Video from our Swearing-In Ceremony

This is the day we officially became the newest Peace Corps Volunteers. I sound ditzy, be kind.

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I have arrived!

-Dance with Host Families 

Arriving at my permanent site!

I’m done with training! Thank God. Although it was the most comprehensive job training that I’ve ever had, it was more wearing than I thought it would be.  I now live in , Kaffrine, in a town of 4,000 people. That number is a little misleading because we are the largest town in a 45-minute radius. People from all the neighboring villages come to our town to shop, go to school, and go to the clinic. Kaffrine is a region that even people who have visited Senegal have never heard of. I believe it is only known within Senegal as the peanut basin, famous for nothing else. It’s desert, but there are giant boabab trees breaking up the horizon. 

By the standards of Peace Corps sites in Africa, I’m living lavishly. I have one light bulb and one electrical outlet in my “studio apartment.” Electricity comes on for 10 hours a night. My family is very sweet, and we have an outdoor spigot where the dozen of us get our water. I have to ask for the key when I want water, I guess families with wealthy enough to have spigots are afraid that people will steal their water, so they lock them.

My new name is Khady Diop. My first name was Aida, after Aisha, Mohammed’s child bride. Khady is short for Khadija, Mohammed’s first wife, who was his boss and twice his age. I guess it’s an upgrade. My sister is also named Khady Diop. My teenage brother is named Khadim Diop. This makes things incredibly confusing in our compound. Within 48 hours of my being here, hundreds of people in town knew my name. I don’t think I can change it now. My host dad is a sweet man with four wives. The polygamy component to our family feels bizarrely normal. My family has been really accommodating of me, and they are very respected in town.

Girl’s Scholarship Initiative

I have been in my new town for six days and I had a great day the other day. I explained to the teachers at the junior high about the Michelle Sylvester Scholarship program, and I had a moment of realization:

Here I am, speaking French to teachers in a rural community that are as excited about girl’s education as I am. Am I really doing this? This is exactly the kind of work I want to be doing. 

Despite the fact that I’ve lived abroad before, Peace Corps has seen me shed a lot of tears. Yet again, I’ve moved to a town where I don’t know anyone. Sometimes this job is awful, sometimes it’s gross (you don’t want to see my “toilet”) and sometimes it’s completely worth it. 

I think it was divine intervention that I came to my town. Before coming to Senegal, I knew I wanted to focus on working with women. During training I realized that I could to do this by focusing on family planning and on girl’s education. Peace Corps Senegal puts a huge emphasis on improving women’s independence. As I was saying, my town is perfect for this interest of mine: not only does the town have three women’s groups, but they also have a sexual ed club at the junior high for boys and girls. And it isn’t abstinence only! That’s progressive even for some states in the US. One of the women’s groups focuses on micro-savings (the closest bank is an hour away). Most women in Senegal do not generate income, but some jobs are exclusively for women, like street vending. In many families, men distribute their salaries amongst their wives and the women shop for their kids.

Today a few schoolteachers and I proctored an essay for our scholarship candidates. Nine girls from 7^th to 9^th grade wrote about their future goals. A few said they wanted to be policewomen (wasn’t expecting that one) and others said they wanted to be sage femmes (mid-wives). When asked about how they would improve the education of girl’s in their community, all nine of the girls said that they would stop arranged marriages, “les marriages forces et le grossesses précoces.” Waangari Maathai once wrote that Westerners believe that African women are unaware of the injustice they face. Reading the essays and hearing the girls talk about wanting to postpone childbirth, I would agree with Maathai that African women are quite aware of what they are up against. For me one of the things I don’t like to witness about women’s roles here is the sheer monotony of their day-to-day. Cooking and washing clothes for dozens of people everyday without electricity, running water, or modern appliances is time consuming and just plain dull.

Along those lines, all nine of my scholarship candidates wrote that they would take care parents and siblings in the future. I don’t know if I’ve ever said something like that.

All nine of my girls will have their school fees paid for next year, and in the next six weeks the pool will be narrowed to three winners who will receive additional school supplies as a grand prize. The scholarship is structured like a US college scholarship: the finalists will now have to be interviewed and get a teacher recommendation. Lastly I will go to their houses to interview their parents about their thoughts on education.

At first I had qualms with the scholarship program it sounded too much like a child sponsorship program. Child sponsorships are one of the most successful campaigns in the world of development, however they only give aid to a few children within a community, usually the most photogenic and marketable ones. Although only 9 girls from my junior high will win free tuition, I’m OK with it because we are picking the girls with the highest grades and they will go through a rigorous process. The teachers replaced of few of the original girls on the list because although they had high grades, they came from families that were better off.

