Fewer and farther between...

Hey all,

It's been quite a while since my last update, but I figure now that the day to day stuff of my service seems a little mundane, it's worth waiting until I have a bulk of stuff to write about.

Starting with an update on the well that was under construction at the time I last wrote, it unfortunately remains that way. Though it's near completion, other projects and a general incompetence when it comes to customer service have kept the masons away for the better part of the last few months; though they've been good enough to provide me with plenty of promises to tide me over til it's done. In the meantime, I'll be doing what I can to try and move forward on the rest of this larger-scale community garden, of which this larger-scale well is meant to be a part.

My own agricultural work has been going pretty well, though I find myself a little swamped playing a game of catch-up after having been out of site for a little over a month. My village family was honored to have members of my actual family, Patrick and Molly Hanlon (my cousin and his wife, my cousin "in-law"?), come to visit the village for about 4 days. They were very proud and humbled to have Samba's family travel from a literal and figurative world away just to come see how I've been living for just shy of two years; and how they've lived their whole lives. They were thrilled by the gifts Pat & Molly brought but they were very emphatic about having me translate that their coming was gift enough, and that they would like to speak to them, if only they could. As I said, it was about 4 days with some time fit in to experience a bit of the Bassari culture (another ethnic group in the area) with my friend and fellow PCV Lindsay and her counterpart.

All told, Pat & Molly's visit lasted about 2 weeks, with time in Dakar before heading down to Kedougou and a couple of days before leaving as well. Between the village and their return to Dakar, however, we had the pleasure to travel up to the beach town of Popenguine for a fishing trip with my friend Ankith, the PCV who has been posted their working in eco-tourism for the past 2 years. Unfortunately, due to inclement weather the night before, the captain decided to cancel since, despite beautfiul weather the day of, the previous night's storm would make the water still too choppy farther out. In any case, we still got a beautiful day at the beach and were able to grill out that night; not fish we caught ourselves, as planned, but just as good.

Ankith was generous enough to let us stay with his family an extra night so we would have a place to celebrate the Muslim holiday of Korité, which marks the end of the month-long fasting of Ramadan. I had been wondering what we would do for that, given we'd already be out of my village by that time, but Ankith's host family welcomed us and stuffed us on chicken, fries and salad. Korité is somewhat like Easter in that most people venture to the church (or mosque, in this case) in the morning, then come home for a big mid-day meal; though for them the eating itself is significant since it's being done at a time of day during which they have been allowed to eat for the past month.

We headed back to Dakar after that to get them back in time for their flight and do some last-minute site-seeing, and shopping. Molly has this thing for baskets I'd rather not go into, but in any case, we found some genuine Senegalese woven baskets and mats that are popular here, so she was happy.

I was thrilled and so grateful to have them come visit, if not just to have someone from back home experience my new life here firsthand. I hope they had as much fun as I did, and I, for one, know my family here won't forget them or their generosity for a very long time (probably never). Thanks guys!

I mentioned being away from site for a while, and traveling with Pat & Molly was only the tip of the iceberg. The day I dropped them at the airport was the same day the newest batch of volunteers-in-training were heading to Kedougou for the Volunteer Visit portion of their training, in which they travel to the region, and sometimes even the site, that they will ultimately go to upon swearing-in. It's a good opportunity for them to get a taste of what their next 2 years of service will be like, and I know for me it was a motivation to get through the last of training. Anyway, I'm sure I've talked about it at length in past updates, since this marks the 4th group of trainees that have done this since I've been here. I'm officially old.

Needless to say, I wouldn't be making it down in time from Dakar, so I went back to Popenguine to hang out with Ankith and the trainee who would be his replacement while he showed her the ropes (thanks again, Ankith). Once the visit was done I was meant to be back in Thies to help out at the training center, which I was able to do for one day before the trainees went back to their training villages.

Then I went back to Dakar to travel to Burkina Faso (another West-African country). My first (official) trip out of Senegal in 2 years! I got asked to go along with two other volunteers from my original group who would also be doing third years, but in Agroforestry. It was a conference put on by the Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization (ECHO; www.echo.net), based out of Florida. It was the first meeting of its kind in West Africa, bringing people from many different countries and organizations of which Peace Corps was just one of many. It was a great learning experience and we were sent with the idea that since we had already done 2 years and would be doing a third, we might be good candidates to disseminate this info to other PCVs. Here's hoping.

