Advertisement
Published: December 29th 2005
November 29, 2005
We’re finally making some progress on our work. We’ve got some dates finalized for going into villages to ask women about their health care needs. It should be really interesting, and hopefully we can gather enough information to write a half decent report. It’s really frustrating here because we’re always at the mercy of someone else to get something done. We need the supervisors to organize our meetings, because they have the links to the women, we need the interpreters to work on translating our questions, and we need the drivers to take us to the villages. None of these people work at the pace that we’re used to, so Marian and I are having a real lesson in patience. I think we’re getting better at handling the pace of life here, and we’re starting to get worried about returning to the North American workplace.
We wanted to mention a few things about our time in Senegal that are actually really weird, but we're kinda getting used to. Firstly, remember jelly shoes? Men here wear them all the time, especially in Tamba. Alex and Marian were going for a walk past a soccer game, and the
guys playing asked Alex to join in. One guy gave him a pari of jellies to wear. It's bizarre to see them on men, but they're just everywhere. They are especially popular for playing soccer and jogging. I didn't think I'd ever see them again, but I guess anything is possible. Another really bizarre thing is the way that they transport livestock. While we were walking through Tamba the other day we noticed a taxi-bus (the thing we took to St Louis) with probably ten goats tied down to the top of it. It had traveled a fair distance, and now the men were trying to get the goats off the roof. They just climb up and then kind of drop them off. If the goat's lucky, then there's someone to catch him at the bottom. This is not always the case. Even worse is when they start freaking out, and kicking everywhere, through the open windows to the people still riding the taxi-bus. We sat and watched the procedure for awhile one day, only to quickly realiwe that it ws a daily event. Finally, we think that it's really funny that we're all eating out of a communal bowl.
Since Alex and John started taking over the dishes, we've been making our pasta in a big pot and just eating it straight out of there. It seems weird that we thought that was so strange when we arrived at Magueye's, and now we're voluntarily doing it.
December 3, 2005
John, Alex and I headed over to Africare tonight to listen to the Vanier Cup online. We found a really good radio station and heard the whole thing without interruptions! It was really bizarre to listen to it while in the Africare office in Tamba, imagining how cold everyone was there! We loved every second of it, and would get really excited every time they mentioned Will's name. We were really excited when they won, and pretty sad that we couldn't be there to share the moment with everyone. We saw a lot of pictures after though, and that helped to lake up for it! Congratulations Will, we're really proud of you!
December 15, 2005
I’ve decided to wait until the end of our time in Tambacounda to really write about what we’ve been up to. The truth of the matter is, we haven’t been
Becky's Village
The four of us in Toubaup to much. There is really nothing to do here. Our work has been really interesting, but our lives outside of that have been anything but that. Before a few funny stories from work, I think we should begin with a day in the life of John and Alex…
They definitely lead the lives of Senegalese women (almost, anyway). Alex makes breakfast for us, while Marian and I get ready for work. After we leave, they wash the dishes and get ready to head out to the market to pick up some fruit and vegetables. They also check their email while down at the market, which I don’t think is a common item on a Senegalese woman’s ‘to do’ list. By the time they get back home, they need to start making lunch, which is always pasta, so that it’s ready for when we get home. We hang out together during our two hour lunch break. After Marian and I leave for the afternoon, they wash the dishes, then head out to play basketball. They’ve played basketball everyday since we got here practically, which is why John’s dropped close to 15 pounds. We try to make up for the fact that they do all the work during the day by making dinner at night, but it doesn’t always go that way. They are definitely really good sports for being here…
Work has been very interesting lately. Marian and I have spent the last two weeks going out to a village each afternoon, to conduct focus group discussions with rural women. Some of them have been really successful, while others have been a total disaster. Our very first group was a total gongshow. There were 30 women, probably 50 children, close to 10 men and about 20 diffferent species of livestock. It was loud, distracting and a total waste of time. The topics that we’re discussing with the women are considered very personal here (things about delivery, and prenatal care) and will not be discussed openly in large groups or with men around. Our main problem is that the Africare supervisors are all men, and they gave us a male interpreter. They seem to be accepted into the group most of the time, but we really have to wonder if it would have gone better if there were only women. The main problem is when the village men hang around, because the women really clamp up then. It’s really rude to ask the men to leave, especially since we’ve come into their village, so we usually try to explain what we’ll be talking about, and usually they gladly leave! The number of children can be a problem also. Babies are fine normally, because they are sleeping or breastfeeding, but young children can be really distracting. We’ve really started to put our foot down about how many people can be around, and when the interpreter has to ask everyone to be quiet, and we’ve started to get some really interesting information out of the groups.
