Fatick, Senegal: My New Home Is Starting to Feel Like Home :)

Hello Everyone!!!! Gosh, it’s been too long since my last post so I’ll waste no more time in re-capturing my past three months here :)

January: My Birthday and Laura’s (the PC volunteer who was here in 2006-2008) Visit

So the month of January was kicked off with a very low key New Year’s Eve and Day as described in my last post. Of course right after that was my birthday!!! Woo-Hoo, I am 27 now, oh my! Haha! So, I ended up celebrating my birthday (Monday, January 10th) with my family here in Fatick and with my fellow Peace Corps volunteer friends in Kaolack (where our regional house is located/only 1 hour east of Fatick). On the morning of my birthday I opened up my beautiful birthday cards that my family had sent me and I cried like a baby:) (Thank you Emma, Mom, and Dad SO MUCH!!!) Also, my friend Amy arrived from her village; she left her village at 5 a.m. to arrive in Fatick at 11 a.m. with some cheese and bread in hand to compliment the bottle of wine and bar of dark chocolate that were sitting in my kitchen patiently waiting for Monday evening :) Thank you, Amy SO MUCH!!!!

Amy and I had an awesome lunch with my family, where my mom and all of the kids sang happy birthday to me in French and where we ate WAY too much ceeb u jen (rice and fish)! Waa Kër Ndao Style! (Translation: Ndao Family Style…I swear, my family eats REALLY well…we even have crab in our bowl sometimes, no joke!). So after an amazing lunch with my family, Amy and I somehow managed to walk back to my place where we caught up on our lives and exchanged lots of laughs, hugs, and tears :) By 8pm our cheese, chocolate, bread, and wine birthday extravaganza was in full force in my living room, accompanied by great music and conversation. At 9pm we were invited by my landlord to have dinner with him and his family. They set the table really nicely for us and we enjoyed a super yummy traditional Senegalese couscous dinner. By the end of the day, Amy and I were ready to explode from all of the food we had eaten! I was able to call to my parents in the US in the afternoon and I received tons of texts and phone calls from my volunteer friends throughout the entire day, starting at 7am and ending at 10pm, and I seriously could not have been more grateful for all of the love they all showed me on my special day! Thanks guys!!!!

So moving on to late January, as many of you have already seen from my photos on Facebook, the volunteer who served in Fatick during 2006-2008 came to visit her family and friends for a week and stayed with me. Her name is Laura (or Ndella) and she is a cute little thing and a total firecracker from the east coast :) Laura’s visit couldn’t have come at a better time. It was right before her visit, about 5 months into my service, that I really started questioning if I would ever be effective here because of the language and integration difficulties I was having at the moment and honestly will continue to have throughout my service here. I was closing off from the world around me because of my insecurities with the languages and my fear of not being good enough to do the job but, hanging out with Laura and tagging along with her everywhere she went that one week showed me that the most important part of my service here will be the relationships I form with the people of Fatick and not how many business classes I teach.

Seeing the way people remembered Laura’s name after two years and the huge smiles they got on their faces when they saw her really touched my heart. Also, seeing the way Laura talked and interacted with everyone just so naturally, as I am sure she does in the US with her family and friends there, really left me in awe and opened my eyes to what this experience should really be about. Laura was one of the lucky volunteers like me who got to learn two languages at once so seeing her still being able to speak both French and Wolof really filled me with hope when I most needed it :) Laura sweetie, thank you so much for everything and for all of the great advice, having you here and seeing the way you interacted with your family and friends has been absolutely invaluable to my service :) Keep shining my love and know that I am always thinking about you especially when the neighbor kids call me by your name! Hahaha! Love you, girlie!

February: My trip to Kedougou (9 hours southeast of Fatick in the bottom right corner of the country) and W.A.I.S.T. West African Invitational Softball Tournament (this event should totally be named WAISTED instead WAIST, I am sure you can imagine why)

I spent the first weekend of February at a training on how to build pumps for wells at the Kedougou Peace Corps regional house in Kedougou, Senegal. I left Fatick on Wednesday the 2nd, got to Kedougou on Thursday the 3rd, finished the training on Sunday the 6th, and got back to Fatick on Tuesday the 8th. Needless to say, it was quite an exhausting trip but nonetheless a super fun adventure:).