After 5 days, we came back to Dakar and I myself headed BACK to Thies to the training center to help out with the famed Counterpart Workshop. It's a chance for host-country nationals chosen as counterparts for PCVs work to come meet their Volunteer prior to their install to talk about plans for their arrival, the first 3 months, etc. They also get sessions on safety and security, helping their PCV learn the language, dealing with misunderstandings, and general awareness of what being a Volunteer means. I mainly acted as translator between Volunteers who were learning the same language as myself and their counterparts, but it felt good to do it.

Once that was over it was back to Dakar with the intention of returning to Kedougou ASAP. Through my multiple trips back and forth I had been working on my 3rd year medical clearance and that was finally complete, but now I had about 10 other Volunteers from my original group of 2 years ago coming into Dakar to do their Close of Service (COS) and, effectively, go home (or leave, in any case). So, given the choice between leaving immediately for Kedougou or waiting a couple extra days until another group of PCVs from the region would be organizing a car to go back, I decided to stay and spend some time with these people who had been my friends for 2 years; and some my closest neighbors. We had a great time reminiscing about our own training and our experiences together. It was certainly tough to say goodbye and even harder to believe it was over in what felt like both a heartbeat and an eternity at once. But our paths will likely cross again; they don't seem the type to settle down anytime soon.

I made it back to the village for a whopping 3 days before heading back into the town of Kedougou to, believe it or not, greet those newly sworn-in Volunteers and help them prepare for their installs (again, for the 4th time). I came back accompanying Lindsay's replacement, whom I think is very excited to be out in mine and Ian's (my second closest neighbor) neck of the woods (aka the boonies). And we're very excited to have her, though it will be strange without Lindsay.

Let's just hope she makes a good third for our Thirsty Thursdays. I'm sure she'll learn.

Thanks!

Til next time,

Steve "Samba" Sullivan

Long Overdue Update...because when are they not

Hey everyone,

Sorry for taking so long this time around to send an update on the

life and times of Sully in Senegal; the time really gets away from you

when your sweating your way through the days. But thankfully we seem

to be on our way out of the hot dry season and into the hot rainy

season. We've already had quite a few rains, and it's amazing the

difference even just a little moisture can make to the landscape. My

friend who is a fellow volunteer and my closest neighbor described it

pretty well when he said it's like going from a moonscape to a jungle

in a matter of weeks.

With the rains comes the planting, and my 2nd annual distribution of

Samba's corn and assorted crops. I recently got all my seeds that

were issued to me out to my site, and now their in my hut waiting to

be given out to farmers once I come up with plan d'action. I

fortunately got to request things that I wanted this time around,

being all experienced and what not (...?). I also have the seeds that

were returned to me by farmers last year to figure out what to do

with, so I'm thinking of trying to expand out to a neighboring village

or two. Probably just with one or two farmers in each one, since I

don't know those villages very well, and I'd be stretched pretty thin

trying to visit them constantly on top of monitoring the fields in my

own village.

In addition to that, the goings on consists of a lot of work for the

upcoming mosquito net distribution, also for the second year in a row.

However (and you all probably noticed I didn't try to hit you up for

money this time around), the system is a little different since it's

much more on the government's shoulders this year and not Peace Corps.

The national anti-malaria program in Senegal has decided to adopt the

system of distributing nets that we implemented last year, when it was

much more the PCVs baby, and use it to continue towards the updated

goal of universal coverage (and they've provided the nets). Last year

the government did distribute some nets, but they were focusing only

on women and children under 5, so our distribution was beneficial in

ensuring that every sleeping space, regardless of who slept there, was

covered by a net. The government has since, as I said, updated their

goal to mirror our distribution last year in trying to achieve

"universal coverage" (which, incidentally, was the recommendation of

the World Health Organization that distributing long-lasting,

impregnated mosquito nets en masse was the most effective way to

combat malaria).

So while it has been a lot of logistical work on our side, it's been

encouraging to see that with so many national, regional, and

departmental teams involved this time, even if we were to quit right

now, this distribution would still happen without us. My job has been

helping with the visuals (surprise) for the many trainings that are

needed this year to educate local health workers on the best way to

take a census of a family's compound and accurately discover exactly

how many nets that family needs. The dry run of this training was

yesterday, with the first real one being today. I think it's going to

go really well, and I was happy to be able to contribute what I think

will further help these health workers do the best job possible.

