Sustaina-Blind

I read my journal entry from one year ago, today. Always a source of entertainment. In this particular entry, I lay in bed in my house in the US of A, spilling forth my fears and excitements about Peace Corps and Niger and what challenges I would face. I bulleted them like this:

• Food
• The heat 
• Food
• Culture
• Food
• Clean water 
• The heat 
• Using a latrine
• Culture
• The heat 
• Food

·        I also reminded myself to buy “a billion batteries.”

As I rolled my eyes at my own stupid exaggerations it dawned on me that the actual battles I’ve fought as a volunteer, with myself or others, have been entirely different from those I speculated a year ago. One adapts to food and climate. I adapted. I must say, I pride myself on being an expert adapter at this point. Throw me into the ocean and I’ll build a raft from jagged seaweed and jellyfish tentacles and make friends with the fish. Or something like that. (So glad I retained my ability to exaggerate). 

The real difficulties I’ve faced so far have been the result of cultural walls, or, surprisingly, of issues with my program itself. Most recently I’ve struggled with the pressures associated with Peace Corps’ biggest watchword: sustainability.

Peace Corps, as an organization, prides itself on what it is not. We are not an NGO that throws money at a community without research or further follow-up. We don’t put our stamp onto every project we’ve briefly brushed up against (ahem, cough, USAID) and we are not, most importantly, unsustainable.

One thing that Peace Corps is is self selecting. The type of person who joins the organization is full of zeal and good will; think uneven tan lines, calloused palms and lots of laughter. As a whole we’re a concerned group. We’re concerned about our commitment, concerned about the country, concerned about the cultural stressors, and lastly, concerned that our well meaning sacrifices are worth it. Therein lies the rub. According to Peace Corps and many development theories, in order to be worth it, our work must be sustainable.  

This makes all the sense in the world. The lifespan of a volunteer is only two years. Granted, so far it seems like the longest two years in the history of time, but in the scheme of things it is a blip, a flash, a sprint. In the lives of the people we want to help, two years is sadly insignificant. It is for this reason that we strive to find projects that last. This means not only teaching individuals, but teaching teachers. It means broadening our net of knowledge and trying to reach as many people as we can in our service. It means trying to hit all problems at the source and not the end. It means not doing everything yourself, a concept that has fallen hard on many an earnest volunteer (Mamadiy, I'm talking to you here!) It means, unfortunately for us, never giving a quick fix but always thinking in the long term.

I say “unfortunately for us” because wouldn’t it be so nice to once, just once, give a few extra dollars to help a family get through the week? Wouldn’t it be so nice to see a grateful smile and know that this baby is going to live because you paid the hospital bill? Couldn’t I just buy this man lunch so he doesn’t go hungry today? 

But what about tomorrow? What about the day after tomorrow? What about next week?

Logically, one can see the large crater I’m so gladly moving towards. I can’t possibly give money to every sick baby, to every hungry man. I may be a white American but I’m a Peace Corps volunteer which doesn’t amount to much financially even in Senegal. Anyways, it’s better to teach a man to fish and all that, right? If I help improve the health care, if I increase food security, these problems may work themselves out for the betterment of every citizen, not just two or three. This is the very core belief of the Peace Corps and sustainability. But this man will die by then, and that baby will never survive the week without medication. Do I really want that on my conscience? And so I continue to give small financial aid and consequently feel like a dirty, corrupt volunteer.

There are other issues at hand in this scenario. The family system in Senegal, in much of West Africa to my understanding, is tightly wound and supporting. If you’re in any need, your family is honor and duty bound to assist you. Some are not blessed with a particularly loving or capable family, but that’s the general idea. Let’s consider, however, the viewpoint of such a person in need. You could save yourself the shame and hassle of petitioning your sister or your husband by asking this hapless foreigner. You could find the money in your family, but this poor lad doesn’t know that, right? Also, he’s more likely to give you ten times the amount you actually need, through sheer ignorance or that nagging privilege guilt. Sounds like a good deal!

