A Kolda Thanksgiving

Tobaski Pics

Trainings and Such

Part of being a Peace Corps volunteer is finding that imperfect balance between the amount of work you execute (e.g. number of trees grown/planted) and the amount executed by host-country nationals (HCN). It would be very easy to grow a bunch of trees myself and then hand them out or just go plant orchards on my own. I wouldn't have the back and forth trying to determine what the HCN really wanted to do. I wouldn't have to make sure they attended the training at every step, and then executed every step correctly. But the more work I take on, the less likely it is to continue on after I leave or after Peace Corps leaves the community. Trees might be considered "Amadou's (that's me) trees" and won't be cared for. HCNs might expect from my replacement the same handouts I gave during my service. (To the left is my back yard and the trees I have in my nursery).

Over my first year at site I have really taken this philosophy to heart and insisted on not ever forcing doomed projects on people, handing out trees or tree sacks to anyone who stops by, or working in someone else's field without their help. I've also executed a number of trainings and demonstrations to get people learning the process work.

My first training was establishing a cashew tree pepineer (Pictured Left). This included preparing the soil mixture, filling the black plastic tree sacks, treating the seeds, and setting up a nursery site. With trees started in the nursery you can get them growing a month or two before the rains are established, so they are already healthy and strong before outplanting, when they can really take off.

I have since also completed trainings in citrus and mango rootstock bare-root bedding. This involves direct seeding citrus or mangoes in a germination bed to allow for adequate establishment and selection of the best seedlings to transplant into tree sacks before grafting the following spring and eventually outplanting. If there is a multi-step process, I give them the first step in a training and then tell them to come find me when they're ready for the next. This effectively weeds out those that aren't really interested in working on their own.
Malaria killed 780,000 people worldwide last year and continues to be a serious issue in Senegal. In my host family alone 6 people contracted malaria this year alone. PC Senegal has made great strides in bed net distribution and preventative action. I completed two trainings on preparing mosquito repellant based on leaves of the locally available neem tree. You simply boil the water; add leaves, oil and soap, and then stir to cool. The lotion is quite effective and inexpensive. This was my best-attended training.
The following day my host mother Jennaba (right), my friend and workpartner Moussa (left), and my namesake Amadou (center) got together to try out the process and make the lotion themselves. I'm told another who attended the training is now making it and selling it in the bigger city of Velingara.

Parc National Niokolo-Koba

At 4am on Thursday I met three guys from England driving the return leg of Sierra Leone to London after working at a hospital there for two months...We decided to go to the National Park for the night...

Here are some pictures from the trip (blog post upcoming)

And then he went to the trunk to get a tire iron...

I was in Dakar about a week ago to complete my mid-service medical appointments where they run a number of tests to make sure Senegal isn't killing me yet. Dakar always offers a number of big city headaches you would never run into in regional capitals, much less a village. One of them is the obstacle of negotiating a taxi fare wherever you're going. As a white foreigner I have a sign on my back that says I have a whole lot of money, and anyone and everyone should try to get as much of it out of me as possible. Fare negotiations always start with something ridiculous like 4000 or 5000 CFA. I often throw out the Wolof karma proverb, "Luway def bopem," and the entire dynamic of the conversation changes: I am no longer a tourist, I speak some of the most prominent local language, and there is no way you're getting 3-4x the fair price like you're accustomed to with other foreigners. We joke around a bit more in the small amount of Wolof I speak, usually calling each other "sai sais" (thugs), and in the end we settle on around 1000-1500 CFA for the fare.

Around 4pm on Sunday afternoon myself, Jesse, another Peace Corps Senegal volunteer, and Virginia, a former Peace Corps Togo volunteer picked up a taxi in front of the "Liberte VII" Peace Corps transit house in Dakar negotiating the standard 1500 CFA price to the "Brioche Doree" bakery round point in Ngor Village (northwest Dakar) as the waypoint to go another ~200yds to the Peace Corps Senegal office. Nearly every taxi driver in Dakar knows this waypoint and has no trouble getting to it.

We negotiate the price, load our bags in the trunk, and depart for Ngor. Along the way I ask the driver if he speaks any Pulaar so maybe we can have an actual conversation, but he doesn't. The beach comes into view and we arrive at the first round point in Ngor with the driver pointing out a different bakery as the destination. I remark to him, in Wolof, "no, no it's the next round point. The round point with the Brioche Doree. It's not far." The driver starts to grumble to himself a bit in Wolof that I don't understand, but we continue nonetheless. About 20 yds before the target round point I tell him to hang a right to continue on to our destination, and he loses it. He's yelling in Wolof about how expensive gas is, and if I wanted the fare for 1500 it would have been the round point ~150 yds back. Trying to stay calm I tell him it's just a litte further. We take the right turn at the round point, and I tell him, "it's the next left." Well that was that...

