Let me just take the time to recount two more events from visiting my village. As I said in my last post, we took public transportation to get there. I was jammed in the first row of the van, next to five other people (the van is the width of a minivan in the US). Somehow, when climbing out of the van, I managed to rip a huge hole in my skirt, right at the butt. When I rolled my skirt up to hide this hole, the skirt was too short and didn't cover my knees, so I had to resort to pulling my shirt down really far in the back and hoping no one would notice. Talk about making a good first impression...
Later that day, we decided to take a walk to the Gambian border. To get there, we walked through another village along a bush path (path through the sand/off the main road). A group of children formed behind us and grew as we continued, picking up more people along the main road. By the time we reached the border town, we had a large following of children. It must've been funny to see.
I also don't know if I mentioned this last time, but my village doesn't have electricity and gets its water from a well. I'm very excited to live without technology, which my langauge teacher thinks is very bizarre.
So after visiting my village, I returned to the training center for a day for some technical, medical, and safety training; and now I am back with my host family in Mboro for a stay of one and a half weeks. To be honest, I wasn't excited about coming back to Mboro; after seeing my permanent site, I just wanted to go there and begin my service. But, as I rounded the corner near my house on Monday evening, my sentiments were immediately reversed by my 3 little brothers running toward me and screaming excitedly, "Aida Job, Aida Job!" I couldn't have been welcomed more warmly and am glad to be back.
It's been about two weeks since I was last here, and it's exciting to see how much my language skills have improved since then. I can now communicate much more with my family. Yesterday, my language class had a "waxtaan ci lekk gu sell ak seen wa ker" (discussion about nutrition with our families) conducted all in Wolof. We introduced the importance of healthy eating for children, explained exclusive breastfeeding and then complementary foods for babies, and made a vitamin-rich porridge for the mothers and the children to try. In the porridge, we put flour, sugar, oil, water, peanut butter, bananas, and meringa. (Meringa is an amazing plant-in just a small pinch of dried/crushed merigna, there is a vast majority of the vitamins needed for the day and is extremely cheap to buy or can be found growing all over Senegal. It seems too good to be true, as one volunteer put it. In Wolof, it is nicknamed "neberdi" after the english "never die" because it is so healthy.) I was glad to find that this recipe developed by the Peace Corps was well received by adults and children alike, and some even said that they will start adding peanut butter, bananas, and meringa to the porridges they make. So, despite the fact that vocabulary limitations made it a very rudimentary session, it was altogether a success.
Today, we spent the morning at the health post, assisting with baby weighing and vaccinations. We had tried to come watch this several times before, but the health post hadn't received the vaccines each time. Finally; the vaccines had arrived. We got to play an integral role in this process. I was in charge of weighing the babies (the weight would then be used to determine if the baby had adequate nutrition) while others in my group held the baby, prepared the vaccine shots, and delivered oral vaccines/nutrition supplements. Altogether, we vaccinated about 50 babies. It was great to see how the process occurs and to be able to assist in it. In our sites, we will be helping with these as well and perhaps working on improving the organization of it. I do also have to say that a lot of babies in Senegal do not come and those are often the ones who are malnourished and need the supplements and also means that not all babies are receiving the vaccines, despite the small cost of only 100 cfa for the visit. There are a lot of reasons for lack of attendance including mothers not having the time to go (some waited for over 5 hours) or being embarrassed that their child may not weigh enough.
To continue this blog filled with short random stories, I will list some of my pasttime accomplishments here, which oddly (and unintentionally) all relate to the number 3. 1: I have crocheted three hats for family members. (Yarn here is cheap, but not consistent. One ball that I bought had continuously different thicnknesses, and another ball had several breaks in the thread that had simply been knotted together.) 2: Read three books and started a fourth-all excellent, and I highly recommend them all. (Purple Hibiscus; Prodigal Summer; Modern Piracy and the High Seas; and Desert Solitaire.) 3: Went to the tailor to have three outfits (two skirts and one dress) made from bright, beautiful fabric that I bought in the market.
And finally, I'd like to take some time to explain Peace Corps because I don't think I've done that yet, and some of you might be wondering what exactly I am doing here. Peace Corps Senegal is a 26 month program; the first 2 months consist of training, and the next 2 years are service in the community. As an environmental ed/health volunteer, I can work on projects as diverse as building latrines, covering wells, baby weighing, maternal health, youth programs, girls' empowerment, community gardening, and much more. We spend training learning some of these technical skills, as well as medical and safety information at the training center in Thies. We also spend a majority of training with a host family for what is called community-based training, where I am in Mboro. Here, we learn langauge and cultural skills. This way, when training is over, we will have the language to interact with the village and the means to learn more language there. We will then have an in-service training about 2 months after we begin service to learn more technical skills. In essence, less than one month until my service begins!
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