ho ho ho

Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas. Christmas was spent in Ndioum with a few volunteers, many left for holiday. It was a great time with friends, like a little family celebration. I got to cook tons of food which was empowering- controlling what you eat and fulfilling certain food cravings, yes please!

2011, welcome to my life! I spent New Years in Saint Louis, which is absolutely beautiful. I’m in love with Saint Louis, there’s everything there, you can walk around and act like a tourist and not get bothered- or you can throw done some mad Pulaar skills and show everyone what’s up. Speaking Pulaar in Saint Louis was actually pretty easy, because Saint Louis is only about 4 hours away from some Pulaar speaking villages/towns. I arrived at Saint Louis Dec 31st and met up with fellow volunteers at our hotel. It was a Peace Corps chaotic celebration, which means it was ultimately tons of fun! Akon performed a free concert for the people of Ndaar (Saint Louis), which I was about to go but never made it down there which was fine I still spent New Years with great people and got to hear all about Akon’s lipsyncing hamster ball performance afterwards.

My birthday arrived… uninvitedly. I hate birthdays, one year older- gross. I’m now 23 years old, I spent my birthday in village. I had an Environmental Club meeting with my primary school kids, and we went ahead and seeded our garden- I didn’t tell anyone in my village it was my birthday cause they don’t really celebrate birthdays and I don’t like celebrating my birthday. I told my EE club about it the next day, only because they asked me how old I was and I told them that as of the day before I’m 23, and they were disappointed I didn’t tell them it was my birthday. But come on! Really?! I’m totally fallin’ in love with these kids, I’m enjoying working with kids so much it’s going great. It’s really hard but I want my service to be dedicated to working with the kids. It’s easier working with the kids that are still in school just because it’s easier for me to gather them up, but I want to work with the other kids too to teach them more technical skills for their life and work. It’s just harder to organize, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

So right now I’m waiting for my village to gather their cash community donation money for the health hut project after I receive all of that I’ll take the rest of the money out of the bank account and we’ll start putting that project into action. But in the mean time I’ve been working with my EE club, of about 11 students in the oldest class for primary school. I’m attempting to start up a reforestation group but once again it’s hard coordinating schedules especially because it’s working with adult males… tedious!

Awa, a gender development trainer came to my primary school and did a talk with the CM1 and CM2 kids, which are the two oldest classes. She talked to them about forced marriages, staying in school, studying hard etc. We also had her do a talk at the College in Ndioum, because there are no volunteers in Ndioum we all came together and helped. This talk was much more serious because the older crowd, an instructor talked about teachers and students having sex because the kids think it’ll make them cooler, or benefit them somehow. Also she addressed pedophilia, and incest… it was much more intense than I assumed. But it was really important for this talk to happen, and sure enough the kids were really happy they got to hear it. Awa has such a way about herself she can talk to anyone about anything and there is never any judgment passed, you just want to open your whole life story up to her. She’s a really great person, and a really helpful thing is that she knows pretty much every language in Senegal so when people try to label her as a “toubab” it’s easily proven that she is still very much a Senegalese woman.
The Podor region volunteers are now organizing a summer camp for the girls in our village and ndioum, so that’ll be really exciting hopefully to happen in June. Next week we have a training for our teachers so I’ll have access to internet next Wednesday. Other than that enjoy the short update.

Loves. xox