I have successfully been in village for 5 weeks now, completing what is known as Peace Corps’ 5-week challenge. During this period, volunteers are challenged to remain at site and not spend a night at the regional house (houses owned by the Peace Corps in each region for volunteers to use to get work done or to spend a night speaking English). And now, the real work of a volunteer begins to unfold a bit.
As I have only been here for 5 weeks, at first I spent my time merely getting to know my village. I would spend a lot of time in my compound talking to my family, all the children who come there to play, and all the women who would stop by to speak with me or my parents. My Wolof is still slowly improving, and people are telling me that I understand Wolof now. (This is very generous as I still ask for a lot to be repeated or words to be explained, but I am understanding their explanations now and I can understand most of what is being said if only one person is speaking at a time.) As time went on, I received invitations to have lunch or tea (which is drank every afternoon) at other people's compounds. Now, in the past week, sama liggeey, mungi tambali. (My work is starting.) As a health/environmental education volunteer (in Senegal, these programs are synonymous-when you think about it, it makes sense since they're so interconnected), the potential for my work expands over a broad spectrum.
I have spent much time at the local high school (about a 3 km bike ride from my village) working to promote girls' education. Thanks to the help of the students at Van Der Veer Elementary School through my mom, I will be funding 9 girls' education. The 9 girls are in the American-equivalent of grades 6, 7, and 8 and were selected by their teachers for being incredibly bright/motivated but having a financial need that makes it difficult for them to attend school. I have interviewed each girl (yes, in Wolof), received recommendations from their teachers, and had each complete a short essay describing their desired future and hope for girls in their community (in French). Soon I will be going to each girl's home to speak with the family. This process has been extremely enlightening to me. I've learned a lot about the Senegalese school system, the difficulties these girls face in the education system in Senegal, and about life here in general. For example, all these girls go home and cook, clean, do laundry, etc. for their family; however, they all accept it and actually don't even mention this work to me unless I ask if they do this at home. Additionally, when I asked their biggest difficulty, one girl said that she didn't have electricity at home and her flashlight is bad, so it's sometimes hard to study. When I asked what they plan to do with the money, all said that they would either use it to buy school supplies or give it to their parents. One girl also said she would use some of it to buy breakfast so that she can concentrate better in school. Finally, a few mentioned that the biggest problem facing girls in their communtiy is early marriage that causes them to drop out of school; they want to help girls be more motivated to continue. They all said that they plan to stay in school and don't want to marry until after they graduate or after university (which they all want to attend). After interviewing them, I couldn't help but feel incredibly lucky for the education and opportunities I received growing up. In my house, my education came before anything else, and I was lucky to have a great school sytem. I know some places in the US have similar conditions to here, but I realize how much stronger you have to be (especially as a girl) to succeed in the Senegalese school system compared to East Brunswick, NJ. Here there is not the same support system at home and school to help you pass. I even see this from the knowledge the students have. It is incredibly disheartening to see 10-year-olds struggle to read and having difficulty sounding letters out; at that age, I was flying through books and writing (very short) reports in school.
I have also spent some time working at the health post. This is similar to a doctor's office in the US; it is a step below the hospitals. However, there is only one qualified doctor and only 2 or 3 nurses to care for many villages. I spent a day assisting with vaccinating babies in a nearby village. We traveled to the village by ambulance. (Think big white van with an empty back, no equipment but room for someone to lie down.) We then sat under a tree and waited for the women to come with their babies. The nurse would administer the vaccine (polio, yellow fever, TB, or Penta), and I would record it all in a booklet for the moms and a master book for all the babies in the village. It was a good system since then both the health post and the mothers have the information about vaccinations. Unfortunately, the date of the vaccinations was not spread well throughout the village and only 28 arrived. However, she will return next month so hopefully those who didn't come this time will come then.
I have been doing some traveling to other volunteers' sites to work in their gardens. I have helped to start tree nurseries, plant vegetables, and beautify an urban space to have as a teaching garden. My garden is also just beginning; just yesterday, I planted vegetables in a nursery that I will later transplant. Hopefully they will grow so that I can give them to my family for meals. I hope to also start a garden at the primary school in my village to grow vegetables for the village to eat and/or sell. There are currently school gardens at the two high schools near me started by previous Peace Corps volunteers. These gardens were created to supplement the World Food Program's provision of free lunches for students who come from far-away villages to school every day. The vegetables grown would supplement the rice and other grains donated by WFP. They need a bit of a revival though, so I hope to go to them soon. (Due to teacher strikes this year, the school year was greatly disrupted and thus the education of students and the condition of the school gardened suffered.)
I have decided to work to bring my village more trees. Currently, there are only neem trees in my village. Though these trees have important medicinal properties, my villlage does not know them. (I will soon start to teach them how to make a mosquito repellent from the leaves and other uses.) However, there are no fruit-producing trees for consumption or sale. Though my village does eat and sell a lot of mangos, they buy these in bulk from other villages. Therefore, I went to speak with the Eaux et Forets branch to bring tree seedlings for transplant to my village. My village is now planning to host a meeting to determine how many and what types of trees they want; they are all really excited to have more trees. It is something they have wanted for awhile, but have been unsure of how to accomplish. I am hoping that Eaux et Forets will grant the request as promised, but I am waiting to find out.
I have begun to teach one woman and a few children english. This woman approached me saying she wanted to learn english. She was not the first to do so, but she was the first to actually follow through with this desire. I have worked with her 3 times so far (though she apparently came over on some of the days I was away from my village too) and is very dedicated to learning. She has a lot of trouble retaining the information, but tries so hard. One of the kids is picking up what I teach really fast though. I need to develop a better system to teach her and the kids separately. This woman is amazing though. She is always laughing, inviting me over for lunch, and trying to help me. The other day, when I walked into a neighboring village with her and my mom for a ceremony, she said something to me. I thought she was asking if I could run, but she may have been saying something else. Anyway, I then asked her if she could run, and we ended up dashing down the road together, laughing hysterically as passers-by stared at us.
Finally, I took it upon myself to go to every compound a few days ago to record the name of every person living there. This is the first census ever done in my village, and everyone is curious about the stats. I learned that there are 26 compounds (2 of which contain 3 heads of the house living in one compound). In total, there are 397 people (assuming no one forgot to mention someone, which is quite possible), twice the number my village had estimated lived there. As I went to every compound, I was shocked to realize that I didn't recognize everyone; apparently, I see and talk to the same group of people all the time. But everyone asked me to stay to talk and drink tea, so I will be going back to every compound to spend more time with them.
So these projects are all only just beginning. In reality, nothing is really accomplished during the first 3 months until after our training in August, but it is nice to have some small projects to work on now. I feel so much better when I am busy and working toward something. I also am beginning to formulate some ideas for bigger projects down the road. It is just the beginning now, but I know soon I will be jam-packed with work as I try to do as much as I can to help my village.
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