Acquiring a Green Thumb

By joining Peace Corps, I knew I would be gaining an invaluable experience and learning new things over my service time. Those were some of my main reasons why I joined.  Never did I actually imagine that I would discover my inner green thumb just waiting to come out and garden.  As a small enterprise development volunteer, I didn't actually think that I would be doing anything with agriculture, or even small scale gardening.  I thought my work would be business related rek. But after being here for about a year, I realize that quite a bit of my work revolves around agriculture, especially living in the Kolda region: that's all we really got going on down here :)

So about a week and a half ago, I helped participate in another volunteers palm reforestation project in a few villages just outside of the city of Kolda.  I'm not an agroforestry volunteer, but I was more than excited about helping out! We helped superivse the planting of 2 different species of palm trees, and we helped ensure that proper protection measures were taken to avoid them being devoured by rampant goats, sheep, cows, etc. The project was a lot of fun, and it was nice to mix up my work by helping other volunteers in their projects.



Ally helping plant a palm tree



Some of the palm trees that we helped distribute out








I've also expressed my newly acquired green thumb by starting a small garden in my compound, next to my room.  Ally, my agroforestry volunteer gave me some trees: Papaya, Guava, Citrus, and an African Mahogany. My family and I planted the fruit trees in my garden along with a ton of moringa and the beautiful panté seeds I collected back in April (see former blog posts).  My brother Diouldé added some cucumbers (which get gigantic here!) and some onions.  Eventually we want to add some tomatos, and when the season is right we have lettuce and cabbage.  I love having a garden.  Before Peace Corps I never really had a desire to plant anything or maintain a garden.  The last time I actually tried growing stuff back in America was probably when I was 5 years old and I planted a peach pit in my backyard because I wanted a peach tree.  Of course it didn't grow in Arizona, probably from the fact that I only watered it on the day I planted it, then never again.  Peace Corps has brought out my inner green thumb! I love watching the seeds I planted grow, and now our yard is beautiful! No longer just a burnt garbage pile.  I've decided that when I return after my service I will always have a garden. I also want to continue to plant trees.  Trees are amazing! It'll probably be a little easier having a garden in America too because we don't have to worry about it being eaten by wandering animals, which is often the case here.
 I take comfort in the fact that my host family will benefit from this small garden, even after I leave. I love that they actively help in taking care of the garden and are excited about it :)

The beginnings of our compound garden...

Mutant Cockroaches!

What is brown, has 2 sets of antenneas, 12 legs, a shiny outer shell, 2 heads, and lives in my douche???? 

Yea, that's right, a teenage mutant ninja cockroach. Check out the pic below:

SICK! SICK! SICK!

I saw this thing the other night when I went to bucket bath before bed.  It was super creepy! At first I thought maybe it was weird cockroach sex (?), but when they didn't separate and scurry along when I flashed my flashlight at them, I began to worry. I texted my friend who knows everything about everything when it comes to insects (and other critters) to let her know that I have mutant roaches living in my douche that want to eat me.  I was hoping for some insight to this disgusting phenomenan: Over exposure to shampoo?  Radio-active garbage in my douche? Too many mango peels? What would cause such a scary insect monster?

The answer: siamese twin cockroach. A fusion in which a fertilized egg completely separates, but stem-cells conjoin the cockroach twins together creating a creepy insect monster living in my douche!

Siamese twin roach living in my Senegalese toilet

So what does this mean for me? I guess I'll let the nasty mutant live as long as it steers clear of my room.  The minute it so chooses to enter (like other bugs), I will douse it in pesticide and smack it repeatedly with my fly swatter. Freak of nature. Cool Phenomenan. Whatever. I'm completely terrified of it!

Lamude

Qu'est-ce que c'est??? : An extremely tart fruit of Western Africa, found abundantely in the south of Senegal.  In Pulaar it's called Lamude (litterally means sour thing). The word for sour is lami.  When I first tried this exotic fruit I found myself saying, Lamude no lami buy! which basically translated to...the sour fruit is really sour--go figure! God, I love pulaar :)

So here it is: A yellow exterior which nobody eats, you have to squeeze the sides of it together to pop it open at the top. Inside you will find the yellow, pulpy fruit that surrounds the seeds.  There are usually many inside depending on how big it is.  Here in the market you can get a small one for 25cfa (like 5 cents in America) or a larger one for 50 cfa (10 cents).

I've seen various methods for eating this deliciously sour fruit.  My host family likes to crack it open and put salt and Magi cubes (bouillon cube equivalent) on top.  That version is ok. I like to put chili pepper powder with mine (We call it American chile pepper at my compound because I brought the chile powder from Amerik) The kids like it that way too!

Me and the kids eatin Lamude!


