While I prefer to write my posts on a single topic, I think that my six month mark here in Senegal is an appropriate time to reflect on my service thus far and where I see it going in the foreseeable future. Through training's and just living life in village, I have slowly gained a better understanding of what projects I will work on during the next two years of my life. Though learning the local language (Jaxanke) has been difficult, the experience has allowed me to better integrate into my community. Over the past half year I have integrated into two distinct communities: my Senegalese village life and the Peace Corps volunteer community. While at times they overlap, say when we visit each other sites, mostly we live two lives quite unique from one another. Over this stretch of time I have learned about and practiced subsistence farming, gotten malaria and made a boat load of new friends. So what better way to catch everyone up on what I'm doing than to post some pictures since we all know a picture is worth a thousand words...
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| About two days before I left for Africa. What better way to leave the country for an extended period of time than to hang out in D.C. |
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| Welcome to Senegal! Beside the two hour bus ride from the Airport in Dakar the training center in Thies was the only part of Senegal I saw for my first week. It was in the training center that I learned which language I would learn and where I would be going for my permanent site. |
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| During Pre Service Training (PST) I split my time between the training center, used mostly for technical training, and my host family in the city of Mbour located about an hour south of Thies on the Atlantic Ocean. |
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| Ag stuff. As a sustainable Agriculture Extension Agent its important to know how to grow things. During PST, we tended to our school garden during the time not spent learning our new languages. |
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| Ataya aka Senegalese tea. The best time to drink ataya is any time. Sometime with mint added always full a sugar, there is no better way to sweat away the afternoon than with three glasses of sweet sweet goodness. |
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During PST its always important to stay positive. While the language learning moved at a snails pace, out compost matured quite quickly.
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| Transportation in Senegal can be uncomfortable at times, all the reason to have a positive attitude! |
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| Swearing In. After passing our final language test, we were allowed to become official volunteers. Held at the Ambassadors mansion, all of us dawned our Senegalese best and enjoyed some interesting appetizers before being shipped of to our permanent sites. |
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| Goodbye PST! After swearing in we celebrated the Muslim holiday Tabasiki with our PST families. One last farewell later and I was off to Tambacounda, my home region for the next two years |
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| Pictured here with my village appointed counterpart Djellano Sylla on my first day at site. |
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| This is my hut. Nothing to fancy, water filter to keep the parasites and bacteria at bay and a screen door to let the breeze in. |
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| Fun. After two months in village, the West African Invitational Softball Tournament (WAIST) in Dakar occurred. A time most volunteers wait months for. With softball games during the day and parties at night, WAIST was a great way blow off steam after after two months in the bush. |
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Back to School. After three months in village it was back to Thies for In-Service Training (IST). With training's ranging from how to graft mango trees to proper seed storage techniques, IST was an intensive eleven day training.
So there it is, six months rolled nicely into one blog post. Currently, I am working on a garden in my village and tree nursery for future reforestation projects. I try and stay as busy as possible; whether its teaching English, visiting the garden or chilling under a mango tree there is always something to occupy the life of a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal. |
