Closing Thoughts

my backyard! so green

This is my final blog post. Before I get started, I first need to say THANK YOU to everyone that contributed to the latrine construction project. We ended up raising twice the amount needed, with extra funds going towards other Peace Corps/Senegal projects. Secondly, I want to reiterate that this blog concerns my opinions and my experiences in Senegal, nothing more and nothing less.

It is strange to sit down to write a blog post in a comfortable chair with a cool can of seltzer in my hand – luxuries I could’ve only dreamed of until recently. I’ve been living in the US again for almost three months now and the exhilaration of the produce section of the store is just now manageable. This summer I have luxuriated in the opportunity to spend time with my family and old friends in my home state. I have appreciated trees, air conditioning, and blueberries like never before.

public transportation: not comfortable

Living in Senegal was immensely challenging for me in various ways. On the surface, there were the basic discomforts of life: carts drawn by donkeys, 110 degree weather, chickens invading my bedroom, and sand everywhere. When I wasn’t sitting on a concrete floor or in the sand, I’d be lying on my one inch foam mattress. On special occasions I got to sit on a hard plastic chair. But I got used to those things. What took me longer to get over was the constant feeling of living defensively. I used sunscreen to protect skin from burning, vitamins to prevent micronutrient deficiencies, a mosquito net to avoid malaria, and water, so much water. I often worried I would drown myself trying to stay hydrated.

time to play!

Of course there were daily perks to balance out the struggle of life without sofas. In Senegal I never had to hurry – anywhere, ever. Keeping track of the time was a hard habit to break, but I started planning my days around “before lunch” or “around twilight” instead of specific times. And I had endless free time to read, write, draw, climb trees, chat with ladies, play with kids, and process everything I was doing and seeing. Losing track of time, I found myself more grounded in the moment in which I was living; exactly and wholly there and no where else.

the biggest Mouride holiday in Senegal - Google it

Another luxury I had was the opportunity to live without internet. I loved the resourcefulness that I developed in Google’s absence and the freedom of not being able to check my phone throughout the day. But more significantly, I was exhilarated by the idea that I was living beyond the internet. That I have a wealth of information in my head that has not been digitized and itemized online as a data set. I loved speaking a language that still requires human translators and celebrating holidays that don’t have Wikipedia pages. When I had questions, I talked to people to get information instead of asking the internet. Living in a community that hadn’t yet heard of Google helped me reassess my own habits with technology and appreciate my relationships with people instead of devices.

Little Camel Ride in the Desert

My favorite part of life in Senegal by far was the feeling that I had achieved my number one childhood goal of time travel. Exchange with other cultures has always fascinated me, yes, but with other time periods? Too good to be true. Yet, in Senegal my main methods of transportation were a) walking and b) horse drawn carts. When my parents visited they noted that seeing satellites in the night sky reminded them of their childhoods. At home my mothers gathered firewood to build cooking fires and we hung our laundry on lines to dry after handwashing it. We butchered our own meat and I felt like Laura Ingalls Wilder watching kids inflate the sheep’s lungs like a balloon and play with them. Just like Laura, I felt the thrill of going into town for a piece of candy and fabric shopping for a new dress. Instead of Little House on the Prairie, you could say I was living a Little Hut in the Desert story.

village sunrise: extreme beauty

My two years in Senegal involved a lot of extremes. Extreme mental effort to speak Wolof all day every day. Extreme weather conditions from hot to hotter to sand storms and flash floods. Extreme emotional vacillations the likes of which I have neither felt before nor since. I was pushed to and past my limits regularly both physically and mentally, which means I now have an intimate knowledge of myself, my boundaries. And living a Wolof life taught me when to push back and how hard. I joined Peace Corps because I always felt that the world was too big a place for me to only experience one way of life - with one environment, one language, one family, one religion. Senegal truly was a window into another world for me and I wouldn’t take it back for anything.

jerejef, waa senegal ak waa ngar

a day in the life

village laundry

village iron

People used to ask me what a typical day in the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer looks like. I relished the opportunity to scoff, "typical? There's no such thing as typical, ordinary, or average in a PCVs life." But now that I've settled into my last few months of service, I can speak about my daily routines in a hopefully unpretentious way.

