Glitter

I concede that I am a hippy.  Vegetarian (well, vegetarian on vacation), organic, earthy, open air farmer’s market, loud indie folk music from a politically vocal but barely running car, naked toes in the musky soil, sleeping in tents and barely bathing in highway rest areas, environmental science major- hippy.  Save the earth! t-shirts with third hand thrift store jeans, knee high woolen socks and Birkenstocks; I am there!  But I have a confession to make.  I love glitter.  It doesn’t quite fit the picture; I have yet to find a sequined organic linen skirt, or all natural sparkle eye shadow.  I have quenched my thirst for the glitz with annual doses of bedazzled bathing suites and layers of waterproof makeup.  I have never disclosed the fact that behind my earth toned façade there lay a plastic paradise of all things shiny just waiting to be taken out on the occasional weekend.  But now she has found her home!  There is so much glam here Senegal that on a holiday a drag queen might have trouble getting noticed.  Jewelry is big, loud, and shiny.  Shoes are high and bright.  Makeup is obnoxious and clothes can make you dizzy.  Subtlety is not a word that applies to Senegalese dress and while the more sensible part of me is slightly ill from the gaudiness, another part of me is absolutely thrilled!  I am now the proud owner of an entirely sequined shirt.  It is golden and I love it.

Bugs

It’s hard for me to imagine but I remember that there was a time when I would have trouble falling back asleep after finding a bug in my bed.  I cannot really fathom why I would be so shaken up by one tiny creature, maybe it was my lack of familiarity.  Even with my chemically treated mosquito net (ever watch a fly slowly slip into insanity as it inhales the toxic fumes, from your bed?  It’s a somewhat bittersweet experience) I am happy to wake up and discover only one dead bug in the folds of my sheet.  With the commencement of the rains bugs have made a comeback from their relatively limited  showing during the hot season.  I had almost forgotten how much I hated flies and mosquito bites; now I remember.

Having been raised in a society where even a drunk yes means no, I feel very much violated by flies.  I yell and swear and swat at them but their advances are relentless.  They touch me in places I do not feel comfortable being touched: my lips, my eyes, my nose, my ears.  The other day I had a grasshopper crawl up my pants to my inner thigh.  I tell them I’m tired, I really just wanted to nap, but their tiny feet awkwardly tickle me as they caress my legs.  And cuts too.  Any type of wound is treated like a desert oasis during a drought.  They all brazenly crowd around my scratched raw mosquito bites, doing I’m not exactly sure what; but I don’t like it.  I once had the great idea to use this weakness of flies to my advantage.  I would wait until a cut of mine was covered in flies, then I would swat, and with their lust for blood or whatever they take from me, they would react too slowly and I would have killed many flies with one slap.  If you’ve ever mistakenly bumped an open wound of yours against some hard object you’ll probably have trouble fathoming why I would think this was a good plan.  I only tried once.  My hatred of flies runs deep, but not deep enough to ignore the pain of slapping your own open wound.  The worst part was watching the flies, who had all escaped, return to my newly throbbing cut not a full minute later.

I was confused about where all the bugs had gone during the hot season. Not that I complained or went looking for them but their relative absences was conspicuous.  Now I know where they were, or at least all the earwigs.  I had been sleeping outside during the hot season because it was absolutely too hot to sleep inside, so my mosquito net was set up out there.  The first night it rained enough where I was forced to relocate under a roof I was too tired and grouchy from being woken up in the middle of the night to be bothered to move my mosquito net with me.  But then laying in the dark trying to fall back asleep I kept feeling itchy.  I know mephalquin can have strange side effects, but I hadn’t experienced this before.  I felt like bugs were crawling all over me.  It finally got so bad that I had to turn on my flashlight, and that’s when I found out that there were bugs crawling all over me.  Earwigs.  I killed all the ones I saw and tired to go back to sleep.  A little later I felt like I had more bugs crawling on me.  I killed those as well.  And then again.  I couldn’t figure out where these bugs were coming from.  Eventually I just gave up and fell asleep.  It took me a few days but I finally realized they were dropping down from my ceiling.  It’s a nice straw area for them to live, except of course when it rains and becomes soggy, then they drop in to say hello.  It’s much less of a problem now that it’s been raining for a few weeks and most have left their apparently seasonal home.