The driver stops the taxi and starts yelling in Wolof how I need to pay him 2000 CFA now, and he's not taking me any further (at least that's all I understood). Again I tried to stay calm, "it's just a little further on the left." He gets out and goes to the trunk, and I think, 'well he's going to throw our bags out on the street and try to get rid of us.' He lifts up the bags and pulls out a tire iron from the trunk. The thought actually crossed my mind for a split second, 'well the car was rumbling a bit, maybe he needs to mess with the tire...' I quickly remembered, "no, I've heard this story before..."

He came around to the front passenger seat, tire iron in hand, and yanked my door open. "Give me my money! You need to pay me 2000 CFA!" At this point I decided to switch to language I actually speak and said, "calme-toi..." His response was a quick, "dugama (I don't understand)." French would now be useless. This was going to be interesting as I was the only one in the group of 3 who spoke any Wolof, and it was about exhausted at this point. I turned to look for the input of my friends and we decided the office wasn't that much further. We could just walk. We got out of the taxi, and went around back to grab our bags. The driver was still wielding his tire iron and staring us down. "He didn't take us all the way to our destination, so I'm only giving him 1000 CFA," Virginia remarked. 'Good luck with that,' I thought...

Virginia handed him the 1000 CFA bill, and the driver started yelling, but his Wolof exclamations were about as effective as hers in French. He grabbed onto her bag to thwart her escape, and she grabbed onto the tire iron to keep him from getting any ideas about using it. Suddenly the car started rolling down the street on its own, and the driver had to abandon his grip for a moment to stop it. It wasn't enough time to get away as we started to walk, so the stand off continued. Finally at this point the local foot traffic saw this loud tug-of-war taking place, and around 10 people (some French, some Senegalese) showed up to see what the problem was.

They quickly tried to tell the driver to calm down and get between us and him. "What did you negotiate for a price?" I was immediately asked. They knew the problems tourists had getting a fair price. I explained how we had negotiated for 1500 to this round point and he got angry out of nowhere for having to go past the round point with the first bakery (he clearly didn't know where he was going). A Senegalese man quickly snatched the tire iron from his grasp, and that was out of the equation. "Just pay him the remaining 500 CFA and it will be over," they said. I didn't want to set a precedent for being able to scare extra money out of tourists (which is clearly what he was trying to do), but I could reconcile he had taken us to the negotiated waypoint even if it wasn't our destination. I gave him the remaining money, they removed his grasp from Virginia's bag, and we quickly walked away while the yelling continued. I kept an eye out behind us, but we made it to the office without any further issues...

"But neither did I...I haven't once..."

It’s funny the little routines we get into to deal with what are very clearly challenging circumstances. We accommodate others that we know might be having a tough time just so that they have a shed of sanity to hold onto when times are especially trying.

The last month here in Senegal has been underscored by the Islamic holy time of Ramadan. From Sun up until Sun down Muslims around the world are not supposed to eat or drink. Muslims are also not supposed to swallow their saliva, so spitting out the window can get to comical proportions in a cramped 7-place traveling across country. Exceptions are made for the children, sick, pregnant, and breast-feeding. This has been a bit of stressful time for the people here in Senegal, as tempers can grow short around 6:30pm when you haven’t eaten all day.

In my household Ramadan has meant that at around 5am my family gets up and has an extra early breakfast before sunrise. The electricity even comes on especially for that hour from 5am to 6am. Not fasting myself, I’ve continued on my regular wake cycle of around 7/7:30 and eating breakfast around 9:30/10. Lunch tends to be a little later around 2:30/3 with the children making up the majority of the company and my sister of 25 years, Julde, cooking. Around 7:15pm or so the sun drops from the sky and it is time to break the fast that has weighed so heavy through the afternoon. For fast breaking we have one of my favorite dishes, mony, consisting of pounded millet, kosam (a spoiled milk yogurt sort of treat), sugar, and, if we’re lucky, some citrus juice. Normally if someone has not fasted during the day he won’t partake in the family drinking of mony. The fast breaking then pushes dinner back to a later hour of between 10 or 11pm, and we make the switch from a rice base to a lecciri base (pound corn or millet like couscous).

The other day I was working in my back yard doing some weeding around my tomato plants when I noticed the time was approaching for fast breaking. I put a shirt on and walked through my hut and toward the batiment (cement main house in the compound) to meet my 6-year old sister Yebbe coming out to get me. She took one look at me and turned back to open door, “Nee, o ara (Mom, he’s coming).” At the door my mom Jenaba met me with the usual bowl of mony but only one spoon. “Handi, be horanii. O woni fii aan tan (Today, they didn’t fast. This is for you only.)”

