Friday, November 28, 2008

Has it been two weeks?



Hey everyone,

We last left off with me having been sworn in as an official volunteer, and anxiously awaiting my installation into my village and FINALLY being able to settle in a bit. Well, my install was a little over two weeks ago, and insofar as I'm still here, I think it's going really well!

My village is called Kekeressi, and it's a small village outside of the town of Salemata. Supposedly, I'm the most isolated Volunteer in the country of Senegal, but I have another volunteer only a 5k bike ride away, so at least we have each other. It is pretty secluded though, and it was entertaining to see the P.C. car try to make it through the hillside trail to get to my village. We made it, with all my stuff intact, no less (Alhumduillay - thanks be to God).
It's been an interesting couple of weeks, with me attempting to get to know the village and, of course, try to improve my language skills, though it's almost impossible not to improve, unless I were to not ever leave my hut, because I'm now in a situation where I have to hear, speak, and even think in only the language I'm learning, with only a little help from French with people who speak it a little. Needless to say, immersion is the best way to learn a language fast, hands down, and its definitely the most important thing for us to be doing right now, because as they say, if we cant speak the language, we wont be able to do much of anything.
However, I find myself bored after a while of just studying my books and practicing on my family, and like others have been trying to help out around the compound, going and picking cotton, biking in to the city with my father, beginning a tree nursery, basically trying to impress upon them that I want to be there to work and not be a boarder. It seems to have worked out so far, as they have acknowleged that I like to work and work hard, and have been insistent more than once that I need to rest more. Though, part of that is because a lot of the things I actually find as restful, like reading English books, or writing, or drawing, they still consider working, or studying, so they basically think I just work all the time unless my eyes are closed. This would probably explain the fact that they can simply sit and be content with just being in my hut with me, without expecting me to talk to them, even while I read a book, and we're bonding. I've also been fortunate enough to be placed in this new village where just 5 years ago, Madame Wade, the first lady of Senegal, put forth the funding to have an excellent grade school built, where students have class, eat, and are even given clothes. The piece of land for this school is completely enclosed by a cement wall, with the actual buildings only taking up about half of the space, and the rest just being open field. Ideal for agriculture projects...? I think so.
The director of the School, Demba, actually agreed to be my Pulaar tutor, and we've been meeting 3 times a week for an hour at a time, and I basically ask questions in French about the language, or ask him to speak about a certain topic in Pulaar and I try to write/understand as much as possible of what he says. I recently started showing him pics from America and asking him to describe what he sees in Pulaar, which has been fun and entertaining. He's a great guy and I know will be a great resource for my work over the next couple years, and he's been very excited about my project ideas (a school garden for veggies, large tree nurseries, educational murals), and has even said that a lot of what I want to do mirrors the aspirations that Mme Wade herself has had for the school which haven't been realized yet. So who knows, maybe I'll be working with Senegal's first lady in the years to come.
I biked in to the P.C. Regional House of Kedougou a couple days ago for Thanksgiving, an 85km, 7.5 hour bike ride that I dont hope to repeat anytime soon, but was glad to have done it for the first time and gotten it out of the way. It was definitely a beautiful ride though, despite my getting pretty exhausted and having some kids in one tiny village accidentally yank the break I had strapped to my bike for food onto the ground. It was pretty funny to try and yell at them in Pulaar, to the best of my ability, but it was pretty much along the lines of "Not good! Not good! You stole my bread!" Then I was at a lost; a new language becomes even harder to remember when youre pissed.
So we had our feast last night, and it was nothing short of glorious. We had all of the volunteers from the Kedougou region here, as well as a lot of volunteers from the nearby region of Tamba who came in, including all five of the new Tamba volunteers whom I swore in with, so its been great to see them again. We did in fact have a turkey, our PCV leader, Matt, who is a 3rd year volunteer recently appointed as the coordinator for all of the volunteers in our region, purchased a turkey from the Tamba region about a month ago, and he had since been living and being fattened up at the regional house. Yesterday, however, he gave his life to make sure we had ourselves a traditional American Thanksgiving. His name was Tasty, and needless to say, he lived up to his name in the end. The food was amazing, but in the end, it was the company that really made the night, and had everything been horribly burnt, I dont we would have had less of a good time. I'll be here at least for a couple more days, because tomorrow we have a regional meeting with the Country Director to talk about the regional goals that have been drafted as of late, and our strategic plan to hopefully achieve them. Up til now, the newbies haven't had a role in said plan, but after tomorrow they'll be more clearly defined, and I'm definitely excited to have some clear objectives to work towards...what can I say, I'm still very much an American, even after a whole 2.5 months. Hopefully I'll be back here soon to update you all again (I have to bike to the nearby town of Salemata for pretty much everything, but believe it or not, they dont have Internet). Please dont feel obligated b/c it's insanely expensive, but should you want to send me anything...I put a list up on my blog in an earlier post and my address is there as well. Thanks! (Shameless? I think so).

