How I Deal with Holiday Emotions

As December unfolds, I find myself getting a little depressed. Maybe it’s because I miss my friends and family who are undoubtedly doing things like laughing extremely loudly while drinking hot chocolate in front of fireplaces and wearing sweaters or ice dancing to holiday music as snow gently falls on their faces. These are my default images in all of my darkest moments. Because I cannot imagine anyone back home doing what, in all actuality, they probably are doing: just sitting, or something, or like eating chips out of a bag on a couch, or maybe being on Facebook during a meeting. No. In my dreams, America, as well as all of the people I love, are maestros of life, excitement, and action.

But to alleviate my sadness, I’ve been finding ways to distract myself. For instance:

I built this Christmas tree for myself using a metal rod I found in a garbage heap, an empty can of powdered milk, various paint brushes, and construction paper. I expected my host family to be embarrassed for me when they saw it, as the Senegalese typically shun anything whose beauty doesn’t depend on glitter or shiny aspects, but they were just all-around impressed. I admit that every time I walk into my little apartment and see my tree, it does make me happy. Success!

I also recently celebrated the Islamic holiday of Tamharit, or the Muslim New Year. Everyone had told me that it would be a decently raucous time, complete with a special meal of millet, chicken, and milk (in phases, not all together.) They also told me that children cross-dress and then go from home to home, demanding candy and money. As a strange character in Senegal who somehow encompasses both genders and all ages when it comes to cultural standards, I was encouraged to dress up like a man. I accepted because, duh. That sounds awesome. I figured I might even get some candy out of the deal. So using my own mannish clothes and face paint sent by my father, I turned myself into Moussa Coulibaly, an average Senegalese man who needs a wife:

Unfortunately for me, everyone else, including my fun-loving four year old host sister Bigue, refused to dress up. “I’m wearing girl clothes!” she exclaimed with disgust when I implored her to dress up like a man with me. Even the baby was weirded out. My family insisted that after dinner, we’d all go on a walk around the neighborhood and see all of the kids in their costumes. We went on a walk and saw no one, NOT ONE PERSON, cross dressing. Except for me. The magical cross dressing toubab of Thies. I somewhat resembled a gay pirate.

I also recently attended the US Marine Ball in Senegal, just like Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake!

My site mate Clare and I went on a double date with two Marines stationed in the capital. It was like a Cinderella story: two poor, dirty Peace Corps volunteers lavished with things like prom dresses and hair curlers then thrown into a fancy social situation with the elite ex-pats of Dakar. Actually, it was a lot like Cinderella, since around midnight, I totally crashed and turned into an exhausted metaphorical pumpkin. Too much excitement! But when the excitement includes things like watching Marines slice birthday cake with swords, you live with no regrets.

But ultimately, as an American, I can’t help but default to work as my number one to distract myself from FEELINGS. And in that respect, I have been successful. I’ve been working on making the Life Skills manual more user-friendly, which means new fonts! New pictures! And magical colors! But, cheesily, I admit that it does make me happy to see the changes I’ve made with it. Here's a small example of the original manual Bethany and I started working off of, and where it is now:

I have meetings during the next few weeks with our teachers about revisions, so hopefully those are productive. I’ve also started helping with local English classes again. For my first class, I’ve gone to a few different schools and taught listening comprehension using a lesson about schools in America. One class was especially chatty, and we had a fun conversation about the differences between Senegal and America. They were shocked at the idea that kids are basically locked inside schools all day, and I really enjoyed delving into the details of middle school dress codes in America. Your skirt must extend longer than your hand reaches, your tank top straps must be thicker than three finger widths, and you can’t wear shirts that advertise cigarettes or alcohol. It all came back to me so quickly!

So yes, this is how I distract myself. I also hope to indulge myself a little as the holidays draw nearer and take at least some sort of vacation to celebrate with friends. But until then, please, keep doing things like sledding at all hours of the day, riding horses, running through open fields of corn, climbing mountains, and going to McDonalds. It’s the American way.

