Sokone and Korite

First news, I know where I’m going to live and work after training!! I’ll be moving to Sokone which is in the Delta area which is NE of The Gambia. It’s a town of about 15,000 people and there are tons of PC Volunteers (PCVs) in the area including a bunch of people in my training stage that will be very close to me. I am told I’ll get a lot of visitors, particularly from the village based volunteers because I have running water and electricity as well as a nice 3 room apartment on a compound of a very nice family.

The way they revealed our site was really fun. On the basketball court at the training center they have a map of Senegal painted. We all had to shut our eyes and then they led us to our spot on the map. They when we were all placed we were allowed to open our eyes and not only see where we were but also which of the other trainees we are near. It was so exciting!!!

It’s Korite (Core E Tay) Weekend here and Ramadan is finally over!! It will be interesting to see how my daily life will change now. I’ve been told that Senegal is very different and much more subdued during Ramadan.

Korite has been an interesting experience. A friend called Alex who works for the same NGO that my dad works for came up for it the night before. He got stung by a scorpion when he was leaning on the door frame of my room just after he arrived. The scorpion was about an inch and a half long and black. I’d been told before by one of the other trainees that her biologist father said there were no deadly scorpions in Senegal but I still rushed to pull out my PC health handbook. We followed the directions to ice it and take Tylenol. He said that the spot that was stung was sore as were his arm muscles after words.

Korite was nothing like I suspected and I am not sure if it was a normal Korite or was altered because we had a huge down pour in the afternoon. The day started off with all the males in the families who were old enough to talk going off to the Mosque. They were all dressed in their brand new clothes. All Senegalese Muslims like to get new clothes for holidays and they try to never re-wear an outfit to another holiday if they can help it. As for the women, they must have done their own prayers at home and then started preparing the meal that we had at 2PM. It was Senegalese couscous, chicken, olives, sausage, boiled egg and an onion sauce. My family is wealthy by Senegalese standards so this meal had ingredients in it that most families might not have such as sausage and chicken. They would usually have fish. After our lunch I was so tired that I took a nap and was told that at 4PM we would be going out to visit people. But when I woke up at 4PM it started to pour with rain.

And then my room flooded. I wasn’t in my room when it started raining hard and didn’t realize that there was a puddle accumulating on my floor right where a bunch of my stuff is. So there was a big scramble to move everything when I walked in and yelled. We managed to put everything on my bed, shut the window and then mop up the floor. That is one great thing about having tiled floors versus carpet is that they are so much easier to clean, particularly with liquids. Nothing was too badly affected, a couple books have some water wrinkling and a few other things were wet.

So after that I changed into my new Senegalese outfit and we sat around for a bit. I got the outfit made a week ago. It consists of a panga (Paan Ya) which is a wrap skirt and a top made out of the same material. I picked out what they call a Hollandais Wax fabric. It’s white with a blue print on it. They call the fabric wax because there is a layer of wax on it. It makes it stiff and shiny, two things that the Senegalese like in their clothing. Then we went out “visiting”. That consisted of visiting the two homes that other Trainees live in around me. The first house the men in the house were watching Pearl Harbor in French! It strange seeing Josh Hartnett and Ben Affleck speaking French….


After that we came back and had another meal. Then some family came by to visit and drink tea but that was it. It was all a bit anti-climatic. First off all eating on the floor somehow takes a bit of the fun of a big meal away. We usually eat on the floor anyways, in the same circle around the bowl on a big mat like we did yesterday. Then just walking around to chat with people just seems a bit strange too. You do it to show off your clothes mainly since these are the same people you see all the time. Because families live together already, it is not the same sense of family reunion like it is in the U.S. for our big holidays.

Week 4

This has been a long week. First of all, on Sunday evening the man in charge of Security for PC Senegal died in a car accident. So Monday there were no classes and Tuesday after class we went to pay our respects to his family. He was young and had 5 children and was by far the most important male in his family in terms of leadership and financial earning power.

This week had also been assessment week so we had our first language oral. I feel like I did pretty well on my French one. Class is going pretty well. Some of my tech classes are boring simply because I got my degree in Business and what is being covered is very elementary. I am one of the few in the Small Enterprise Development who has taken a lot of business courses so these classes are essential. It still is hard for me to sit through when I’m tired and already know the material.

Daily life for me here is long. Every morning I rise at 6:15 AM to get ready to leave for the training center at 7. I walk or bike with another Trainee who lives in the compound across from mine. I have taken to showering twice a day in order to keep my skin clean and cooler. I shower in the morning when I wake up and before I go to bed. Keeping clean is the best way to prevent most of the infections that you can get here and particularly heat rashes. I douse on the baby powder in the morning like I did when I lived in the Philippines. It really does help keep one drier and cooler in this hot and humid weather.

At the center, which is a 10 minute walk, we have breakfast that consists of a piece of fruit and French bread and tea or coffee. Classes run from 8-10, 10:30-12:30, 2:30-4, 4:30-6. So the morning is usually language with medical, cross cultural and tech sessions in the afternoon. I have gotten a lot of vaccinations while I’ve been here and before I came. Every week we seem to have 2 more. I’ve gotten some of them before but am getting them again just to be safe.