Secondly, Senegal thrives on the concept of making a quick buck. Any way to fix a piece of junk for two dollars and resell it for ten is seized upon immediately. The amount of money scams in this country is astounding. I may have written about this before, but one that really gets me is coined the ‘prescription scam.’ In this scene a person will find an old hospital prescription in the trash and then set about house to house, asking for small donations to cover the cost of the medicine. “My daughter is so sick, she’s all I have, I need to get her help, please give me a few hundred CFA”. In reality, no one is sick, this person probably doesn’t need the money (at least not desperately) but sees an easy way to fool people into emptying their wallets. The Senegalese are wise to this scam. Foreigners? Not so much.

This isn’t to say we don’t have similar situations in the US of A (or worse, unless I missed something and Bernie Madoff was Senegalese). The difference is merely the continent and the continued perception that Westerners have towards the third world , mainly, Guilt with a capital G. The hand of fate made me a rich American and so I feel compelled to shell out money for those with fates less fortunate. I believe this describes, on a small scale, many failed development schemes. Voila – the reason Peace Corps discourages and frowns upon such handouts, as harmless as they seem.  

My personal problems with sustainability stem from the Master Farmer site. My farmer is working 24/7 to install this field, a place that is producing nothing as of yet. Do the math – this man is broke. He can barely afford bread for breakfast. The Master Farmer program assumes that the farmers have grown children to help in the field and a family support system to feed them during this installation, which most of them do. My farmer, however, owns land in Tambacounda, about 40K from the village where his family lives, and has no grown children. He is living in a small room in Tamba until he can afford to move his family out here. 

Therefore, rather than watch this rail thin man work himself to the bone and suffer pangs of hunger and exhaustion, I’ve been giving him money for food. I also bought him a cell phone to make our work partnership easier – better to just lay it all on the table.

Flashes of red warning signs appear in my mind as I write this. I know, I KNOW it’s unsustainable. Other volunteers would tell me to be wary of setting a precedent that I can’t uphold, or that the next volunteer will be saddled with. They’d tell me I likely don’t know the entire situation and it’d be better to keep the boundaries of volunteer and work partner without travelling into the wastelands of money dependency from which one can never turn back. After all, Peace Corps is funding his farm - in the larger sense, he's one of the lucky ones. I'd be told to just wait it out and things will get better when we start selling vegetables in a few months. And I’d agree. I’d nod my head, say that I understood. And I’d continue to feed him, and I defy anyone who reads this to do differently!

One of my friends in Tamba put her thoughts about this issue very nicely. She said, “Frankly, I’d rather be scammed out of a few dollars than deny someone the help they really need.” My consternation with sustainability rises not from the concept itself or its obvious merit. But I often feel strangled by the notion that I’m not ever supposed to give financial help to those in dire straits, just because I can. I think change agents are forced to sometimes turn a blind eye in the name of the greater good. We can be, if you will...sustaina-blind. 

At the end of the day, I don’t want to set bad precedents or ruin the reputation of my organization, one that is tenuously built and often undermined by wealthy French tourists (zut alors!). I don’t want to leave Senegal having only temporarily helped several people instead of setting in motion long term shifts that will better the nation forever. I also don’t want to look into the face of a distressed mother and tell her her baby will die because it’s not “sustainable” for me to give her two dollars for medicine. A dilemma, my friends. And one that has been much more than challenging to face than any third meal of millet porridge or a hot day.

Until next time,

<3 Phoebe

P.S – It’s been a year, Africa! Happy Anniversary.

Battle against the 'Toubab'

The perks of living in a small village include a Cheers type familiarity - it's where everybody knows your name. No little kids screaming "white person, give me gift" because you're known, you're one of them. No incredulous stares when you speak Wolof well, or not well, or somewhere in between, because your village is used to you.