That's most of the recent news; however, I do have a continuing well

project which got underway about a month and a half ago thanks to

funds I received from my high school's National Honors Society. They

raised an incredible amount of money putting on a dodgeball tournament

of all things, which I thought was pretty awesome. Some of those

funds are also going to go towards the mosquito net distribution by

helping alleviate the costs of conducting so many trainings of local

health workers and ultimately the transportation costs of getting nets

out to their distribution points. Anyway, the well idea was brought

up at the large village-wide meeting I think I wrote about before,

where we had men, women, and children all separately bring up what

they thought the priorities for improving life in the village should

be. One that they all agreed one was digging a new, modern well

between the two areas of the village which are the farthest apart from

one another. Since then I wrote a grant for the well to be dug, which

was later funded by dodgeball, and digging has been underway for the

last couple weeks. I'm happy to report we recently hit water at 6m

underground (which is ridiculously shallow and I'm very fortunate

since I only budgeted to go no farther than 10m; also because most

people get to 10-20m and haven't hit anything but more rocks). We are

still going to continue down below the water level to the 10m mark, so

that the villagers will never have to worry about that well running

dry. The idea is that since we've only just entered the rainy season,

the water table is going to be at about it's lowest point, so if you

dig to it and then continue beyond by a couple of meters, you can be

sure that even in the thick of the hot dry season, there will be

water.

I'm kind of chronologically all over the place since it's easier to

write about things as I think of them. I did just get back a couple

weeks ago from JazzFest in St. Louis, which is up north of Dakar and

basically extremely far away from Kedougou. It was totally worth the

trip though; myself and three other Gou volunteers went up together

and had a room at a hotel that was by the beach (not particularly nice

but it was by the beach), and our room had a little kitchen area with

a gas stove and mini-fridge, so we were able to cook our own meals

some nights and grill out on the hotel's property. The music was

awesome, though not the music of the actual Fest since I wouldn't know

what that sounded like. The actual event is walled off and expensive

to get into, but every other bar on the island has live music in

celebration of the Fest, so we would just watch those shows for free.

All in all, despite the heavy amounts of travelling, it was a great

getaway and a nice little vacation.

This past week my two closest neighbors, Lindsay and Ian, came out

to my village to paint a world map at the primary school there. Not

much to be said about it besides it was extremely hot and took us 3

days to do it, but PC has like a whole packet on how to complete one

so it turned out really great. It was just that I dont think any of

us expected it to take as long as it did, and my family was surprised

when my guests' stay went from one night with us to three. In any

case, it's done now and looks really nice and the school was

very appreciative since now they have a great new teaching tool

available to them.

Oh, and about 3 months ago, we did a repeat of last year's eye

clinic: same doctors, same deal, I even got to have the same job as

the Pre-Op guy and getting to use what my friend called my "polished

Grandma Pulaar" to help "soothe" patients by explaining everything to

them. It was cool, though, to see a marked difference in how much I

could tell them and to what degree I could answer questions as

compared to the me of last year. They performed something like 94

cataract surgeries again this year which was incredible, but the best

part was that the hospital was performing C-sections at the same time,

so we'd have to give up the OR until they were done; one day my friend

and I asked the head surgeon if we could, you know, watch, and he

actually said yes! We just had to don scrubs and masks and stood in

the corner watching the whole thing. NEVER would have been allowed in

the States, and it was totally gross, but now I can say I've watched a

C-section from beginning to end. They're surprising brutal.

That's about it for now, if you're still reading at this point! As

you may have noticed I switched my email over to a Gmail account

because Comcast doesn't work too reliably for me over here, for

whatever reason, and PC has been doing a lot of info and file-sharing

through Google Docs, so if we have our own accounts it's easier for

us. So I just copied over all my contacts from the old account and

recreated this list; if youre still on it and would rather not be, let

me know, or if you know someone who should be on it, tell them they're

not on it for a reason. Or tell me, and I'll add them.

Thanks again for all the love and support, and I'll make a serious

effort next time to deliver a timely (and shorter) update.

Love,

Steve Sully Sullivan

Still Alive in Senegal

Happy New Year!

Yep, it's been that long since I last wrote anything. Resolution...?

Anyway, I hope everyone had a great time over the holidays; I know I did. And thanks to everyone who continues to follow these updates, you know, when I actually write them.