A lot of the local women's groups around here use the fruit to make juice (really really good!) and jams.  If you add lots of sugar to it, it curbs some of that biting sourness.  I really enjoy eating it raw, but I am also a lover of sour fruit (I used to eat lemons raw on my breaks while working at PF Changs a few years ago).  I love all the cool and exotic fruits widely available here! 

Me and Aminatta sharing a lamude

Michelle Sylvester Scholarships and Other Fun Shenanigans

Sorry for the long delay in blog posts.....my month of June has been devoted to the Michelle Sylvester Scholarship! The MS scholarship is a great program that is put on by the SENEGAD branch of Peace Corps Senegal, a sector devoted specifically to gender development and supporting girls' educations.  Please check out the website for more information.
http://senegad.pcsenegal.org/scholarship.html
Me and many of the other volunteers have been collaborating with the local middle schools to choose 9 girls from each school to win the scholarship. The scholarship will be for the next academic school year to help the girls' families pay for inscription fees and school supplies.  It is a great program, and I'm so very happy to be part of the scholarship team!
Unfortunately, as I've mentioned in earlier blog posts, there are many girls who do not get the opportunity to continue with their education. Reasons for such circumstances include but are not limited to: the lack of monetary funds of their families, the fact that these girls are 1 of 10 children (sometimes more or less), the lack of interest in obtaining an education, limited family support, adolescent pregnancy, and forced marriages.  The MS scholarship is great because it gives some girls the opportunity to continue on with school for another year, and almost all of the girls that have been chosen are good students with great grades and a desire to continue with school.  Me, and many other volunteers around the Kounkane area have been working together so that these girls can benefit from this program! So far we have worked closely with 5 middle schools: We've proctored the essay writing, we helped the girls fill out the forms and questionaires, informed their families, and personally interviewed the girls to get better acquainted. I've met so many great girls! It's been a great opportunity to help them out!
Part of the scholarship work that we've been doing is to do home visits. Some of these girls live in villages surrounding the town that has the middle school; therefore, requiring us volunteers to bike out to these places.  It's been a lot of fun! I love to see how each family reacts...are they proud? Excited? Nonchalant? I've seen so many reactions, heard so many different stories, listened to different answers to the interview questions....but what I love the most about going to the villages is all the interesting things we encounter on the way there.  Now that the interviews have come to an end, I'd like to sum up the interesting things we came across during home visits:
-Getting lost and asking people where so-and-so's hut is?
-Flat tires and heat exhaustion (not life threatening)
-Bike collisions and scary buses driving on the wrong side of the road (Bad drivers in general)
-Scrapes and bruises
-Having children chase after your bike, while you're riding it, yelling "WHITE PERSON!!!" at you

They say crocodiles live in this river...what?

-River crossing in a canoe with only enough room for you, your bike, and Sabaly (name of the man who owns the boat)

Waitin for a canoe....

-Gift receiving! (So far, we have collected bags of mangos, peanuts, and a live chicken that we put in a back pack and strapped to the back of Pam's bike)
-Happy families!
-Impromptu dancing
-The opportunity to hang out with some really AMAZING girls :)

It's been a fun month! Check out some of the Happy Families! 

One of the families we visited in Kounkane



Awesome village just outside of Tayel!



Namesake

I probably have received one of the greatest honors humans have ever bestowed on one another: a Namesake. She is beautiful! Born May 21st, 2011 (two days after my bday) so it's fitting that she is named after me. Her name is Salimatou Samantha Boiro, named in honor of, well, me :) She is the second daughter of my counterpart, and I spent all of last saturday with her, holding her, playing with her, and of course napping with her. I love that both of her names are both of my names: My Senegalese name is Salimatou and my real name is Samantha. I feel so honored!

My Tokora!

Here in Senegal, namesakes are so important. Almost everyone here is a namesake of someone else: a grandmother, uncle, mom, best friend, etc.  In fact, I am a namesake of my host mom Salimatou, and when I was living in Mbour under the name of Adama, I was the namesake of my baby sister.  It's a really great feeling to know that someone wanted to name their baby after you, in your honor.  I love that about this culture. I guess the only problem that occurs though with everyone having the same names is the lack of variety, which is totally true...(I feel like there are maybe a handful or two of names for each gender and ethnic group here in Senegal). All the names are recycled.  I can't tell you how many Mamadous, Dembas, Salimatous, Fatimatas, etc. I know. :) But now we've thrown a new name in the mix: Samantha. Maybe my tokora (namesake) will have a tokora later on down the road and she will be Samantha too :)  

Me and my namesake and her family! <3

Nevertheless, I am honored to have a namesake here in Senegal. She is a beautiful baby. Quiet. Peaceful. I will probably spoil her :)  Now I have 2 little people out there running around with my same name (I technically have a namesake in America. My former boss's daughter) I'm feelin the love :) xxx

Let's Hear it for the Girls!

