Thursday, April 21, 2011

Visiting my future home

So I just got back from checking out the village I'll be living in for the next two years. I move in around May 14th, so for now I'm jumping back and forth from my training village of Samba Laobe and the training center at Thies.

The Volunteer Visit, or VV, couldn't have gone better. It's called the VV because your village visit is being facilitated by a current volunteer. They act as your tour guide and translator. My "demyster" Charlene was awesome, she is great at the language and she has done soooo much in her village including painting around 10 murals, working on a huge thriving community garden, and she has planned and is almost finished facilitating the creation of a 1 hectare garden. There's lots more that shes done but ill stop there.

So here is the story told in a few pictures. It starts with us trainees being blindfolded and walked around a map of Senegal painted on the basketball court in our training center. The last picture is two of my three roommates at the training center. Ben, the one in the sunglasses, is saying "I live on a mountain between two mountains!". He is going to Kedegou, the farthest region but the most mountainous and therefore the most beautiful some people say. You almost always have a waterfall in your backyard.







Here are some pictures of Charlene's village, the donkeys there, cute little baby sheep, and the mural we painted on someones hut (the villagers jump at a chance for us to paint a mural on their hut, sometimes because they enjoy the message and sometimes because they just want some art on their hut):




If you touch poop and then eat, you get sick, but if you touch poop, wash your hands and then eat, your happy. The last frame is the senegalese way of saying im happy or its all good. Says Charlene, they don't do thumbs up.

These are the pictures from... My village! Really they are just pictures of the lake 2 MINUTES AWAY FROM MY HUT! It's a pretty special thing, I don't know anyone else that has water this close, and its beautiful.










There are gardens lining the water, and the gardens are really well maintained and well designed relatively speaking. This is good because gardening is not one of my strong points. The water is actually a reservoir created by a dam on the nearest river. People own boats, and I asked one of my community counterparts, the guy standing on his boat, if i could borrow his boat sometime, he said sure thing! I can put my bike on the boat and take it down river to Emily, my closest neighbor and good friend. Ohhhhh boy! The last picture is of a baby donkey that was born the night before said the owner.


These last pictures are of the bike ride to Emily's site, a few pics from there...


Her view from her backyard, scenic aint' it?^^^

 This was 2am at the PC Kolda regional house after our welcoming party which was awesome^^^^
 On the road reading a book borrowed from my regional house.
I'm ending with the puppies sleeping, even though they were in emily's village.

I will post sooner or later, my little 3G internet usb key thing likes to act up.

love and miss you

Thursday, April 7, 2011

the pics n' stuff

the pictures i posted are: from the training center at lunch time, some are of the training center, one is of my school in the CBT site, beach ones are from my birthday at the beach with fellow trainees, there is one of a kid with her two front teeth missing or growing back in, my dad thought it would be a really funny picture haha.

There is one of my teacher or LCF samba kande, he is awesome. he has a great sense of humor, but he doesnt laugh and joke as much as almost all the other lcfs. Example would be when he's teaching us Pulaar Fulakunda, the language we've been given, he would explain how to use the word is by saying in pulaar "For example, ablai is a player, for example, today only". my response of course in pulaar is "no samba, i disagree, you are a thief, every day, I am the sky, I am a big tree, i am the sun"

I have to say that it takes a lot of confidence to learn a new language by jumping right in like we all have. I'm not being overconfident or egotistical when i tell my teacher i'm the sun, i'm just joking. In Senegalese culture, joking, making fun of others, calling people horses and chickens is like THE thing to do.

Okay im gonna go get my money from the admin office, 28,000 CFA or around 60 bucks for the next two weeks. its like a million dollars. Then directly after that we get blindfolded and placed on the area theyve decided for us! the decision is not random (jude lol) its made considering my language skills, my sex, that im a health volunteer, that im a water and sanitation volunteer, and on an interview we did in the beginning where we told a bunch of current pcvs who we are and what we'd like to do/where we'd like to go.

Later!

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Pictures!









upcoming posts

My new post and perhaps the ones coming after them are transcribed from my journal. They are dated starting with the last post on march 14th, my first day in the village of Samba Laobe, my homestay training site.

Tomorrow all of us trainees get blindfolded, spun around, and placed on a chalked out map of Senegal. When we take our blindfolds off we will see exactly where we will live for the next two years. I'm going to try to post some pictures, i hope this works....