Bismillah 2011!

Wow! Another year came and went--Au revoir 2010; you were a good but hectic year. It's hard to believe that we are saying good-bye to a year that feels like it barely just begun.  As the new year approaches I would like to dedicate this blog post as a reflection on all the events that occured in my life during 2010:

I went back to working full-time on the NPIC contract at my job at the time (which was amazing because we all dropped down to 32 hours with the bad economy during slow times); therefore allowing me to pay off my visa credit card balance from my travels abroad during 2008.  I also obtained two other amazing part-time jobs teaching as a dance workout instructor at 24 Hour Fitness and Pure Fitness.  Teaching dance has been one of the BEST jobs I've ever had...i miss it terribly.  I met some AMAZING people in my classes!  I loved going to work, and I was in the best shape of my life so far (which I can honestly say, I am no longer in the same shape because I live off white rice and oily sauces here). I've gained an estimated, unwanted 6 pounds....In two years I hope to go back to teaching--inchallah. :)
In addition, I sold my beloved car Scarlett to my awesome uncle, I sold my furniture to my co-worker before his marriage, and I gave my father my cellphone literally 15 minutes before boarding a plane to Washington DC for staging, which he does not use.  I packed up my entire life and everything I own and crammed it into a small closet in my parents spare bedroom to sit and collect dust for the next two years. I had a month and a half during the summer to wrap up life and tie up loose ends in the United States and get ready for a new one in Senegal.  I spent some time with friends, family, Mike, Tiffany, and of course Mael. I moved to another continent, relocated to Thies, then Mbour and finally Kounkane. I learned a new language in 4 months (it's still pretty rough, but I can get around).  I learned how to use a squat toilet/douche and take bucket baths. I've been sick on and off since I've arrived in country, but love every minute of this experience. I celebrated a series of my first Muslim holidays including: Korite, Tabaski, Ramadan, etc. I've tried new dishes, traveled around most of Senegal, learned how to use public transportation and get around in a third world country. I've learned how to kill cockroaches instead of screaming and running in the opposite direction, which is what I used to do in the USA. I've gained two new sets of families: the Diallos and the Baldes. I drank more Attaya that anyone should in a lifetime.  I've met some really amazing people who I serve with in the Peace Corps including my bffs in country: Ali and Pam! I said good-bye to my family and boyfriend knowing I probably won't return to the USA in the next two years.  And I worked my butt off for 8 months trying to save enough money to pay my private loans while I'm gone, and was only successful in saving enough for 15 months (not bad, considering my short window of time). I also read lots of books including: The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo, The Girl who played with Fire, The Other Boelyn Girl, On Love, The Girl with the Pearl Earring, The Kite Runner, Eat. Pray. Love, and The Hours.
Wow! There's so much more too, but I figured I'd just highlight the more interesting stuff.  Yes, 2010 was a good year: a transition year.  But here I am now in Senegal until October 2012, and I'm so very happy to be here.  I hope I can accomplish a lot in 2011!  I wish everyone has an amazing New Year's celebration! I toast to a happy year and good health for everyone! May it be a prosperous year! Best wishes for 2011! Bismillah! :)

Merry Christmas!

Hope everyone had an amazing Christmas!!! :) Can't believe it has already past!  My Christmas was good! I spent a week in Dakar with some amazing people! We spent some time on the beach, eating great food, and passing the time with Peace Corps friends and family :)  It was such and expensive week, but it was definetly worth it :) We even went to the French cultural center to watch a film. We saw "A Nightmare Before Christmas" in French--it almost felt like Christmas with the movie and the xmas lights! Good times!  Towards the end of the week, Ali, Jes, and I left the PC regional house and stayed at the third year apartment that our friend Darren let us use while he went home to America for the holidays.  Thanks Darren!  :)  We spent Christmas eve eating cheese and crackers by candlelight and enjoying the beautiful view of the dark city and ocean from the window of the apartment.  We even made "dirt"--Ali's recipe: chocolate pudding, crushed Oreos, and gummy worms. Yes, very nutritional :) hahahaha! It was fun! 
Christmas day was great, even though we were so far away from our families.  We served appetizers of cheese and crackers, chips and dip, fresh veggies, and wine.  For the main course, Ali and I cooked a giant dinner of pesto pasta with mushrooms and artichoke hearts and l'emmental cheese, a fresh green bean salad with tomatos, carrots, green bell pepers, and other veggies drizzled in balsamic vinegar and olive oil.  Ali used some fresh olive bread and made a buttery garlic sauce to garnish it. :) For dessert we baked a chocolate cake (from a bag) and put out a box of assorted xmas cookies to accompany our vin chaud (mulled wine).  We ate so much, but it really was a nice dinner!  We really wanted to bake some Christmas cookies but we couldn't find chocolate chips, baking powder, graham crackers (or anything remotely similar), and the shredded coconut was too expensive for our "village pay" But we still had a pleasant enjoyable Christmas at Darren's borrowed apartment.  It just six of us celebrating together: Me, Ali, Jess, Mohammed (Ali's friend from Niger), my host brother Djiby, and a random Senegalese man that Mohammed invited and I forgot his name (We share everything in Africa--it's part of the culture, so it wasn't really a big deal that we had a stranger at our Chrismas dinner). 