The newly vacated residence did not stay empty for long.  Now at night I can hear something (originally I assumed they were termites but now I just don’t know, and they never show themselves) eating my beams at night.  Every morning I have a pile of tiny wood shavings on my floor and at night I listen to their chewing and hope the wood is thick so that I have some time before the roof collapses.  My host father said I could fumigate my room with a mixture of mosquito spray and engine oil.  The bugs will apparently all die and fall from the ceiling, but I’m hesitant to expose my body to more poisons considering the aforementioned mosquito net and mephalquin.

Really there are just bugs everywhere now.  There are these neat red fuzzy ones that remind me of grandmas in velour jumpsuits.  There are neon green spiders that look like space probes, and red millipedes that look like stitches over a raw wound.  There are so many bugs that reading or writing at night has become a huge nuisance.  They are all attracted to any light and fly into your eyes until you give up.  We cannot even eat with a flashlight on anymore.  It’s better to keep it off and hope nothing’s swimming in our sauce rather than turn it on to see bugs land in the spotlighted food.  I tell myself there are probably healthy macronutrients in the bugs I eat, but the buzzing from inside my douche quickly reminds me of the other, not quite as healthy, hosts the bugs might be carrying with them into my food.  Ah well, such is life.

Anna Visited

This post is actually not going to come from Maria because she would like the opinion of her guest, me, her sister, to be heard. I arrived in this country exactly a week ago, although it feels like a lot longer than that. I cannot even really describe most of what I have experienced because it is all so unbelievably different from home. There is a difference between reading about African villages without running water and electricity and actually experiencing the lifestyle. I had a lot of trouble adjusting for the first few days, but I started to adjust soon after. As a follow up to Maria's last post, we worked on the solar fruit dryer. Dad was smart enough to realize that screws would solve the problem with the slipping nails, so I brought some with me. It's hard to imagine that they do not have tools as simple as a screw here! Screws are certainly not as modern as cell phones, yet they all seem to have phones. The fruit dryer was almost at completion when we realized that the hinge was not going to work, but at least the only task remaining is to attach the door.

And then the power went out.  The only thing reliable about Tamba’s power is that it will reliably cut out every day.  So I guess you’ll never know how the rest of Anna’s trip was, unless you ask her that is.  I will continue to update you about the solar fruit drier.  Caveat, they do have screws here, I have seen them, but not in a store.  As she said, we finished everything except for the door since we had the incorrect type of hinge.  When I returned from our vacation from South Africa I bought a hinge that would work much better. But then I returned home and once again my relationship with the fruit drier was tested.  All the clear plastic we had attached to the metal slide was ripped from the supports by the wind in my absence.  Now I have to find more clear plastic and attach both that and the door.  TBC.

Soire

The other day my friend Josh was chatting about how his village loved to hold dances all the time and asked if I was interested in coming to the next soire that weekend.  Dancing in another village is a good opportunity to let loose without having to be reminded of your awkward flailing for the next two years as you walk around town.  I had nothing too pressing so that next Saturday I hopped onto a crowded minibus headed for Malem Nani.  There are no bus or transportation schedules here in Senegal, you just head to a ‘garage’ where all the buses and cars congregate, find one headed to where you are going, and wait for it to fill up.  Sometimes you buy the last spot on the car and you leave immediately, other times the wait can take hours, sometimes you end up leaving the next day.  I had to transfer buses in the city of Tamba and due to the wait there I arrived in Malem Nani fairly late at night. Having missed dinner, Josh and I ate some street food where one of his friends cooked.  I had been looking forward to the dance until then when one of his villagers greeted me.  We did the normal lose hand shake, is your family there, and your work, peace, peace only.  Then he suddenly went in to kiss me.  This is not a greeting I learned and definitely not ok in Senegalese or American culture.  I dodged the sloppy attempt and Josh immediately put him in his place.  This guy was definitely not in his right state of mind.  As independent as I like to try to be, that admittedly shook me up and I started wondering if we should even go to the dance.  If guys were that forward at dinner, what would dancing be like?!  But we devised a plan, I was to go for the crotch first and then Josh would step in and we would leave immediately if I felt uncomfortable.

