School (again) and wildlife stories

Absolutely crazy morning. I guess I was feeling sleepy anyway and should be happy for this turn of events, but still it is disappointing. I showed up to my computer class with the people from my house this morning at 10 only to find that the government did not pay the electricity, phone or water bills for any school in the country. So all the services have been cut off. Thank goodness regular classes have not yet begun, but for any extra things like summer study sessions, watering the plants and trees as well as computer classes like mine, things are difficult.

Just makes you appreciate a public school system that functions.

In other news, I should talk about my recent craziness. Normally I would hide this from the blog and pretend that I am only a stellar volunteer, but the truth is I’ve gone a bit crazy, and certain associates have encouraged me to share it with you as evidence of what service in the third world can do to a person.

I’ve had some recent brushes with the wilderness that remind me just how far I am from being comfortable on a couch in suburban Indiana.

I went running with my neighbor Neil the other day where we normally run, way out in the bush where there are fewer people and cars and the air is (usually) fresher. Only about 400 meters into the run, right in the middle of farmer’s fields which are almost ready for harvest, we see an enormous truck emptying none other than tanks full of sewage and human waste onto the ground. Needless to say, the smell was terrible and neil and I kind of freaked out about the health implications—just the other day I sat around with my whole family eating beans practically fresh off the vine. Really scary thoughts.

It gets better (or worse). The rains have really dredged up a lot of insects, meaning that I chase roaches and geckos and crickets out of my room nightly. I guess I didn’t do so well a few nights ago because I woke up feeling really congested—I thought I might be getting sick until I blew my nose and found, guess what, a spider. Miracles of the human body—at least this means that I didn’t ingest it.

Which is better than I can say for the fish eyes the following evening for dinner. (and I forgot to tell you that my last meal before leaving for the states happened to be sheep’s head. Normally when we eat sheep’s head I don’t even know it because all the meat has been pulled off the bones ahead of time. But this time, for some reason, the cook left all the parts in, including jaw bones filled with teeth. My one mom even took the jaw, cracked it in half and pulled the tongue out from inside and tried to feed it to my cat. Scary when even the cat won’t look at it twice.)

One more wildlife story-- we have our cows tied up outside the house these days (there is one that just had a baby which is sooo cute!) While I was walking to the boutique on the corner my first mom started yelling at everyone to grab the baby cow. He was eating a big plastic bag—so we all kind of danced around trying to get the bag out of his mouth, but he took refuge under his mom and then the mom started charging at people. She was tied to a tree, so we all got out in the end, but it would have been terrible to be gored by a cow’s horn in front of my very own house. And the silly baby cow ate the whole plastic bag and choked and coughed for a while.

My computer class

Here are some captions for the pictures in this post:
1)A mural on a school wall where I teach computers
2) The building on the left is the "computer room." The crazy guy on the steps is our guard (whose last name also happens to mean "urinate" in Wolof). The little white building is the director's office/teacher room and storage area-- it is the size of a closet.
3)The shack made out of pieces of metal is a makeshift classroom. The school (like all the other primary schools in Louga is severely overcrowded. Each elementary student has to do a competition (through standard testing) to try to get one of the limited spots in the middle school. If you don't pass, you can repeat the year, but most kids repeat once or twice and then give up.
4,5,6) Students working in the computer class. The women in #6 are part of my family-- my "sister-in-law" and my "sister"
7) The sanitary block at the school. On the right is the original. On the left is one built by an NGO a couple years ago.
8) One more student in the class



I've got a pretty solid computer class going on these days, with photos to boot so I thought I would tell you a bit about it

I teach every morning (it used to be two classes which each met twice a week) but now we put the two classes together and meet every day. We are trying to rush and finish everything before Ramadan starts next Saturday. During the period of Ramadan ( a full 30 days) most adults will fast from daybreak to sunset. They don't eat or drink anything for the entire day. THe period is one of the five pillars of Islam so the fasting is practiced by nearly everyone. It is extremely hard to work during this time too-- people are tired and grumpy and often get sick and to be honest it is just too hot to try to function without food or water. So there is the reason for hurrying things along.

The class started with about 15 people and although attendance isn't totally regular, most people are present on the days they can be there and they are starting to get some information out of it. We started on things that seem so simple-- what is a computer? what is memory? how do you use the keyboard? (the double-click was a major step) and now we are getting into email accounts and using an address book; using search engines and sending files. I was so happy when we first starting using email and the students were honestly giddy about being able to send each other little messages.