Random Senegalese man, Jes, Mohammed, Ali, and Djiby on Xmas dinner

After the big dinner, Jess and I found some Talibe (children that beg for money on the streets in the name of their Maribou, or Islamic leader).  We brought down a few bowls of food to feed the Talibe.  They seemed to enjoy it :)  The kids are so cute and they all speak pulaar.They were given away by their parents for various reasons (oftentimes because they can't afford to take care of them) and sent to Islamic school to study the Koran. Part of their "learning" is to go on the streets and ask for monetary contribution for their Maribou. Some of it is legitamate and the kids are well taken care of, and sometimes, like most things, corruption plays a big part.  It breaks my heart sometimes to see the Talibe, but I know it's culturally acceptable and it's something I have to respect and realize it's just different from my culture....

The Talibe eating some Christmas dinner

Well, Merry Christmas to all of you! I miss you a lot!  I'm currently in Tambacounda for 2 days and then I'll be heading to Velingara tomorrow to check for care packages! :) yea!  Next stop is Kolda for New Years then back to site!  Wishing everyone a beautiful Christmas season full of love and happiness!  xoxoxo :)

In-Service Training....

En jaraama from Thies!  Yes, I'm still here....I'm almost done with my in-service training.  It's like being in school again.  I have 4 two hour sessions a day: two in the morning and two after lunch.  We have been learning various things.  I've had learning sessions on food transformation (yea!!! definetly a potential project for me), sector collaboration, creating GIEs, teaching business consulting, accounting for the illiterate, and much much more.  My mind is on overload; I've been learning so much!  Tomorrow me and two others in my program have to do a presentation in French over calculating costs.  It should be interesting....But I'm almost done with training--saturday is the last day.  It's been a little hectic, but I really have enjoyed some of the sessions.  I feel like I'm learning quite a bit, and I'm starting to get some ideas of projects I can do at my site. :)
Last weekend we had a field trip to Dakar for the Artisinal Expo!  I had so much fun there and bought way tooo much!  There were various pieces of art made by local artisans in Senegal.  I bought some jewlery and greeting cards!  I couldn't help myself; the artisans created some beautiful things!  There were also various art works including: Basaari masks, hand-crafted wooden chairs, Senegalese style clothes, and and assortment of home-made jams and juice concentrates in local fruits like bissap, tamarind, etc. I saw a lot of wood carved figurines and paintings too!  There was a large selection of beaded, hand-made jewlery like bracelets, earrings, and necklaces also. Check out some of the goods I bought!  It was a fun way to pass a saturday afternoon, and it was amazing to see what some of the local artists create.

 

Some of the bracelets I bought at the expo



Artisan Expo

So what's left on the agenda??  Well, today is technically New Year's Day for the Muslim calendar. I missed the party last night because I'm away from my family.  There's always next year right?  I am done with training on saturday, and then I'll be heading up to Dakar for a week to celebrate Christmas with my Peace Corps family!  Stayed tuned for a more interesting blog--inchallah! Bisous! xxx










Left site for the month...

Happy December!!!
Can you believe this year is almost over? I can't.  So it is December and I'm approaching my fourth month of service (including training).  What have I been up to since my Thanksgiving feast you ask?? Well, I went back to site and my family showed up with a beautiful puppy!  They named him Chocolat (pronounced the french way) and he is the typical Senegalese dog that you see everywhere: white with brown spots.  He is adorable, and by default he officially became my puppy.  I will probably be the only one who will take care of him. But he is so cute; I just couldn't resist. He better be a good dog--inchallah. 

I spent a few days at site, left for Tamba, and spent the night there.  We had to head up to Thies for the All volunteer conference, and because I live so far away in Kolda, I spent two days getting up there.  The All Vol conference was a two-day conference where all the volunteers in Senegal and a few from the Gambia, Togo, and Burkina Faso congregated for learning and sharing information.  I learned a lot of new things, and the conference made me eager to start working.  I even went on a bee keeping field trip. Nice.  When the conference ended, my stage stayed in Thies because we have our in-service training for the next two weeks.  I've been learning lots of interesting SED stuff.  I really can't wait to start working. 