Michelle Sylvester Scholarship for Girls

Opportunity for women has been shown to be the most effective means of reducing birthrates. It's simple: when a woman can use her time to work and contribute to a household outside its walls, it most often outweighs time otherwise devoted to bearing children. In Senegal, especially in villages, boys have been shown to go further in school by a wide margin. A number of factors contribute to this reality, but simply put there isn't as much support for girls to finish high school much less continue on to university.

Peace Corps Senegal runs a scholarship program to support the best female high school (equivalent) with financial need. The process to select candidates starts with recommendations from the girls' teachers based on classroom participation and academic achievement. The teachers recommend 9 students, with three from each of the levels 3rd, 4th, 5th.

With this pool of 9 I proctored an essay inquiring what each girl was planning for her future endeavors and how she felt she could support girls' education in her town. Next was the interview portion where I posed a number of questions ranging from the number of children and students in each girl's family to where and for how long she studies at home. Paired with the interview was a "home visit" where observations were taken about the state and signs of wealth for each girl's home. Based upon all data collected, the top 6 of 9 candidates also showing the greatest financial need will get the next year's tuition paid for, and of those 6 candidates 3 will also get money for school supplies.

As an American young man of 23, adolescent Senegalese girls probably relate to me the least of anyone. This program was definitely my chance to really get to know some of them more personally, each one now making a point to stop me and say hi when we see each other in the street. The scholarship is not an exorbitant amount of money, but with the number of volunteers spread all over Senegal completing this program, a lot of girls can be supported to continue their studies and consider their futures more seriously.

More Donkey Ride Pics

Trees Go in the Ground??

For the past 7 months I've been caring for a steadily growing pepineer that consists mostly of guava trees and now also includes cashew trees and a thorny live fencing species. Since the rains are finally starting to become more and more steady, I've started to outplant!

Recently I was approached by the abbott, Timothee, from the Catholic Mission in Pakour after we had discussed the potential of working together some months earlier. Timothee said that he wanted to work with me, but continually asked what I wanted to do on the grounds of the Mission. I had explain the fact that it wasn't up to me to decide what to work on; potential work partners come to me with ideas and then I help them start the projects. After a visit to my pepineer and a short discussion down at the Mission grounds we decided there was enough space in a fenced in area of the grounds to plant 5 guava trees and 3 cashew trees. For the trees that I have cared for and grown I have decided that selling them is a much better strategy than giving them away. If I give them away there's a chance they won't be cared for like their worth the time and effort that was put into them, and well I'm not selling them for very much at 100 CFA/tree (enough to buy a loaf of village bread in Senegal or about 20 cents USD).

I arrived on the arranged evening with the 5 guava trees and went to work demonstrating the techniques for outplanting a pepineered fruit tree. After completing the first outplanting, I stepped back and let the two resident abbotts, Timothee and Martin, along with my buddy, Moussa Diallo, and

Babacar, the grounds management worker at the Mission, do the rest. By the end of the evening we each had a tree named after its planter.

With a new seven-foot tall woven fence inside a wider area, shorter wire I was not the least bit concerned for the trees...as long as the doors were closed properly.

I had decided to put off completing their plantation for another week since my cashew trees were only just about 6 weeks old and the guidelines call for at least 6 but no more than 10 weeks in the pepineer before outplanting. Upon returning to the Mission only 6 days later I was greeted by bare twigs where leafy 2.5 foot guava trees once stood - GOATS!! I was upset to say the least. I made my irritation known in a roundabout fashion, as displaying frustration would not be culturally acceptable. Six and half months of care and work down the drain. Two ground-driven vertical logs braced the piece of fencing designed to slide open prohibited the fencing from sitting flush and had offered the perfect weakness. We finished outplanting the cashews and rearranged the fencing to sit more streamline.

I have since visited the Mission and I am happy to say the guava trees are all pushing out new leaves. Since the trees were old enough to have some hard wood, the goats were not interested in consuming them all the way to the ground. For now it looks like the trees will survive, but we all agreed that another attack like that would surely finish them off.

I hated goats before they attacked my guavas - constantly chasing them out of my compound with rocks following them close behind. Within a few nights of the attack, I was lying in bed and spied a goat that had gotten into the fenced-in area behind my hut consuming every last one of my trees. I arose with a start, banged my toe on the side of my bed, and, gasping for a breath, gazed out my back door. It was 2am, pitch black, and there wasn't a goat to be found...goat nightmares...Does Peace Corps health insurance cover PTSD?

English Club & Such at the CEM de Pakour

Throughout the dry season I spent most of my time on secondary projects not related to trees or reforestation, and one of my regular jobs became an English teacher at the CEM where the latrine project is underway.