Of course, I live in a city, so all bets are off. 

I have to re-explain my purpose, my name, my single marital status, my job, no I don't know how to cook the national dish of rice and fish, no I don't want to buy you a plane ticket to France! - to almost every person I encounter. I think some Senegalese kids are trained from birth to yell "toubab!" ("white person!") whenever they see one. What really gets me is when adults yell too. Come on, people. 

Yesterday I was biking furiously to the Pentagon (my field) and a woman called "toubab!" as I passed. I stopped. I turned around. I biked back. She looked blankly at me. I told her politely that "toubab" was not my name. Would she prefer be called simply "African person" or did she go by something else? Did she, in fact, want to talk to me? Or was she just being vocally observant? Yes, there's a white person! Ta da. I got back on my bike to leave. She waved and said "bon voyage, toubab!" as I biked away. Lesson decidedly not learned. 

There's a French grocery store near to my house that sells a lot of my favorite foods such as Pringles, gummy bears, Twix bars, fruit yogurt and olive loaf. (As I write that, I realize I sound like a bizarre five year old. Can't help it...) This store, besides being the reason I don't have any money ever, is also a local hang out for the talibe gangs of Tamba. You'll remember, the talibes are the young Koranic students who are told to beg most of the day, to learn humility. Well, they see me a lot as I come in and out of this store, so I finally taught them all my Senegalese name (Aida) to avoid the typical "toubab" situation. Somehow this information spread all over Tamba so that when I see a talibe now, even in the far reaches of the city, he will know my name! I was pretty impressed by this until another female volunteer came into the regional house one day wondering why all the talibes were calling her "Aida". Drat. 

In my somewhat reluctant role as the white foreigner, I can get away with things that normal Senegalese eschew. Having a pet, for example. Pets here are very rare; most animals serve one sole purpose, I think you can guess what. 

It can be hard to see the too-skinny cows and goats and know where their destiny lies. Of course, there is something more honest in this type of butchering than in buying a pack of chicken breasts at Stop&Shop. At least you know where the meat came from.(Or is that worse? I can't decide.) Unfortunately you don't often know which part of the animal it came from...and that is how I ended up eating sheep testicles last week. Not good. Not even remotely good. 

In March I arrived in Tamba towing my tiny black cat, unnerving half the neighborhood and earning myself a reputation right from the start. Now it's September and I've adopted a puppy to live at the Pentagon, so he can run free in the field and keep us company as we work. I recently took him on a walk through the small village area next to the field and earned myself a whole new reputation. It's important to remember that as strange as Senegal seems to me, I'm giving just as much as I receive; in terms of weirdness, of course. Yes - I'm pretty sure most of Tamba thinks I am very weird. But there are worse things!

Until next time, 

<3 Phoebe

Recent Fun

!

Wassadou, a beautiful campemant 70k from Tamba. I saw hippos!

Surpise, Muus!

Looking fancy for Korite...my younger sister Awa on the far left, followed by neighborhood friends 

Awa and friends!

More neighborhood kids :) 

Me and Awa, relaxing! 

Pure Ridiculousness

One of my great friends is leaving his job with Tostan in Dakar and moving to Chad, to work with The Carter Center for the eradication of guinea worm disease. He’s been fantastic, one of the few people I could really count on in Senegal. This past week I went to Dakar to say my goodbyes and wish him the best of luck.What follows are accounts of a few ridiculous experiences I had while visiting the capitol.

The Nightclub 

Upon arriving in the city, my friend Dan and I grabbed a taxi and asked to go to the Tostan office. Dakar is a large, sprawling city, so normally you have to tell the taxi driver the name of the quartier you want to go to. Unfortunately, I don't know the city very well, so I felt lucky when this driver told me he knew exactly where to go. Dan and I settled into the back with all our bags. 