Talk to you again soon, and thanks again for all the love and support, as usual!

-Steve "Samba" Sullivan

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Now it's official


I guess I should start off by announcing that I am officially no longer a trainee, but a tride and true Volunteer with the United States Peace Corps. Our "swearing in" ceremony was this past Friday (yesterday), and it certainly was an honored event. It was held at the U.S. Embassador's residence, in an beautiful area of Dakar peppered with palatial houses, and Madame Embassador's was certainly no exception. She was so gracious as to allow us to hold the ceremony in her home, including the reception afterwards, and the event had some pretty notable invitees, including the Secretary General of the Republic of Senegal.
And yes, all 40 of us trainees who arrived in Senegal on September 11th were sworn in together. It's apparently quite rare to have a training group to be sworn in in it's entirety, having not one person terminate early. I'm also honored to be a part of this group because not only are we all still HERE, EVERYONE reached the language level required in order to swear in and essentially pass training (they call it Intermediate Low...I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I got Intermediate High). Needless to say, our country director has some pretty high expectations of us.
It was also cool but a little nerve-racking of an event for me because I actually was allowed to give a speech at the swearing in, in front of the Embassador and the all the news cameras...yikes. It wasn't so much a speech as a way for the Peace Corps to show what we had been learning with regards to local languages, and for us to have an opportunity to formally thank everyone in those native languages. They had three people do speeches in three of the major languages spoken here: Mandinka, Pulaar, and Wolof; I was the Pulaar one. I actually got some compliments on it afterwards, at least in terms of my pronunciation, and probably not so much for the content (Hi, my name is....I'm going to...thanks to the teachers...bye). It was a little more involved than that...but not much more.
What was also particularly cool about yesterday was that we were allowed to go to what is commonly referred to as the "American Club" in Dakar, which is basically just a nice resort with a pool and a bar and a volleyball court which allows free-access to Peace Corps Volunteers....and given that we had JUST been sworn in...we didn't waste much time. I felt very European because I forgot my swimsuit and said screw it and just swam in my boxers (sorry Mom), which were still bigger than a lot of the bathing suits there.
After hanging out there for a while, we had to get back to Thies to the center, because we had all been allowed to invite one member of our homestay families, who have done so much for us over the past 8 weeks, for a party with some great food (eaten the American way at tables with plates and not around the communal bowls we've become accustomed to) and an opportunity to honor our family members. My "Dad" came, which I was happy about, and even got up to talk about his experience with me in front of the whole crowd when they asked for volunteers to share them. I also gave him a couple gifts to take home to the family:photos I had developed in Thies of them, and a couple drawings I had done that were of family members.
Then came time to spend some quality time with, who else, each other. It's definitely a testament to not only this new training module that we have been guinea pigs for, but also to the caliber of the relationships we've formed with one another since coming here. We've all been a great support network for one another, especially when we want to vent about what we're going through and we can't do it with family for fear of scaring them or current Volunteers who have already been there, done that, moved on, got the t-shirt. We also have a lot of FUN whenever we're all here, which has also been a big motivation for us to stick together.
So, tomorrow at 6am, I begin the journey to Kedougou. We'll be making the trip over two days, staying one night in the Tamba regional house, and then we begin getting "installed" on Tuesday. Mine is on Thursday with Chris, the country director, so I'll have a couple days at the Regional house to hang out, and probably get me another warthog sandwich...those things were damn good. It promises to be a pretty stressful next week, but I feel ready, especially to finally have a place to begin to call home, where we've been hardpressed to feel settled anywhere during training with going back and forth so much.
Hopefully I'll be able to be back in touch soon after installing when I make it back to Kedougou, but thanks again to everyone for all the love and support. I made it (though you didn't have any doubts...right?)...

Naade go,

Samba Diallo
...formerly Adraman Barry
...always Steve Sullivan

Pics: Watch out Africa, I'm a Volunteer; the majority of our group during Swear-In; the Embassador's "backyard"; our Pout training group; me and my Senegalese "Dad" during training.