My daily wake-up call comes around seven am, a chorus of roosters crowing, donkeys braying, and children chattering. I have a lovely view of the morning sky to contemplate as I use my open-air bathroom and enjoy the morning air before it tops 100 degrees. My family convenes around 7:30 to drink coffee (aka sugar) in my dad's hut, then I meander to my neighbor's house to greet the family and watch the morning's happenings.

village cutting board

In a true small town way, we glean entertainment from observing who's going into town, who's cooking what for lunch, what's going on with the weather, etc. Around nine I go home to eat breakfast, which is a liter of water and, if I'm lucky, bread and peanut butter. Then I get ready for the day: sunscreen, conservative clothing, full water bottle. I "go to work" from ten to noon, painting a mural or visiting a new baby or overseeing latrine construction or vaccinating kids or sewing old mosquito nets or mapping the village or weighing babies. By noon I go home to get out of the sun, refill my water, and hang out with my family until lunch. Lunch comes around two pm: oily rice with little fish and a few vegetables.

village investment (chickens)

It's an exciting event because we sit on the ground and eat with our hands around a communal bowl, which means I'm fighting within the bowl to get good food and fighting around the outside of bowl to keep the chickens from jumping in the rice. The struggle of lunch and the with of the rice in my stomach prime me for nap time from three to five pm, during the heat of the afternoon.

village grill

For two hours I enjoy some alone time and I usually read because sleeping is challenging in a 100 degree concrete box. To recover from the heat I bucket bathe around five and drink my afternoon liter of water. In the evening I sit with women and talk, shell peanuts, and play with the kids until the sun sets and the village gets dark. Dinner's at eight and consists of sandy millet "cous-cous" with leaf sauce. The chickens and littlest kids are asleep by dinner, so it's a much calmer event than lunch. Some nights I stargaze for a while, then read by flashlight until bedtime at ten.

village potty training!

It's a small and slow life, but doesn't make it an easy one. While it may appear that I only have a two hour work day, don't forget I am speaking Wolof and living in accordance with Senegalese cultural rules 24/7. Peace Corps wasn't kidding around when they asked for a commitment to a 168 hour work week. It's a job that's simultaneously incredibly demanding and insanely liberating. It's a life of contradictions.

Wrapping Up in Village

horsepower: one

Here I am, two years away from the day I left the states and only ten weeks left until I’ll find myself stateside once more. In this, my penultimate blog post, I’d like to talk about the ultimate big project going on in my village and humbly ask for financial help from you all, the perennial statesiders. During my first 18 months of service I completed projects that I was personally interested in alongside projects Peace Corps Senegal encouraged me to pursue. This last project, though, was for my village – a tangible thank you for all the extraordinary things they’ve done for me. 

work time / nap time

It’s a project that I can’t in good conscience call my own. While I provided some materials, organization skills, and motivation to (sort of) follow a timetable, all the credit goes to my host father and my health worker counterpart. These two men inspired the project, motivated the community, handled all the details, and did a fair amount of hands-on manual labor. Before I get carried away discussing my respect for my work partners and my love for my village, let me tell you what the project was all about: poop.

bricks for days!

In 2010 the World Health Organization estimated that 15% of the world’s population practices open defecation – more than one in ten people! Open defecation is just what it sounds like – pooping in the open rather than into a covered and contained hole (or something fancy that flushes). In my village, open defecation means men, women, and children walking into the bush (aka fields) to poop. Not only is this an activity that causes embarrassment, it leads to all manner of sanitation concerns; for example, the increase of instances of diarrheal disease, which is unpleasant for all and fatal for some. What’s the solution to open defecation? Latrine construction!

my host dad surveyes the progress

First step: town meeting. In November we gathered the heads of all 30 households and held a lottery to choose the 10 houses that would participate. Second step: grant. I submitted a grant to Peace Corps and the wonderful organization Water Charity funded it almost immediately! Third step: materials. We tied up our horse drawn carts and went to town to gather cement and rebar. Fourth step: hard, hard work. Many men dug their 2m x 2m x 2m holes by themselves in the span of one day. Next bricks were made, dried, and then cemented into place below ground. Finally covers were constructed with handy footrests. Throw up a millet stalk fence for privacy and you’re done!