For starters, I got to see lots of good friends I hadn’t seen in a while, I got to see some monkeys with funny butts in their natural habitat (I think they might’ve been baboons:)), I learned about the ins and outs of how to make and operate a rope pump (I am currently trying to implement this in Fatick, more on this below:)), I got to slab some fresh cement into some molds and got down and dirty daisy style:), I ate a warthog sandwich (tasted just like pork!!!), I ate the most delicious homemade pizza on planet earth (no joke, us peace corps volunteers can cook!), I survived a really long hike to see a really beautiful waterfall!!!, I think I threw out my lower back during that hike, I saw the waterfall!!!, I got a full body massage by one of the housekeepers’ sister who is a certified masseuse because I couldn’t stand the pain in my lower back the day after the hike to the waterfall, I felt like I was at summer camp because the regional house looks like campgrounds, did I mention that I threw up at the end of the hike because of exhaustion and because of my malaria pills? yeah, and lastly but most importantly, I got to see the people of Kedougou, the Pulaars, who in my opinion are the most sweet and humble people in all of Senegal :). In all, my trip to Gou-Land was super fun:):):). Thank you, Kedougou, I really liked you; however, I don’t think that your trail to Segou Falls liked me:). Until we meet again….

Okay, so moving on to mid-February…WAIST. The West African Invitational Softball Tourney is obviously a softball tourney but it is for all of us Americans living in West Africa:). It was held in Dakar and it was LOADS of fun! My team, the Kaolack region team (all 50 of us), dressed up as ballerinas and got our little too-toos handed to us at the end of most of our games. We were there to have a good time but somehow got put in the competitive league because of our size:). Anyway, the weekend was full of lots of American food (I even had a philly cheese steak sandwich and a super yummy grilled chicken club sandwich!), lots of drinks (both virgin and not so virgin drinks), lots of crazy dancing (daisy style dancing:)), and just lots of fun! I stayed with a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Randy) from Peace Corps Nicaragua and his family (his wife Ericka who is Nicaraguan and their super cute little ones: Valentina and Diegito). Staying with them seriously felt like I was home in the States! Since Ericka’s mom was visiting from Nicaragua the house was all Spanish and it was great! Ericka and her mom Zoila are the biggest sweethearts I have ever met and really made me feel like I was at home and part of their family:). Thank you, Randy and Ericka, I really do not have the words to express just how grateful I am for having had the chance to stay with you guys and I can’t wait for Diegito’s birthday party in late April!

March: My Current Projects…YAY, I Started Working!!!!

I taught a marketing class in French!!! So, for four weeks I taught a marking class on Thursdays and Fridays, 3 hours on Thursdays and 2 hours on Fridays:). I nearly pee-peed my pants that first day!!! Haha! I taught the class at the local CDEPS in Fatick. CDEPS is a youth vocational school that offers technical classes to people out of the regular school system. My class consisted of 24 ladies between the ages of 19-35. I was older than most but younger than some:). I really enjoyed the class and I think the ladies got a lot out of it too. We went over marketing theories and techniques in depth and I tried to make the class as relevant and fun as possible for the ladies. Also, teaching the class in French helped my language skills A LOT! I had to prep about 5-8 hours before each class but overall it was a great experience and I made some really good friends because of it:). The ladies want me to continue to teach them and I do too but since I have other projects going on, I won’t be able to teach them again until after July.