I’m glad I didn’t stop myself from going.  Apparently everyone who had decided to pregame the dance no longer had money to buy a ticket for the soire.  Also, apparently 11 is too early to go to a Senegalese dance.  The only two white people in a town of about 2,000 were the only ones on the dance floor.  The dance was a fundraiser for a student group in town, so when we first showed up the guys running the soire came out and danced with us.  Watching them was worth the bus ticket to Malem Nani.  They were so good at dancing, every move they pulled just looked so smooth, cool, and fluid.  Who knew that one legged below knee kicks or that bowlegged funny walks could be so sexy!  But here these guys were, looking, acting, and dancing like big name rap stars.  Maybe the best part was that they didn’t even notice that I am an awful dancer.  Our dancing was basically like a circle of encouragement.  Everyone would take their turn in the center of our circle, while we whooped at their moves.  I had a great time being awkward and they cheered that along too.  In my village I usually go to bed around 9:30 so we had to leave at 1, just as it was starting to pick up.  Regardless, dancing in a sparse dance hall in Senegal amongst talented young men is something I won’t forget for a while.  And then to top it off, Josh’s family cooked an awesome lunch of yassa fish the next day.

Mangoes

I haven’t written a post in a while, sorry about that, and now I’m really just not sure what exactly to write…

Mango season is just beginning and I am taking full advantage of it.  Yesterday I ate four mangoes, but don’t worry it was spread throughout the day.  I still cannot figure out if that is more or less appropriate than the three I ate two days ago but all in a row.  My village is blessed with so many mango orchards of both native and grafted varieties.  Some people even have two or three mango orchards.  When they get a whole bunch of mangoes ripe at the same time they bring them into Tamba to sell, but in the meantime they pick a few and eat them, give them away, throw them, feed them to livestock, whatever they want at the time.  Adults here like mangoes but due to growing up with a mango season every year they’re not obsessed with them quite like me.  Usually mangoes are given away to the children but I guess I’m not good at hiding how much I love being given a mango, so recently lots of people have been giving me mangoes.  I realize that sounds bad, like I’m stealing mangoes from hungry children, but, well, I have no excuse except to say that I really love mangoes.  Think about it in utilitarianism terms, I like mangoes more than the children, so they should be given to me!  But honestly, sometimes I do feel guilty, then I see  mangoes being thrown away and realize there are more than enough to go around at the moment so I should just enjoy… :)

That reminds me of my solar fruit drier adventure.  I thought that to deal with all the excess of fruit at one time, but lack thereof at other times, a fruit drier would be useful.  We seem to have an excess of sun here in Senegal so I wanted to make it solar powered.  I recruited one of my friends to come and help me construct the drier, tempting her into my village with the promise of all you can eat cashew apples.  We bought all the supplies we needed in Tamba, then got a PC car and driver to transport them to Madjaly.  The driver was doing us a favor and was in a bit of a rush so we didn’t ask him to stop and get the lumber we had bought cut into thinner pieces with the table saw located at another shop in Tamba.  We figured it couldn’t be all that hard to do.  Well, the next morning we looked at our two four meter long boards, our dull saw, and our pruning saw, and immediately regretted our decision.  Don’t ever let anyone talk you into cutting eight meters of lumber in half the long way with improper equipment in the hot season.  However, if you do find yourself in that situation cut the boards into the length you want first, then cut it in half.  It’s much better for your moral and makes the work seem to go by faster.  We thought we were doing so well when we realized all our pieces would be cut before lunch.  We felt empowered and had visions of finishing everything in one day!  After lunch all we had to do was nail the boards together, put up some mesh shelving, and slap on a bit of black paint.  Considering how easily these nails went into this wood, we were golden.  What we didn’t realize was that when nails go into wood easily, they can also come out of it easily.  We were so surprised when, having constructed one side of the frame in no time or effort, it began to fall apart as we constructed the other side.  The force of the hammer pounding nails in on one half of the frame pushed the nails on the other half out of the wood.  Neither of us had experienced anything like this problem before (not that either of us are extremely experienced in woodwork).  We were not even looking at the other half of our frame when pieces started falling off.  It was a bit embarrassing.  The entire day my family had been stealing skeptical glances at the two white girls trying to build something, waiting for us to fail.  We thought we were going to fool them but now what they had always known was coming true.  We kept trying for a few hours but eventually became so frustrated, hot, blistered, and covered in sawdust that we had to call it a day.  My friend had to leave the next day (I keep telling myself I didn’t scare her away) and the solar fruit drier and I were no longer on speaking terms, so it still has not been completed.  But during our break I’ve been brainstorming ways to save this relationship and have got some ideas.  I will update you with the progress once I tackle this project again…