Six teachers from town rent rooms in my compound teaching Arabic, Natural Science, elementary education, and of course English. Mr. Gaye, the English teacher, and I quickly got to know each other simply because of the ease that came with speaking my native tongue. He continuously wanted to improve his English and I wanted someone to have a conversation with as a break from French or Pulaar. One day Mr. Gaye proposed the idea of me giving a presentation in one of his classes to give his students a chance to listen to a native speaker, and so my teaching career began.

It started with just one of Mr. Gaye's classes and continued on until, to date, I've given around 7 presentations in not only Mr. Gaye's classes but also a second English teacher, Mr. Diop.

Almost all of the presentations have consisted of me starting off by explaining a little about myself, where I'm from in the U.S., and what I studied in college before segwaying into Peace Corps

information. I then give a background on what the Peace Corps is, its goals, its programs, and what my current and future efforts and aspirations are for Pakour. I finally move on to cultural differences between Senegal and the United States (blog post upcoming...I can't believe I haven't outlined this yet...maybe it just took me this long to be able to hash it out). During the presentation I try so hard to speak sloooowly and cleeeaaarly because "American English is so quick." After working with the English teachers for so long, I've even picked up on their pronunciation of certain words and try to use those to improve the students' understanding. Throughout the presentation Mr. Diop or Gaye will take notes, and we always conclude with a short quiz on what I said. Sometimes if they miss something I might repeat the answer amongst other information/names to make them sift through and find the correct response. Some of the classes have only been learning English for a couple years, so hearing a native speaker for the first time is extremely difficult, but when they do find the correct response, and there usually is at least a couple of students that were actually paying attention, it makes it all the more worth it. The other day I taught an English class on the problems of deforestation and the importance of the forest surrounding Pakour. Any of you that know me can probably guess what happened - I got a little carried away talking about the environment and before I knew it I had diagrams about Global Warming on the board, and the students eyes were glazed over...I'm sure they picked up some of it...

I'm now considered one of the teachers, and I even have some students calling me "Mr. Barry" (It takes some getting used to being called "Mr." anything, especially with your foreign last name) I attend all the teacher gatherings and spend most of my free time with them conversing in a mixture of French, Pulaar, Wolof, and English (in that order).

Additionally I have been a judge at the English Club's Master Game (Master Game Finals Pictured). The Master Game is a jeopardy-like trivia game with mostly simple

questions in categories including spelling, general knowledge, grammar, and vocabulary, but everything is in English. This is a great

opportunity for the students to practice their English by speaking and hearing only English. Unfortunately some of the other teachers are a little less than confident in their own English

and use a lot of French (the general academic language in Senegal) or

even some of the native native languages (Wolof/Pulaar) in their

lessons. So often many of the students, and even some of the English teachers, fear speaking English with me as they might make a mistake with the native speaker. With the way conversations almost always start, it seems that the first thing they must teach in English class is how to say "I don't speak English," so I spend the first couple minutes diffusing this and pushing them to try harder. Through my experiences with the Master Game I have gotten to know some of the best students in Pakour, and for all the stories I hear about female students getting married at 15 and dropping out or the prevalence of students not fulfilling the 50% average to successfully complete a grade and having to be held back, it is refreshing to meet the best of the best who will even seek me out at home on their own time just to practice their English. Pictured is Amadou, the president of the English Club, at the Master Game Finals singing a song about Africa's pain and struggle...in English. He's pretty good...

The CEM in Pakour, is struggling by with minimal funding and decrepit facilities, but with the

efforts of teachers like Mr. Gaye (Pictured Left) and Mr. Diop (Right) along with the freshman headmaster, Mr. Sabaly (Center),

things are moving in the right direction.

I was recently awarded a certificate of recognition by the teachers, students, and headmaster of the CEM for my continued work with them in English classes, the latrine project, and the Michelle Sylvester Scholarship Program (Blog Post Upcoming). Mr. Sabaly thanked me greatly for my help and stated that next year our work together will start earlier in the school year, and my opinion will be solicited and considered for every decision made at the school...wow, never thought I would find myself with this much input into the school...

"That's the Reality of Poverty..."

The other day I was travelling from Velingara (larger city 60 km north of Pakour where I pick up my mail) to Kounkane (30 km north of Pakour where I get on the national highway) when we picked up an unusual passenger.

My mode of transport was what PCVs call an "Alhum," a short-distance city-to-city bus always packed to the brim with people (pictured). While travelling from large city to large city, the Alhum makes stops at smaller villages in between to drop people off and pick up people waiting on the side of the road. About 20 mins from my destination of Kounkane we stopped at a small village and a man approached the driver, they talked for a minute, and the man walked back to the nearby compound. At the compound he picked up a wrapped up plastic mat and sheet and approached the back of the Alhum accompanied by four other men. As he approached the Alhum I kept staring at the wrapped up bundle in his arms unable to come up with what possibly could be inside. As he climbed into the back I thought, "no, you've got to be kidding me...No...."

