It has been a long time since Dave and I have posted. We need to finish our travelogue.
Mali to Senegal Part I
How do I describe the return trip? It would make a great B type short film. There was drama, pathos, pain, humor, terror, and feats of endurance! I did not even document it in my journal as I was hoping I would forget it, but the experience is indelibly marked into my brain and psyche. I can say in hindsight that I am glad I experienced it as I now have a measure to which I will always compare bad experiences. As in, “You think this is bad? You should have been on the return trip to Senegal from Mali!” Words do not do this justice, but there are no pictures as I was too busy ”making it through”! I will say that, again, while so many experiences were out of our control, what really got me through was Zach’s concern and support as well as Dave’s. When I finally lost it towards the end of the ordeal, everyone treated it as normal, including the Senegalese! OK here goes…
Phase 1 Bandiagara cliffs to Bomako (By the way, if any of you are into Jimmy Buffett, His latest CD is titled Hotel Buffett, The hotel is in Bomako and so was he 6 months before us. I doubt very much that he had our travel experiences! This was an over night ride. Zach had gotten tickets ahead of time, but when we got there the bus was full! (Duped again!) Our choice was wait for a day or ride in a bus that had 70-100 goats tied on top with their feet tied in rice bags. We thought , “Well OK they are not in the bus so this should be alright.” Overnight ride. Slept for the first two hours then woke up cold (Yes cold in Mali, Huh!) Slowly it dawned on us, there were small vent windows along the top of the bus windows and they were open. A fact we were thankful for when we got on the bus and it was 101 degrees. Now however, we were covered with goat pee spray and uncomfortably cold, while the bus driver played the Nom Song (A Griot storytelling song) over and over. Now it is morning, then midmorning and the temp is soaring and we are covered in goat pee and smelling, hungry and desperately needing to pee ourselves. Finally out side of Bomako with the city in sight the driver stops to let the goats off and I stand up on the bus and cry in front of everyone (Not a very Muslim thing to do!) When we got to our hotel, I just stood in the shower with my clothes on and watched the cockroaches in the corner! While this sounds rather desperate, all it took was a new hotel room, three showers and a cold Fanta at the Campenaird (A nice Lebanese restaurant) to make me feel better. Then there was day two……
Sue (Zach's Mom)
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
How much longer?
"How much longer will you be over there?" was a question I heard a lot while I was home. The answer is, as long as it takes to finish building (constructing, management training, and marketing) the tourist ecolodge I am helping the people in my village to create. On paper I have just signed a six month extension with an end date of February 17th 2011. In reality, I am not bound to that date, but I needed to set it so I could continue to defer my loans. Will I be home sooner? I hope so, but not likely. The work I am doing now is not my life's work, but it is something I have started and I can't leave the work unfinished just because my arbitrary two years of service are up. I made a commitment to my counterparts to see the job through. Additionally, PC Senegal is now working on developing an ecotourism label and certification scheme which is an idea I had proposed months ago. Developing that is something I am passionate about and would be really good experience. "So, how much longer?" longer than tomorrow, less than a year, ask me later.
AND COME VISIT!
AND COME VISIT!
America
I couldn't sleep the whole week before I left Senegal to go to America. I was so excited that my father cautioned me that "America is not magic, it's just the same as it always was." To which I replied, "Exactly, it is always magic." My belief was reinforced when I stepped off the plane and found that everyone around me was speaking English. It was weird, and magical. In fact, the whole three weeks I was home were filled with shocking experiences of seeing my native country with fresh eyes. Here are a few observations from my witnessing.
- We are generally ignorant of other cultures. This observation happened even before I arrived in America. Once my Delta flight was off the ground the first thing the stewards (esses) did was serve us ham sandwiches. (Muslims, who made up probably 80% of the DL216 population, do not eat pork products, whoops.) I had a good laugh and delicious sandwich at this. God Bless America.
- America is green. I had this observation while sitting on my back deck. In much of America, if we don't cut down the trees, shrubs, and grass they will over grow our homes. The environment in Senegal is better, but in Mauritania, if they do nothing (or even if they do something) their homes will covered with sand. God Bless America.
- Large grocery stores. I walked through Wegmans (a chain grocery store somewhere in between Whole Foods and Quality Markets (R.I.P.)) and bought five of everything, literally shoveling goods off the shelves. The only luggage I returned to Senegal with was full of food. God Bless America.
