First Month

Song of the month Pink Floyd; Heaven can Wait
Sorry that it has been so long between my post. I have had a lot going on right now which has made it difficult for me to be able to sit down and type. I currently have my host family, which is great. My mom Georgette is in her mid sixties and my dad is Jean-Gabou. He is in his seventies, is blind in one eye and is almost deaf. I thought my French was bad when I spoke to him, but he just couldn’t hear what I was saying. I have three brothers, Louie who is in his mid thirties and works as a physical education teacher. Pascal is another brother who works in textiles (I think). He is the father of Pape who has been the person who has helped me the most. Pape speaks to me all the time and we will go out for the occasional beer. That’s right I am in the 5% and have a Catholic family. They are Seerar. My other brother Philippe is ill as it was explained to me. He doesn’t speak at all and is extremely thin. I am not sure exactly what is wrong, but I am not sure if my family knows either. TIA (This is Africa) as we say. My sister Mary Angelic is a very nice woman. She does the majority of the cooking and cleaning. She wakes up with my mom every morning by 7 to start sweeping the courtyard. She has two kids. Ferdie who is 5 and Annyolan who is around one. Our house is basically, several separate rooms that lead outside to a courtyard. Since it is so hot we generally sit under one of our several lime trees. We always have chickens running free in our yard and a pigpen. A funny story, the other day I came home and noticed a pig was missing and a pot was on the stove. Naturally I was excited because I have eaten mostly fish and rice since my arrival. This would be one of my first meals without fish. I go up to Pape and ask if he needs help. He accepts and I grab a seat and the fan, which he had requested. He opens the pot and starts pulling piece by piece out of the pot parts of the pig’s head. First off was a snout. Apparently you can eat that. After the snout we got a jawbone and had to peel the meet off of that. The grand finally was the ears. Yeah, we made Pate with that. If you were curious to why I needed to help, it was to fan away the flies while we cooked. I was happy top hear that the pate was for sale and not for us to eat. But some things are lost in translation when he brought me a half loaf of French bread with Pate. By the way the only bread in Senegal in the cities is French bread. All I eat is rice and white bread. I am on the carb diet.
A typical day for me starts at 6:30 I wake up and get to the Center by 7:10. I generally ride my bike while the Talibae yell at me. My spelling is probably wrong but the Talibae is a group of children who are sent to live with a Marabou. The Marabou can’t afford to but these 8-10 year olds anything so he sends them out to the streets to beg. Since I am white and the only white people they see are on TV you can imagine what they think. I have all of the money. It is difficult to not feel bad for these kids but you can’t give money to each kid or you would go broke by the time you went a kilo. The other day I went to a house with Pape to watch prison break and a little girl freaked out and cried because she was scared of me. It is very weird to have all eyes on you. In other cases kids will come up and shake my hand or pull on my arm hair because no one has hair on their bodies here.
I unfortunately have dealt with death also. A safety trainer from the Peace Corps, died on his way to a site. He was in a car accident. He was a very nice man who worked very hard for us to be safe. It was difficult to deal with because many of the trainers couldn’t work and we witnessed several of the prayers. We also went to his house to pay respects to his wife. I have never seen anything like it before. Everyone is gathered in the courtyard, the women sit on mats on the floor while the men sit in plastic chairs. You go drink tea and pay your respects.
Once again sorry for having so many scattered thoughts but I have been here for a month and all of this happened. Yesterday I went to a Baptism and saw a goat gets skinned and deboweled. Now if you have never seen anything like that, I recommend it. If it were the only time you have eaten meat in a month you would have no problem watching it and seeing how it is prepared. It is a way of life. In other news I got my site placement. Holy Smokes, I am going far north into the desert. Dagana, Senegal. It is on the river bordering Mauritania. 25,000 people 2km by 5km. My closest neighbor is 20km away and the closest neighbor I already know is 47km. I am 125 km away from st Louie, but that is a 3-hour ride in Senegal. By the way someone please send me anti motion sickness pills. The engineers here thought it wise to put asphalt roads on top of dirt, so in the rainy season when the dirt roads the asphalt falls through and causes some nice pot holes. There is a handicapped organization I will work with and a new high school where I will help teach English. That is my plan as of now, but I need to get some business in somewhere so we will see. One of the subsidized sugar factories is in my town and a tomato canning plant is there. I am in the middle of nowhere and it is rocky and sandy. But I am only two hours away from the two best national parks in Senegal. There is a third one I will see but that is South East. That will take me a two or three days drive. Hhahahahah. TIA Imagine if you liveed in a world without a cell phone, no Internet, no cars, and one day you just had it. No knowledge of how it works or any concept of its origin. Their would be no regulations for car safety, no concept of the value of a phone, no idea how to drive, and no idea of edicate. I was at the cyber and the guys on either side of me were looking at porn. That is a normal occurrence. Just a thought to leave you with.
I live in a fish bowl, I can eat, dress, act Senegalese, but no matter what, I am not Senegalese and people are here to remind me of that fact every day. My skin has become thick and imagine if you have only seen black people on the television and you finally saw one for the first time. Would you stair, yell, grab at, beg from, welcome, or cry from being scared. Every day I see these reactions and it shocks me because we live in a different world. Most experience has been good for me, and I like it here, but when you think stuff is hard for you, think about what you have, because the people here have it a hundred times harder and they are the happiest people I have met. One month down 25 to go.