Volunteer Visit

As part of the pre-service training program, all trainees go and visit a current volunteer for a couple of days to get a taste of what the volunteer life is really like. So after we found out our permanent sites, we were all matched up with current volunteers for a four-day “demystification” visit. Byron, another SED trainee, and I went to go visit a volunteer named Jessica, who is also SED and has been in Senegal for a little over a year now. She lives about 30 KM south of Kaolack, the capital of the region that I will be living in (clarification: Kaolack is the name of the capital AND of the region. Potentially confusing, I know).

So last Saturday morning, after getting a late start (because between Senegal and the Peace Corps…everything is always late), all of the other trainees bound for southern Kaolack and I piled into a Peace Corps Land Rover and headed out. The distance between Thies and Kaolack is only like 130 KM so you’d think it’d take what, an hour and a half tops, right? Wrong. Road maintenance is far from a priority here once you get outside of Dakar. The trip took almost 3 hours because we had to zig-zag all over the road like a kid trying to drive in one of those street racing games at the arcade. But eventually we made it to the regional house in Kaolack to pick up one of the volunteers that another trainee was visiting and set off again…first stop, Jessica’s village. Well if you thought that the trip to the regional capital took an exceptionally long amount of time, it had nothing on the 30 KM trip to Jessica’s village. Yeah, it took over two hours of basically off-roading it through potholes and puddles the size of a mini lake. As a comparison, my family went on a Pink Jeep tour in Sedona this past spring, which involved taking a Jeep up and over the rock formations all over that part of the country. Well this trip to Jessica’s village was infinitely bumpier and Kaolack is pretty much entirely flat. Ohhh Senegal! But while it might sound to you that my trip to volunteer visit was exceptionally long or rough, it was nothing compared to some of the people who had to trek out to more remote locations. Some of my fellow PCTs actually had to spend the night on the side of the road in the bush because the numerous Peace Corps cars sent to fetch them got stuck in the mud upwards of 15 times. Yeah…makes my car ride seem like a limousine doesn’t it?

Other than that, the volunteer visit was pretty uneventful. We spent the first two days checking out Jessica’s village and getting clued in to all the latest Peace Corps gossip. Then, since there wasn’t much going on in her village due to Ramadan, we decided to catch an Alham up to the regional capital for the next two nights. Alham btw is Peace Corps slang for the big white vans that serve as public transportation over here. They’re actually called Ndiaga Ndiaye’s, but they all have “Alhamdulillah” painted on them in big, bright letters…so we call them Alhams for short. Basically, I would liken them to a death trap on wheels that in no way appears to be road worthy when they are empty, let alone when they are packed full of 35+ people with assorted bags and animals hanging out on the roof. We take one of these beautiful contraptions out to our training village all the time and the floor of the van is actually made of wood and has numerous holes in it. Fun times, fun times. Never the less, so far so good on them getting me where I’m going in one piece, so I’ll take it. Its kind of amazing the puddles and mud these things trudge through...especially because I’m quite sure that the car I drive back in the states, which is in perfect working order, could never handle them.

Anywho, we spent the next few days at the regional capital checking things out and pretending we were back in America. I ate macaroni and cheese (thank you PCVs who share their care packages!) and several cheeseburgers, sat in the air-conditioned room at the regional house, and marathoned some of season 2 of The O.C. with the other people at the house. It was pretty amazing. Oh and Byron and I successfully took on the city of Kaolack and its labyrinth of a market without the aid of a PCV or LCF to act as interpreter/guide. We were quite pride of ourselves, haha. The downside of training is that you start to get used to having some one there to interpret things and more or less do everything for you, but when we get to a site in a month we’re not going to have that anymore. So it was nice to prove to ourselves that we actually can do it alone.

So after having some major American time in Kaolack we headed back to the center for a couple of days of technical/cross-culture classes. Now, as I mentioned in my previous post, I’m headed back to Tassete for language classes and to celebrate Korite. I’m also working on planning a beach weekend for our stage with my friend Kathryn, which should be tons of fun. Feel free to send me a million emails to read when I get back (HINT)…later!