More about the rain...

Visual Music

Visual music,
bathes the earth
as a mother lovingly bathes her child

Stilling solice,
dampens the burning ball
of intense inner fire

Cleansing clarity,
clears the air
of immediate concern

Descending droplets,
return grounded
in growing pools of reflection

Running rivlets,
springing up in the sand
inspire new directions

Nourishing nectar,
fuels growth
towards a higher purpose

Rain in West Africa, a rare regularity,
is welcomed by parched soils
and parched souls.

Lightning Tree

I LOVE the rain here. I loved it in America, but rain is so refreshing here it makes me pause everytime. I have been trying to capture exactly it mood it puts me in. Here is one attempt:

Lightning Tree

The current of something greater

flashes through your mind

as a desire to be more thoroughly alive

burns its roots into your psyche

yes, there is something growing now

with ions for leaves

breathing ozone not oxygen

it is this feeling that you want to catch

as it momentarily illuminates new synapses

this power of potential

the beauty of inspiration

but its gone in an instant

too electric to hold on to

leaving behind only smoking tendrels

of growth

in the smoldering hole of what could be

but isn't.

z.swank

8/2/2010

Ingli Trip

Fording a river

This photo was taken in a village 30 km from any sort of road. They have internet.

The Ingli waterfalls, come to Senegal and I'll take you out to see them.

There are some beautiful villages out here.

and another post!

Things have gotten GREEN! It has been raining twice/thrice a week for a couple of months now. This part of Senegal gets as much precipitation in the five month rainy season as Western New York gets in a year. It shows. The grass is up to four feet and the corn is up to ten. It does my eyes good to see green, my body good to feel a cool breeze, and my soul good to feel rain. Back home in NY I loved each season equally for the different aspects of the world it brought out. Here, I just love the rainy season. So much so that I have thoughts of looking for year round green in my next surroundings of residence.

People are leaving. The volunteer community is sort of a bizarre social atmosphere. We are thrown together as a group of strangers that shares a common tongue, background, and set of challenges. We generate great camaraderie while still not really knowing each other. Then volunteers start finishing their time and leaving before you know it, only to be replaced immediately by new faces. In Senegal, a group leaves and is replaced every six months. Sometimes groups of outgoing volunteers can slip away without affecting your social network. Other times you can loose all of your good friends and be forced to start building new friendships as if you just arrived in country. I probably feel this more acutely than most volunteers since I lost nearly all of my friends twice, when I transferred from Mauritania and then now that I am extending. I do not mean to lament too heavily, it’s always exciting when a new group comes in, but the group leaving now is taking the two people I have been closest with since Mauritania.

Fun. The volunteers in the Kedougou region put together a show for the community radio station every week. It is a great activity that I support wholeheartedly, in principle. Really though, I have no real interest in taking part even though nearly everyone else pitches in. Recently I was asked by another volunteer why I would not help out with the upcoming show and without thinking I deadpanned, “It doesn’t sound like fun at all.” To which another volunteer within earshot responded “I like your work attitude!” I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but it stuck in my mind in that fateful way that hidden truths do. Time passed and when it popped up again I realized what else it meant: all of the work I do, is fun to me. While I am sure that my interests and attitudes have adapted to the job I am currently doing, being in the completely unstructured work environment of a PCV has given me the freedom to choose only the work that I find fun, and on a day to day basis. It is often hard for me to tell if I am what I am excited about is my work, or is my life. I realize I might not always have this, and I am therefore appreciating it all the more, but knowing that this type of feeling about one’s work is achievable, it is going to be something I am willing to sacrifice for in the future, if need be.

The campement. Little progress has been made on the campement lately. From the beginning of the year up until my trip to America we were out working on the campement more often than not. Since coming back from America, things have been moving much more slowly due to a variety of reasons. First, we have nearly used up the funding we have received thus far. Second, the rains started which means everyone is very busy out in their fields everyday and don’t do a lick of work anywhere when it rains. This is a tradition I like very much and think we should adopt in the States. Haven’t we reached a point of development where we can just kick back whenever there is any sort of weather? Of course not, it would be contradictory to the Puritan (can’t we just call it American at this point?) work ethic that built our nation. Any slackening in our efforts and we’d fall from the grace of the bleeding, beautiful, destructive edge of progress. So, I take advantage of the rains here just as much as everyone else. The third reason is it is Ramadan. Not to be insulting to your cultural knowledge, but I don’t think I could have explained Ramadan to someone before coming to West Africa, so I’ll attempt do so now.