To my chagrin, the very teacher who helped edit the list, told they girls they were picked in part for their “social condition”. Next year I’ll try to make sure the girl’s don’t hear that they were picked due in part to their poverty level. This same teacher also took it upon himself to tell some of the girls that they’d been eliminated from the pool of candidates for the grand prize. The teacher’s have asked me to give all the students scholarships. I said that in an ideal world, education would be free.

When girls are educated, they tend to marry later, have fewer children, and more money is diverted towards families and communities. In my scholarship program, we ask the girls if they will stay in school if they get married. So far they’ve all said yes, but I feel like I’m putting them in a position in which they feel obligated to lie. I’ve heard my principal say that the school has lost 12-year-old children to marriage and one teacher said “they all get pregnant while they are in school.”

Apart from the junior high, I’m also working at the town clinic, “le poste de sante.” My counterparts are a birth attendant and a midwife. My bet is that they are tired of delivering babies, because they’ve told me a few times that they want to collaborate on teaching women about birth control and the importance of birth spacing.

I also plan on working with men in the future to.

I was biking in the bush the other day about an hour from my town when I saw a man in a dress biking towards me. Which is weirder: a Senegalese man seeing a white women in pants biking in the middle of nowhere, or me seeing a Senegalese man biking in a dress? I will say that it’s pretty common to see men wearing dresses here, as well as holding hands and cuddling.   

Child Trafficking in Senegal and West Africa

            If you’re foreigner in Senegal, one of the first interactions you’ll have here is with talibe. Usually they are boys around 6 to 12 years old, wearing dirty ragged clothes and no shoes. They beg on the street for money, and go door to door begging for food. For the most part, I see families giving these boys only rice. The talibe system is one that exists in several West African countries.

 Talibe are children trafficked under the guise of Koranic education. They come poor Pulaar families or Guinea. This isn’t true for all talibe, I have two talibe brothers and my father is wealthy enough to have four wives. However, these boys are put onto the street for an average of seven hours a day, every day, in almost every town in Senegal. They don’t keep the money. They are housed in Islamic “schools”. To my knowledge their “education” consists mainly of memorizing the Koran. Not all talibe are trafficked from abroad or domestically, but the system meets every definition of slavery under international law. Some fundamentalist and poor parents truly want their kids to be in these schools. The justification is that begging for all of their meals makes them humble, similar to some Buddhist monk communities. Unfortunately, most people don’t know that these boys are habitually sexually assaulted at their school dormitories.

I’ve only seen people be kind to talibe. My two host families are very well to do, and they give food to the boys every night. Again, this is another form of Senegalese generosity that fascinated me at first.

Driving down to my permanent site our cab stopped at a gas station. Several kids surrounded the car and two of the kids came into the car with their hands outstretched. Talibe are not aggressive most of the time. This passivity is actually a good sales technique. When confronted by talibe you have a catch 22. Either you give them money, which will go to their marabout, and thus enabling the system. Or you don’t give them money, and potentially the child will go hungry and be beaten for not meeting his daily quota, which I believe is 20 cents a day.

When the children surrounded the car I felt claustrophobic. But after talking with Peace Corps vols about this, I’ve come to see that these are just kids, victimized by a system that they will only truly understand once (or if) they reach adulthood. So I started sticking my tongue out of the kids and making funny faces. One kid started to pretend hit me through the window and I pretended to be hurt. This got the talibe to smile, even though we didn’t give them anything.

Here’s a good article on talibe:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/world/africa/13dakar.html

One of the biggest arguments I’ve had here was during training over the issue of child abuse. Our PC Senegalese staff explained that they were hit when they were children and they continue to hit their children today. Abuse towards children is something you see here all the time, especially in schools and in homes. During the training session, I spoke up and tried to explain that hitting children is a not OK. EVER. Regardless of culture. Values are relative, but hitting children causes cyclical violence. One of my host moms hits her two-year-old incessantly (this woman also asks me for money every single day). I’m a big fan of Geoffrey Canada, who created the Harlem Children’s Zone. He states that when you hit a child for touching something, you’re hindering their mental growth and creativity. Children touch things because that’s how they learn.

I’m hesitant to put all of the information about my experience on the Internet. Not all kids here get trafficked or pregnant. Life does not suck. Senegalese people are far friendlier than Westerners (I just got admonished by a stranger from another village because I didn’t say hello to her while I was reading my book in front of my house). People in all countries are trying to get by, and make their lives as well as they can. That’s why I like this job (most of the time). I want to make my life better, and everyone I work with tells me how they want to make their lives better.