About my other projects: I am currently working with a local agricultural/farming association in Fatick called ADN (Association de Développment de Ndiaye-Ndiaye ). They are a really motivated and humble group that need help and are located about 1km south from my place in the quartier of Ndiaye-Ndiaye. Ndiaye-Ndiaye is a farming/agricultural neighborhood in Fatick. Our water here in Fatick is really salty since it comes from the Sine-Saloum Delta, but Ndiaye-Ndiaye has lots of wells and that is actually where our drinking water comes from and that is also why Ndiaye-Ndiaye is the agricultural neighborhood in Fatick. With that said, I am currently working on getting low cost/adaptable well pumps in Ndiaye-Ndiaye. As I write this, I am currently in Kedougou again but this time I am here buying a rope pump to take back to Fatick so that we can replicate it there and install some of those guys in Ndiaye-Ndiaye :). I plan on jumping onboard on a grant my friends are writing to get 52 pumps in 52 weeks in the regions of Kolda and Fatick. The grant would pay for two-thirds of a pump and so the receiving individual or group would have to contribute one-third of the cost. These pumps are inexpensive, adaptable, and efficient which is great because pulling water from a well is not fun! Plus, having a pump would increase farming efficiency in Ndiaye-Ndiaye and the adaptability of the technology of these pumps make them sustainable and easy to keep up and implement elsewhere in Fatick after I leave:). Also, since I know close to nothing about agriculture, I am trying to get one of my aggie friends to come up to Fatick and show some members of the ADN and me composting and agricultural techniques so that we can start implementing some of those techniques here and so that I can get these guys ready for a Moringa tree tournee that my region will be doing in early July :). I’ll keep you guys posted on my progress with ADN :).

Aside from my work with ADN, I have started to work on some Gender and Development projects us Peace Corps volunteers have going on here. I have currently started working with two middle schools in Fatick in nominating some of their top female students for The Michele Sylvester Memorial scholarship that our Peace Corps SeneGAD (Gender and Development) program offers. Here is a brief description of the scholarship: The Michele Sylvester Memorial Scholarship Fund was established in 1993 in memory of Michele Sylvester, a Peace Corps Volunteer dedicated to girls’ education in Senegal. Its purpose is to help close the gender gap in education and to keep girls in school. The scholarship provides money for the school fees for nine girls at each middle school working with a volunteer, and for school supplies for three of those girls. School faculty members determine the original nine girls, the volunteer chooses six finalists, and a Selection Committee picks the three winners. The Selection Committee uses a personal essay written by the candidate; an interview of the candidate by the volunteer; the candidate’s grades; and recommendations written by a teacher and the volunteer to make its decisions, based on the following four criteria: motivation, ability, financial need, and recognition. So let’s help keep some girls motivated and in school!!!

Last but not least, I am currently working alongside the other 49 volunteers in my region (the Fatick, Kaolack, and Kaffrine regions) in planning and fundraising for our regional girls’ camp that will take place in late June this year in Badoudou, Fatick. Our girls camp is called Camp de Connaissance et Croissance and is a leadership camp for 40 middle school girls between the ages of 13 and 15. I personally will be bringing three girls from Fatick to the camp :). The camp is a weeklong development program and in that week we Peace Corps volunteers hope to give every participant an experience which will stay with her for a lifetime. We work hard to ensure that every girl says goodbye at the end of the week with increased self-confidence, improved communication skills, a greater capacity for leadership, lifelong friendships, and higher self-esteem. The camp costs have totaled to be about $5,500 USD and I need everyone’s help as we have about $3,400 USD to go! We hope to raise the rest of the money by May as we need to start purchasing a lot of the supplies and we need to start paying for the lodging. So pretty please help!!! Here is the website to our camp with lots of details and photos from last year’s camp and a link to donate (all donations are tax-deductible) so please take a look :). http://ccc.pcsenegal.org/

 

So there we have it guys! Crazy me in action! (Well, sort of…) I would love to say that everything is going to work out as planned, but I don’t know that yet. All I know is that I absolutely love working with people. Getting to know my students, the farmers, and the teenage girls I work with and making an effort to better understand them so that I can better serve them is so much more important to me than ‘getting it right’, whatever that may be:) ADN in Fatick is an amazing group of hard-working and motivated individuals that I hope to grow closer to within these next few months. And for those of you who know me quite well, you know that I whole-heartedly enjoy working with female teenagers. I’m not too sure why, maybe it’s because they remind of me when I was their age and I can remember just how hard it was to have self-love and confidence at such a critical age since it’s still lots of hard work for me to love and trust myself even nowadays:) In all, Fatick really is starting to feel like home. I’m still the crazy white girl for some, but for most, I am a neighbor, a friend, a daughter, a sister, and/or just plain ol’ Ndeye Koumba Ndao (my Senegalese name:)). So guys, until next time and please know that I keep all of you back home close to my heart :) I love you all SOO much and lots of hugs and kisses!!!

XOXO- Daisy:) aka Ndeye Koumba Ndao :)