8 Months Down

*If you really want to know what living in Sub-saharan Africa is like as a PCV, check out this superior blog: http://whatshouldafricacallme.tumblr.com/

A Few Middle Schoolers Rapping about HIV

Sailing

Cat Man

My first eight months in country didn’t exactly fly by, many days I counted down until 5 PM when my electricity turns, for that is when I can finally sit in my hut with the fan on. It’s November and it’s still 100 degrees Fahrenheit every day.

Since my last post caused a few people at home to worry, I’ll state a few things that are nice about Senegal:

-It’s always sunny in Senegal

-People always give me free food

-I can work as little or as much as you like (in Peace Corps you are your own boss)

-I’m reading more than I ever have, I don’t know if anyone used a Kindle more than I

-When I walk down the street kids dance in attempts to try to lure me into dancing

-The work can be gratifying, just the other day I explained how birth control pills work to my 25 year-old-friend and how cheap they are, 40 cents USD a month! She had no clue how to take the pills. Do you take one pill a month? She asked.

I’m slowly getting used to how I’m treated here. Also, I’m used to not being used to things. I used to gag walking over cesspools of trash and animal feces. I used get nervous about not being able to get to my final destination when my bus broke down. Now, it’s a given that my bus will break down in the hour and half it takes me to get to the big town down the road. I’ve been hitchhiking a little bit more, last time I told the driver my dad is a gendarme (policeman). Since my last blog post was so negative, I’ll start by talking about my lavish weekend trip to Dakar after my 10 day training session in Thies.

The High Life in DAKAR

         My “in-service training” lasted 9 hours a day and there was no weekend break. So I pretended that I deserved to have my first real visit to Dakar.

         Dakar has everything! Even goat cheese (here at my site we eat an unhealthy vegan diet). As I arrived in Dakar in a PC vehicle with three other volunteers, I immediately jumped out of the bus and started vomiting bile on the side of the highway. Bile, if you don’t know, has a very inhuman neon yellow tint. So, my first day in town was a bust due to food poisoning that I’d gotten at the PC training center, but this is supposed to be a positive blog so let’s get to day two.

         I happen to know a nice young man who has a sailboat in Dakar, so on my second day, three PCV’s and I set out on the open ocean. Since sailing is a posh thing to do, we capped it off with wine, cheese, and salty crackers. These are things that are very difficult to find in this country. We sailed around Ile de Goree, possibly the most famous landmark in Senegal. This island was made infamous because it was the last place where people were held captive before being sold into the transatlantic slave trade.

         When we got back to shore, we had a drink at the yatch club. The club is exclusively middle aged French men with tanned, leather, sailor skin which is has spent too long at sea. Many of these men go from France to Senegal, Cabo Verde, and then the Caribbean. 

         That night we continued with the French theme and went to the Alliance Francaise. I had the best meal I’ve had in Senegal; Steak with sweet potato gnocchi (the gnocchi I took from my date). The next day we went to a bookstore where we became engrossed in books about puberty and reproductive health aimed at ages 4-6. My mother brought out these embarrassing didactic books in front of my friends when I was going through puberty. Now, here I was getting embarrassed as the clerks looked at us while we debated whether or not these books were too graphic for my work in my town.

         I suppose the one thing Dakar doesn’t have is sidewalks. You have to risk your life to walk in Dakar because the sidewalks are so bad, you have to walk in traffic. Taxis are equally lethal. The Huff Post rated Dakar as one of the least livable cities on Earth. Obviously that writer hasn’t had the pleasure of visiting Kampala (no offense to my Ugandan brothers and sisters, the rest of your country is nice).

Getting used to things, sort of

         One thing that I haven’t gotten used to is being asked for money by adults. Just this morning I went to clinic and had such an experience. Today a real doctor was coming to the Poste de Sante. A gynecologist! One of my father’s wives told me yesterday that he’d be coming. I realized that this was a deliberate announcement on her part, because when I saw her at the clinic, she pulled me aside and asked me for money to see the doctor. I looked at her and realized that she was in her third trimester, although she’d never tell anyone she’s pregnant. Not only did I not have the money, but I also was in a bind because this is the very woman that my family thinks stole my rent money two months back. Of course I wanted her baby to get an ultrasound. The machine had been brought in from the big town. But how can I give money to someone who may have burglarized my hut? Also, when everyone asks you for money for more or less legitimate things, the easiest way to get by is to say no to everyone. Which makes you the bad guy. If I would have stayed in the U.S., I wouldn’t be put in these moral dilemmas.

         When I told my sage-femme what had happened, she told me that patients beg her for money daily. So, I guess I’m not the only one making these calls.

         Another thing I’m slowly getting used to is how rude people are. Americans are overly sensitive, and we like to talk about our feelings. These are not worldwide traits. All cultures have wildly different ideas about what is “rude”. Just ask the French. They will tell you that having an American birth certificate is rude.

Today in the two hours I spent in the community, I was asked by three people “Yaangi nos?”.

In Wolof, there is no word for fun. The concept doesn’t exist. When I interviewed my scholarship girls, the hardest question was what you do for fun. Yaangi nos is supposed to be the closest equivalent to “are you having fun”. I hear it every day. What it actually means is “do you have money?” This question sucks. If I say no, their response is, “you’re white, you have A LOT of nos”. This is verbatim what people say. If I say yes, I’m affirming their stupid assumption that I have a lot of “nos.” Basically, the belief is that if you don’t have money, you don’t have fun. In reality, I do have money, but I rarely have fun here. I don’t think I’ve ever been having fun when someone comes at me with this question.

Demanding that a different skin color give you something is just not considered rude here. If you’re foreign, that gives Senegalese people the right to treat you however they feel like, because you have “nos”! By American standards, most conversations I have with people involve them being offensive. In Dakar no one referred to the color of my skin. As I said, Dakar has everything! Even middle-aged Caucasian Frenchmen. One night in Dakar, about 20 volunteers and I went out dancing. It was us, the middle-aged Frenchmen, their prostitutes (nice looking girls) and the playboy Darkarois boys drinking like good Muslims.

I have a new friend in town. Oussman’s age is unknown, but homeboy has nine children and lived in the states for almost 20 years. He loves the states! He said he never experienced any prejudice in the US. I don’t say this often, but that made me proud of the US. With a little prying, Oussman told me he did experience racism. One time he was trying to go to club and the loser doorman wouldn’t let him in. When he found out he was Senegalese, the man let him in. “I didn’t know you were African, I though you were black,” said the bouncer.