My First Three Months in Country!

Hello Everyone! I am finally updating my blog! Yay! I apologize for not writing in this thing earlier and hope you all have enjoyed the lovely pictures of my journey so far that I have posted on facebook J For my friends and family that do not know the details of my departure, here they are: I accepted an invitation into the Peace Corps program in Senegal, West Africa early July of this year, 2010. I pretty much quit my job, packed up my life in about a month, moved out of San Diego on Sunday August 1st, and took my flight out of LAX on the morning of Sunday August 8^th. I managed to somehow survive two demanding months of cultural and language training and was sworn in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer on Friday, October 15^thJ I am currently serving in Fatick, Senegal as a Small Enterprise(Business) Development Volunteer. So, here is a summary of my first three months as a Peace Corps Trainee/Volunteer in Senegal, West Africa J

Training in both the city of Thies and small village of Bayakh, Senegal (August 11^th-October 15^th): Okie dokie so about my first two months in Senegal as a Peace Corps trainee, it was hard! Hahaha…It was very demanding emotionally and physically but it was a very beautiful experience.  I arrived in Senegal the morning of Wednesday, August 11^th along with 63 other wonderful Peace Corps Trainees. We spent 5 days together at the Peace Corps Senegal training center in Thies and then got split up into small groups (depending on the languages we were learning) and were sent off to live in training villages for the remainder of the training. Each trainee was assigned a host family to live with so, needless to say we all pretty much jumped into the culture right away! My training village was Bayakh which is a road town of about 6,000 inhabitants. I was assigned Bayakh along with 7 other wonderful trainees whom I miss a bunch already J We took language classes and classes about the Senegalese culture for about 6 hours a day 7 days a week with the exception of a couple of Sundays that were allotted as free time. About every 2 to 3 weeks we would meet up with the other trainees from the other training villages for security, health, and technical classes at our training center in Thies. For me and the other Small Enterprise Development (SED) trainees, our technical classes consisted of learning about different projects that current and past SED volunteers had done and the options that were available to us. For our agricultural trainees (aggies), their trainings consisted of agriculture stuff and the same thing went for our agroforestry trainees (agfos).

I took French language classes for the first 7 ½ weeks and then switched over to Wolof language classes for the last week and a half. While French is officially the national language of Senegal, Wolof is a native language that is spoken throughout the country. My host family during training was just plain awesome! They were so nice and patient with me and I am just so grateful for that.  My training host parents were a young couple who were very open and excited to have me there even though I really couldn’t verbally communicate during the first half of trainingJ I swear, whenever I needed to use the restroom I would just grab my stomach and point to the outhouse! Yeah, most of my communication during the first half of training consisted of hand signals and acting out the things I wanted to do J However, I really enjoyed being humbled to the point that I felt like I was a toddler again J It was very humbling indeed! I also had a really cool host grandma who only spoke Wolof, 2 aunts (1 of whom was my caretaker and my best friend in villageJ), 1 cousin, and two little sisters who are absolutely adorable. We all lived in one compound and I had my own room. I ate all my meals with the family and even learned how to tie my baby sister onto my back! I would go to the boutique sometimes with my baby sister on my back and my neighbors would go nuts about it! They absolutely loved it! I also learned how to dance the ‘Goana’ dance and I am really starting to believe that I was perhaps Senegalese in my past life. I can get down to ‘Goana’, trust me!  I took bucket baths (no showers for me thank you!) and even learned how to correctly go number 1 in a Turkish toilet (aka squat toilet)J But most importantly, through all of the ambiguity and frustration that adjusting to a new culture and learning two new languages brings, I am most happy and grateful about the relationships I was so blessed to have been able to build with my fellow trainees, my host family, and with some community members of Bayakh during those two months of training J

In all, even though training was difficult because of all of the adjustments to so much change, it was exactly what it needed to be for me and I am just so grateful that I was able to share my tears, laughter, fears, and love with my training family and fellow trainees J

My first month as an official Peace Corps Volunteer in Fatick, Senegal (Thursday October 21^st-Today Sunday November 28^th): So my first month at site has been quite exciting and interesting and intimidating all at the same time! Fatick is a regional capital and is a pretty big city of about 26K-30K inhabitants. I have electricity, running water, and even a shower head in my new place! I feel very blessed to have these amenities since most of my fellow Peace Corps friends here live in villages of about 200-1,000 people and live in huts with no electricity and no running water. So my hat off to them for sure! There are a handful of NGOs and other organizations here in Fatick that I will probably work with in the near future. I really haven’t started to ‘work’ and probably won’t for maybe another six months as I need to focus on integrating into the community and increasing my language skills. French is coming along slowly but surely and I’ve just really started to dive into Wolof so I have a feeling it’s going to be a while before I get comfortable with the languages and I’m okay with thatJ

Life on my own as a Peace Corps volunteer here in Fatick is really neat. My host family is the family of my counterpart and they live about two neighborhoods west of my neighborhood. I have two little sisters and one little brother and lots of family friends. I eat lunch with my host family everyday and do breakfast and dinner on my own. My host mom Nabu is just about the sweetest thing to me. She does a lot of work with teenage girls in Fatick about HIV/Aids awareness and prevention. I even got the chance to go to one of her meetings and say a little something to the girls! That was really cool! My first day in Fatick was interesting. In a nutshell, I was super dehydrated and ended up throwing up in a boutique in the Marche while my host mom was trying to show me around and trying to help me buy food for the week J Yeah, I made a really good first impression! lol! After that, I spent the better part of the following two days in my bed crying. Heeheehee…but since then and up until yesterday my health has been okay. I currently have a pretty nasty cold but I’m sure it’ll go away soon; it’s just running its course right nowJ

So the weather here is probably the biggest threat to my health. It is HOT! Like really hot! And this is winter so I’m not too excited about spring and summer K But luckily I’ve been drinking lots of water, wearing lots of sunscreen, and I have been wearing my little hat to keep myself from dehydrating againJ The majority of the people here in Fatick have been just so nice and patient with me. Mostly everyone speaks French but Wolof and Sereer are the two languages that are spoken at home. So even though people speak French to me, they don’t necessarily speak French to each other so that’s where learning Wolof comes into play for meJ The food has been really delicious and I’ve actually even gained about 7 pounds. There is jugo de Jamaica and Tamarindo here and a dish called ‘mafe’ that is super similar to my mom’s Mexican peanut mole J As you probably have already guessed, I absolutely love that dish!

In all, my first month here in Fatick has taught me to slow down and smell the roses and daisies J Learning two languages at once, adjusting to life on my own in a foreign country, and integrating into a new culture is obviously no easy task but I’ve learned so far that taking it slow and taking each day and minute as it comes is the best thing I can do for myself out here. It’s funny, I came here to grow in the virtues of love, patience, respect, and humility towards others and I’m finding that in order to be a more loving, patient, respectful, and humble person towards others, I first have to be these things towards myself J  So with that said, let’s see what lessons I learn next J Love you all and lots of hugs and kisses!

XOXO

-Daisy