- Americans are wonderfully and excessively inventive. Keystone Light now gives away plastic bottle necks that you can pop onto the top of a can to beer to make it look like a bottle of beer. Who ever said Keystone Light wasn't classy? Too bad they have to give them away because no one in their right mind would buy them (I have two). God Bless America.
- We Americans are living the good life. I avoided saying this while I was home and I am hesitant to say it now because it sounds cliche, makes me sound holier-than-thou, and no one having a bad day likes to hear it, but the fact is, it's true. There is so much that we take for granted in America (for example, that drinking water comes out of the ground cool, not piping hot (and even though it is already cool we have the means to cool it further, just cause)) that at times it was difficult for me to hear anyone complain about anything. At the same time, as I have said when describing people's attitudes over here, life is relative. If your basic requirements for survival are met, when you get up in the morning in a place you are used to you tend to think "Ok, what's for breakfast?, what am I going to do this morning?, I wonder if Joe/Mamadou is feeling better." not "Wow! I own my own car! My house is made of beautiful wood! Grass is growing on my lawn!" or "Wow! I own my own donkey! My house has an excellent thatched roof! There is enough manure in my sandy yard to grow corn when the rains come!" If you have enough to eat, a decent shelter, clothes, and some sort of work to do, your day to day emotions are probably not so different from a billionaire. A few decades from now the newest generation of Americans will look back at the America my generation grew up with and wonder how we could have survived such a backwards existence, where we did not even have the internet, just as my generation looked back at a time not so long ago where household electricity did not exist. Prosperity's affect on an individual's enjoyment of life is not a direct correlation, other wise we would be just be high all the time. We ought to turn down the dial of need since it's not getting us anywhere and in its place we ought to appreciate the grass covering the topsoil covering the rest of the earth that we stand on. God Bless America.
- Transportation. At no time while I was in America did I have to ride in a make shift seat in the trunk of a station wagon that was 20 years old. God Bless America.
- Being in your own culture. Zero is the number of times I was called Toubab (white person) by little kids while I was in America. I heard it 10 times just on the taxi ride out of the airport when I returned to Senegal. Similar to that, I was describing the Senegalese habit of hissing at people to get their attention to some American friends and they responded that they thought it seemed pretty offensive, I agree. God Bless America.
- America is magic. As if all this was not enough, I spent the last night at home, standing on my back deck watching fireflies light up the woods. America is magic. God Bless America.
- We are generally ignorant of other cultures. This observation happened even before I arrived in America. Once my Delta flight was off the ground the first thing the stewards (esses) did was serve us ham sandwiches. (Muslims, who made up probably 80% of the DL216 population, do not eat pork products, whoops.) I had a good laugh and delicious sandwich at this. God Bless America.
- America is green. I had this observation while sitting on my back deck. In much of America, if we don't cut down the trees, shrubs, and grass they will over grow our homes. The environment in Senegal is better, but in Mauritania, if they do nothing (or even if they do something) their homes will covered with sand. God Bless America.
- Large grocery stores. I walked through Wegmans (a chain grocery store somewhere in between Whole Foods and Quality Markets (R.I.P.)) and bought five of everything, literally shoveling goods off the shelves. The only luggage I returned to Senegal with was full of food. God Bless America.
- Americans are wonderfully and excessively inventive. Keystone Light now gives away plastic bottle necks that you can pop onto the top of a can to beer to make it look like a bottle of beer. Who ever said Keystone Light wasn't classy? Too bad they have to give them away because no one in their right mind would buy them (I have two). God Bless America.
- We Americans are living the good life. I avoided saying this while I was home and I am hesitant to say it now because it sounds cliche, makes me sound holier-than-thou, and no one having a bad day likes to hear it, but the fact is, it's true. There is so much that we take for granted in America (for example, that drinking water comes out of the ground cool, not piping hot (and even though it is already cool we have the means to cool it further, just cause)) that at times it was difficult for me to hear anyone complain about anything. At the same time, as I have said when describing people's attitudes over here, life is relative. If your basic requirements for survival are met, when you get up in the morning in a place you are used to you tend to think "Ok, what's for breakfast?, what am I going to do this morning?, I wonder if Joe/Mamadou is feeling better." not "Wow! I own my own car! My house is made of beautiful wood! Grass is growing on my lawn!" or "Wow! I own my own donkey! My house has an excellent thatched roof! There is enough manure in my sandy yard to grow corn when the rains come!" If you have enough to eat, a decent shelter, clothes, and some sort of work to do, your day to day emotions are probably not so different from a billionaire. A few decades from now the newest generation of Americans will look back at the America my generation grew up with and wonder how we could have survived such a backwards existence, where we did not even have the internet, just as my generation looked back at a time not so long ago where household electricity did not exist. Prosperity's affect on an individual's enjoyment of life is not a direct correlation, other wise we would be just be high all the time. We ought to turn down the dial of need since it's not getting us anywhere and in its place we ought to appreciate the grass covering the topsoil covering the rest of the earth that we stand on. God Bless America.