Women and children started bounding toward the front of the bus to fill in the seats further away from the new passengers. Some started sobbing, but everyone went quiet. The music that was playing from a stereo in the front of the bus was immediately cut out. After staring at the bundle for a few more seconds, I finally came to terms with what had just boarded the bus. There was a body wrapped up in that clothe and plastic mat lying across the lap of one of the new passengers....

I overheard their destination - Marawe - immediately after mine. For just over 20 minutes the bus would be riding with a body in the back of the seating area...

When I finally got home to Pakour, I recounted the story to the teachers that live in my compound with varying reactions. None of them had ever heard of this happening, and said it was very abnormal. One teacher, Mr. Seck, was angry that this was disrespectful to the dead person, and also that "women and children would be afraid of the body. Shouldn't they have had a special car to take the body?!" Mr. Gaye, an English teacher I hang around and work with quite a bit, was shocked but not surprised. Very solemnly he looked at me and said, "that's the reality of poverty..."

Approved!

My latrine project at the local high school was just recently approved by Appropriate Projects!

(See "Facilities For The Community High School")

The school will now have bathrooms after not having them for more than 7 years!

For more details check out the online article: http://appropriateprojects.com/node/697

Appropriate Projects pre-funds their projects, but if you are interested in donating on the website, there is the opportunity.

Local Market Day, Birthday Celebration, Village Soccer Final, Downtown, Moussa & His Son Mammadou, Bissau Barry (Me)

New Mailing Address!

We're consolidating mailboxes, and I have to change my mailing address (B.P. 157 now):

PCV Curtis McCoy
B.P. 157
Velingara, Senegal
West Africa

Facilities for the Community High School

Despite the fact that the rains have not yet arrived to Pakour in full force queuing me to put trees into the ground, I have been working on a number of side projects and secondary work to keep myself busy. The local high school (CEM) in Pakour has been a frequent place of work for me lately. As a decent-sized town, there are 630 students in need of a proper middle school at which to study. Unfortunately, the CEM has been without proper bathroom facilities for all of its approximately 7 years. The students actually coordinated a strike earlier this year in protest of their lack of facilities. With a substrate of nearly bedrock on the school grounds, the digging alone would be an especially expensive undertaking - much too expensive for the small amount of funding the community school runs on.

The newly-appointed school director wants so badly to improve the conditions and practices at the school, but minimal revenues and no response from the government has kept these conditions the norm. After discussing the issue with Mr. Sabaly I have submitted an application to Appropriate Projects to help fund an 8-stall latrine on the school grounds. As I mentioned earlier, fund-raising is not the job of Peace Corps, and I must not get in the habit of these kinds of projects, but when money is the only obstacle that is why these organizations exist.

The strike was finally ended with word of progress, but Appropriate Projects has yet to approve the proposal. I will keep you updated.

My Humble Abode

Getting Ready For The Rains

I had been gardening every morning with my buddy Moussa Diallo throughout the dry season (November-May), but with the end of that cycle gardening has been tapering off. I have since started pepineering a number of trees in tree sacks in preparation of Agroforestry Season (coinciding with the rainy season May-October). I currently have nearly 100 Guava trees, 50 Acacia nilotica (a fast-growing, nitrogen-fixing, thorny live-fencing species), and about 150 Cashew trees growing behind my hut. With these trees I plan to supplement the supply that will be needed to complete the number of projects I have planned with people from the community. Among those planned projects are 18 live fences (closely-spaced trees are employed in lieu of dead fence posts or chicken wire to yield a longer-lasting, self-pruning, possibly nitrogen-fixing barrier), 10 cashew plantations, 10 mango plantations, and a few orange plantations. How many of these projects are finally realized remains to be seen, as it is up to the planner to come to me for instruction and training – I’ve already had a few no-shows for training appointments.

Peace Corps technical work takes a little push and pull to make progress. So much developmental work in Africa is the standardized NGO coming in to pay people to do trainings while also handing out materials and more money for project startup. Anyone is going to show up for a handout, wouldn’t you? But the Peace Corps’s motive is to give ideas and training with the notion that that will last much longer than money or materials.

“Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he will eat for a lifetime” is a common proverb I use when I explain the Peace Corps to potential work partners.

Additionally, it is up to the people to come seek me out for help. They know I am here, and after a number of months they should know why I am here. This may sound like a lazy approach, and in a smaller village of only a couple hundred people this might be a recipe to get nothing done, but in a city of just over 2500 it is a measure of motivation. I try to make myself available and visible in the community, and I never write off an idea, but there are too many people accustomed to handouts that I need to filter out. If only one of the roughly forty projects is completed because only one person was motivated enough to get it done, then I’ve accomplished something by finding that one motivated person.