Eight of the ten latrines are now done and it’s been amazing to see what my community can do. Typically grants require a 25% community contribution, but this one was split 50/50. While your donations will retroactively pay for cement, rebar, and brick making labor, the people of the village provided sand, gravel, masonry labor, and hole digging. It’s been really fun to collaborate with people willing to work so hard and give so much. If you’ve got the giving fever, feel free to donate here. When a 50 kilo bag of cement only costs $5, any amount truly helps.

A big thank you from myself and the people of Ngar Gueye!

fresh goat prints in the cement!

Our Hands and God

Every day that I spend in my village I find new reasons to be impressed with the women I live with. I don't mean little I-respect-you-and-what-you're-doing kind of admiration, I'm talking a serious I-can't-believe-how-strong-you-are feeling that absolutely floors me even after 20 months. The women and girls in my village have strength of every kind: mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional. To illustrate this point I'm going to talk about every woman's favorite experience: childbirth.



Let's start with pregnancy. Pregnant women in my village get no breaks from conception right up to delivery day. A woman's typical workload in village includes, but is not limited to, pulling/transporting water, caring for a full house of children, gathering firewood with a machete, cooking for a household of 20+ people, and working in the fields harvesting crops. During Ramadan pregnant women fast right along with everyone else. As a health worker, most of these tasks make me shudder and I alternate between delivering stern lectures about self-care and averting my eyes. But when I can put aside those health-related concerns, I am astounded by what women are capable of.

Fast forward to delivery. The midwife in my village (medical training: four months) once summed up childbirth in an incredibly beautiful and concise statement. She said, "Giving birth in hospitals, women have access to medicines, medical professionals, and various machines. Here we have only our hands and God." And it's true. Our delivery room consists of an old iron bed and a scale to weigh newborns. No electricity, no professional medical staff, no medications. I reckon it's a place that could strike fear into the heart of almost any American woman.



And it can be absolutely terrifying. I attended the birth of my host mother's namesake and during delivery complications, we called the regional hospital and asked them to send the ambulance. The response? The ambulance is with another patient right now, but it'll come to you next. Thankfully our hands and God were enough to get mom and baby through the delivery safely. But that's not always the case. In 2010 American women faced a 1 in 5,000 chance of death related to pregnancy and childbirth. In Senegal, 18.5 out of every 5,000 suffered the same fate.




The things most women endure in village are enough to break your heart. But my takeaway does not concern the trials and tribulations, rather the strength women combat them with. Mental strength to birth a child outside a hospital. Physical strength to carry firewood on your head at eight months. Spiritual strength to observe demanding religious rituals while caring for a newborn. Emotional strength to accept and move on from a lost child, sister, mother. Senegalese women epitomize the Wolof word jambaar, which could literally be translated as "hard worker" or "person of substance." But it was once described to me as a "strong warrior princess," which is how I feel about almost every single female I know in Senegal. 

Good News and Bug News

give these boys a safe place to poop!

Good news first: my latrine building grant was approved yesterday! The wonderful organization Water Charity has fronted the money so that construction can begin ASAP. The latrine project is totally community-driven and will hopefully end open defecation in the village - aka everyone will have somewhere to poop inside their own homes. Just in time for the holidays - it's the most wonderful time of the year! You can help out here!

this is NOT the scorpion that stung me (phew)

Bug news second: I got stung by a scorpion yesterday! Ouch! I was walking (read: dancing barefoot) in my backyard when a red-hot pain struck my big toe. I looked down to see... nothing in the sand and ran to wash the sand off, revealing ... nothing on my foot. Meanwhile, my toe is swelling and pain is moving through the arch of my foot, down to each of my toes, and I'm starting to panic thinking of all the possible things that could've sunk their teeth into me. While I'm on the phone with the doctor the pain moves from my foot through my right leg and into my back and I start thinking very sinister and panicky thoughts.