My host sister peed on me

Your first night staying at a new host family is always exciting and awkward for both you and your hosts. My host family here in Bayakh, Senegal includes an English teacher. This is good because we can have real conversations beyond the usual “It’s hot” or “How is your mother”. However, since my uncles speak English, I don’t speak as much French or Wolof. But I like letting people practice English with me. My 9 to 16 year-old sisters speak French well, and the women above 16 speak Wolof. This is the first time I’ve had sisters and they hit me just like my brother used to. I feel very at-home. My family has relatives in Strasbourg. The Amar’s are going to be my first of two host families. I will live with them for my first two months in country while I take Wolof classes and work at the middle school on a community garden with 10 students and 6 other PCV’s.

            One of my favorite tenets of Peace Corps is our obligation to share other cultures with people back home. Senegal is a great placement for me, because in the states there are many misconceptions about Islam and Africa. Although I may lament things about living here, my hosts are beyond generous and I hope to portray them positively.

            My host family, the Amar’s, are rich! They have two TV’s and Internet and a light bulb in every room. The “douche” (the word for shower means pit latrine in Senegal) is a constant source of confusion for me and seems to be it’s own ecosystem: lots of bugs and cats frequent the latrine. In Senegal diarrhea is one of the top five killers of children under five. I can see why since flies are prevalent and soap is not.

            Anyhoo, on my first night I was asking in broken French to hold the baby. Eventually I got the three-month old in my hands. Her name is Mbuso. We were having a grand old time when she peed all over my Theory dress. It was a lot of pee. I told my host mom that Mbuso had given me a “gift” and I got everybody to laugh about it. I forgot that in most of the world people don’t use diapers. Many things here are inconvenient for us Westerners but are positive for the environment: such as the lack of toilet paper, tampons, diapers, etc. I wish that all Westerners could come to a country like Senegal, where there is absolutely no trash collection or recycling. Seeing trash on the ground EVERYWHERE is a constant attack on the psyche, but it lets me know that when I throw something away anywhere, it doesn’t just go away.

Senegalese Food

            Meals are exciting in my house. Frequently kids from the neighborhood come over to eat with us. I’m not sure if they are cousins or not. Everyone on my block feels like part of my family. My host mom and sister are great cooks. We eat lunch and dinner with our hands, on the floor, all together from one big bowl. It is usually rice and some kind of protein with boiled vegetables and hearty helping of oil. Senegalese are not afraid of spiciness. In my travels, I’ve never seen spicy food outside of México.

            My mother would not like the way Senegalese eat because she can’t stand people who sit on the floor when they eat and who eat with their hands. I have been here for two weeks and I’ve never seen a local drinking while they eat. The only thing I have seen people drink is tea after lunch. I have never seen someone drink water.

            The issue people brought up the most when I told people I was moving to Senegal was the treatment of women. This is not the worst place to be a woman. However, the behavior of females is quite controlled.  Today I went around Bayakh with my language teacher and she introduced me to the village chief and one of the three imams of the village. When women greet people, especially men, they are supposed to bow. I promised myself that I would only do this under duress or if I really needed an important person to respect me. So today I bowed to a man for the first time. Sadly, it will not be the last time.

            Today my host father and I were talking about “rites” ceremonies amongst the different ethnic groups. Here the “Puls” or “Pulaar” give each other scars next to their eyes to set themselves apart from other groups. It looks pretty cool and it’s a quick way to see if someone is Pul. Senegalese are quick to point out that there is little to no tension between ethnic groups here (except for possibly Casamance in the South which has some separatist leanings).

I asked my host dad what the Wolofs do to adolescents during rites ceremonies, and he said they perform circumcision. “Of boys?” I wanted to clarify. He said yes, and nonchalantly added that in the East of Senegal they circumcise girls too. Before coming here I met a midwife in New York who worked in Casamance, and she said every pregnant woman she saw had been mutilated. I did not expect or want to be having a conversation with my host dad about female genital mutilation on my second day in the house, but it was interesting. According to this conversation, it’s not universal in Senegal, but I’m weary.

           

The Wolof Language

Wolof is moderately difficult. People here DO NOT like speaking French here. Even if they know that you as a foreigner and do not speak Wolof, they will speak Wolof to you instead of French. One cool thing about the language is that it is very spiritual. Wolof derives in part from Arabic. The standard greeting, “Assala malekum,” speaks of peace. “Aljumdulilay” means something like “Thanks be to God.” Also, “Inshallah” is used to say that hopefully God will make something happen. You could say, “I’ll come to your meeting on-time, Inshallah.”

            Wolof has no conjugations. The pronouns denote the tense, however, references to time are kind of an afterthought. Wolof also has a little French in it. Here the kids speak more French than the adults. I think the ability to speak French is linked directly to someone’s literacy level, since Wolof was only written down with independence and I have yet to see any text in Wolof.