Carnivorous Times and My Week as a Nurse

After Tabaski, life continued on the upswing. To start with, we continued eating sheep meat for the next three weeks. I’ve since found out that this makes many people, mostly old men that I come across in office situations, very angry. They sit during lunch and shovel the meat into their mouths, muttering about how ridiculous it is that we’re being served meat AGAIN and all they really want is a big vat of fried fish, or as they call it, real food. They complain and complain and make a lot of grumbling noises. I have issues with this. First of all, if they want the fish so bad, I think they should just figure out how to cook it themselves. That’s what I do when I have cravings for things like popcorn, guacamole, or brownies: I find a way to make it work, even if that means I mix cocoa powder with butter and sugar and just make some kind of weird batter that somehow satisfies me. But second of all, their pain is my happiness. I try not to talk to myself about how, at the end of the day, I’m just not a big fish person. But the more I admit that to myself, the harder the next 18 months will be, so mostly, I just eat the fish every day. Except for the three weeks after Tabaski, when all of my dreams come true and I just stuff my face without thinking.

I also had the chance to participate in a really cool project during November. Global Smile Foundation, an organization that travels around the world doing cleft lip surgeries, came to my city and called upon some Peace Corps volunteers to give them some extra support. No one really knows what causes cleft lips and palates – some say it’s merely genetic, others say it’s often linked to a deficiency during birth – but the fact remains that in America, they’re almost always corrected immediately in small children. In Senegal, on the other hand, there is only one team of doctors who do the surgery (which apparently gives them rock-star status... I told my host family I was helping with cleft lip surgeries and they knew the names of the doctors, despite none of them ever having a cleft.) Kids with clefts grow up with difficulties eating and speaking, not to mention social ostracization. One family we spoke to brought their 25 year old daughter. They had not sent her to school, thinking her cleft evidenced a lack of intelligence, and she hardly left the house. All of this due to lack of an extremely simple surgery – a surgery that organizations like Global Smile Foundation come in and perform for free.

I had no idea what to expect when I showed up the first day, but soon found myself exercising one of the few skills I’ve picked up in life: holding babies. Or more specifically, weighing babies during their pre-surgery consultations. The second baby I touched threw up all over me.

But when I returned to the hospital for my next shift with the project, I found all of the other Peace Corps volunteers rushing around wearing OR scrubs and juggling medical equipment. I was flabbergasted; I’d assumed we’d be helping with mostly administrative tasks, but here we were, being allowed to participate in the thick of it. I was even invited to observe some operations directly, but since I knew that I would undoubtedly pass out and maybe even fall into some sort of coma at the sight of blood because I am such a strong, fearless person, I declined and stayed in the PACU. The PACU is where they brought patients after the operations, to let them sleep off the anesthesia and monitor the vitals for a short bit. To be fair, I did get squirted with blood once, due to an unruly child who became aggressive with his IV. Luckily, Coke and cookies saved me from passing out. I also had the essential jobs of downloading Rihanna and Willow Smith music videos to distract the disoriented or frightened kids, as well as making age and sex appropriate outfits from suitcases of donated clothes for each patient. I took it very seriously. Personal shopper to the passed out.

The week was just really great though. The team did about 10 surgeries a day, but each day would stretch out to about 12 hours – which meant they were long, but we also had a lot of opportunities to get to know the kids and families that we were treating, not to mention share a lot of stories about Senegal with the visiting GSF team. And all of the Americans were just so wonderful to work with. Peace Corps work is, by nature, pretty slow: taking the time to integrate takes a lot of time, and the projects we end up enacting usually don’t show results until after we’ve left. In that respect, it was a lovely change of pace to work with a project that produced visible results so quickly. And watching nearly every single mother well up when she saw her child’s corrected lip or palate after the surgery really sealed the deal: the difference being made, not only physically but in the lives of these kids and families, was obvious.

Well, maybe not as obvious in this photo as it was in real life. But trust me! You can read more about Global Smile Foundation's work here! http://www.gsmile.org/