Well, I am missing site.  I really love it down south.  Now I"m in Wolof country and I don't speak the language.  Sometimes I can find a few random pulaar speakers scattered throughout the city, but I usually have to switch to French.  One positive thing I have discovered is that my Pulaar has improved tremendously!  This past sunday, I went back to Mbour with Ali and Pam to visit our PST family (when I was still a Diallo).  I was able to hold on a conversation with them for a long time; I have indeed improved in the last 5 weeks! Yea!!! I still have a lot to learn, but it is always refreshing and encouraging to know that I have made improvements.  :)

I hope everyone is enjoying the Christmas season!  I am missing that--it is seriously non-existent here...maybe in Dakar I can find some Christmas-y things?? I'll keep y'all updated!

Sending love from Senegal! xxx



Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Happy Thanksgiving from Senegal!!!
Today was an awesome day! I feel incredibly sick as I'm writing this blog entry.  I haven't felt this full since I left the USA! I had two rounds of dinner and I'm waiting to devour dessert, after some waiting time of course.  There's no way I can eat anything else right now.  So I'm here in Kolda for Thanksgiving, and I'm celebrating with the other volunteers in the region! We spent the day cooking and baking.  For the actual dinner we had stuffing, candied sweet potatos, garlic mashed potatos (vegetarian and non-vegetarian), green bean casserole, cranberry sauce (shipped from the USA), salad, corn, watermelon, garlic breadsticks, roasted chicken, and turkey. YES! We actually had a turkey for the holiday, thanks to me and my girl Ali!  It's a little ironic too because I'm a vegetarian, and she is semi-vegetarian, but we were the ones who went out of our way to get a turkey.


Geoff getting ready to cut the turkey.  Check out all our food!

 



Geoff and Meg cutting the turkey



The story is incredible! On monday, Ali came to Kounkane and told me that she needed to go to a nearby village to check out a turkey for Thanksgiving.  Yes, a live turkey.  I decided to accompany her and in the late afternoon, we set off to buy a turkey for the Kolda region.  We biked to her village Goundaga to get some directions, and then we set off by bike.  We biked about 15k using a bush path full of rocks, trees, cows, and sand.  It was a rough road but we eventually got to our destination of Saare YeroBa, a small village in the backlands of Senegal, West Africa.  The village itself probably housed like 30 people or so.  We arrived and found the house of a Samba Balde who apparently owned the turkey.  We talked with his family in Pulaar and told him how we biked all the way out there to buy his turkey for our American holiday this upcoming thursday.  We argued and negotiated with the price and we were finally able to agree on 15,000cfa or 30 dollars for a live turkey--under the condition that they package him up tight and put him on Ali's bike.  The family gave us a broken bucket and a tattered pair of pant to transport the turkey.  They tied his legs, put him on the pants, and then placed him in the bucket, which they tied with elastic to the back of Ali's bike.  We started to go back to Ali's village, but the road was rough and bouncy.  The turkey fell of the back and I was following Ali, so I had to serve and throw myself into the bushes so that I didn't kill our future dinner.  Ali and I re-fastened him to her bike and continued on.  Not 10 minutes later, the turkey fell of the bike for a second time. It was horrible!  We re-tied the elastic and put him back on the bike.  We then walked to the next village, and begged the people there for assistance.  They were amazing and tied some wood onto Ali's bike to stablize the turkey.  They also gave us a basket to switch out the broken bucket and gave us extra elastic to secure the animal.  It worked!  We made it back to Goundaga in the evening, and I was forced to bike back to Kounkane in the dark, but I did make it home safetly.  :)  It was quite an adventure and something I never thought I would ever do in my entire life?? Bike out by bush path to the middle of nowhere Senegal to buy a live turkey?? Really?  Yes, I did do that, and it's a pretty bad ass story!  Plus all the volunteers here were very happy we did--apparently he was delicious! We named him Hirande (which means dinner in Pulaar) and we enjoyed his company for a few days until this morning when my site mate, Geoff killed him and deep-fried him.  It was an enjoyable Thanksgiving though, just done Senegalese style :) 



Hirande (dinner) that Ali road with on the back of her bike



Hirande getting deep fried



I can't wait for dessert!  We have pumpkin pie, apple crisp, carrot cake, and egg nog! Pam and I made the carrot cake and egg nog.  For the dinner, I made a giant salad with homemade dressing and I bought a watermelon for some fruit!  

The carrot cake that Pam and I made!

I hope you all have an amazing Thanksgiving and that you enjoyed my little Thanksgiving tale! Eat lots of food and give thanks for all the many blessings God has given us!

Sending love from Senegal!!! :) xoxox

Tabaski!