Right to Sight

For the past week I’ve been in the big city of Tambacounda  to help out with an eye clinic.  A few American doctors from New Jersey came here on a mission to conduct cataract surgeries, giving sight back to people whose eyes have become too cloudy to see anymore.  While those doctors did operations, a girl who is volunteering here in the Tambacounda region also had her father visiting, and since he is also an optomologist, he conducted eye consultations.  Both cataract surgeries and eye consultations are routinely done at the hospital in Tambacounda, but the doctors from the States were able to teach the Senegalese doctors an improved way of conducting the surgeries and the help with the consultations alleviated some of the heavy work load of the Senegalese doctors and helped with some of the more complex eye issues.  The doctors also offered the cataract surgeries at a reduced cost and were able to donate some medicines and a variety of glasses to the hospital.  Peace Corps volunteers were able to help out by translating for the American doctors and getting eye drops and such prepared for all the patients.  It was a very successful week full of long, tiring days at the hospital, dealing with crowds and patients and such.  The doctors were able to conduct about 20 surgeries and 30 consultations a day, and they will continue all next week, although a new batch of Peace Corps volunteers will be here and I will be back at site.

On a whole this past week has been greatly gratifying, being able to help people who came to us blind, and a day later they can see again.  It was helpful in a sustainable manner, since the doctors were able to teach their techniques, and I was able to get in some good language practice with a vocabulary set I do not usually use.  However, there were some obvious cultural differences that made part of the week extremely frustrating.

In the States we definitely have a stigma about asking for help.  You only ask for things if you really need them because it is embarrassing and people feel like they have failed since they could not be completely self reliant.  Others judge because they see asking for help as a sign of weakness and laziness.  Obviously this is an overgeneralization but the presence of the stigma surrounding asking for help becomes very clear when you are suddenly in an environment where this does not exist at all.

Our system of looking down on people who ask for help certainly has its flaws, but having no qualms about asking for help has its own set of issues.  Combining this with the Senegalese hierarchy of respect, you end up running into a lot of things that appear backwards to an American.  For example, the older a person is, the more respect they get.  So the older a person is, in general the better they eat.  The bowl of food for the adults usually has more vegetables and choice meat pieces.  In the States we might feel guilty about getting better food than others you are eating with, especially when taking from growing children who might need the nutrients, but here there that is the norm and there is no reason to feel guilty.  Wealthier people usually get more respect as well, so when a wealthier person comes to visit you, you will probably offer them tea first, and it is possible that there will not be enough tea for the least wealthy person, who also happens to be least able to afford tea for themselves.  Just like I generalized about Americans judging when people ask for help, I am also generalizing here, but there are many times when I run into what I might consider “backward” situations.

At the eye clinic there were boxes of  glasses in a variety of prescriptions, styles, and conditions, donated by people in the States.  I knew that the people who donated these glasses did so in hopes of helping someone who could not normally afford glasses.  And, yes, there were stories of children who could not answer the teacher in class because they were constantly in a slight state of confusion arising from not being able to see the board, and stories of such nearsighted older ladies whose entire world had been blurry for their whole life until they put a pair of glasses on that day and were able to see what the world really looked like for the first time.  But other things were more frustrating.  Like when the man came in to get a pair of glasses, didn’t like any of the ones in his prescription and demanded that I look for ones with a case for him.  I refused because we were not doing that for anyone and there was a long line behind him.  I then get the response that he is the wealthiest person in this hospital so I have to look for a special pair of glasses for him.  This would not happen in the States and I just didn’t know how to respond.  My thinking is that if he is so wealthy he can certainly afford a pair of glasses and shouldn’t be taking these ones from people who legitimately cannot, but his thinking is that he is so wealthy so I should give him the best glasses.  It is hard to stay calm in a situation like that, but neither of us were in the wrong, we just came from very different cultures.