Friday, February 19, 2010

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