Wanderlust~: October 2011

My Village at Dusk! (credit to photographer Sister Kate)

Alright. I won't even apologize for being so late. I am completely aware that I am worst person ever. I'm not even going to try to make excuses, BUT I really don't have a computer right now. Yes, I came to Peace Corps with my old college computer. Yes, it broke within my first month here. Yes, Mother Bell sent me a new baby one. Yes, it also broke a few months ago. I know...I've done the math. Two broken computers in less than two years. My One And Only Excuse: SAND!

Sunset and Goats

But my lack of technology is actually why I've decided to start this blog. Hopefully, it will encourage me to write a little here and there, but much more frequently. I am really wanting to put in more effort to update yall on my life, to make a post, put up pictures, and just do better. Yes, this means I will have to borrow computers, but I WILL do it. Every month? At least???? AHHHHHHH!

Okay. So it's been way too long to try and tell you everything that has been going on here, so instead I'll try to give you a small random sampling.

My Hut (the one on the left)

My Mom, Mariata, and Her Kiddos

First and foremost, I am doing really well. For one, I have not been sick in a really long time, maybe almost a year. I did just get electrocuted, but that is a very different story and makes me look like an idiot... so I will keep that one to myself. But seriously, everything is going amazingly. Language --- , which in the beginning was one of the biggest barriers, has become not quite second-nature, but maybe somewhere between third and fourth. I finally feel like I can have a conversation without really thinking too much or translating everything word for word in my head! Success! I am sure I still sound like a caveman (or woman), but I'll take what I can get. Everything else is pretty good too. It just keeps getting easier and easier. I'm not saying it's all roses and kittens, but undoubtedly it's an improvement. I still miss 'Merica and think about all of you guys every day. (I'm not exaggerating. It really is to the point of being creepy...) But I am getting closer and closer to the finish line. SIX MONTHS! But who's counting...

Kumba Diallo - My Grandma!
(Her American name, Memaw, of course)

Okay, so I don't really know how to explain my work over the past months. It's been crazy and all over the place, so instead I'll try to explain what I am up to right now.
Here goes...

Women's Garden in Diagaly

Mbowen Women's Garden

First off, I am still keeping busy with all things gardening. However, my role has changed quite a bit from last year. I would equate it to going from being a waitress in a restaurant to becoming manager, minus the pay raise. I spend a lot of time in the garden still, but mainly just to talk to everyone and make sure everything is going well. I don't have my own garden plot right now, except for a tree nursery or two. Kinda sad, especially since that means no vegetables for lunch, but I am just in and out of my village too much right now to keep up with the watering. I am starting to take on more projects, which requires me to travel other villages and to our regional house in Linguere more often. BUT I still love just being in the garden.

Drinking Water in Diagaly. Mmmmm

Right now, I have the women's garden in Diagaly (my village), but am also helping to get a garden up and running in an area offset from my village called Mbowen. So far, this garden is going great, especially considering that they just survived hot season here with greenery intact. The women are soooo incredibly motivated. To give you an idea of what I mean, the water situation is super rough here, i.e. water comes once a week and is stored in a big (DIRTY! <--) container in the middle of the village center. BUT even so, the women carry their water all the way from this storage unit to their garden -- 1/2 mile away --- in these huge buckets (around 5 gallons) that they carry on their heads! They have to do this trip twice a day to make sure their gardens stay green. That is what I call dedication. In the U.S., I could easily kill a potted plant sitting right next to the sink, but that's neither here nor there.

I am also working on getting the school garden together. Right now, we have built a really beautiful fence and water storage basin and have purchased a bunch of tools to actually start the garden. School just started last week, so when I get back to village, we are going to get the student's garden group up and running and finally begin planting!

The Women Showing Off their Tomatoes

And more on the gardening front, a town like 3.5 miles away from me called Loumbelana was also really interested in starting a women's garden. Sooo right now, we are stuck in the beginning stages of this process because the space that they picked to build their fence is completely flooded (rainy season!). We have all the supplies though, and as soon as the area is dry-ish, a couple of the women in Loumbel will come to Linguere (bigger town) for a garden training. After that, we will hopefully get down to business...

Aissata - My Sister and Potential Adopted Daughter

Hmmm... What else has been going on? Okay ---Basketball! So a couple Peace Corps girls in my area and I have been working on a project to build basketball courts in our villages. Soccer is the big sport here, but girls are pretty much discouraged from playing, which does not sit very well with me. Sooo building on past Peace Corps projects that created courts in the region, we decided to take basketball to the bush. My community is super excited about it and is paying 25% of court costs, while we are working to bring in the the other 75%. Luckily, we met a couple guys who work for the NBA here in Senegal, and they have agreed to pay for half the costs, so hopefully we will get that in soon! I am really just stoked for the completion of this project, mainly because as most of yall know, I am one of the worst basketball players to ever to come out of the state of Kentucky. But NOW, compared to people here, who have never even touched a basketball, I may end up being able to compete with the 5th graders... at least for the first few weeks.

And unfortunately, on a more serious note, I have become increasing aware of the current AIDS epidemic in my area. In Senegal, the HIV-prevalence rate is relatively low overall, especially compared to other African countries. However, the people in the Linguere area are known for being extremely transient, i.e. they travel to various weekly markets in the region and a high percentage of the Pulaar population are herders and

My Newest Little Bro, Omar, with His Daddy

are constantly on the move. All-in-all, this constant traveling is causing HIV to spread like wildfire. I am slowly realizing how many people in my village actually have it. I just went to the hospital last week to visit a young girl who I suspected might be infected. Sadly, she ended up having an extremely advanced case and looked really bad when I saw her. Her husband had refused to take her to the hospital, so she ended up having to run away to her parent's house where they finally took her to the hospital in Linguere. I just found out that she passed away a few days ago. And this is just one story. It's just happening way too frequently. In November, some other volunteers who are seeing similar patterns in their villages and I are starting up a training program for twelve villages in the area to teach people about HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment. Our plan is pretty confusing, and I won't bore you with the details here, but at the end of the series of educational talks in each village, we are going to set up AIDS-awareness days throughout the region where people can come and get tested to see if they are infected. We all realize we are not going to stop the spread of AIDS here, but it's a start and you have to start somewhere right?