Leavin' on a jet plane (again).

Today sitting on the beach with some of my girlfriends, I saw something that made me realize that I really will miss Senegal. We were all relaxing and enjoying the sunshine, but everyone else on the beach was engaged in training exercises of various sorts. This is pretty typical- guys do lunges, sprints, push-ups, etc. It just seems to be a part of the mentality of being a man in Senegal. Fitness is a big deal. There was one man in particular, however, who caught our attention. This man was running sprints back and forth in front of us, which wasn't in itself very notable. What was notable was the fact that his baby sheep was running behind him. Like one might expect a dog to do in the States. No leash of course, but the sheep was running back and forth, turning when he did and bleating the whole way. Adorable. And not something I can expect to see more of in snowy Minnesota. It's seeing things like sheep running with their owners that I can already tell I will miss when I go home. I really have started to feel at home here.
This morning we had a 're-entry session' where we discussed the big lessons that we've learned and things we want to take away with us. Everyone has funny stories of dysfunction and total confusion, but at least it seems to have amounted to something. I think I need to get home before I really figure out what this semester has meant, but I am happy to have been here. It's been a linguistic and cultural haze, but I have loved the adventure. I can already tell that my travel bug will be back within months of my return. Too bad I probably have other things (like going to school and getting a job) to do before I can take off again. At least my adventure isn't quite over yet. In fact, the amount of time I have left is the length of a normal vacation! It's funny how my perspective on time has changed.
And now- celebrating a few months well spent with my friends in Dakar and hopefully getting my laundry done before I get my butt on an airplane to take me away to France!

Movin' Out

At this point it is getting really difficult for me to believe how long I have been abroad. The idea that I only have three days left in Senegal creates such a confusing mix of joy/remorse that I don't really know what to think. I couldn't be happier to be going home (CHRISTMAS! SNOW!) and to see all my friends and family again, but I can also tell that there will be things that I miss here. The food, the car rapides, the weather- Senegal has been a nice place to spend my fall. I feel like I have learned a lot and I definitely had a good time. 

I'm still thinking about what exactly I have to say. There may be another post coming soon.

As it is, Joe and I have started imagining our French adventures and thoroughly intend to freeze for the first few days while we search for winter coats. Wish us luck!!

December 2nd- What??! It's December!?!?

So I am sitting in my room in Mbam on the eve of my last day here. I can't really decide how to feel, but I am happy with the way things have turned out. It's strange to think that it's already December! Now is the time when I really want to get back to contact with the outside world (seriously- cell phone reception has been awful, the power's been off, and I have only been on the internet once in six weeks), but I also want to put Mbam in my pocket and carry it away with me. The people in my life here are wonderful and I can tell that while I am as confused as ever about the big questions lurking behind development, this experience is going to help me come a little bit closer to some answers. It was definitely a worthwhile life experience to pack up and move to the Senegalese countryside. I can't really account for my six weeks with any real accuracy; all the days blur together. But I do know that my activities have been varied and have offered me a sense of what goes on here. My computer is almost dead and I don't really have much time to write, but I wanted to say a little bit about how I am feeling. This day feels sort of important. It marks the end of this internship and really, the end of the program. We have a week left in Dakar, but I have no doubt that will fly by (especially because my 21^st birthday is coming up next Wednesday! I can't believe it's already December...) and then I will be off on another adventure in France until the holidays. Time is a funny thing when days pass at the tempo of a West African village, but months disappear in what feels like seconds. I was interrogated by a very drunk Senegalese man this evening in broken French/Wolof/English about what I had learned here. I felt as though I couldn't answer because to tell you the truth I have been too wrapped up in the experience to sit back and reflect on it in any genuine fashion. This may seem bizarre given that without outside distractions I have spent a huge amount of time thinking and writing in the past six weeks, but that's mostly been personal and I can tell it's going to take me a long while afterwards to figure out exactly what this semester has meant. I realize now it was a lot braver than I realized to come and do this internship business. I don't expect anyone to praise me or pretend I did anything good for the world; I know that this trip was about me and my education. But I am still happy that I managed to laugh my way through the experience rather than having a nervous breakdown when things got crazy (and they did, occasionally, get a little crazy) It's funny to think that until I met David (the Peace Corps volunteer in Mbam) on Tuesday, I hadn't spoken English in over a month. I guess the Thursday before Emma came and we spoke some English, but that too was in the fifth week of my stay. I will be curious to go home and find out if there are things about me that have changed- besides my skin tone and hair color- that I haven't yet noticed. I am so up in the air on so many questions right now, I hope I can get my head on straight before heading home. Even if I can't, I am not too upset because I have made a really important decision- my first breakfast back in the states will be at the Original Pancake House on December 23^rd. Oh the important things in life!   