- Transportation. At no time while I was in America did I have to ride in a make shift seat in the trunk of a station wagon that was 20 years old. God Bless America.
- Being in your own culture. Zero is the number of times I was called Toubab (white person) by little kids while I was in America. I heard it 10 times just on the taxi ride out of the airport when I returned to Senegal. Similar to that, I was describing the Senegalese habit of hissing at people to get their attention to some American friends and they responded that they thought it seemed pretty offensive, I agree. God Bless America.
- America is magic. As if all this was not enough, I spent the last night at home, standing on my back deck watching fireflies light up the woods. America is magic. God Bless America.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
HOME
It's the 12 of May, I am sitting in Thies on my way to Dakar because I fly home at 2:40 tomorrow morning!!! I have not been this excited in at least 5 years. I'll be home till June 3rd. If you are in Chautauqua County, near Potsdam, or anywhere in between, shoot me a message, I'd love to see you. WOO America!!!
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
My Hut
PVCs here have to constantly fight the misconception of our friends and family back home that everyone in Africa lives in huts. The reality is that not everyone lives in huts, but some do and the huts are much more photogenic than a concrete house, so they are probably disproportionately represented in photos. Anyway, I do live in a hut, and so does nearly everyone in my village. In actuality I might have lived in a hut in Mauritania too if enough grass grew there for thatching, but it doesn't.
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This is my hut right after the rainy season. Most of the greenery is gone now. It still needs to be rethatched, that should be happening in the next couple of weeks.
Robert Pirsig, the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, once said "I think that if we are going to reform the world, and make it a better place to live in, the way to do it is not with talk about relationships of a political nature... or with programmes full of things for other people to do... The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there..." I am a firm believer in this philosophy and extend it not just to making mental and political changes, but also to making physical changes. In that spirit, I have been "developing" my hut. (Although this idealism might just be a cover for my love of building and tinkering.) Anyway, I have been having fun and here are the results of some of my improvements.
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When I got there, this door was just a beat up old piece of tin with a bunch of holes in it. I decked it out with the bamboo facade.
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This shelving has been my biggest project. It was tricky to figure out how to get it to hold the curved shape while still support it horizontally, but after a few midday naps I came up with a solution. I made the shelving part out of a kind of wood that is almost exclusively used for making stools. So all the days I was out there cutting it up, everyone who walked by said, "Oh, you are making a stool." (Cultural side note: not knowing something makes one look bad so when they see someone doing an activity but they are not sure exactly what they are doing, they will guess and make a statement out of it rather than simply ask what they are doing. This gets a little old.) So I would correct them and tell them to go inside my hut and look. One particular time the village chief, who's compound I am in, happened to be there when someone came by and said, "Making a stool huh?" for the umpteenth time. I sighed and told him to go inside my hut and look. When he came back out he said, "Wow, that's impressive, I thought you were just making a stool." To which the village chief incredulously responded, "You thought he was just making a stool? Have you seen what he did to his door???" I got a kick out of that.
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Door and shelving. (Mom, see, now I am as organized as Tim!)
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Close up on the shelving.
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My compost pit. Water from washing my hands after going to the bathroom automatically waters the pit.
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The door to my garden.
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A small veggie garden behind my hut.
.JPG)
This is my hut right after the rainy season. Most of the greenery is gone now. It still needs to be rethatched, that should be happening in the next couple of weeks.
Robert Pirsig, the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, once said "I think that if we are going to reform the world, and make it a better place to live in, the way to do it is not with talk about relationships of a political nature... or with programmes full of things for other people to do... The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there..." I am a firm believer in this philosophy and extend it not just to making mental and political changes, but also to making physical changes. In that spirit, I have been "developing" my hut. (Although this idealism might just be a cover for my love of building and tinkering.) Anyway, I have been having fun and here are the results of some of my improvements.
.JPG)
When I got there, this door was just a beat up old piece of tin with a bunch of holes in it. I decked it out with the bamboo facade.