Thankfully my sitemate and personal hero came to pick me up and calm me down and after a while we figured it was just a scorpion bite and treated it with ice, benadryl, and acetaminophen accordingly. It's healing beautifully. The scorpion encounter has been added to the ever-growing list of injuries, infestations, and infections I've seen in Senegal due to my exposure to bugs. In fact, during my first months here I contracted so many weird "bug diseases" that my peers happily and easily elected my Peace Corps memoir title: A Bug's Life.

I've debated for a long time whether or not to share my health issues with you, my blog audience. On the one hand, I find it incredibly interesting and sort of hysterical in a sad way. On the other hand, publicizing private health issues is a classic hallmark of a volunteer who has been in country too long and completely forgotten which boundaries should and should not be crossed. My compromise is to make a list and let any interested parties investigate on their own.

Here goes nothing!

During my training months, I was blessed with: cutaneous larva migrans (aka slithering disaster), head lice (thanks host family!), dermaophytosis (ringworm), bed bugs (they stayed for a quick four months), and now my scorpion sting. BUT far and away, my most interesting and most horrifying encounter with a bug was with Maggie, my mango fly. If you dare, skip down to the treatment section on the wikipedia page and imagine dealing with that, alone, your first week in Peace Corps. And if you're not totally grossed out by mango flies, check these cupcakes out. Yes, that's just what little Maggie, my maggot, looked like!

From Home to Home

bean harvest - the most wonderful time of the year

I recently went on a 10,000 mile journey: I left my Senegalese home to visit my American one! While in the United States, I ate myself silly, luxuriated in bathtubs, and, of course, spent precious time with my stateside friends and family. It was a dizzying time of freedom and choices - like do I want hot or cold water to come out of this sink? (?!?!?) Overall it was incredibly relaxing and energizing. It also brought to light the gaps in knowledge that people have about my life as a Peace Corps Volunteer.

mom making dinner, looking angry

Allow me to explain my life in a nutshell. I am a Peace Corps Volunteer, which means I’ve dedicated 26 months of my life to service in a country outside the United States. As of now, I have only about five months remaining. (!!!) I’ve spent the past 21 months in a Wolof village (population: 350) in rural Senegal, West Africa. My technical work involves health education but I consider my most important job that of a sort of cultural broker. I speak a language called Wolof all day, every single day. I wear West African clothing, I celebrate Senegalese holidays, I exchange Muslim greetings, and I eat Wolof food.

nature walk

Prior to my trip to the states, I often lamented how little my host family understands about the US. (Host mom: “Do you have ice in America? Charettes? Watermelons?”) At this point I feel very close to my host family, especially my moms, and I think if they understood the first 23 years of my life, I would make a lot more sense to them. I want the cultural exchange to go both ways, but just talking to them about life in the US is nothing compared to the experience I’m getting living life in Senegal. Also, it’s hard to diplomatically explain that everyone I know in the US has electricity and ice (and cars and roads, etc) without making us sound like a bunch of super privileged jerks.  

that one time my cat caught and ate a squirrel

It was a bit jarring to realize upon my arrival in the states that American people know just as little about Senegal (“Where is that again?”) and virtually nothing about village life (“Why don’t they speak English?”). I guess I had forgotten how little I knew before I came. I realized that just because Americans have the internet at hand at every second of every day doesn’t mean they are or should be experts on Senegal. Then I realized I was suddenly tasked with the job of explaining an entire culture in sixty seconds or less and I might as well explain it in Wolof if that was all the time I got.

it rained finally! peanuts ready for harvest.

That’s how I found myself, even while sitting in front of a plate of eggs benedict and a bloody mary, feeling discontent. I felt like a cultural orphan, not quite fitting in in Senegal but not quite belonging in the US either. Fast forward to my overdue, triumphant return back to village in which mobs of people crushed me with and in their happiness. Finally I understood that my Peace Corps dream was and is being realized because now I have two countries, two homes, four mothers, and five more months to enjoy my village.

triumphs abound!!!