We’ve had some really funny things happen to us while we’ve been in the villages. We were in a slightly larger village (maybe 500 people) one day, and after the meeting we were walking around, taking some pictures. After every meeting we ask the group if we can take some pictures of them and the village, and they get really excited, especially if they can look at them on the digital camera screen afterwards. We think it’s because they don’t see themselves very often, because they don’t have mirrors or cameras themselves. Even the women get really pumped, and usually we have to make sure that we’ve got a really good grip on the camera, because everyone gets so excited to see themselves. We’ve been taking a lot of pictures of kids, who will literally pose for hours if we’d let them. One afternoon, we were taking pictures of kids, and a 10 or 11 year old girl came over to find out what was going on. She obviously had special needs, and when we offered to take her picture, she ran off, very scared of us. After watching from afar for awhile, and seeing all the other kids get there pictures taken, she slowly wandered over, and eventually stood in front of us to get her picture taken. She didn’t utter a word, this entire time, and even when we showed her the picture of herself, she just smiled silently. We walked through the rest of the village, stopping to say goodbye to the chief (this is something that is required when you both enter and leave the village. We can’t speak to him, but we go in with the supervisor, who tells the chief who we are, and stand there grinning like idiots). As we were leaving, the entire village gathered around our car. This usually happens when we’re leaving. Everyone comes out and waves and thanks us for coming. As we were just about to get in the car, Marian and I both passed by the previously camera-shy girl who had yet to utter a word to us. As we smiled at her, she opened her mouth and said a single word: ‘tubab’. Apparently they learn this word very early on in life…
We went to another village, north of Tambcounda for another meeting. The paved road ended right at our house, so we had a really long ride down a horrible road. By the end of the ride I was feeling pretty woozy, and I never get carsick. Marian, who gets carsick a lot was pretty green by the time we reached the village. When we got out, we quickly realized that the people were very different from others that we had visited. They looked different, and had markings on their faces. A lot of the children had the big bellies that comes from being malnourished. We thought that it was weird that a lot of the children also had reddish hair. We couldn't figure it out. They were really nice people, and their village was defintiely the most remote one we had been to so far. The women never left the village for anything. They grew crops to eat, and only a few men would go to the market very infrequently. We were obviously the first tubabs that a lot of them had ever seen. We sat down with Kandara and Ibrahim, and a crowd quickly gathered around us. Children sat all in front of us, and older teenagers behind them. Everyone sat silently staring at us. No one said a word, and everyone stared. It lasted well over half an hour, about the same time that it took Marian to feel like she didn't want to hurl all over the place. It was really strange to be that interesting to look at. When we got home we looked up Kwashikor, which is a protein deficiency, the reason for the big bellies, and learned that another symptom of the deficency is to have reddish hair. We were sad to realize that the thing we thought was kinda cool about these children was a result of malnourishment.
After that last village with Kandara, we said goodbye to our supervisors and interpreter, and visited three different villages that had Peace Corps volunteers in them. We used them as a liason to organize a meeting, and as our interpreters. The women were a lot more open with their answers, because they already knew the volunteers, and there was a lot of joking going on. When we were leaving Becky's village, the women started saying prayers for us. They said that we had come to help them, and they appreciated it and that they hoped that God gave us a safe road home. It was the perfect reminder of why we had come to Senegal in the first place.
Since these entries, we've travelled back to Dakar. We're spending our last two weeks there before heading off on our adventure.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.073s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 9; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0392s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Margo
non-member comment
Aunt
I hear you had a great chat with your families on Christmas Day. I hope your last weeks in Dakar were pleasant. Think of all the wonderful food that's ahead of you now! Much love, m