Happy Belated Thanksgiving! Hope everyone's holiday went as well as ours; though for us, "well" meant feeding a group of about 40 people, including the country director and his family and figuring out how to make a turducken. I, however, has the sense to leave the cooking to the pros and just chop or carry something from one room to another every now and then, so I didn't have to do much of any cooking.
I was happy to get back to Kedougou for the holiday, which meant seeing everyone from our region, including the newest volunteers with whom I havent spent much time yet, as well as the neighboring region of Tamba (we're affectionately known as TambaGou whenever we get together). It was also exciting to be back in the regional capital as I had just been at site for about 4.5 weeks (hence the long-awaited update, right?). It was the longest stint I had done in the village thus far without leaving, except to go to the nearest town over for the weekly market. It was a relief to simply be speaking English again and to be around friends; though for my own mini-village-marathon, it wasnt all that difficult. I fortunately had a lot of work to do, what with calculating yields harvested from the farmers I worked with this growing season, outplanting my woodlot of about 100 trees, many now over my head, into rows to be used as fuel/fodder wood, plus I got to teach a few more art lessons at the school (BAD time to not have a camera), as well as help them with an activity for Children's Rights Day, unclear as to whether or not it was celebrated anywhere but my primary school; and by "help them", I mean a teacher asked me to do something for Children's Rights Day.
This became a really interesting opportunity to use the boatloads of art supplies I've received from the States, but also came at a time when I was becoming increasingly frustrated with the parenting techniques of my village family. In general, most parents here use more of a negative reinforcement technique when raising their kids; it was actually part of a session during training as explained to us by one of the Senegalese staff, also a mom. Instead of a, "This is what you did wrong here; dont do it again" approach, its more like a "What, you cant do it this way? This is the right way; are you stupid?" And you can only hear "If you...I'll beat the piss out of you" so many times from the same woman in one day before you at least start wishing they'd mix it up a bit. Verbal abuse is one thing, but at least have some sense of originality.
I dont mean to paint a bleak picture of the parents in my village;' I know the parents in my family love their kids. This is how they were raised and how they were taught was the proper way to raise children. And theres probably something to it since most of the adolescent girls in my village are more self-reliant and capable then people I went to college with. But I do think my family should exercise a certain amount of perspective when dealing with their kids, since they use the same tone/harsh language for serious transgressions, as well as stupid crap. I've started to be more vocal about things I dont like or that make me angry; I think I've earned that right at this point, so we'll see how that works out.
Anyway, with this on my mind, Childrens' Rights Day, which apparently was sponsored by UNICEF as they had sent posters to the school, seemed like a great opportunity to have the kids bring home to their parents what they had learned about their own rights (i.e. the right to be well fed, to be vaccinated, to live in a clean environment, to express themselves) and what they needed from their parents in order to be happy and successful. So, with the whole school, we went over the rights they had learned, and I asked them who could help them achieve each on. Low and behold, "PARENTS" showed up the most number of times, so they all went back to their classrooms and, armed with good old Crayola, picked a couple from the list of rights for which they needed the support of their parents; they wrote/drew whatever they wanted to take home to them as a visual reminder. Doubt it did much to change anything about how parents treat their kids, but they enjoyed the activity anyhow.
After coming in for Thanksgiving and having a great time, I jetted back to my village (luckily got a car) the next day so I'd be there for the Muslim holiday, that Saturday. It was exhausting, but it was good to have made it back and be able to reminisce with them about with them about last year's Tabaski when I had only just got there it seemed. So, I went from turkey and stuffing to the Mosque and goat slaughtering in a matter of a couple days; totally worth it.
I'm back in Gou again, however, because I needed to continue/finish a project I had started when I was here for Thanksgiving. I may have mentioned this before, bu the volunteers here in Gou are trying to work alongside the hospital for an AIDS awareness and campaign in the form of multiple billboards that would be put up in prominent spots all over town. Yours truly got asked to paint said billboards, and once we had a list of possible messages from the hospital, it was on to figuring out just what the hell I was supposed to do. The billboards having long since been made, it was now left to come up with some way of sending these messages visually to the public. Anyway, World AIDS Day was December 1st, and thus I had come right back to Gou to try and finish the billboard for the big unveilling during the town's AIDS activities, as organized by the hospital and one of our city-based health volunteers. Unfortunately, the hospital decided to postpone these AIDS Days activities for a later, non-AIDS Day day because they felt it was too close to Tabaski; they have yet to reschedule. So, I'm here finishing it at my leisure, waiting to see when they might reschedule the event; though I plan to go back to my site tomorrow regardless.
Again, hope everyone had a great holiday; let me know! Hope to talk to you again soon; I should be back through here again in a little over a week on my way to Tamba for the next Ag Summit, and then it's Christmas. A bunch of us are thinking Christmas in Kedougou has a nice ring to it.
Talk to you soon!
Love,
Sully
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