Hi my name is Andy and I live in a hut

Ok, first of all, I'd like to offer a small outline for this blog, so you can scroll through it for the bits you're interested in.

But before we get started I'd like to mention that the comments on the blog have tapered off significantly. If you don't comment on the blog, I don't know that anyone's reading it, and if nobody's reading it, I may as well just be writing in my journal. So if there aren't like 20 comments or something on this entry, I may never write another one. Dun dun dun....!

Outline:
A) Wish List and New Address
B) Hut/Village Description
C) Day in the Life Slash Food
D) Thanksgiving
E) Malinke Lesson of the Day
F) Final Comments


A) Wish List and New Address

So I've been advised by some seasoned Peace Corps Volunteers to shamelessly put my wish list up on my blog, so as not to burden my parents completely. My address has changed, so if you do want to send a care package, or even just a letter, check the last blog entry for the new addy. Now without further ado...

- Food. Any kind of food you can think of that I might like, I will like. High protein stuff is good, since there's not much meat aroud, like beef jerkey, but also any kind of junk food or packaged food in general is always a treat and would make my month to receive.
- Neosporin. I'm always cutting myself. Can of tuna opened my finger up the other day.
- Hand sanitizer. Gotta stay clean, and I shake a lot of hands.
- A decent pair of tweezers. Impossible to find here, clutch in the event of a splinter in the bush.
- Bugspray. I have rub on stuff, but sometimes it's just easier to spray. And I don't wanna get malaria.
- A leatherman. I know these are expensive, but they come in very handy for a lot of things. I have a mini one that I keep on my keychain and it's priceless, but for bigger jobs i need a bigger knife.
- Photos. Send me pictures of what you're doing in every day life. Pictures of the weather (I showed a picture of boston in the winter to some of my villagers, who had never seen snow before).
- Posters. Gotta decorate the hut somehow. If you do want to send me a poster, probably the best way is to get it online and have it sent to my dad, so he can put a couple together in a tube. Email him for his address if you're interested.
- Books. Anything interesting that you've read, I want. From classics to the new hit. I have lots of time to read.
- Discman. This is the coolest part. I have my iPod and it's great and I listen to it every night. But I don't want to lose touch with the music scene back home. So if someone can send me a basic discman from home, then anyone can mail me a burned CD with lots of their favorite music on it for me to listen to. And stay hip and with it in my music knowledge.

So word, that's my wish list. It's long, I know. And some of the stuff isn't cheap. But I promise that any letter or package that is sent will get a reply from moi. Also, make sure to include a letter, or at least a note, in your packages.


B) Hut/Village Description

I live in a village of 400 people in the region of Kedougou, which is in southeastern Senegal. Kedougoug is absolutely gorgeous, with more elevation changes and greenery than anywhere else in the country.

The ride out to my village is about 37 km and takes me about 2 hours by bike. My village has no electricity or running water, but I do have a small solar panel on my roof to charge my iPod with. I also have no cell phone reception. In fact I'm about 2 hours from it. But that's not such a bad thing, it's kind of peaceful being disconnected sometimes.

My village is organized into family compounds. I live with the village chief and his family. He has two wives (but the second was simply the wife of his brother, that he took in to support when his brother died, and I think their relationship stops there, because they have no children together). A family compound is a fenced-in area with a collection of huts used as bedrooms and one is the kitchen hut. We also have a storage hut to keep the harvest in.

I have my own hut which is huge - 15 feet across - and circular. It has a thatched roof and a cement floor, with a front and back door. I also have a fenced-in backyard of my own and a small fenced-in area to use as my bathroom. In my hut I have a bed made of bamboo poles with a foam mattress and a three-tiered table also made of bamboo. I have a small gas can with a stove attachment so I can cook.

I don't know what it is about the sky in Africa, but somehow it just looks different. Every sunset is breath-taking. A few whispy clouds always seem to wander into the western sky just in time to be painted by the sun. The sky almost looks smudged some evenings, like an impressionists painting.

My camera is broken and a new one is en route, so I don't have any pictures yet. But be sure that you already know what my village looks life. When Hollywood went to Africa for a day to see what a village looked like in Africa, I'm pretty sure they came to mine because I laugh every day at how cliché it looks.


C) Day in the Life Slash Food

I wake up at about 8:00 am every day and go for a jog. Any villager that I run by usually asks me where I'm going and laugh at the idea of running just for the sake of running, but I'm sure they'll get used to it.

Then I come back to my hut, get my bucket and an extra T-shirt and walk to the well, which is about 150 meters away. I pull my water by hand - no pully - and fill a 5-gallon bucket to the brim and put a lid on it. I'm the only man in my village who pulls water because it's considered women's work, but I'm trying to rock their ideas of gender roles a little bit.