"Europeans and Donkeys!"

I arrived in Kounkane, the closest road town to Pakour, on Wednesday March 9 and quickly became aquainted with the ass I would call J. Lo. Being the largest and strongest, J. Lo was the most expensive of the four donkeys purchased for the ride at a whopping $110 (55,000 CFA). Joining J. Lo was Princess Sparkles, ridden by Michael Goldman, Shackleton, ridden by Cara Steger and eventually Charlene Hopkins, and finally Scarface named for his gruffy appearance, ridden by Geoff Burmeister.

Geoff had organized the ride and therefore purchased all of the donkeys. As we approached them for the first time he started profiling each of them. Scarface was getting on in years, well past his galloping years, but would be loyal as well as docile. Shackleton was a young male not looking to put up much of a fight and content to simple go where you wanted him to. Next there was Princess Sparkles, a young female named before Mike had even seen her, but we would all quickly learn of how fitting the Princess name was. From the moment we approached her, she quickly turned away and raised her hind leg ready to strike – this was going to be interesting. Last but not least I approached J. Lo with slow steady hand determined to whisper and charm her into my confidence without having to use the firmer methods of reinforcement and punishment I had so often seen with each passing charet. I steadily creeped up to her with an outstretched arm reaching for her neck in an effort to immediately calm her as she slowly wavered away from me. My hand met her coarse fur gently and she seemed unafraid compared to the other three donkeys. Her immense size made her easy to tell apart from the others, and Geoff assured me she would be the fastest.

The hour was closing on our first scheduled presentation. We mounted our steeds and headed down the road to the predetermined location at the Kounkane garage (more like a large cul de sac in the middle of town). As we made our way through the streets of Kounkane we were accompanied by Moustapha Dialo, the Kounkane health relay, on megaphone. He explained in better Pulaar than any of us could hope for that there would be a presentation on malnutrition given by Peace Corps volunteers in the garage that evening and that we would then be leaving the following morning on donkey back toward our eventual destination approx. 100km and 6 days away in Kolda.

Arriving at the garage we tied our donkeys up to some nearby trees and got to setting the numerous plastic chairs we had reserved for the event. After not too long the stereo system was also readied and pumping music. We needed to pull people out of their evening routine and get them to this causerie because even though many had said they were coming it is only culturally customary in Senegal to say you will attend event even though you might have no intention of going.

To get things going a dance party broke out between the volunteers and the children assembled in front of the speakers, but eventually the hour to start came and went, and the only audience we had mustered were the group of children ranging from 6-14 years – the same age group we were all accustomed to yelling “Toubab!” at us. They were clearly there to see what the foreigners were doing. The heat of African sunset proved to be too much for the volunteers’ dance party, and we retired to the seats assembled behind the stereo equipment to wait.

Kounkane was supposed to be the “Ace.” Geoff lived there and people had been told about the causerie well prior to the day of, so where were they? If we couldn’t assemble a decent crowd on our home turf, what were our chances on the road when there would only be a matter of hours between summoning the people and the start of the presentation? Not to mention we would have a schedule to keep with trying to get in two, sometimes three, 1.5-2hr presentation in in a single day with as much as 15K separating towns.

Eventually a ray of hope was offered: the trickling in of the mothers of Kounkane. It started very slow with four or five, but all of a sudden I turn around and, as night fell on this small town of around ten thousand, it was “Standing Room Only.” The place was packed!

We finally started in with introductions, but what is an introduction without a solo dance number for the crowd. Dancing is a big part of Senegalese culture; before each bare-knuckle wrestling match (the Senegalese national sport) each wrestler does an elaborate 20-25 min dance that sometimes overshadows his ability to wrestle.

After each of us introduce ourselves in Pulaar we started the skit that we had spent only 5 minutes discussing before our departure for the garage. Geoff donned his skirt and tika (head scarf) to signify his role as Mike’s mother. I was the other, healthier child with Cara Steger as my mother. Geoff was to be the mother unfamiliar with child nutrition while Cara had a better idea of what was nutritional for a child.

I played in the dirt, as Senegalese children do, as Geoff entered the scene carrying Mike on his back held on by a long piece of cloth tied in front at the chest, but given the physical disparities between Geoff and the mothers of Senegal, the common means of carrying a child in Senegal didn’t work as snugly as it normally would.

Cara, as my mother, insisted that Geoff and Mike stay for lunch, and after much denial and insistance Geoff gave in. The four of us sat on a mat around an imaginary food bowl supposed to be filled with many types of vegetables. As Mike, Geoff’s child, reached for the middle of the bowl where the vegetables are often placed, Geoff slapped his hand scolding, “those are only for adults, not children!” Cara however contested that children need vegetables just like adults; “don’t you see Amadou (me) and how big he’s gotten eating vegetables?” Geoff reluctantly agreed and exclaimed, “Ndatu (Mike) you can eat a little.” The skit ended with Geoff yelling at Mike to stop eating and he carried him off stage.