Ramadan. Is the holy (lunar) month for the Muslim world. If you want to know the theological significance of it, I’m not the person to ask. I just know what happens here. For the whole month of Ramadan all practicing Muslims (except those who are sick, infirm, pregnant, or nursing) fast from sun up to sun down. That means no food or water from dawn to dusk. In my village, they wake up at 5am to eat breakfast and suck down as much water as they can. Most people still work out in their fields or prepare food for at least half the day, because, well, they have to. Towards midday people start lying down, a trend that continues throughout the afternoon. Then around dusk everyone gathers around a bowl of Mboydi, little balls of corn flower in a tangy sweet sauce. They all sort of stare at this until the evening prayer is called and they can break their fast. Then they can drink water again. Dinner happens around 10pm, then everyone goes to sleep in order to get up at 5am the next day. This is now the third Ramadan I’ve been through. I’m only convenience fasting this time (skipping lunch but still drinking water), but I’ve fasted enough to have appreciation for the men and women who are out there working in the fields with no water. Ramadan starts 11 days earlier every year because it follows the lunar calendar and right now it is slowly marching its way backwards through the most busy time of a West African farmer’s year. Which brings up the other aspect of Ramadan one notices; everyone is a little on edge for obvious reasons. I’ve spent most of the month hiding away at the PC house taking care of my new PCVL duties. Only eleven more days left now though and this should happily be my last Ramadan.

PCVL. Each region in Senegal has a third year volunteer, or group of them, that extends to take on the responsibilities of Peace Corps Volunteer Leader (PCVL), essentially a regional coordinator. In the past we had a wonderfully active PCVL that did a lot to support the other volunteers in the region, but he has decided that after four years of service in Senegal, without even going back to visit the US, it was time to go home. Including myself there are three volunteers who are extending and due to the nature what we each wish to accomplish in our extension, we have decided to divide up the duties. This allows me to semi-officially take on the responsibility of taking care of the regional Peace Corps house, something I was leaning towards doing anyway. Robert Pirsig, and probably some other famous people, said that if you want to improve the world, you need to improve yourself first. Liking this quote, I’ve always applied it to my physical surroundings as well. I find that having my room in order, makes it easier to keep my life in order. Using that metric, and looking at the state the regional house is often in, it’s a wonder the volunteers are able to accomplish anything at all. So I find myself building new shelves, fixing plumbing, picking up trash, repairing doors, and replacing electronics when lighting strikes (three times so far). It is not development work per say, but it needs to be done, I enjoy doing it/having it done, and like I said the physical attitude of a place affects the mental attitude of the people in it. It also works out quite neatly that this responsibility keeps me in Kedougou where there is, among other amenities, a blender that I use on a daily basis to pump out smoothies. J

Finally, a post!

I have to apologize for not writing in so long. As tends to happen every now and then, time just slips by. Since I don’t remember where I left off in the story of my life over here, I’ll start with a resume of what’s happened before starting the fall season.

- Bigger waterfalls

- Fourth of July party in Kedougou

- Roofs on the huts in the campement

- Lots of carpentry

- The RAINY season

- World maps

- Feelin good and lookin forward

What am I doing now (in brief)?

- Starting a business

- Prepping to raise $$$

- English camps

- Close of service conference

Now for details:

Bigger Waterfalls:

The tourist attraction for my village is a waterfall. The attraction for Dindefello is another bigger waterfall. However, both of these pale in comparison to the waterfall at Ingli and no one goes there except for PCVs. This is because it is only accessible by foot or bike and we are pretty much the only foreigners who know about it and are willing to take a 120km trip to get out there and back. Boy was I glad I did. I’ll let pictures speak of it’s grandeur.

Fourth of July party:

Every year the Kedougou region hosts a fourth of July party for all of the PC volunteers in Senegal. This year, over half showed up, around 80 people. It was honestly one of the best if not, the best Fourth of July I have had. Events included, corn hole, horse shoes, can jam, water balloons (my doing), and super soakers (my doing). Food included the staple sides of the 4th and PIG! Quite a delicious rarity in Senegal. I won’t be here for next year’s 4th, but if you are looking for a good way to celebrate America’s independence next year, you should come to Senegal to get it.

Roofs on the Campement:

As you all know, my main project is building an ecotourism lodge. We received about $5,000 USD in January and have now converted most of that into three huts and a bathroom for tourists. At the time that I left to go to America, the walls were up, the rains were coming, but there were still no roofs. I am happy to say that they are all on now. Having roofs on the huts marks a real the achievement of being close to being done with this phase of the project, eight months and much sweat after starting. It is a great feeling to be able to look at them and think “I made that happen” (with funding from the US government and the physical contributions of many people from the village) and know that it will soon be providing a source of formal income for 10 individuals and financially support the village’s own development efforts to the tune of 15% of it’s profits. It’s hard to imagine accomplishing things that are much more rewarding than that in my life.

Lots of carpentry:

Without me knowing my counterparts commissioned the doors and windows of the campement to be made out of African Mahogany. Dough! But very beautiful. Except, the carpenters used nails that were twice as long as they should have been so they all have ugly nails bent over on the back sides. I had a revelation recently that this campement was never going to be as nice as I had envisioned it because I was not MY campement, a realization that was precipitated by seeing the patterns on the sheets that my counterparts bought, but the massacre of the beauty of African Mahogany was one thing that I could not let stand. So I have many days over the course of the last few weeks pulling out all of the nails and then replacing them with screws. Seems like a pretty simple operation, but the wood is incredibly dense and the screws are incredibly weak. In order to get them in I had to take out the existing nails, pound in slight larger nails just to enlarge the holes, then pull those out, and put the screws in. Towards the end of the work I got my hands on a cordless drill (God Bless America) and it all went much faster. Anyway they are done now and they look much better. The other carpentry I have been doing was ripping 24 meters of wooden planks down to size for the window frames. When I was in America I picked up a saw sharpening file knowing that I was going to be doing this but neglected to buy saw set pliers (which push the teeth of the saw out alternating directions so the area that it cuts is wider than the blade of the saw, keeping it from binding up). So every time the saw bound up in the wood, I cursed myself for not having the foresight to get the set pliers (now in the mail) here sooner. Once it is here, I am going to sharpen and set every single saw I see because nearly every hand saw in Senegal is dull.

