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.