When my (American) father used to edit my high school essays, he critiqued me for my tendency to go over the top in the concluding paragraph. I tended to insert some grandiose optimistic statements to end the writing on an unnaturally high note. Well, dad, this post proves that old habit die hard. And if Peace Corps isn’t a time for you to turn your struggles into triumphs, I don’t know what is.

Malnutrition, Ebola, Malaria, Oh My!

repairing an old malaria bed net

For those of you who have been anxiously awaiting updates on the actual technical work I do in Senegal, today is your day! My official title in Peace Corps is a Preventative Health Education Volunteer with a focus on malaria, child and maternal health, and water and sanitation. When I first arrived in my village, just about everyone (myself included) was a bit confused about my role in the community. If I’m a health volunteer, where are my prescription pad and medical supplies? If I’m an education volunteer, why am I not formally partnered with the village school? Above all, why would any white-skinned American move to rural West Africa if not to build new buildings, distribute free supplies, or just hand out cash money?

nutrition - where's the veggies?

The role I play as a health worker has slowly become more defined during the past sixteen months (although some people are still just waiting for the cash). The most pressing health issue that I see in my village is malnutrition, which presents in a cycle. Babies are born small and underweight, and then grow into girls with nutrient poor diets and lives of hard physical labor who then become pregnant while their bodies are still developing, resulting in the birth of a new generation of small babies. The cycle of malnutrition is like that rambling sentence of a description –convoluted, unrelenting, and difficult to get a handle on. It’s also heartbreaking.

the fattest new baby I've seen in a long while

“I had never been an emotional sort of person, but now I felt all my defenses against sadness being stripped away,” recounts Ecuadorian Peace Corps Volunteer Moritz Thomsen in his book Living Poor. I feel the same way when, prying into the lives of my family and community members, I find that every woman has felt the impact of malnutrition on their pregnancies, their babies, their births. You’d be hard pressed to find a woman who has not experienced the death of a child whether at birth, during the first few days of life, or the first months and years. I have been alongside these women long enough to experience a handful of these deaths myself and believe me when I say my heart has broken every single time. What is my role in these situations as a health worker, as a friend, as a daughter?

weighing babies! whee!

The Senegalese Ministry of Health’s response to the situation has been to implement monthly growth monitoring events in which all children under two years of age are weighed and measured. These events have a long history in my village and are conducted with admirable regularity and with high attendance rates. Once a month all the moms trek to the health hut where my (unpaid) counterpart weighs the babies and tracks their progress on a color-coded chart – green for healthy babies, yellow for moderately malnourished, and red for severely malnourished. I was duly impressed by these events but noticed a glaring problem while talking to the women afterwards – not one could converse to me about the health status of her baby.

the nutrition map

I realized that the mothers viewed malnutrition as a problem that only doctors can identify and solve, not an issue that women themselves have control over. But how to shift the feelings of accountability and responsibility to the women taking care of the babies? I made a map. Women who never finished primary school, which is the vast majority of mothers in my village, felt unqualified to read the charts tracking weight. I simplified the record keeping down to one piece of construction paper per baby per month on a big map of our village. It’s great for women to compare and contrast the different households and different individual mothers. Now at our baby weighings women linger and chat, posing theories about why certain babies have lost or gained weight, offering advice to mothers of struggling babies, and smiling over the good health of their own children. The map great for the health workers too, as it facilitates the tracking of malnourished kids over time and geographically.

monitor lizard for lunch!

The nutrition map is an example of one small scale project I have enacted to combat one of the large scale problems facing my village. I’ve learned to be proud of small changes and find meaning in my daily conversations about various health topics. 

Also - Ebola in Senegal. Thankfully it has not spread past the one isolated case in the capital city. The upside of Ebola's presence in country is that people are more excited than ever about hand washing. The downside of Ebola's presence in country is that villagers are no longer eating so-called "bush meat." Aka I've been watching the fattest monitor lizards crawl all around my backyard and no matter how much I salivate, my family refuses to kill and cook them. Rats! I appreciate that they are heeding public health warnings, but personally I am mourning the loss of one of this season's tastiest treats.