5 Week Challenge – Status: COMPLETION

Well fine ladies and gents, friends and foes, comrades and countrymen, and anyone else who maybe stumbled accidentally upon this blog via Google search but was so captivated by my witty title or flattering author picture that they decided to start reading… I have officially COMPLETED the 5 week challenge!!

I am now fluent in both Malinke and French. As well as Wolof. I can carry water on my head for miles. I can eat rice neatly out of my hand without spilling. I know everyone’s names in my village. As well as all of their children’s names, where their parents came from, what they farm in their field, what their favorite foods are, what all of their hopes and aspirations are for their lives and their children and their grandchildren, and what they think about every night in that peaceful moment of diaphanous clarity just before falling asleep.

Except that I don’t. I don’t know any of that. Such a claim would be both pathologically facile and a blatant lie.

And yet, I am still glad to have participated in the challenge. Here is why:

For one, my language skills have indeed improved significantly.  I am, by no means, anywhere near fluent.  But I can at least have a conversation. I can order food. I can ask for directions. I can ask about people’s children or about their work. And I can tell people that malaria is bad so they should hang their mosquito net.  And I trust the rest will come in due time.

Secondly, I have started to get to know people. I know all the names of all 25-35ish people (the number fluctuates) who are living in my compound as well as most doctors, nurses, lab technicians, midwives, birth attendants, pharmacists, community health workers, housekeepers, guards and chauffeurs that work at the hospital in Saraya.  I know most of the boutique owners and most of the ladies who sell hot bean, egg or tuna sandwiches in the morning. I know many of the kids that play basketball in the evenings and quite a few teachers at the middle school/high school. People have started getting used to my presence here. They know my name and they know that I live here; I’m not just passing through.  All of that is critical for me to begin to feel like Saraya is my home.

Thirdly and lastly, I’ve started finding my niche.  Probably most new Peace Corps volunteers or trainees, or people about to leave for Peace Corps staging, would corroborate the notion that the scariest part about going into the Peace Corps is indefinite expanse of unknowns.  For SO LONG, you just don’t have any idea about what your life will be like in any respect for the looming 27 months (2 years + 3 months). Little by little this gets less opaque. Around a year after applying you generally find out what country you will be going to and when. Six to nine months later when you actually arrive in country you find out where exactly in that country you will be going for training and what language you will be learning. A month or two into training your actual village placement is revealed and you have the chance to see it for the first time – see the people and the houses and the environment of where you will be spending the bulk the next two years.  But then a month later, fully “trained” and ready to go with all your clothes, food, water filters, medical equipment, etc., you arrive in village and you still have no idea what they hell you are doing.  This is NOT one of those jobs you show up to where you show up to be handed a list of tasks, duties you are responsible for and deadlines.  There are no deadset work hours or work days (or weekends for that matter).  You may or may not even have a physical location where you go to do your work. And you may or may not have any idea who you should be working with.  Peace Corps technically assigns each volunteer a “counterpart” who is a community member that has agreed to be the volunteer’s work partner and help them facilitate projects.  This person generally attends a 3-day training workshop in Thiès with the volunteer (although my work partner was absent for this) to orient them to the goals and methodology of the Peace Corps and how they can support their volunteer.  However, their involvement in the volunteer’s work and inclusiveness of the volunteer in their work varies on a wide spectrum from counterpart to counterpart.  This is therefore a job where you have to FIND your own work. You have to go out, talk to people, follow people around, ask questions, take notes and YOU have to CREATE your own role.  You need to find the things that need to be done and do them.  During these 5 weeks, I believe I have begun to find some of these things.  Just by hanging around the health center every day for example, I was invited to attend an HIV screening in a small village about 2.5 hours outside Saraya called Bambanding. During the screening it became apparent that there had been no community mobilization for the screening because there was not a Relais (a community member trained in a specific health topic) in that village who had been trained in HIV. Therefore, nobody was telling village members about why HIV is bad, how to prevent it or why to get screened. So only 17 people showed up to be screened that entire day…  Enter Diabou Tounkara (me)! HIV education and Relais training may be just the perfect place for me to start my work here...