After fifteen minutes of heavy traffic and twists and turns, we started to be suspicious. "This doesn't look familiar, maybe we should ask him again if he knows where to go," I said. The driver waved off my concern and said "Tostan! Tostan! Yes, I know!" so I sat back. 

We finally arrive at a sketchy corner in the middle of the city, nowhere near the quartier where the Tostan office lies. The driver points out the window. Dan and I confusedly follow the line of his finger before lighting upon a crumbling, broken down nightclub called "Hoissan".

Easy enough mistake to make, I guess. After all, why wouldn't two young Americans want to go to a closed, dirty nightclub in the middle of the day?

The Restaurant

The second day of our trip, we learn our friend who is moving hasn't started to pack...at all. We leave him to it and strike off to view the big market in Dakar and get some lunch. Neither of these tasks proved to be particularly easy.

The market in Dakar is, to say the least, overwhelming. I basically tore out a fair amount of my hair while briefly walking around that day. It's full of desirable items - actually, if you can't find what you want, someone will get it for you in a jiffy. It's like a tag sale hunter's dream in that the hundreds of stalls have no direct correlation to each other and everything is cheap. If you look remotely like a tourist, however, be prepared for the harassment experience of a lifetime. 

A couple men latched on to my friends and me right at once. "Come here! See my brother's shop! Come here! See my cousin's stall! Eat this! Now give me 25 cfa!" This kind of heckling isn't uncommon in any market worldwide, but I hate being followed. 

Two men wanted us to go to a far side of the market to look at a shop. They trailed us as we were looking at fabrics, jewelry, fruit, talking incessantly and trying to move us in the right direction. My short temper finally blew up and I let off a stream of angry Wolof that deterred them momentarily, but not for long. We had to walk far outside the market area before they gave up.

At this point, wallets still full and nothing bought, my friends and I decided to eat. There are a lot of little standing room food shacks in Dakar but there are also some really nice restaurants, so why not take advantage, right? We walked around trying to find something suitable, pushing through heavy crowds and traffic before realizing we'd gone in a giant circle without seeing much. Harassment was on the horizon again so we quickly jumped in a cab and headed across town to another restaurant we'd heard of. 

After another twenty minutes in a cab, we arrive on the clear other side of the city to find the restaurant closed for maintenance. There didn't seem to be a lot in the area but we started walking, trying to find that right combination of cheap, sitting area, good food, and quiet. Hard!

We trudged down a bright, hot avenue, sidestepping into a private residential area by mistake, passing expensive hotel bars and tiny rice shacks. Finally, thirsty and somewhat bewildered about our bad luck in finding a suitable restaurant in this huge city, we stumble upon The IndoChine Palace. 

Parked on a big corner lot, this place had the full decor (inside and out) of a stereotypical Asian restaurant. We crossed a small sloping lawn, complete with statues of Buddhas and dragon fountains. Still unsure if the restaurant was open, we reached the big double doors only to have them open silently (magically!) upon our arrival. A full staff of Senegalese people dressed in traditional Chinese garb welcomed us. I looked at our ensemble in our sweaty, dirty, backpack-carrying glory, and raised an eyebrow. Typical. We were the only customers. 

We sat down at a round table with fancy place settings and cloth napkins, surrounded by eclectic Asian art. I found myself facing a giant stone bust of an African queen. Not quite what I was expecting. 

Over the course of the next hour, we proved ourselves to be unequipped to handle civilized society. After a solid month of eating with our hands, working in the grind of the fields, and showering once a week, it's hard to get back into the swing of... having any manners. To start, the waitress brought us damp hot hand towels. We didn't know what to do with this. I took mine and nervously held it out over my plate. Dan started using it to wipe the sweat off his face. Eventually they lost their heat and the waitress took them back, thank goodness. 

After scanning the menu and realizing nothing cost less than 5 mill (approx.10$, a hefty amount for our 100$ a month salary) we ordered a few things to share. The food was amazing, honestly. I could write about the savory mushroom spring rolls for an entire paragraph (I won't). My friend Minnie and I tore at the spring rolls with our hands while Dan slurped a dumpling soup. 