November 27th- Peanuts, booty, and movin' on.

Today was a great day. Nothing all that earth shattering happened, but it was wonderful for its simplicity and the sheer number of positive experiences I had.

I woke up early, but before my alarm, which is something that happens often here. I've found that one of the things I love most about living in Mbam is my sleep schedule. I am free to let myself go to bed when I'm tired, whether that's 10 o'clock or 2 o'clock and drift off to sleep without worrying about an assignment that's imminent or whether or not everything is done for the day. Things always get done, and if they don't, there's always time in the morning. And I love waking up here! I always wake up fairly early, usually between 6 and 7 o'clock, to the sounds of birds and donkeys and brooms sweeping the dirt outside. It's such a calming feeling. I roll over, look at my clock, and realize that I still have an hour or so to take for myself. I usually lay in bed, listening to music or writing and relaxing as the sunlight slowly starts creeping through my shutters (we don't have windows). I love that most days I don't even have to set an alarm even though I always do because I don't want to look like a big lazy butt sleeping all day- my family here is constantly being productive and even if I can't always help, I don't want to spend my day napping.

So I woke up at a nice leisurely pace. More leisurely than normal, in fact, because I had nothing scheduled for today. It's Saturday, after all. I took my time getting ready and then headed to the boutique with Kordue to buy bread and candy for her. Then I ate breakfast before running off to see Pape, who was going to the peanut fields.

Binta told me to go along with the boys who were going to work on the peanuts, so I jumped on the donkey cart and off we went. One of the donkeys had a baby last year, and the yearling trotted behind the cart the entire time, accompanied by Pape's dog Chuey. I loved that every time I looked behind us, there was a small donkey and a dog trotting side by side.

Upon arrival at the field, I realized that my lurking question about what happens to the rest of the peanuts was finally going to be answered. When we came back from harvesting, we usually only brought a few pagnes full of plants to process, which left a large number of peanuts sitting in the field to dry. It turns out that the men go out with rakes and pile all of the smaller piles together in one great big pile and then let them dry for a few days. After that, they return with rakes and very strong sticks and do some of the most repetitive work I've seen yet! First, they pull off the whole plants in large stacks using rakes. Then each man takes one or two fairly solid sticks and starts hitting the plants, knocking off peanuts and small pieces of dried plant material. After this initial processing, there are always still lots of peanuts on the plants, so the remaining large pieces get put in another pile, where they get hit again. After the second round of beating, the plants that remain get put in their own stack, where they will later be beaten with an even bigger stick and get used for feeding animals and collecting peanuts. This means that there are three separate rounds of really tedious hitting of peanut plants which in the end leaves piles of loose peanuts with small pieces of plant mixed all together. So after the entire gigantic pile of dried peanuts is beaten the requisite number of times, the harvesters use the wind, throwing the pile up in the air (okay it isn't really throwing- there's sort of an art to it I guess) and letting the peanuts drop while the wind carries off the foliage. So finally there are all these peanuts sitting in the field to be painstakingly collected and sold to the government cooperatives for 175f CFA per kilogram. What a process. With peanuts, the work is never done. The Senegalese are the first to admit it, but everyone grows them anyways. I guess it's valuable because they can keep half for food and seed and depend on making a profit off the rest by selling them to the government. It makes some sense to have a cash crop in the mix, especially one you can still use for food if the market falls through.

So my afternoon was full of observing Pape abuse peanut plants. I tried to help, but was laughed out of the job (no surprise there- it's pretty physical work). Tomorrow, I hope to go back, but with a bucket so I can collect loose peanuts instead of just sitting around and eating all the peanuts that we're trying to harvest. Eating the peanuts straight from the field is my favorite part of going harvesting. There's nothing better than freshly roasted peanuts straight from the dirt they grew in. We were in the field over lunch, so I ate as many peanuts as I wanted. And after awhile Pape set a few plants on fire and we ate the charred peanuts directly off the ground. I love when they are prepared like that! They stay in the shells so that the peanuts are warm and taste a little bit roasted, but are rarely burned (even though the shells are totally charred and turn my hands black as night and get all over my face so that all of the black people around me make fun of my pale skin). There's nothing better than freshly harvested food, especially when you can prepare it at the field! Really, I was in the field for something like six hours, but I can't really tell where the time went. It didn't feel like six hours.