After carrying the water back to my hut on my head, using the extra T-shirt as a head mat, I eat breakfast. My family is up and has eaten before I wake up, so I eat breakfast alone in my hut, which is mono, that porridge I've written about before. It's possibly my favorite part about Senegal so far. I also make a cup of coffee.

Then I use the water to take a bucket bath in my backyard and get dressed to go about my day. So far I've only had a few days in the village but I've been using them to meet people, travel to other villages to meet farmers there, and I've gone into the fields with my family to do work out there twice.

Lunch generally comes around noon and is rice or findo (a very small grain) covered with a sauce. The sauce is usually made out of leaves, or is peanut based, often times with okra, which makes it sort of slimy. Dinner is usually similar to lunch. Sometimes with the sauce is whole okra or pieces of this orange squash that is sweet and delicious.

At some point in the afternoon I try to make it into my hut for a good nap. Then I like to spend my afternoons reading or studying Malinké (which is extremely similar to Jaxonke, but not the same). I hang out in my compound with the fam until dusk, at which point they say their prayers and then we eat immediately after dusk.

Often after dinner I go to the teachers' hut (i have a small school with three teachers in my village). The teachers speak French and are extremely nice and welcoming. They have told me that I'm already a member of the family, and am welcome at all times of the day. They eat much better than my family, and sometimes even have meat, and eat later than my family. So, often I eat dinner twice. Even so, I usually eat at least a clif bar every day.

Then I go back to my hut around 9:00 or so, shut the door and have some Andy time. I listen to music, read, write in my journal or write letters. I also usually make oatmeal or eat a can of tuna. Then at about 10:30 or so head lamp is off and I'm asleep. And that's a day in my life.


D) Thanksgiving

All the volunteers from the Kedougou region came in to the regional house, which is in the city of Kedougou, to make Thanksgiving dinner together. The regional house doesn't have electricity but does have a small stove and oven, and also has running water. It's more of a compound than a house, with a collection of huts that we use.

The volunteers who have been here for a while have gotten extremely creative with their cooking so we had a great meal:

We had chickens and ducks (turkeys were 80 bucks a pop) that we cooked on the grill. We had garlic mashed potatoes and turkey gravy (the gravy was sent in packet form from home). We had delicious mashed sweet potatoes with a bissap mirangue on top (bissap is a flower here that they also use to make juice). We had fresh baked bread - sourdough, rosemary, and something else. We had stuffing made from scratch, right down to drying the bread ourselves. We had green been caserole made with a can of mushrooms and powdered milk because we couldn't find cream of mushroom soup. We had a delicious carrott and raisin dish that someone dreamed up. For dessert we had squash pie (no pumpkins around) lemon bars, a fudge cake, a chocolate-peanut butter pie, and cream. All of these were made from scratch, including the crusts. Betty Crocker and Baker's Sqaure took the day off.

So while I did miss eating with you all, we did have a meal of which any American could be proud, despite the lack of turkey.


E) Malinke Lesson of the Day

"I speak Malinke" and "I speak English" are "Nse Malinko kan mee" and "Nse anglais kan mee." Directly translated that means that you "hear" or "understand" the languages. I think it's an interesting difference in approach, that once they learn a language they say they can hear other people in it, whereas once we have learned a language we "speak" it.


F) Final Comments

With that I congratulate anyone who managed to get through all of this. I know it was long but people have been asking me for different things on here and I wanted to make sure I had something for every one. Keep giving me ideas for what you want to hear about.

And don't forget to write comments, or I may never write anything again.

Love Boubs

Address

I'll be back on tomorrow to write an extensive blog about my first week in village, but I did want to quickly get my new address up.

PCV Andrew Jondahl
b.p. 37
Kedougou, Senegal
West Africa

Phone number is the same. Call me, I'll have service til Fri morning.

Love Boubs

Goodbye Easy Life

It's official. I am a Peace Corps Volunteer. After eight weeks as a Peace Corps Trainee I have completed all of my assessments, learned the latin names of 25 tree species and their uses, achieved the level of Intermediate Medium in Jaxanke and adapted to the culture to Peace Corps standards. So, I have been officially sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer and will depart for my village tomorrow morning at 6 a.m.

I have a two day trip ahead of me to get there, and will be traveling with two other volunteers going to the same area. The volunteers already in the area will be there to welcome us and help us settle in, and then it's off to the village as of Tuesday morning.