            Senegal is a great place to learn a new language. Everyone greets everyone here, and everyone wants to get to know you if you are new. Another easy aspect of learning Wolof is that questions are always answered in the affirmative. When asked “Nanga Fanaane?”, the answer is always yes, I slept well. “Naka wa ker ga?” the answer is always, my family is doing well. Conversations are predictable.

Training

Many people asked me if I was scared to come live in Africa for two years. It was a little scary knowing that I’d have to learn two new languages. However my training is all-inclusive. Because of all the bad publicity that PC has gotten over their handling of rapes, we have had several hours of training on rape prevention. The advice they gave was invaluable. Having been sexually harassed in every developing country that I’ve been to, I wish I could have had this training before that.

            One underrepresented issue in Africa is their treatment of gays. In most African countries gay “behavior” is illegal. What the fuck is that supposed to mean? Here in Senegal you can go to jail for five years for gay “activity” and some marabouts have been known to tell their followers to stone gays to death (although my language teacher says she’s never heard this). The word for gay man here is man-woman. Yesterday the front page of the paper threateningly said, “Wade’s party will give gays new privileges if re-elected.” As if that is a bad thing. I doubt he is even considering that. While I was in Uganda they passed the death penalty as the sentence for being gay. The reaction from the international community put a temporary stop to this, but many activists were killed.

The Clothes

            This is the first place I’ve been to where people do not wear Western clothes. The women wear beautiful African prints. They frequently wear low cut dresses but any skirt above the ankle is considered salacious. The skirts don’t seem appropriate for the heat but they are beautiful. The Senegalese always dress well! Men wear nice tunics either to their knees or ankles. Some women wear the hijab but it’s not the norm. If a woman wears a hijab it can mean that she is Salafi, and that she does not have physical contact with men. It’s cue to others that when you greet a woman in a hijab, don’t shake her hand because she will cross her arms in front of her chest to show she does not touch men. Sometimes women will wrap their hair in the same cloth as their clothes. Some men wear little round hats.

I apologize for all Typos above. I don’t like to spend a lot of time on my computer here because it takes me away from my family and work. However, I think it’s my responsibility to share my Senegalese experience to people back home because that’s why government hired me! I hope I wasn’t too negative during this post, because in truth, it’s been a breeze so far because people have been nice to me.

My sister Fada with the drooling Mombuso.

Middle School Dance

Pre-Departure Freak Out

I apologize in advance because this won’t be my most interesting entry. I’m still in Hell’s Kitchen, New York. While I still have reliable Internet, I’ll answer some frequently asked questions that I’ve gotten in the 14 months since I applied to Peace Corps.

FAQ on Rachel’s Senegalese Peace Corps Marathon

Where is Senegal?

See map, its North of Ghana, South of Morocco, borders Mali.

What will you be doing in Senegal?

Unknown!

I will be a health educator/facilitator on preventable diseases, and I’ll work on other health issues like malnutrition and sanitation.

Where will you be living in Senegal?

Unknown!

What language do they speak in Senegal?

Supposedly French in the bigger cities, Wolof, Pulaar. There are half a dozen other languages spoken by other groups, predominately in the South.

Another good question is, why I am going to West Africa for two years during my roaring 20’s? Good question! Have you ever considered joining Peace Corps? Almost everyone I’ve talked to about Peace Corps over the past year has told me that they’ve considered it. When I was 12 my dentist suggested that I join the Peace Corps. Since my all-knowing dentist said this, dozens of people have told me to join. As if this 27-month commitment is no big deal, anyone can do it. I headed the advice of my dentist 10 years later,  and I applied at Christmas during my senior year of college. Although I haven’t shipped out yet, I think you have to insane to do something like this. This volunteer job means giving up everyone that you love for a couple of years for a completely unpredictable experience. Plus it’s unclear whether or not you will be successful in your new job. Lastly, Peace Corps is over 50 years old and has attracted a large amount of criticism.

I’m choosing to work for this organization because I volunteered in a 500-person village in Panamá with Amigos de las Americas, a group founded by two former PC volunteers. I met a PC volunteer in Panamá who lived one village away from me. Her environemental classes were almost identical to mine. This volunteer experience inspired me to study international relations instead of psychology, and prompted me to later work at an orphanage in Argentina. That summer in Central America also showed me that I could hack it with Peace Corps, if I wanted to.

I requested Africa as my geographical region when I applied. When my welcome packet arrived and I saw that I got Senegal, I screamed and jumped around my aunt’s apartment for about 10 minutes before calling my parents. Senegal was one of the top five countries in Africa where I wanted to live. There were many times in college that I thought my African Studies minor would be pointless, but oh no!

If you do want to know more about Senegal, visit our friends at the CIA:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sg.html