There are some problems-- as you can see in the pictures, the school that houses this computer room is very poor. The computers were a donation years ago and have fallen into disrepair and the school is very crowded. During the year they use a classroom for the computer room, but once classes start again they will have to close off the computers so the students will have space to work. There are also problems with the direction, which is not very proactive, and the guard, who is currently in charge of managing the computer room and doesn't now anything about computers (sometimes he rips the plugs out of the wall in frustration!) But in the end, I am encouraged by this class. The class is young people and old, men and women-- it truly is an atmosphere that one almost never sees in Senegal, and everyone seems to be equals (refreshing!)

Enjoy, more photos to come!

Senegalese Emigration in Pictures

on BBC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/5335062.stm

check it out

trapped!

I wrote the other day about feeling trapped by poverty. I didn't think it would take effect so quickly but here I am. Trapped, in a different sort of way. It has rained for 8 straight hours. Not the messing around, play in the streets kind of rain, but the kind that rattles my tin roof until I think it will fly off (although it still doesn't manage to cool the interior... )

so jet lag + rain means that I haven't left my room in 36 hours... Cabin Fever! this is another thank you to care packages... what would I do without Sudoku puzzles and beef jerky? I have nearly finished an entire tome by Salman Rushdie and still going strong.

On a side note, I was so worried about needing to carry little silly gifts for family, friends and work partners here (the gift from your trip thing is taken pretty seriously) that I never bought myself any wonderful american treats to bring back with me... so mom, my apologies in advance for repeated phone calls asking for granola bars and wheat thins...

here are some more photos of the "ocean" in front of my house

and on a lighter note

I was welcomed home so warmly by my family that I had to remember why I came here. They truly are so wonderful, I couldn't leave them. And I have to thank my volunteer friends and my local other Toubabs for remembering me too! They all were in touch in my first few days home and I feel so lucky to have a great community here.

This doesn't negate the fact that I couldn't bring myself to eat rice today and ended up sitting on my floor and boiling packaged mac and cheese (thank you care packages!)

and several of my work partners have been in touch as well, which is encouraging!

thanks so much to everyone at home-- friends, family, friends of friends (maybe even the ND Football team?) for making my visit home spectacular. I can't wait to be back with all of you!

Cold Turkey

I haven't been very good at posting in the last few weeks-- but it's for a very good reason. I just returned from a visit to the states, where I met with friends and family and enjoyed all the pleasures of home for a solid 2+ weeks.

It was really a fantastic trip home (there were golf and cigars involved, a plastic tub of mango margaritas, a Tigers game of stickball, strobe lights and even french fries) so I thought I got a good dose of the US to last me for a while. and then it was time to go back to senegal and I started to change my mind.

I won't go into the details, but on my first day back in senegal I missed home more than I expected-- I missed not having to argue with the cab driver about the price before I got in the car. I missed clean streets and pretty buildings and happy smiling faces of people I might actually know. The list really could go on and on. what I really found myself wondering is-- am I completely ready to do another 15 months of this? Was I just joking when I did the first year?

So I propose a new re-insertion method for volunteers. No more cold turkey (it doesn't work and it is just plain painful). Instead, I suggest a slow-drip IV. Somehting that is portable, easy to use and not too disturbing to passersby. A little Wolof thown in here, a little rice and fish here, a casual string of shouted greetings, a chorus of sheep and even the sand from the streets. The most important is that it be entirely constant, so that instead of forgetting we have a nice and easy re-entry...

What this all really comes down to is that I had forgotten for a moment what it is like to live in this kind of poverty. I can only begin to imagine what it must really mean-- but seeing it again here was like seeing it for the first time. I think it is so easy to forget, especially after being here for a while, because people truly do show a resiliency and resourcefulness in their lives. But the reality of it is that poverty is a crushing factor here in senegal. there is no way to measure it based on what food people eat or what people buy for clothing, etc. I mean that it can be crushing to the spirit, creativity and optimism in people. We just had the period of exams for students here in Senegal and I was disappointed and discouraged by what I learned. Widespread strikes in the school systems prevented students from preparing well for their exams and in some cases even meant that the exams were never graded. For many students this means definite failure. The chances of passing are actually so narrow that many never leave elementary school. There are two universities in Senegal. One is highly competitive, with limited space. The other is public and open to all who pass their exams, meaning that classes can exceed 500 students and more. For many the only hope to really get ahead is to win a scholarship to study in Europe or America. Paying their way alone would be literally impossible. Scholarships from the government are so few that only a handful of students can benefit and private sector scholarships are non-existent.

Maybe I am just venting some frustration, but it seems like a one-way street for most people. The obstacles are so huge even to getting an education, that everything else-- job, well-being are like dreams.