As I've said before, my region is Kedougou, which is also the name of the closest "big" city. I have a two hour bike ride to get to Kedgougou, which is where I can get my mail and find an internet cafe, but to find a bank branch I'll have to go to Tambacounda, which is four hours from Kedougou in a car. So yes, I am about as out in the boonies as any volunteer in Senegal (some people from my training class will be living in apartments with electricity and refridgerators, and one even has wireless). But I'm glad I'm going to the bush. It's pretty much what I expected. In fact, I'll be more connected than I thought, because I assumed I wouldn't have any internet access at all. I'm going to try to make it into town once every two or three weeks, so keep your emails and facebook messages coming, and blog comments, and I'll keep up my end of the bargain. My mailing address will change, so I'll post it on here as soon as I know what it is.

A couple notes about Senegal in general.

Hospitality: If somebody stops by your house unexpectedly when you're about to eat, they eat with you, no questions asked. So the other night some people stopped by my house the other night and before I knew it we had twelve men around the same bowl with two small fish in it over a bed of rice. But nobody would ever think to complain that they werent getting enough. By the same token, a different night this week I finished stuffing myself on a big dinner at my house and went to my friend's. When I arrived they were just sitting down to dinner, so I was expected to sit down and eat dinner again, less than half an hour after i had finished. I guess it all comes around.

Jaxanke lesson of the day: "sate" (pronounced like a chicken sauteé) means village. It also means city and town. They only have one word for all these things. I guess it shows how rural the language's roots are.

Also, they have the same word "sigi" (see-gee) meaning "to sit" and "to live." Any discussion of what that could imply?

Anyway, I better get going. We have a party for at the center with our host families tonight. I helped prepare for it by grinding the pepper. And by that I mean I had a two foot wooden mortar and pestal and a bowl of pepper corns that I had to grind up. One of the cooks and I took turns pounding and holding the mortar - it's pretty physical work.

Love and miss you all, talk to you the next chance I get (i'll def be back into "The Gou" for thanksgiving dinner with the other volunteers in my region).

Boubs

ps. Yes, it's pronounced like Boobs. And my new last name will be Dumfaha. Sound it out. I love it.

Dakar Ain't So Far

I had another great weekend out of town. We need to fit them in while we can, because I will be going off to my site in less than two weeks! I'll be sending out some sort of mass email with more info about my site, but they recommend we don't post that in public places for fear of identity theft.

That said, I spent this weekend in Dakar, which is the capital city of Senegal and probably the biggest in West Africa. I hadn't really seen it before because we flew in at 4:30 a.m. and left quickly on a bus for Thies. I had been to African "cities" before and so had my doubts about how big Dakar would actually be, but it is every bit a big, urban, modern city as most cities I've been to in Europe or the States. Or at least close.

Now a short break away... a name I've been hearing as a walk or bike down the street since I arrived is 'Toubab' (too-bob). It's actually a nickname for anyone who's French, but it's generally applied to any white face and the kids love to shout it out as you go by. It's not necessarily derogatory, the Senegalese just love to point out their physical differences (it's not taboo hear to point out and laugh about the fact that someone is a different weight or race than you - and noone takes it personally).

Anyway, for everything in Senegal, especially in Dakar where they have more white tourists there is a 'Toubab price). So when I arrived via public transportation in Dakar and had to find a cab to our hotel, the cabs were offered to us at 3000 cfa each (about 6 dollars). This may seem cheap but by Senegalese standards it's outlandish. After some arguing in French and some dramatic storming off I managed to talk them down to 700 each, which is a more appropriate price. The entire weekend pretty much went like this, having to negotiate prices.

My favorite part of the weekend was a meal we ate at 'Point des Almadies) which is the Western most tip of Africa. We ate at a restaurant right on the beach, so last Sunday night I was about as close to you all as I could possibly be while in Senegal. The food was incredibly fresh. You order family style, so we had a platter (we're talking heaped up lunch tray style) of clams come out first, then a platter of raw sea urchins that were still moving - you just have to scoop the goop out of the middle. Then a platter of the biggest muscles I had ever seen. Then, came the skewers of grilled seafood: tuna, lotte (a white fish), huuuuge pieces of calamari, and king prawns. All of this food cost a total of 26 dollars, split among 7 people. So we each paid less than four dollars for the whole thing. Not bad.

Anyway, I have a busy week ahead of me, two men that i'll be working with in my village are in town for a three day workshop, so i'm really excited.

More letters emails and posts!

Love Boubs (another nickname for Boubacar)

The Beach and Fritz

First, to answer Dan's questions: I rode my Peace Corps-issued mountain bike. Not all of the gears really work, but it does the job fine. And to be fair, it was 25 miles each way, so 50 total, not 44.

Also, a lot of people seem to want pics. I just found this internet cafe that has comps with usb ports (no Tom Friedman, the world is not flat) so hopefully I'll be able to get some up soon.

Ok, so this weekendall of the people I'm training with went to the beach. For 15 dollars each, I rented a huge 5-bedroom house directly on the beach, had round trip transportation from the training center, and bought enough food to make a spagetti dinner, and to have coffee, tea and bread in the morning, plus snacks. Not a bad deal.