And the day just kept on moving. When I got home everyone made me eat a little rice and fish, given that I'd missed lunch, and I rested a bit before drinking some attaya. Then it was off to the well! I have become pretty decent at carrying my buckets and tonight I made the trip all three times with the other ladies! They usually stop me after one or two tries with concerned warnings about doing damage to my neck, but tonight they let me keep going, which was exciting! It makes me feel accomplished and I am glad to be able to pull my weight occasionally. I also managed to make it to the tailor tonight, so hopefully I will have a new skirt to wear around town in my last week! And we ate a delicious rice and peanut pudding dish for dinner. I was still full from the peanuts from earlier, but the porridge was delicious nonetheless! It was rice and peanuts pounded together and then cooked and mixed with some milky yogurt type deal (lait caille I think, but it also could have just been condensed milk), sugar, and some orange flavoring. Everyone told me to eat my fill so that I can get the jaayfonde I have been hoping for! Jaayfonde is a Wolof word equating to “badonkadonk” and it is the goal of every Senegalese lady to have one. I added getting one to my 'to do in Senegal' list awhile ago, but have yet to make significant progress.

So there you have it. A day that was fairly unremarkable in the grand scheme, but will inevitably remain clear in my memory for a long time. I can't believe I only have a week left here. I am really starting to grow attached to the people here in Mbam, especially the ladies of my house. I can tell that leaving is going to be really sad, but also strange given that this means that I only have two weeks left in Senegal, and about a month left being abroad. It's bizarre to think about because I have spent a lot of time thinking about leaving and the time has finally arrived. I also think that I have unconsciously become very used to my surroundings and am going to be a little surprised when I (inevitably) experience the reverse culture shock everyone keeps warning me about. Right now I can't see the changes that I know have occurred in myself, so it will be an odd feeling to leave and have them all become apparent. Or maybe they won't. Or maybe I haven't changed. I guess we'll find out soon enough.

November 26th- A little piece of the homeland comes to Mbam

Yesterday (November 25^th), we brought a little piece of America to Senegal by holding a grand celebration at my house for Thanksgiving. This has become a tradition at Binta's house, where they are accustomed to hosting exchange students. The shopping list alone suggests the magnitude of what the feast would be: four ducks, ten kilos of potatoes, five kilos of onions, two very large squashes, one kilo of butter, and a flurry of garlic, spices, sugar, and other condiments. We were going all out for sure.

I was happy to have another student from MSID, Emma, who is in the region come to join the party! It was nice to have another toubab hostess around to help explain the festival and to celebrate and savor the delicious Thanksgiving foods.

We started preparing the night before, as we did for Tabaski. The neighbor ladies all came over and the kids ran all over town (and to neighboring towns) to find enough of everything. We sat chopping and peeling all night, getting ready for what would be an early morning as well.

The work continued from six o'clock the next day when we started boiling the potatoes in the grand marmite. There were a ton of potatoes, and we were cooking over a woodfire, so this was a process that was going to take some time. Both the squash and the potatoes were boiled thoroughly and then pounded using the huge mortar and pestle we have. It was way easier than mashing the normal way! I think I need to find a mortar and pestle for sale in the US. But a giant one like the ladies here use for pounding millet. I was so excited to be making American classics! The potatoes got a savory seasoning of garlic, black pepper, chili pepper, butter, milk, and a little bit of Maggi (the ever prominent Senegalese bouillon mixture) and the squash ended up with nutmeg and sugar. Talk about bringing America en mini to the middle of Mbam! I also brought wild rice from home that we boiled and seasoned and added on the side of the plate for everyone to try. We ate the duck with a Senegalese style onion sauce and white rice with vegetables. The entire meal was absolutely delicious. I ate my fill and we followed lunch with ice cold juice made from hibiscus and baobab fruits.

The best part was the number of people who came to join the feast. There were something like fifteen random kids from the neighborhood, seven teachers from the school I work at, and countless other neighbors, not to mention everyone who lives chez Binta. We demolished all of the food throughout the afternoon. It was quite impressive really.

I was just happy to have a little time to relax and feel at home. It was nice (although a bit strange) to be able to speak English with Emma and to feel a little in control as a hostess/the person who knew what the holiday was about. Everyone ate so well and the American dishes (especially the squash!) made it seem like real Thanksgiving. It was also a nice way to begin the end of my internship. It's hard to believe, but I only have a week left here! I have started counting the days, looking forward to internet connections and moving on to the next stage, but that doesn't mean I'm going to be happy to leave! I have really come to love the people around here. I'm picking up a bit of Serer and I finally don't feel overwhelmed by the masses of ladies who pepper me with questions when I run errands. The community is so open and welcoming, especially the people living with Binta. I have been shown the greatest hospitality in being here and I was happy to get to celebrate one last time with everyone before I begin writing my final paper and preparing to take my leave of Mbam.