During the meal, out of the corner of my eye, I spied a mouse. It flitted by our table. I barely reacted. Ten minutes later, Minnie said 'Hm - I think I saw a mouse over there.' Apparently we'd all seen the mouse at different times and no one had mentioned it. Dan said, "Yep - we're still in West Africa." I think our collective lack of reaction says it all. 

The Bars

Third night of our trip, Minnie and I decide to go out on the town. We stop first at a well-known hotel bar for happy hour. The bartender took a liking to us and kept refilling our drinks, so we stayed a while. The clientele consisted of a few overweight foreigners and a old lady dressed in a tennis outfit with a mullet haircut. After whiling away some time with chitchat and wine, we walk a few blocks to the French Cultural Center for dinner, a place famous for exotic burgers. I've probably eaten three burgers in the past six months, so this was a draw. Of course, we get there, and they don't have any burgers. If fact, they didn't seem to have half the menu. With my dismal French I couldn't read most of the entrees, so I asked the waiter to translate into Wolof, which he found hilarious. With his help I ordered a great steak. Success. 

After the restaurant, we walked two blocks to a bar called The Viking. The fact that there is a bar in Senegal named after Nordic blonde warriors is amusing. There were a smattering of people there, mostly foreigners and one very intoxicated Pulaar man. He struck up a conversation with Minnie that was half Pulaar, half incomprehensible slurring, 100% annoying. We left our bar stool seats and went to a table in the half lighted interior. We nursed our drinks and engaged in conversation. After a while, I noticed that seated next to us was an extremely attractive Senegalese woman and a dumpy male white guy. I watched them curiously and saw some money exchange hands before they left together. Not hard to tell what was going on there. At about 2 am, Minnie and I called it quits and headed back to the packed Peace Corps house where I stayed up a bit longer before falling in a sweaty heap onto my bed and waking up five hours later with my shirt stuck to my back, off to the garage to catch a car back to Tamba. 

Overall, a fun trip. West Africa is a colorful place. On the way back, our car broke down four times due to an over-hot engine, so I didn't get home until late. But I'm back and ready to get back to work! Well, sort of. 

Until next time, 

<3 Phoebe 

Start of a New Season

Last night, I woke up suddenly around 3 am. It’s time for a change, I thought. Something’s gotta change.

In my last post, I wrote about falling down, getting up, and moving on. I rearranged my blog, something more ‘fresh and so clean, clean’, and I’ve put out a hit on my stress and anxiety. This whole evacuation, re-adjustment thing has bogged me down for too long, so if I’m going to stay in Senegal, I’d better quit dragging and start living.

Conveniently, Ramadan is over! The rest of Senegal has picked up its feet right along with me. During the month of fasting, i.e the month of food-related aggression, productivity dwindled and tempers ran hot. I accomplished very little and sat in stuffy heat for hours on end. I couldn’t seem to please anyone by fasting or not fasting (see dialogue below). I played dreary rounds of a board game akin to ‘Sorry’, although my board was decorated with pictures of the longest standing African presidents. So, my board was decorated with pictures of Qaddafi.

Needless to say, I’m glad lunch is back. Work can progress and I can stop looking at pictures of Qaddafi’s face for so long that he morphs into sandwiches, roast chicken, or a bucket of ice.

Future plans:
Heading to Dakar to say goodbye to a great friend who traveled with me from Niger to Senegal and is now moving on to Chad. It’ll be sad to see him go, but I know he’s excited for new work opportunities, so I wish him the best!

Finally installing the fence at the Pentagon (aka the Master Farmer site. My Master Farmer, Salif, told me very seriously that his field would be named “The Pentagon. For the national security of food and the elimination of poverty.” Can’t argue with that)

Meeting the new volunteer in Tamba! He/she is already in Senegal, the new class of trainees arrived on Aug 31st. Site allocations won’t be decided for a few more weeks, but the prospect of help has me almost drooling in anticipation. Give them to me NOW!)

