Hello everyone! It’s been awhile. I’ve been traveling and moving around a lot, which has been exciting but also stressful, hence the lack of updates. And the excitement isn’t over yet – I still have one week of In-Service Training left! But I’ll still try to take a moment to tell y’all the latest from SENEGAL!
At the end of June, I had a language seminar in the faraway region of Tambacounda. Tamba is traditionally known as being the hot region. For instance, my counterpart told me that when you’re making coffee in Tamba, you don’t even need to boil the water. You just take the water straight out of the faucet because Tamba is so hot! Initially, the seminar was scheduled for Thies, aka my home, aka where I have been for the past 4 months. But I told the Peace Corps administration, “I NEED TO EXPERIENCE OTHER PARTS OF SENEGAL, NOT JUST THE RICH ONES!” and they agreed and changed my group’s session to Tamba. I was stoked!
Getting to Cady’s village, Kouthia Ba, was quite an adventure, especially because my travel buddy had take a medical leave after hurting her back the day before our trip. This meant I had to navigate the Senegalese garage system for the first time…. and do it by myself. The garage system is how Senegal does transport. It basically encompasses a million old station wagons that sit around and wait for 7 people who want to go to the same place. If you’re going somewhere that typically, no one wants to go (aka Tambacounda… sorry Tamba), you can sit around and wait alllllll daaayyy for seven people to fill up your car. I was the third person in the car, so I had a long wait. But on the plus side, being early meant I got to choose a breezy window seat and not be thrown into what is basically the trunk of the station wagon, so that was good. When our car finally hit the road, I kind of felt like I was on a family road trip. You know, me, the three kids stuffed into two seats next to me, the college students in the back, and the random, 7 foot tall Mauritanian man. Long story short, I made it to the village of Kouthia Ba!
It was cool to see how the village people live (opposed to The Village People, who live lavish lives financed by royalties to ‘In the Navy’ and ‘Macho Man’). The days were long but it was fun just chatting with some of her neighbors and family. We even got to witness a monumental soccer match one day: Cady’s village versus the kids from the giant road town. On paper, this match-up frightened me. This matchup also frightened me when the road town team showed up: they were each literally twice the size of each of our kids, due to age difference or nutrition, I don’t really know. BUT! Our kids were amazing! They were like quick and sprightly and just played like such a well-oiled machine! At the end of regulation time, the score was 2-2. SHOOTOUT! And wouldn’t you know, Cady’s village came out on top on the very last kick… it doesn’t get more dramatic than that. And of course, the entire village was in attendance to watch and they went WILD! They really did go wild, not just me. I tried to capture it in a picture and failed.
As for village accommodations, Cady has a sweet hut setup that includes a giant outdoor bed, which is great when it’s stiflingly hot inside. But in addition to her outdoor bed, she also has, literally, a PACK of giant rats, numerous other small rodents, and some white-tailed mongeese that party it up between 1am and 5am every night. As a city girl, I was not used to the noises I was hearing. I was terrified. We also ate rice and peanuts every day for dinner. That was hard for me. Luckily Cady had some ketchup, which kind of made our dinner taste like a Big Mac if we ate it in the dark.
But it was fun to be in a village! As we drove away, stuffed into a bush taxi, rolling down a dirty road, breaking down numerous times, I couldn’t help but vow to visit as many villages as I can in Senegal. AND I WILL!
Hopefully I’ll have some entries about the 4th of July and the other stuff I’ve been doing up soon! Until then, love from Senegal :)
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