No More Hand Holding

After Swear-In it became immediately clear that as far as Peace Corps is concerned, we’re big kids now. What does this mean? Basically they got us back to Thies that night and gave us each enough money to get to our regional capitals, and that was it. We spent the next two nights at the center in Thies, but the party was over. No more meals cooked for us, no one coming in to restock the toilet paper, etc. Time to start taking care of ourselves again.

Over the course of the weekend, everyone except the new volunteers in the Dakar/Thies regions headed out to their regional houses. From the regional house (or the training center in the case of the Dakar/Thies people), PC personnel would pick everyone up one by one, and take them to their site. So Sunday morning, myself and the 20 other new volunteers in the Kaolack/Fatick/Kaffrine regions packed all of our stuff onto a bunch of sept places (the station wagon type transportation) and headed off to Kaolack. Getting to Kaolack was, as always, a bit of an adventure. I swear, sometimes I truly forget that I live in the developing world, but traveling always serves as a reminder. For one, we must’ve been pulled over by the gendarmes at least 3 or 4 times. Nothing too exciting, but they always seem to feel the need to stop you and have a look when they see a bunch of Toubabs zooming by. Plus, there are so many potholes on the road from Thies to Kaolack that the drive there can best be likened to a real-life game of Mario Kart. Cars swerving all over the road, some choosing to abandon it entirely and drive through the grass, even one slightly-too-close-for-comfort near collision with oncoming traffic. Always an adventure!

But we all made it to the regional house in one piece. My install date was Wednesday, October 21^st, so I spent the next several days wandering around the city, slowly buying all the things I’d need to take to site with me. So what exactly does a PCV moving to site for the first time need? Voila, my shopping list:

• 2 large washing basins for laundry – I may have a flushing toilet and a shower now, but I definitely won’t be seeing a washing machine again until I get back to America. Sigh.
• Side note: in case you were wondering, laundry and mysterious bleach stains do continue to be the BANE OF MY EXISTENCE. I avoid bleach near my clothes like it’s the plague and yet these stains continue to appear. I believe at last count, I am down 7 shirts and one of my favorite skirts. EIGHT articles of clothing! I swear, laundry is a constant test to my resolve to stay here. I’m going to have to have a tie-dye party to mask the stains because I really don’t have enough clothes without all those shirts. Which means I’ll be spending the next two years wearing more tie-dye than people in the 60s. But I digress…
• Laundry clips for hanging things out to dry – no washing machine means there are definitely no dryers. But really, the sun dries things faster anyway
• 2 buckets with lids for storing food and other things that I don’t want mice getting into
• 1 plastic cup for taking bucket baths – when the electricity goes out for an extended period of time (which it often does) so does the running water. Thus, sometimes showering is not an option. Wah wah.
• Gas tank with a burner – stoves/ovens are also not something you see frequently
• Bowls/plates/silverware for those occasions when I feel ambitious enough to use said gas tank to cook for myself
• Broom/dustpan
• FAN!!!! – I have been dreaming about having one of these for the past two months. SO AMAZING!
• Hand washing station – sinks aren’t a common bathroom feature here, so they have these things instead. It’s basically a teapot that sits on top of a large covered bowl. The cover has holes in it, so you pour the water from the teapot over the bowl to wash your hands and then empty the bowl periodically.
• Power strip – its incredibly rare to find a room that has more than one electrical outlet
• 2 trunks – 1 for locking stuff up at site, 1 for locking stuff up at the regional house
• Toilet paper – some of my fellow PCVs claim that I’m not “integrating enough” by continuing to use toilet paper. I however am a firm believer that just because the Senegalese don’t use TP doesn’t mean I can’t. If that limits my integration…so be it. I’m far too much of a germ-a-phobe to do without.
• Side note 2: this tendency not to use TP is one of the reasons why no one uses their left hand to interact with others in Senegal. Think about it for a minute, and I’m sure you’ll figure out why…
• Voltage regulator – pricey, but I’d very much like to avoid my computer getting fried by one of the many, many power surges around here
• Thin foam mattress – because I was too cheap to spring for the fancy thick one
• Gifts for my new family

So in case you were wondering, there you have it…everything (or at least I hope since that took up most of my settling-in allowance) one could need for setting up a home in Senegal. All of this stuff was bought at the market in Kaolack (which, fun fact, is the largest covered market in Africa!). And with the help of some PCVs who’ve been in country for a while and my own bargaining skills, I think I managed not to get ripped off too much on anything. Hurrah!