While I may, at times, feel like I have hit the ground running already, I know that the real work is truly just beginning.  There is still so much to learn, so many people to meet, and so many health issues to tackle.  But I probably need to go to the capital for a salad and a beer to celebrate making it this far before I jump on into it.

Yay for the end of the 5 week challenge!!

Spot is sitting. See Spot sit. Sit Spot sit!

Hello Sagna, is there no evil with you?

Hello Diabou, there is no evil with me.

You are sitting.

Yes, I am sitting.

This is the conversation I have every morning with the skinny guard in loud-patterned pants, a t-shirt, a wool-knit beanie and flip flops, who sits on a plastic chair outside the old health center building that I pass on my way to work.  Stating the obvious, here in Senegal, transcends cultural appropriateness to be truly, culturally encouraged.

You are sitting.

You are eating.

You are drinking tea.

All of these are both blatantly obvious facts and regular conversation topics in village.  Such a culture of stating the obvious, I have discovered, has some real advantages.

For one, all day long these conversations function as endless vocabulary lessons for learning verbs.  I don’t have to actually ask how to describe what I am doing ever.  I just have to do it and wait for someone to walk by and tell me.

Diabou, you are shelling peanuts. (I be tiga woto la)

Why, yes! I am shelling peanuts! (Iyo!, Mbe tiga woto la).

Bam. Learned the verb “to shell” (xa woto).

Furthermore, stating the obvious is a great door opener for entering more stimulating or prudent conversation.

Diabou, you are shelling peanuts.

Why, yes! I am shelling peanuts. Peanuts are delicious and a good source of protein!

Bam. Nutrition conversation. Had. (#LifeOfAHealthVolunteer)

Plus, describing the most evident and benign details of someone’s present existence is a great way to make new friends.  People simply find it to be extraordinarily normal and instantly, heartily, relate to you when you make such statements.  As soon as I tell people they are sitting, they laugh and a whole layer of cultural-distrust melts away because they can tell that I am not just any tubab (white person); I am here for real and want to understand the culture and form relationships.

Of course, there is another side to this in which you may prefer people to not state what is evident.  Sometimes, as Americans, there are things we all know – things we all know we know – but we all tacitly agree to not speak aloud in order to save someone from embarrassment or shame.  For example, here one might hear (or say):

Diabou, you are gaining weight.

Or:

Diabou, you don’t hear (understand) Malinke well.

In these particular situations, it may take all of your wits and sensibility to keep in mind that these observations are not stated with malicious intention.  They simply are.

Yes, you must say. I am gaining weight. Peanut sauce is too delicious!

Or, yes, I don’t hear Malinke yet. I am learning.

To get angry and retaliate would be fruitless because people here do not see that they may have offended you and do not understand why you could be mad.  If you are, after all, gaining weight, why beat around the bush?  Here it is among the highest of compliments to you – as you intentionally or not are growing into the African vision of beauty with voluptuous curves and thick limbs – to your family – who can afford to keep you well fed – and to the chef of your house – who must be a wonderful cook to be able to keep you eating.

The repeated reminders that I do not yet speak Malinke may be, at times, quite discouraging, but then I will say something unexpectedly correct or complicated or humorous and just as quick as they were to tell me I don’t understand yet, they will tell me I am done learning.  In these times I have to make sure to promptly and deliberately walk back their inflated expectations.

At the end of the day, stating the obvious might seem like a funny thing to do, but it isn't like we don't ever say stupid things in America.  In fact, when you can very clearly see what someone is doing, why do we Americans, still ask?

Hey, what's going on?

Can you not already see what is going on?

Maybe, the Senegalese are on to something.  Maybe they are really just speeding the conversation along.  Once you acknowledge the obvious you can move on to the less obvious...?

Regardless, it is yet another funny, albeit a bit awkward, cultural thing that I am growing accustomed to here in village life.  I've compiled a list of some other things as well for your musing:

- Biking with a live chicken swinging by its feet from my handlebars (I get goose bumbs whenever the wing gets caught in my spokes)

- Walking into stranger's homes to buy peanut butter (such is the nature of a predominately informal economy; to buy a product made by hand you must find that hand that makes it)

- Calling people "my slave" (this is a favorite joke among joking cousins in Senegal but as an American, for evident historic contextual reasons, is quite awkward to get used to)

- Using a loofa (its just never been my thing)