Hono Wai de Senegal! So Tabaski, probably the biggest Muslim holiday was a week ago on Nov. 17th.  It's basically a two day holiday, and my host family in Kounkane was so excited!  I spent the day before Tabaski preparing.  My host sister Ndiole apparently is the best person in Kounkane to do your hair, so I had her braid mine.  Something that you see often for holidays here is Senegal is Henna tatoos, or what we call Fudon in pulaar.  I bought some at my host mom's boutique and my sister put it on for me.  It takes seriously 5 hours to get the henna the perfect tint.  I sat in a chair the whole day waiting for it to dry.  My sister put it on the bottom of my feet and on my left hand, but not on the right because we use our right hand to eat.  So I literally sat in a chair under the mango tree with plastic bags around my feet and my left hand.  It was a long day....but I think the braids and henna came out beautifully :) Check out my pics on fb.  I will probably never do henna in Senegal again, takes too long.



So Tabaski finally arrived.  I woke up early with my family.  We ate a pre-breakfast, which was mooney!  I love mooney.  It's like a millet pouridge.  My family added a little sugar, sour-milk, and lime juice.  I love love love it.  After the pre-breakfast, the boys got all dressed up in their new clothes and went to the mosque to pray.  I hung out with the women and peeled potatos and onions.  When the men came back it was time to slaughter the two sheep my family had bought the day before--both sheep were tied outside of my hut still alive :(  poor sheep.  My brothers dug two holes to drain the blood, and they all participated in holding down the sheep while my uncle cut their throats.  They let the blood drain into the holes until the sheeps' lifeless bodies were still. It was terrifying to watch, but I took pictures for you all to see. 

After the sheep were killed the men hung the carcass from the tree and began to skin and disect it for cooking and eating.  For breakfast we ate bbqed sheep parts with french fries and a delicious onion-y sauce.  For lunch we ate more sheep with the same delicious sauce and potatos.  We ate everything with our hands and slices of bread.  For dinner, we had left over lunch.  There was so much food (meat really), it was like a Senegalese Thanksgiving day.  I spent most of the day watching my family pull apart the sheep carcasses.  It was a rough day for a vegetarian....I did actually have to eat some sheep.  :(

After lunch, we cleaned up and got dressed up in our new clothes that we had made at a local tailor.  I went around with my brothers and sisters greeting the neighbors and showing off our new clothes.  I looked very Senegalese! :)  The children in the neighborhood went around asking for Salybo, which is technically suppossed to be money.  I opted for handing out candy.  The kids seemed to enjoy that. :)  We took lots of pics so check them out on fb :)


The second day of Tabaski was kinda like the first.  The kids got dressed up in the early afternoon again and went throughout the neighborhood asking for Salybo.  At this time I was out of candy though and had to turn them away.  We ate more sheep, but this time it was the left over body parts.  Lunch was white rice and a leaf sauce served with the heart. liver, and other vital organs.  Dinner was the worst.  Couscous (yum), but the sauce was a bloody red color and contained the intestines, stomach, and the head which still had the brains in it.  I couldn't eat it.  It's been like 7 years since I had meat and going straight for brains and intestines was just something I couldn't handle.  I ate straight couscous and sauce.  Maybe next year I will be brave enough to tackle the different parts of the sheep, but this year I couldn't do it.  Overall, my first Tabaski was pretty awesome!  My henna will last about a month and the braids, well, I'll probably take 'em out today!  :)
'Til the next post! :) xxx

Care Packages!!! :)

Hey loves!
Salut from Senegal! :) I am still hanging out in Velingara for a fulakunda language seminar!  I'm taking advantage of the wifi at the hotel and the cheap beer!  The wifi is fast and I can upload photos fairly quickly.  So with the holidays coming up, I've been hoping for some care packages.  If you send them, use a flat rate box via USPS, it's cheaper, but at the same time sending anything to Senegal is super expensive.  I think the cheapest/smallest box runs like 35 to 40 dollars depending on from where you send it. Boo! But if you choose to send them I have included a wish list on this blog posting along with my address for the next two years.  If you don't send a package, letters are always appreciated. I'd love to hear from you guys!
Please send any mail for me to:

B.P. 157
Velingara
Senegal
West Africa

Thanks!  My wish list includes but is not limited to:
-fruit snacks
-gummy bears or worms
- Life savers
-Peanut m&ms
-Goldfish crackers (whole grain plz)
-wheat thins reduced fat (if they fit in the box. If not it doesn't matter)
-Luna bars and/or Cliff Bars
-Triscuits
-itunes gift card (my music is getting old and I can redeem them online)
-Vegan cookies (from Trader Joes)
-Trader Joe's Trail mix
-Miso soup packets and asian soup mixes
-Peppermint patties (xmas addition)
-Any Xmas candy
-Red vines
-Cheezits
-Chocolate Muesli
-Rice Krispy Treats!!!

Thanks guys! Next post will be about Tabaski! :) It'll be more interesting than this post.  Missing the USA like crazy, especially American snack food! hahaha!
Gros bisous! xxx