong. Let me catch you up.

In December my dad and his betrothed Nancy came to visit me. I am pretty sure they had a great time, though I am sure they were sick of watching me run around like a chicken with my head cut off. Sure I know it is their vacation, but I couldn't help but stress. It seems that in Senegal you are always one turn away from total disaster and since nothing works on a schedule planning was especially hard. As for how they faired in the village, one word, spectacularly. So well in fact that I encouraged them to apply to the Peace Corps. They had a great time with the kids and I think they loved their hut. My village asks about them all the time and says that we are all one family now, Benguure Goto in Pulaar. Here are some of my parents favorite kid Golo.





January was spent in and around Kedougou, back at site doing a bit of work. I collected a bunch of tree seed pods for the upcoming tree nursery season with the help of some neighborhood kids.



I let the littlest kid wear my helmet so he wouldn't get wacked in the head with the falling pods.



I think that day I was wearing all found clothing and called my look, The Tennis Mom.



The lunar new year was celebrated in my village. On that day all the girls dress like men and walk around the village asking for money and dance for people. It is kinda like halloween.



And now for a little section I like to call Alexa's Petting Zoo,

Here are some cute ducks


And some lovely cows


And a dead frog I found at the Kedougou Regional House



February brought the West African Invitational Softball Tournament, which was awesome. My team was comprised of 40 insane Peace Corps Volunteers from the south of Senegal. Our team theme was short jean shorts, so we looked a bit like the Dukes of Hazard. The softball was cool, but the parties were even cooler. We partied for 6 straight nights, so by the end I was pretty beat. All the pics are on my BROKEN camera but I will get them up within the next few days.

Now I am still in Dakar for physical therapy. I have tweaked my shoulder pretty badly, not from softball, and am having it taken care of. I am going crazy without anything to do but ice my arm and watch crappy VHS movies from the 90's.

I am gonna head back to the disgusting hostel Peace Corps runs. I will sign off with some random pics that I have yet to publish. Enjoy and Au Revoir

The hut next door to my with my family dog asleep on the porch


The inside of one of the worst cars I have ever ridden in


That's me enjoying a drink at our rooftop bar in Kedougou Le Defii


Me looking pretty


Some boats beached in Poponguine


Water flooding the sidewalks in Poponguine after a big rain


A seriously cool bridge by my village


The Gambia River in Kedougou with a boat crossing it


A woman riding a bike with her baby tied to her back in Kedougou


Me cruising on a canoe thru the Atlantic


A baobob tree


And some funky baobob fruit


A rasta themed truck, notice the "Who Jah bless no one curse"


And finally, a beautiful sunset in my village


Bye guys, talk to you again soon

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