I had a really good time over Christmas/New Year's. It was much more low-key than last year's all-out vacation to the north. In fact I just stayed here in the Kedougou regional house, but I certainly wasn't alone. Plenty of other volunteers decided to do just that (after I did, I might add) so we had a pretty big group here. We actually went to church! There's a Catholic church down the road; the congregation's not too big since most people here are Muslim, but just like any other church in the States, everyone turns out for Christmas Eve. It was a pretty cool experience, though there were plenty of similarities, including a lot of kids who looked like they'd rather be anywhere else. But at least we went...for most of it.
Christmas morning had more remarkable difference; I doubt many of you woke up with the task of slaughtering a pig waiting for you (don't worry, neither did I; I just filmed it). But after that gruesome task was done, between a couple of the more culinarily inclined volunteers and the rest of us acting as slave labor, we had some delicious pork chili for Christmas dinner. After Christmas Day was done, most people went their separate ways; some back to their own regions, some back to site, some up north for the party in St. Louis I went to last year. I ended up just staying in Kedougou til New Year's since I had some work to do anyway, and fate seemed to want me to stay since every ride I was attempting to take before New Year's fell through. But I eventually made it back...
In time for the first-ever Samba Diallo village-wide meeting...extravanganza? Actually, as much as I'd like to call it that, I just held a meeting commonly referred to as PACA: Participatory Activities for Community Analysis. It's basically a chance for the volunteer to facilitate discussions amongst the villagers to identify what their top priorities are with regards to the needs of the community. It took a lot of planning but in the end it paid off hugely. I had one of the PC staff for Agriculture, Youssepha, come to help do some of the more detailed project planning which came at the end of the 2-day event, and also a handful of other volunteers came to help out for a variety of reasons. Some of them wanted to do the same thing at their sites sometime, and one of my friends came to record stuff for the next PC Kedougou radio show.
I also had a lot of help, and favorably so, from a lot of Senegalese nationals, including the director and teachers of the primary located in my village. I say favorably because ideally PC is should only be there to help facilitate the activities; it's the villagers who provide the input and direct the flow of the subsequent conversations. The most important aspect of these conversations is that they happen first within each separate demographic (i.e. men, women, or children) to allow people to speak freely without worrying about abiding by cultural norms such as the youth having to defer to the elders or women not speaking openly in front of men. Some of these activities included having the three separate groups draw maps of how they saw the village, then mark where they went everyday, or every week, or every month. This helped show what resources were available to the village already and their level of importance to each separate group. We also did daily activity schedules for the rainy and dry seasons for each group, to show when they have more time to be able to plan/implement new projects, but also to further highlight discrepancies in workloads (i.e. women here work a LOT).
It all leads up to a village-wide prioritizing activity where they pick the handful of needs they've all agreed upon and rank them. Once ranked, I called in Youssepha to help make actual project plans, which basically look like itemized budgets, which ultimately show the overall cost of the project, and how much the village would be expected to contribute versus external funds should we attempt to write a grant to get it done. It was overall a big success I think; I got on the women's good side anyway by making sure lunch was provided. If nothing else, I have a lot more opportunities for work ahead of me now (or my replacement does...ha!)
I would have written earlier, however, shortly thereafter, it was time to prepare to leave for Dakar for the 37th annual (and my personal 2nd) West African International Softball Tournament or, how appropriate....WAIST. I actually went to Dakar about 5 days before WAIST actually started because I needed to finally do my mid-service check-up with med (no cavities), and I also had to prepare a presentation with a fellow volunteer. For two days before WAIST was the All-Vol conference: a really awesome opportunity for everyone in Senegal and beyond to get together and share best-practices and experiences. Everyone always takes a lot away from it, and this year I was, as I said, asked to present with another volunteer on the subject of using murals and visual aids for communication within predominantly illiterate communities. But, being that she and I are in different regions of the country, we hadn't met until the day before the conference. It was no big deal, however, as we both brought the pics we wanted to use and whipped up a presentation that we ended up giving 3 times to big audiences and pretty good reviews.
But, then of course, there was the softball. WAIST is invaluable for getting to get away from village life and un-wind with your fellow volunteers by actually making yourself more exhausted then you've probably ever been in your village-life. It's a lot of late nights and long days, but it's always a blast. This year, the TambaGou team were in top form, sticking to our usual strategy of forfeiting at the beginning and then playing for, you guessed it, FUN. I mean, we still "play", there's just a lot more highjinx thrown in than you might find in one of the more serious games. Our theme, a popular choice this season, was P.C. B.C. : or, essentially the Flintstones. Remember that pig slaughtering I mentioned earlier? Yeah, we plan ahead when it comes to costumes. Mine was rumored to be one of the best at WAIST, and you may get to see it, if I ever decide to put them up here....
Now we're back from WAIST, I've taken a day to prepare to get back for the village, which included a lot of errands and washing all my travelling clothes, and now it's getting late. So, again, apologies for the late update, but those usually are the most interesting.

Thanks again, and talk to you soon!

-Steve "Samba" Sullivan