Everyone seemed to get a kick out of the skit, and it served well to break the ice on the subject of malnutrition. Geoff and Mustapha then grabbed the megaphones and reiterated the point that children also need to eat vegetables and fruits. We wanted to cover a number of important facts with the presentation, but we quickly decided that the best way to underscore them was to first ask the audience for their opinion before either correcting what was said or, more often, underscoring and summarizing the correct answers given by various individuals.

As Peace Corps volunteers our job is to teach. The problem is who are we as Americans, some of us who have never been abroad at all let alone to rural Senegal (me), to come in and tell people how to live and what to eat. Every community with a Peace Corps volunteer did in fact submit a request before receiving their vulunteer, but with such an imperialistic image abroad we, as Americans, need to approach every situation with a great deal of humility. We’re not here to teach the most basic knowledge; we’re here to make marginal improvements over many years by multiple successive volunteers.

The presentation began with going through the specifics of the prevalence of malnutrition in Senegal and expecially in the rural areas which include my region of Kolda. The numbers are staggering with 1 in 5 children suffering from malnutrition. We continued on to breaking down the food groups. Each group had a banner with labeled paintings of common examples available in Senegal, but before revealing each successive banner the group was polled for what foods are good for energy (njahgol) (carbohydrates), vitamins (fruits, vegetables) (bibbe ledde, mafeeji), and growth (beydugol bandu ndu) (protein), respectively. Again the audience generally had a few correct answers with a few common mistakes (e.g. bananas always seemed to be an answer for increasing body size and growth). After each polling we revealed the appropriate banner and read off each example. Vegetables (mafeeji) was always the last group to be covered because included on that banner was the unlikely character, Moringa leaves (nebedaye).

The final banner outlined the numerous benefits and healthful properties offered by the “Miracle Tree” Moringa oleifera. Gram for gram Moringa powder (dried and pounded leaves) have the equivalent of: 7 x Vitamin C of an orange, 4 x Vitamin A of carrots, 4 x calcium of milk, 3 x potassium of bananas, and 2 x protein of yogurt. The tree is endemic to Senegal and grows quickly with extremely high germination rates. You also cannot kill the tree…I planted a couple behind my hut, but some goats broke in and ate every leaf off of the trees. Within a week you could see new leaves budding. Short of ripping it out of the ground, it will not die.

The following the day, the first day of travel, we were slated to travel around 10 K with one presentation in the morning and another in the afternoon. The morning presentation was again a tough start with a number of women on the road saying they were going to come but not actually coming. This of course would be a common thread throughout the trip as it is in Senegal.

Culturally, it is considered rude to say no, so more often an agreement will be reached with no intention of following through on it or you’re deferred to a later time or day “wait until tonight/tomorrow.” Very often people will give you the affirmative with no intention of following through. This becomes very difficult when trying to schedule an appointment because you could be in complete agreement on the time of an important meeting, but it would be completely acceptable for someone not to show up at all, let alone on time and it would not be acceptable to show frustration for him not showing up.

Additionally, especially in bigger cities, there are always people on the streets shoving things in your face trying to get you to buy everything from caged birds to cologne to mirrors and phone credit. It would be rude to say no, and sometimes that does not get them to leave you alone. However, if you say “next time” especially in Wolof or Pulaar, other than the novelty of speaking to the foreigner that speaks a local Senegalese language, they will most often let you alone.

By the late afternoon we arrived at Diaobe, a massive market town known for its Wednesday “Lumo” (weekly market) day where people pack the streets selling everything you can think of. One volunteer remarked that his host family warned him “you’d be lucky to make it out of there (Diaobe) with your underwear [on Lumo day]” because of the prevalence of pickpockets in an area so packed with people. As we rested from the day’s journey one of the health officials for the area gave us a welcoming speech. During the speech he mentioned how impressed and grateful he was for us to be there braving the 40 degree heat. 40 degrees? Of course he meant in Celsius…quickly we each got our cell phones out to use the converter application to find out what that was in Fahrenheit: 113 degrees…”Oh, that’s why we were feeling so dehydrated…”

Diaobe also gave me a chance to exercise the “cousinage” joking relationship my family “the Barrys” has with “the Diaos.” In Senegal so many people have the same last name it’s not even funny. And from just your last name people will immediately know what ethnicity you are, what language you speak, and what foods you commonly eat. Each family last name has a number of other family names that they commonly joke with, tease, and make fun of. Common insults include being called a hyena, a monkey, a thief, someone that eats too much, someone that drink too much, just simply bad, being told you don’t actually have a last night, that you are not on the straight and narrow, being told you now have a changed last name to the “cousinage’s” last name, being told you eat beans or squash, as well as being told your father is any number of these things. It is all meant to be in joking, but it can go on and on sometimes. As you can imagine Diaobe had a lot of Diaos given that the addition of “be” (pronounced bay) to any place or last name means the plural of people related to that. I don’t know if I’ve ever been told I’m bad as many times in a single day. My family name also has a joking relationship with the “So” family.