This past weekend, after much anticipation and hard work, Kounkane hosted it's first Girls LeadershipConference!  I along with my friends Ally and Jenae, organized and facilitated the two day conference with the much needed help from fellow volunteers in the surrounding area.  The conference was a huge success, and I'm so happy with its turnout.
The main goal of our conference was to encourage girls to stay in school, while also presenting problems or obstacles that may arise, and how they can overcome them.  Here in my region, and in many other parts of Senegal, girls don't always have the ability to continue with school for a number of reasons. The most common problems we see are early pregnancy, financial hardship, and forced/premature marriage.  Oftentimes in the villages, girls are married off in their early teens by their parents, and not many of them have the option to refuse, even though most of them don't want to get married so young (at least from my experience and what some of the girls have told me).
In collaboration with the prinical and surveillant of the CEM Kounkane (middle school) (and PC funding), we were able to make this project a reality :) We invited 50 girls from the 4eme level (ages range from 11 to 14) and our Michelle Sylvester scholarship candidates (9 in total, but 3 were already invited because they are in the 4eme level), which made our total number of participants 56 girls!  We started saturday morning with the opening ceremony and introductions, and after we just jumped right into the days activities which began with a portrayl of the PC film, "Elle Travail, Elle Vit!" (She works, She lives!).  It was a film made by PC Senegal, and it goes over some of the hardships girls encounter as students, but also highlights the importance of staying in school.  The film was followed by a short question and answer session led by Awa Traore, a language teacher, motivational speaker, and a crusader for creating awareness of the Gender issues here in Senegal.  She is probably one of the most amazing people I've ever met! We are so lucky to have her available to help us out with our work!

Participating girls :)

Awa leading a discussion

The next block of our conference consisted of a pannel discussion with guest speakers: 5 AMAZING Senegalese women who really had an amazing story to share with our invitees.  We had Mme Mane, a college graduate and economist/engineer for Sodagri, (an agricultural company here), Salimatou Loly BA, Director of the Case Foyer de Femmes and a teacher of food transformation practices, and Salimatou Sabaly, the Matrone of Kounkane who discussed what it is like to work in the medical field. We also had Mama-Ramata Diallo, a radio DJ for RadioDiaobe, and lastly NeNe Gale Diallo a young but intelligent teacher at the school in a nearby village.  All of these women shared an important message with our girls, and many of the girls had questions and comments to share with our pannelists.  It was really amazing!



Pannelists: Awa, Nene Galle, Loly, Mama-Ramata, Mme Mane, Saly



Awa introducing the pannelists

After our pannelist session, we had lunch: Domada (a tomato-y sauce on a bed of rice, garnished with meat and local vegetables) and then we went into our last and final session of the day discussing obstacles that girls may encounter in school, how to overcome them, and finally, goal setting.  All the girls set 1 long term goal and 3 short term goals.  At the end of first day, we awarded the girls a bracelet which represented their goals and the support they have from us and our pannelists. It was a really successful day!

Getting ready to serve lunch

Day two had a different focus. We started the day with a short game going over the gender biased questions like, Are boys smarter than girls? etc. Then we jumped straight into our health session led by our Matrone, Salimatou Sabaly.  She educated the girls on the female parts of the body, the menstruel cycle, sex and STDs, and HIV.  We thought this was something important to talk about because 1) Girls aren't really educated on things like this in the public school system and 2) For most of the girls, these topics are not something they can really discuss with their parents.  All of these girls are at the adolescent age and are curious about their bodies and sex, and we felt that these topics were really important to highlight.  Especially considering that the Kounkane/Diaobe area where the girls and I live, has the highest level of HIV prevalence in Senegal!
Our health session was followed by an activity where we presented 10 scenario questions all with an underlying theme.  All of the scenarios were something that many girls in Senegal encounter as an obstacle in theirs lives, and it was really a great way to have Awa discuss the issues with the girls and give them a slightly different perspective on it.  Our scenarios touched on the following topics: Pressure to have sex with a boyfriend, Sexual harassement from a teacher (which happens a lot more than you would think), forced marriage, Safe sex (use of condems/contraceptive), Being the only girl in your village to go to school (not all village girls have the opportunity to go to school), Poverty and its affect on their studies, Living far away from school, and equally important, Rape.  We assigned the girls into groups of 10, about 5-6 in each group, and each group received a scenario.  We had them discuss it in small groups first and after, they shared what they discussed with the rest of us.  All of the girls had very important things to say, and Awa did an amazing job of educating them on aspects they may not have considered.  This by far was my favorite session!  All of the volunteers helped facilitate it! :)

Shortly after the scenarios, the girls' parents arrived; we served them all a lunch of oily Thieb (national dish) and then Awa led a lecture to the girls and their parents about supporting their daughters with their goals, the detriments of early pregnancy and forced marriage, which unfortunately are serious problems here in the Fouladou (Kolda region).  She also talked about rape with the parents.  Awa really has a way educating people! The parents disucssion was great!
We ended the conference with a short skit from a local theatre troupe who talked about forced marriage, and it was then followed by Awa, the Sous-Prefet, and some of us volunteers awarding the girls with a Certificate of Completion and a bracelet! We even made a special announcement about our 9 scholarship candidates and awarded them their dipolma first! 