.JPG)
This shelving has been my biggest project. It was tricky to figure out how to get it to hold the curved shape while still support it horizontally, but after a few midday naps I came up with a solution. I made the shelving part out of a kind of wood that is almost exclusively used for making stools. So all the days I was out there cutting it up, everyone who walked by said, "Oh, you are making a stool." (Cultural side note: not knowing something makes one look bad so when they see someone doing an activity but they are not sure exactly what they are doing, they will guess and make a statement out of it rather than simply ask what they are doing. This gets a little old.) So I would correct them and tell them to go inside my hut and look. One particular time the village chief, who's compound I am in, happened to be there when someone came by and said, "Making a stool huh?" for the umpteenth time. I sighed and told him to go inside my hut and look. When he came back out he said, "Wow, that's impressive, I thought you were just making a stool." To which the village chief incredulously responded, "You thought he was just making a stool? Have you seen what he did to his door???" I got a kick out of that.
.JPG)
Door and shelving. (Mom, see, now I am as organized as Tim!)
.JPG)
Close up on the shelving.
.JPG)
My compost pit. Water from washing my hands after going to the bathroom automatically waters the pit.
.JPG)
The door to my garden.
.JPG)
A small veggie garden behind my hut.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Kedougou Regional House
Since I have been really bad about writing blogs lately, I thought I would post some pictures instead. Briefly work is going well, but I am waiting to post on my activities until they are a little more complete. Anyway, now to the interesting pictures.
One of my first posts in Mauritania was about how there really was no feeling of being "inside the home" and almost all of the days activities took place outside. I stand by that observation and perhaps these photos will help you to understand. What is pictured below is the Peace Corps regional house for the volunteers in Kedougou. This is where we stay when we need to use the internet, get to a bank, buy supplies, or unwind. While some of the regional houses in Senegal resemble and American dwelling, the one in Kedougou really follows the Senegalese lifestyle, although it is Americanized quite a bit.
This is what we call the porch and where we spend most of our time.
The building that says Welcome to Kedougou is for storage and the building with the thatched roof is where we sleep.
As you can see, almost all of the buildings are open on the sides. Actually the only buildings with doors that close are the storage rooms and the bathrooms.
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Our kitchen.
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And that's what we call home when we are not in our villages.
One of my first posts in Mauritania was about how there really was no feeling of being "inside the home" and almost all of the days activities took place outside. I stand by that observation and perhaps these photos will help you to understand. What is pictured below is the Peace Corps regional house for the volunteers in Kedougou. This is where we stay when we need to use the internet, get to a bank, buy supplies, or unwind. While some of the regional houses in Senegal resemble and American dwelling, the one in Kedougou really follows the Senegalese lifestyle, although it is Americanized quite a bit.
This is what we call the porch and where we spend most of our time.
The building that says Welcome to Kedougou is for storage and the building with the thatched roof is where we sleep.
As you can see, almost all of the buildings are open on the sides. Actually the only buildings with doors that close are the storage rooms and the bathrooms.
.JPG)
.JPG)
Our kitchen.
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And that's what we call home when we are not in our villages.
Coming home
That's right. I'll be home from May 14th to June 3rd for a couple of weddings and my first visit back to the US in two years. Woohoo! I'll be at home for the first two weeks for my sister's wedding and then up to Clarkson for Ryan and Maggie Mae's wedding. If you are in either of those places, or in between the two, let me know and I'll try to swing by.
I think coming home to visit is just as surreal for me at this point as leaving home to do the Peace Corps was when I started. It's definitely as exciting. Words can not express how good I imagine it will feel to be HOME, even for a little while. I have definitely found it to be true that the more you travel the more you appreciate where you grew up.
Having been gone for two years and living with such a different cultural perspective on life, it will be interesting to see what about America is difficult for me now. I have some guesses. It's probably best not to complain to me about the minor inconveniences you experience. I probably won't tolerate hearing about cold temperatures being a bad thing either. Also I have heard that the waist size of our fellow Americans can be alarming and take some getting used to again.
Anyway, I AM PUMPED to be coming home!
I think coming home to visit is just as surreal for me at this point as leaving home to do the Peace Corps was when I started. It's definitely as exciting. Words can not express how good I imagine it will feel to be HOME, even for a little while. I have definitely found it to be true that the more you travel the more you appreciate where you grew up.
Having been gone for two years and living with such a different cultural perspective on life, it will be interesting to see what about America is difficult for me now. I have some guesses. It's probably best not to complain to me about the minor inconveniences you experience. I probably won't tolerate hearing about cold temperatures being a bad thing either. Also I have heard that the waist size of our fellow Americans can be alarming and take some getting used to again.
Anyway, I AM PUMPED to be coming home!
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