Before riding into Diaobe the bikers accompanying us had gone ahead to sound our impending arrival to the women’s group that was planning to attend the training. This group was a might smaller than the previous, but we were able to effectively elicit discussion given these circumstances, and it made for a very effective causerie. That night we had dinner provided for us, and we curled up onto the floor of the health post tile…not the most comfortable, but welcomed nonetheless after a long day of travel.

The next morning we were up bright and early to start our journey about 6:30 am. It was at this point we determined the heat was too much to be riding the donkeys and our backsides could only handle so much of the riding at a time. We reluctantly decided to walk the remainder of the trip – approximately 90 kilometers to Kolda. Since we had succeded in leaving earlier, the morning travel that day was much less tedious. As we pulled into our first destination of the day we learned that we would be giving the presentation at a school approximately 2 kilometers off the road. Despite being in the target city, we had to keep walking…no big deal, the destination is the destination…until we arrived at that school nearly a mile off the road to find that we were actually supposed to present at the health post we passed earlier up the main road. We turned around, swallowed our frustration, and made our way back the 2 K to the road and .5 K to the health post. The health relais (health post worker) we saw as we came in could have stopped us before turning off toward the school, but he didn’t...

With each causerie the people's responses gave us a sense of how often NGOs and the like come through each town to do trainings. For example though the audience was small in Diaobe the womens' group's knowledge of nutrition made it clear that with all the transients coming through for the massive weekly market there was also a steady stream of NGOs giving trainings at the health post. At this next causerie the opposite was found to be the case for when the banner for vegetables was unfolded a woman from the crowd asked, puzzled a bit, "Don't cucumbers give you river blindness?" This question is all to indicative of the problems with development work. With a brand new massive health post in which to give our causerie, paid for by untold thousands of NGO dollars there was a clear disconnect with the people. Throwing money at a problem doesn't fix it.

Originally dubbed the "Death March" but renamed the "Vision Quest" that afternoon was especially trying. We had 12 Km to cover by foot right at the peak of the heat of the day, and there was no way around it. With temperatures easily reaching into the upper one teens, I stopped thinking and my march turned to more of a wander. As long as road was in front of me, I was going to continue. Three hours later we reached our destination. We finally did get a reading of the temperature in the late afternoon (well after peak heat) from a thermometer attached to Mike Goldman's bag that had been sitting in the shade: 110. The health relais awaiting our arrival was understanding when we decided not to do our skit. Another successful causerie completed as the sun set behind us. Going back into the health post where we had set up camp I found Cara had been stung by a bee on her forehead after Mike had tried to swat it away. Her face swelled up more than I had ever seen before. She would continue the journey, but, in her condition, biking would be a better option.

As we finished up the last causeries the journey actually started to get easier. The exhaustion set in so heavily that we started to get what is known technically in the medical community as "slap happy." At one point we actually explained in Pulaar to the Moustaph, the health relais joining us, and Fodde, who had helped us with donkey logistics what what this term meant. They quickly agreed with our assessment. Yes, it was hot, but it was always going to be hot. Yes, it was far, but it was always going to be far. And the causeries were effective. Thanks so much to all that donated. We raised about $1700 for the "Gardens of Moringa Fund" to support volunteer projects with the stipulation that it include a Moringa training. We covered about 100 Km (62 mi) in six days, about 90 Km of it on foot, and completed 12 causeries. You can still donate at http://www.youtube.com/user/KoldaDonkeyRally (scroll down on page to see how)

A special thanks to the Knauer family - Jane, Mark, and Hannah - of my hometown of Lake Forest, IL for generously funding the purchase of our four donkeys. Funds left after the resale of the donkeys was donated to the "Gardens of Moringa Fund."

It's hard to imagine what people really thought as they saw these foreigners pass their villages on foot tugging donkeys. In Senegal, foreigners are immediately associated with lots of money, so "what were these people doing?" At one point a Frenchman was driving by us and actually stopped to ask us if everything was okay. I did notice that almost everyone greeting us did so in Pulaar. In every other instance outside of this journey greetings are 99% in French unless the person already knows we speak Pulaar. I guess they figured, if these foreigners were walking donkeys on the side of the road across Kolda, most of them in 500CFA ($1) shower sandals, they must have been here long enough to speak the local language. No French Patron (boss) would be crazy enough to do something like that...