Ok, I’m taking a break and posting this now, but I will finish the details soon.

Journal of a PCV Parent Cont.

Essentials for hut living
Warthogs
Rehabilitated Panther
Obsidian Roller National Bird
Baboon
Mongoose
Park map
On the banks of the Gambia
Me and my guys!
Tambaconda was a resting place for us while Zach got organized and provisioned for his installation in his village. (See provisions picture: Bucket with lid to store food, a mat for the dirt floor, a latrine wash kettle, and a wash bucket with cup for bucket bath or clothes washing.) We then went on an adventure, at my request, to Nicola Koba National Park. We stayed at the Wassado, a French run tourist Campement that was flat out luxury compared to the last week and a half. We were in the park forest so it was cool and our room had fans. We showered and I put on makeup and a dress and felt like I was on a date with my two favorite guys! We ate on a porch on the edge of the Gambia River on white linens with wine and French cooking, a chilled mango mousse for dessert, the cool breeze and night sounds of baboons playing in the trees nearby. A bit of heaven! We went on a private safari the next day. The pictures will tell the story. We had a fabulous lunch midday of rice (without dirt), turkey, grapes, tomatoes and hardboiled eggs as a cold salad with vinaigrette dressing. It was the best meal in a long time and thoughtfully tooted in cooler full of ice with cold drinks as well. We fell asleep on a mat provided for us and slept off the midday heat. (Why don’t we do this here on hot days? It certainly is survival in sub Saharan Africa.) That evening after another fabulous French meal complete with the first lettuce salad we dared eat, we sat in chairs on the bank of the river and watched the silhouettes of baboon families playing in the trees across the river. This was a magical moment! Thanks again Zach for knowing when we needed a break!
Sue

Week 4 of 5 Journal of a PVC Parent

Day II Travel from Mali to Senegal (or 23 hours on an OLD bus with a crazy driver)
This trip had intrigue, bribery, violence, humor, humanity and comradary! Most of all it did not have goats tied to the top of the bus! Of the 23 hours we traveled, we had 3 2hour stops. The first stop was to wait for a second bus to make a connection, so we were stuck in a crowded parking lot with pretty disgusting latrines, which by now I could handle because it was better than the alternative! It was just HOT and dusty. We had a lunch of bananas and baguettes (by now we are getting pretty lean). It was an anxious wait because you had to be sure the bus you came on did not leave with your luggage and no one seemed to know why we were waiting. Back on board. Many hours before a lunch stop and dash to a latrine. Then the first of many passport checks started. It was a long aft of stop and go and it was getting towards evening and still no bathroom stop. Finally a stop and I saw a latrine in the distant field and some women from the bus heading towards it so I start off, telling the boys that in no way can they let the bus leave without me! The bus driver started honking his horn and wanted us back for a passport check. I looked at the woman next to me and raised my hands in a question. She grabbed my arm and we ran towards the latrine while the driver honked furiously. She handed me the bucket and she peed out back and gave me the latrine. I started to run back and again she took my arm and shook her head to say “No, don’t run” as we got back to the bus the driver honked his horn in our ears, we just got on the bus with our noses in the air as if to say “ We are women and we have the right to pee, you will just have to wait.” When we got to our seats I turned to look at her and thank her and we shared a giggle. Those kinds of moments of connection were astounding and made me feel more than OK. It is a foreign land, language and culture but we can still connect and share compassion for one another! Later another two hour stop at customs. The Nigerian Nationals were forced to pay a bribe. They were hassled the whole trip, we were not. Our Embassy is too strong in Senegal. We had started the trip at 6AM; our third stop was at 2 AM at immigration. This was a small building in a small court yard with, by far, the worst latrines of the trip (just take my word, I do not want to describe) There were three gendarmes one of whom was more official and his job was to take our passports and hand write our information on a tablet (in pencil! How official is that?) We were the third bus there and there seemed to be no hurry. It could take up to 5- 10 min per person. We were too discouraged to do the math. Finally a non Senegalese African National got tired of being treated this way and got angry with the gendarme. Suddenly we heard loud voices, a very loud slap and the crowd began to get very agitated. We moved to the back of the crowd. All I could think about were the semiautomatics the three officials had, but some people surrounded the disgruntled man and escorted him out of the courtyard until he had calmed, Whew! We finally arrived in Tambacounda at 5AM and slept until 8:30. We had much to do that day!