Next time: moving to Nioro!

My "Commencement" Speech

As much as it embarrasses me to post this, some people requested so here it is…my speech from our swearing-in ceremony. Don’t worry, I translated it into English for all the non-Francophones out there. I swear it sounds better in French (since that’s how I wrote it originally), so don’t be too harsh in judging it!

Mesdames, Mesdemoiselles et Monsieurs…

Hello, I hope that you are all well. My name is Elizabeth Corkery, but here in Senegal, my name is Adama Barro. I am a small enterprise development volunteer and I will be living in Nioro for the next two years. To start, I’d like to speak to you about our stage…

We are fifty-two Americans who came to Senegal for a lot of different reasons, but all with the hope of helping the Senegalese. When we arrived in Dakar in August, we were like children. No one could speak the local languages or even perform simple tasks like washing our own laundry. So, we spent the last nine weeks in eleven villages at cities near Thies, learning the languages, the culture, technical skills and, in general, how to take care of ourselves in this new culture.

I, for example, lived in Tassete with the Barro family. With my fellow trainees, I took French classes and, towards the end of stage, we learned Wolof as well. Also, we became true members of our families and our community.

I think that all the trainees share the opinion that the last few weeks have been difficult. We made lots of mistakes in the languages and the culture; and each trainee destroyed at least one article of clothing while trying to do his or her laundry.

However, with the help of our families and our Peace Corps trainers, we survived. At present, there are people among us who can speak French, Wolof, Mandinka, Serere and even three varieties of Pulaar. Also, we have a better understanding of Senegalese culture and everyday life here.

At the beginning of next week, we will leave for villages and cities all over Senegal. Even though we are scared, I know that after having completed training, we are ready to stand on our own two feet.

So, on behalf of our stage, I would like to say thank you to our families and our communities for teaching us and for putting up with all of our faux-pas and all of the bizarre things that we did. Also, thank you to Peace Corps staff for their support and their patience throughout our training. Without the help of all of these people, we could not be good volunteers.

We are all very excited to go to our sites and I know that, with the continued support of the Senegalese, we will spend two productive and prosperous years here.

So, long life to the collaboration between Senegal and the Peace Corps…

And thank you for your attention.

It's Official!

Sorry for the extended absence everyone. Procrastinating is one of my most well exercised talents, which I’m sure all of you know. So really…this post about Swear-In may be a month late, but for me, that’s practically on time. Enjoy!

[Also, for those who might not know…Swear-In refers to the ceremony that marks the end of training and the transition from PCT to Peace Corps Volunteer.]

Swear-In was October 16^th (exactly two months and three days after our arrival in country!) at the home of the U.S. Ambassador to Senegal. So that morning we all woke-up early and decked out in our Senegalese finest for the big day. Then we piled into a couple of vans and fell in behind our police escorts (I know, we’re a big deal…) for the trip from Thies to Dakar.

Miracle of miracles, we managed to arrive early. So we sat around and chatted for a bit while assorted Peace Corps and U.S. Embassy staff and Senegalese dignitaries gradually streamed in. Once everyone had arrived and was seated, the ceremony got under way.

The ceremony was more or less exactly what you would expect from such a government affair. It started with speeches from our Training Director, Demba Sidibe, the Director of Peace Corps Senegal, Chris Hedrick, and U.S. Ambassador Marcia Bernicat. Then the Ambassador had us all stand up and swear our oath. I wish I could tell you I remember exactly what the oath involved, but frankly it escapes me at the moment. Basically we swore to uphold the ideals of the Peace Corps and the U.S. Government, etc. I swear I was paying attention, but I was also rather distracted with worrying about screwing up my speech or tripping over my pagne on the way to the podium. [Pagne’s are traditional wrap skirts and they are deceptively hard to walk in. Especially for a klutz like yours truly.]