So we took off Sturday right after our morning classes and piled into an "alhum" which is a minibus type of thing that they cram 35 people into and a sept place, which is a station wagon that they put 7 people plus driver into. All luggage obviously goes on the roof. And often the assistant of the alhum driver hangs off the back.

We had a great day of swimming in the atlantic, which is a perfect temp here, and thena fun dinner and a night full of dancing and more swimming. People crammed into beds, slept on couches, and one group even through a couple mattresses on the beach and slept out there.

Sunday was followed by more swimming and small groups making their way to local restaurants for lunch. The local vendors heard we were there and so stoppe by the house with fresh fruit and fatayas, which are little pastrythings stuffed with a little fish and stopped with some sauteed onions. Delicious.

At 5:00 we all had to pack up and go home, although I'm sure i'll make it back there at some point. It was a nice little slice of heaven.

My best friend of the trip was Fritz. Sitting on the beach on saturday a stray dog approached the group I was with. He was light brown and had scars all over his body from countless fights. I obviously started to pet him and he became the trip mascott (although some people refused to touch him). I named him Fritz and he sat down behind me. A couple minutes later I started singing whatever song was in my head and Fritz started singing along with a great howl. I was in love.

He followed us back up to the house and hungout onthe balcony all night, and then he slept ne"xt to the group on the beach and growled and barked at any stranger that walked by. Then on Sunday he followed us all the way to the restaurant and sat under the table while we ate, thenfollowed us back to the house to hang out until we left. He came running every time i whistled. I sadly had to leave him behind, but he will be missed. Good ol' Fritz.


Joxonke lesson of the day: The word for "bike" - nege suwo - directly translated, is "metal horse."

Love you all, and love your comments, don't be shy,

Love Bouba

Adventures and Korite

First a couple of clarifications:
1) The man who passed away was not my language trainer. There were two trainers at the site named Lamine. Lamine the Safety and Security Trainer was the one involved in the accident. Lamine the language trainer is the one I spend every waking moment with.
2) The crazy beach weekend is this coming weekend, not the past.

That said, I did take a bike ride to the coast to check out our beach site last weekend. The beach is 25 miles from Dakar, and on Sunday two other guys and I decided to do the round trip in a day. So we packed a couple backpacks full of water and cliff bars and set out at 7 a.m. to beat the sun. The ride there was pretty easy, mostly downhill cause we were going toward the ocean. Got there around 9 - no prob Bob. We spent the day on the beach, got some good lunch of fresh seafood and rice. Had a beer, devoured a watermelon, talked to a few locals and left around 3:00 to be sure we'd be home by dusk.

The ride home was not so easy. Mostly uphill, into a headwind, and after already biking 25 miles and a day in the sun. Ouch. It took us about 3 and a half hours, almost double the trip there. Uncle Dan, if you're reading this, I hope you're proud. It's about 44 miles farther than I had ever biked in a day (the second farthest being the 6-mile loop at French park that I did when I was 7).

Last weekend was also Korite on Saturday. Korite is the holiday marking the end of the month of fasting in Islam, known as Ramadan.

African hospitality continues to impress me:

One of the customs for Korite is to buy new fabric and have a tailor make you new clothes for the day. Then you spend the day with your family eating well, going to the mosque to pray, and visitng other familes to apologize for any wrong-doing you may have done to them and to generally wish them peace.

A friend of mine, whose family I had met once, heard that the majority of my family had gone out of town for the holiday to visit their extended family and so immediately invited me to spend it with them (it turned out that at least 10 people were still at my house, because my family is larger than I can keep track of). Anyway, my friend's family had also heard that I hadn't had the chance to have any clothes made for Korite. When I walked her home on Saturday night they handed me some clothes and I gathered that they were lending them to me to wear the next day.

So on the next afternoon I put on the outfit. It is called a Grand Boubou and is the fanciest of Senegalese outfits. A pair of pants and large shirt that reaches almost to the ground made of the same fabric. I visited my friend's family but brought a change of clothes so I could leave the outfit with them. But as I left they chased me to the door and insisted that I take the clothes as a gift.

Basically, a family I had only met once gave me the Senegalese version of a nice suit, just to be nice.

Sorry if this anecdote was too long, let me know if I should be more brief. I'll try to post again soon about thiiiis weekend's Beach Trip with everyone.

Leave comments galore,

Love Andy

Some bad news

Today is a sad day at the Peace Corps Training Center.

Last night, our Safety and Security trainer Lamine was killed in a car accident. He left behind a wife, five children, and dreams of one day working for the United Nations. Classes have been suspended for the day and a memorial service planned for this evening.

We will miss Lamine and keep his family in our thoughts and prayers.