Awa talking about the role of the parents in their daughters lives

Our girls and their Certificates! One of the proudest moments of my life :)

I'm so excited that our first major project was a success! I admit, some things could've run a little more smoothly, but I can't complain. We had a great turnout for both the girls and their parents, awesome pannelists, an amazing team of women who cooked 2 big lunches for our guests (that's an incredible amount of work!), love and support from all of the volunteers in the Velingara department (Love you guys!), and none of this would have been possible if it wasn't for all of our motivated Senegalese counterparts and work-partners who did more than their fair share of the work! This conference was amazing and so rewarding! I've never in my life done something that just feels so important. I'm truly passionate about the things we discussed.  Forced marriage, early pregnancy, and HIV are major issues here, and we want every girl to have the option to go and stay in school!  Can't wait until the next conference! We are hoping this will be an annual thing, inchallah!
Girl Power!

A very "village" Birthday

Birthdays here in Senegal are nothing like they are in America.  Oftentimes, Senegalese people don't know their exact date of birth, and their age is an approximation.  My family members have told me they have a certain age, but their identity cards say something different.  Apparently, parents often change their childrens' birthdays for schooling purposes.  Birthdays are not really celebrated in this country either.  There have been days when I would come home in the evening after spending an entire day with a friend who would casually mention, "Oh well, today is my birthday", like it was just another day. It's completely different than the big deal most of us make of it in America. So this month my birthday fell on this past thursday, the 19th, and I decided to share a bit of American culture with my family.  What better way to share than with a Senegalese/American birthday party? I have to say, I really had a great time, and i think my family enjoyed it too!
 I started my day started off with lovely birthday wishes from my PC friends here in Senegal, which was shortly followed by an awesome meeting in a nearby village called Tayel.  We are doing a scholarship there at the middle school, in addition to the 4 other schools in the Kounkane area. I spent the afternoon with Pam and by the evening we were running errands, buying supplies for dinner, and picking up my birthday cakes :)

My other friends from the area came to celebrate my birthday in the evening. We cooked a similar dish to macaroni and cheese, but we had to use what was available in Kounkane: macaroni noodles, a can of vegetables, Vitalait (extra fattening powdered milk), and Vache qui Rit cheese (similar to Velveeta because it doesn't need to be refridgerated, but different because it's white and creamy).  We added some fresh ground pepper, that Pam literally pounded herself, with some garlic and onions, and voila, we whipped up a Senegalese mac n cheese :)  I'd say about 1/2 my family liked it and the other 1/2 didn't.  Us volunteers loved it though!
After dinner we had a dance party...not my personal choice, but still somehow it happened.  My brothers busted out the stereo and started blaring Senegalese music.  We danced "Yuzza" with my family, but of course, loud music in this country attracts a stampede of neighborhood children.  We were forced to dance for a bit, but later I had to beg my family to turn off the music so all the univited guests would leave.  I didn't buy enough cake and boisson to feed all of Kounkane.....

Family and neighborhood dance party

So my family, sang me a sort of mixed version of Happy Birthday in English and Joyeux Anniversaire (the French version).  It was really sweet! They put a large candle right in the middle of my cake.  We cut up the cake, and of course it was devoured in about 5 minutes with all of my family members.  We all shared boissons (Sprite and Orange Fanta) and mintues later me, Ally, Pam, and Jenae retired to my hut for a late night of more cake (yes I had 2), red and rose wine, and lots of laughs!

Most of my family and I on my bday!



Ally n I cuttin bday cake! :)







 It was a great way to spend my birthday in the "somewhat" village Kounkane is....and in addition to my petite Senegalese celebration, I received lots of bday messages from friends on facebook and text messages :) Thanks for the love! The day following my birthday, I went to Velingara to get the mail and picked up 4 care packages bursting out the seems with American goodies! Thanks Mom and Mike! Now I have deliciousness to last me until vacation! :) So much better than rice and oil :)

A jaraama buy (Huge Thank you!) to all my friends and family for the birthday love!

One really amazing thing about serving in the Peace Corps is all the amazing people you meet, both the locals in the country of service and the other volunteers who serve along side you.  I am so blessed to be surrounded by the people in my Kounkane cluster! In the past nine months since I've arrived I've gained 3 amazing work partners and friends (and many more not mentioned in this post) who've helped make my birthday fabulous, and who also enhance my service everyday.  Peace Corps wouldn't be the same without them! Life long friends: another great benefit of Peace Corps service! :)

My loves...