After oath, came the volunteer speeches. Our language trainers selected four people from our stage to write and give speeches in the local languages during the ceremony. Lucky lucky me (because we all know how much I adore speaking in public), I was selected to give the French speech. But first up was Shannon, who gave a speech in Mandinka. I couldn’t understand a single word she said, but it is a very beautiful sounding language. Then KC gave her speech in Puallafuta, which is a dialect of Pulaar spoken in Kedogou, a region in the Southeast of the country. After KC, it was my turn to give my French speech…

To say I was nervous would probably be the understatement of the century. One, I’ve never been a fan of public speaking. And two, it was bad enough that I had to give the speech in front of the 150 people at the ceremony, but the week before (and of course after I’d already agreed to do it) I learned that the ceremony, my speech included, was going to be broadcast across the country. YIKES! However, I made it to the podium without falling and overall, I think the speech went quite well. My hands were shaking like leafs, but I was able to hide them behind the podium. Plus, years of theater and being forced to give presentations in business classes taught me how to keep my voice steady even when the rest of my body is shaking from nerves. I even got a few laughs from my jokes about us Toubabs not knowing how to do our laundry by hand or basically take care of ourselves here, haha. So I consider it to have been a successful endeavor.

Following my speech, Byron gave the last PCV speech in Wolof. Then the Secretary General to the President gave a speech; and the ceremony concluded with the APCDs (Associate Peace Corps Director) for Agriculture and SED giving out our new PCV ID’s and letters of partnership with government agencies. And that was pretty much it for the exciting swearing-in ceremony.

After the ceremony, there were drinks (non-alcoholic, of course…95% Muslim country after all) and food out in the backyard. Unfortunately, I was way laid from my attempted assault on the mini-hamburgers (don’t judge…you’d miss them terribly too) by someone from a Finish newspaper doing an article on the Peace Corps. I’m not entirely sure why the only non-Senegalese or American press person there was from Finland of all places, but in an effort to be a good new PCV I answered his questions. Unsurprisingly I was asked if the fact that the economy is so bad right now motivated my decision to join the Peace Corps. The number of people applying to join the PC has gone up considerably over the past year so I understand why everyone always asks that question. Nevertheless, I’m happy that my answer to that question is, “No, I in fact gave up a job to do Peace Corps.” I think anyone deciding to join PC, regardless of their reasons, is a good thing; but I do like to remind reporters that the state of the job market is not the reason that the majority of people decide to become a volunteer.

Anyway, that was a tangent…but after I finished talking to the Fin, I again tried to make my way over the food. No such luck. I noticed that the Press Director for Peace Corps was waving in my direction trying to get someone to come over, but I just assumed she was waving at the group of LCFs standing behind me. Not so much. It took me several minutes of awkward, “Wait, are you talking to me?!” type gestures to realize that it was me she wanted to come over. Next thing I know I’m standing in front of a news camera being interviewed in French. I had no idea that they’d want me to do that, so I was a little flustered, but I think for the most part it went well.

After my brief, but shining moments in the press (HA) were over, I got down to taking lots of group photos. Then all of us newly minted PCVs went over to the Atlantic Club for some relaxing by the pool before we headed back to Thies. That evening we also threw ourselves a “Hurrah, we made it!” party at the local speak easy. (Otherwise known as the home of the Catholic guy who has a bar in his courtyard, haha). All but one person from our stage came to the party, which was great. It was nice to have one last night to relax and hang out with everyone before we scattered across the country. All in all, it was a great day and I couldn’t be happier that training is over!!

More Pictures!!

I've got some free time near the internet this weekend so more blog posts to come soon, but in the meantime...I've updated my pictures! So if you care to check them out, here are the links again.

For pictures of our end of PST celebration and Swear-In, click here: Adventures During PST

and for pics of what my new home in Nioro looks like, click here: Life of a PCV

ba beneen!