Preparing for Halloween. Tamba hosts the Senegal-wide volunteer Halloween Party, so we’re getting prepped early. If anyone wants to send me orange jello…or black spray paint…

That’s it for now! Thanks for keeping up with the change of blog, and keep in touch. :)
Until next time,

<3 Phoebe

Scrapes and Bruises

In the past month, I’ve fallen down a lot. The day before yesterday I fell into a giant hole dug for a mango tree. Yesterday I fell into the same hole…again. Today I fell over while getting on to my bike. (I know…) A couple of weeks ago my closest friend was sent home after a medical evacuation to the States – that was probably the biggest fall of all!

I’ve posted about this particular friend before, but for privacy I’ll use her Senegalese name, Fatu. Refer to "Brief Job Reflection" posted on 5/21 for other stories involving her. We traveled from Niger to Senegal together, surviving the trials and tribulations of re-readjusting and trying to fit into a volunteer culture already formed without us. She’s been the support of a lifetime in only six months. Her tale can be found in her own words at www.shelbyrajk.wordpress.com, but the long and short of it is she ruptured an artery in her intestine and had to be taken to the States for treatment. She’s ok now, but Peace Corps doctors don’t want to risk a recurrence and have decided to medically separate her from service. (The more detailed story involves almost two liters of blood on the ground, a midnight race from Kaolack to Dakar in an ambulance, and two days in a sunny resort-like clinic.)

After returning to Tamba from this impromptu trip to Dakar, I took a few days to reflect before jumping back into my work. What happened to Fatu was a rapid reminder of the general impermanence of our roles as volunteers. We make flash appearances in people’s lives and change them, for better or for worse. We remind the Senegalese of what they don’t have and inspire them to reach for better circumstances. We run the risk of antagonizing those who celebrate a different culture and have no desire to revolutionize. Not for the first time, I questioned if my presence here is right. This is a gray area for me and has been from the start. But I’m still here.
In Fatu’s case, she traveled first to Niger, next to Senegal, each time with the anticipation of an extended stay and each time denied it. I thought about my commitment to stay in Tamba and wondered if we’d all make it through the elections in January, or if I’d survive the loneliness of losing a good friend here. Each day in Peace Corps brings new challenges and opens new doors, and I’ve never experienced anything like it.

The large discrepancy between Fatu’s medical care and that of an average Senegalese was also startling. Healthcare is an enormous issue in the United States and for the first time in my life, I felt thankful, because this indicates our understanding of its importance. In Senegalese villages, healthcare often stops beyond the local healer and not because of unavailability; in fact, the government has made great strides in the past ten years to provide affordable medicines and treatment. Many people have just not grasped the importance of this change, or believe too fervently in methods that have low statistical success but are traditional. Those who do understand are often not making the decisions within families. This is the challenge given to health volunteers, not just with Peace Corps but with any organization – to modify behavior.  It’s a psychological shift more than anything else. The effort of these volunteers is incredible and their successes immeasurable, quite literally.

If Fatu had been a poor Senegalese, chances are high she would have died. I thank the Peace Corps doctors for their quick action and salute the many volunteers who are working to shift that imbalance, to not only offer good care to all poorer citizens in Senegal, but insure that it is taken advantage of.

After my few days of reflection, I tackled the workload that had been piling up in my absence. My volunteer work partner and friend has since moved on to greener pastures, and I don’t mean that as a metaphor. He moved to Thies, a city just outside Dakar, and actually much, much greener than Tamba. He’ll be helping out there for a year with new volunteer trainings and support. Unfortunately, that leaves me to try and take on two volunteers’ worth of projects. So far it’s been pretty difficult.

To sum it up briefly, I am still partnering with the Master Farmer program, as well as trying to revive the demonstration garden after a few months of neglect. I’ve taken on a women’s garden to assist and struck up a relationship with AfriCare to help with a series of gardening trainings.  The school garden is on hold for a bit until school starts in October. In theory, I am doing all of the above - in reality, I am at the Master Farmer field all day every day, with quick appearances at the demo garden to water and drive-bys of the women’s garden to say “Try to weed better! Well, I gotta go!”

I’d say so far I’m failing to maintain all the projects I’d like to be involved in. The MF field is full time and frankly, time is running out. We’re on a strict seasonal clock here. There will be a replacement volunteer in Tamba arriving in the beginning of November, and I’m crossing my fingers that I can hold on to everything until then. I don’t want to have to show him/her an empty wasteland and say “Now grow things!”  So wish me luck. I’ll need it.

As I said, I’ve fallen down a lot this month, both physically and emotionally. Working in this environment has tested me in every possible manner. At the same time, I've learned things about myself and the world I would never have known otherwise. I hope to keep sharing these things with you. For now, what I've learned is that for every time I fall down, I'm able to pick myself back up again.

Until next time,
<3 Phoebe

Mason! Mason! Build Me a Toolshed! But Seriously.

Hello!

It's been too long! My relationship with this blog has been infinitely better than my relationship with my journal (she'll be calling it off any day now) and yet I've still neglected it. My apologies. A lot has happened in the past month!

June passed very quickly. I spent most of it wrestling with the mason at my Master Farmer site. We hired a mason to build a stone tool shed, what should be a four day project, but one month and three masons later, we're still not done. Building projects in Senegal are troublesome, to say the least. In my case, I learned the person who builds the shed is not the same person who installs the roof...but then you need an additional mason to put bricks on top of the roof after it's in place, because the roof worker can't possibly do that. How do you get a mason out to your field? Not by offering money and work, apparently! How do you get two masons and a roof worker? You don't, you just don't. Sigh.

Now it's nearly finished but the window's been cemented in upside down, a problem I can't even deign to address right now. The roof is on! Hooray! We'll focus on that.

After struggling to comprehend the intricacies of Senegalese work patterns, I left for a much needed vacation in London with my parents. It was a week of blissful tourism in which I was paid absolutely no attention by the casual passerby...hence the bliss! Don't underestimate the power of anonymity. After seven months of constant heckling, it was wonderful not to be noticed. We ducked in and out of  famous pubs, stormed the Tower, stood in two time zones in Greenwich, visited Hell during Dr. Faustus at the Globe and in general, enjoyed ourselves very much. It was a much appreciated and restful break.

Now I'm home, back in Tamba and gearing myself up for a summer of working in the fields. So far I've battled land title rights with my garden partners, extended rice and bean seed to a local farmer and witnessed the capping of our tool shed at the MF site. I'll be doing more research than I ever have, conducting studies on why one type of seed is better than another or why this practice is more beneficial than that one, and hopefully writing a comprehensive report to submit to Peace Corps in Washington. It all sounds very official! I've said this before, but the illusion of Peace Corps volunteers sitting around in the shade fanning flies off themselves has been shattered into many pieces - although the advent of rainy season has introduced more flies than I can possibly cope with. I just ignore them. It's worked so far.

I have to run to Wolof class, but I'll try to write more regularly - I'm excited to say some of my fellow Niger refugees have recently found success in Peace Corps Ghana, Moldova, and Kenya so I'm very proud of them and can't wait to hear more!

As for things stateside, I miss everyone very much and letters are on their way. I promise. I bought stamps after three hours of general confusion at the post office, so count on it!

<3 Phoebe

P.S For a look into another side of the volunteer experience, read my friend's latest entry on her blog. It's a good insight into more frustrating part of Peace Corps and I relate to much of what she says. Just in case you're interested!

http://shelbyrajk.wordpress.com/