A Letter to My Replacement

The Good News

Your domestic situation is cozy. In relation to other parts of the country, your climate’s a refrigerator, Your diet’s rather thorough and when you wage the battle against boredom, you decidedly win, when you sally off to the waterfront to join those on vacation.

The Bad News

You’re not on vacation. And despite what your envious and inexperienced stage-mates may prattle on about, St. Louis is not a club-med resort, nor is it an ancient artifact. It is a raw and relentless expression of Senegalese urbanization today. It’s densely-populated, clamorous and dirty. The streets flood. The electricity cuts. The water dribbles. Not to mention, there are hundreds of young boys, some of them as young as five years old, who are forced to beg. Like many of the seaside entrepô ts of the colonial era, constantly reconciling their past with the present, the storied first capital of West Africa is no different. According to my eight-five year old grandmother (Senegalese), who grew up under the French flag, St. Louis celebrated its independence by simply falling apart. However, about fifty years later, proud residents and nostalgic expatriates alike are desperately trying to restore St. Louis’ primness, power and prestige. But as a Peace Corps volunteer, you may never meet these people. Especially as a volunteer who is concerned with his community’s nutrition, you may enter St. Louis at a much different angle--one less trod by ’Toubab’s. Far removed from the swimming pools, hotels and live jazz, you may explore and practice your Wolof in the far-flung, crowded neighborhoods of families and compounds that meet, if not, surpass your wildest expectations of urban blight, sprawl and destitution. If you thought you were a Peace Corps Posh Corps volunteer spared of poverty, think again. Sunny St. Louis, although a healthy deviation from your preconception of life in the African bush, will, no doubt, bespatter your white linens and gurgle in your stomach. Your sleeves will be tightly rolled up, perhaps not as you had imagined, pulling water from the well, but I promise, you will nevertheless find your black-hole. You will be up-to-your-head in opportunity to make a difference and for this, the bad news, it turns out, may be the best news yet.

A Split-Second Retrospect for the Sabaar Newsletter

In respect to our newest stage, I wanted to remind those of us over-the-hill that:

Before we became useful in our useless language,
Before we could Enable Macros and
Before we scratched our 1,000th Orange Card

WE TOO PARTICIPATED IN P.S.T.

I present a little retrospective:

Lets face it. Whether 2, 6, 12, 18 or 24 months ago, we all showed up to Peace Corps, clueless and in machine-washed clothes.

We were a group of jet-lagged, dewy-eyed co-eds, lopsided by so much camping-gear, we appeared that rather than beginning PST, we hade come to Theis to hunt the Blaire Witch. The 50 or so of us galumphed around the training center, exchanging one throwaway platitude after the next, “Did I hear you’re from Oregon!“ or “Can you believe how well Etiene speaks English.”

Several hours prior, leaned up against whirring glass, we watched the shivering heavens of the Atlantic. We exhaled the last of our American ingested air, swirling our index finger liberally through the condensation. Misty with emotion ourselves, we wrestled our reasons for joining Peace Corps. Replaying the old, indelible pre-service aphorism, “ I will walk away from this experience having gained more than I gave,” we intoxicated ourselves with the positive.

I will be able to read all the classics.
I will not be distracted by drink and drug. It’s a Muslim country.
I will perfect my French

The first few days at the center, we were all fresh off the set of some sitcom finale: drenched in the imagery of our final evenings and goodbyes. If initial impact had been too traumatic, many of us immediately iced the swelling on Skype. Some others, not so busy in heartache, were just swatting flies. A few, those of us who received the reading list, were sequestered into top-secret conference calls, where we whispered developmental sweet-nothings with each other:

“It‘s about bringing behavior change,”
“Shh, it‘s all in the implementation“
“No Chris. You just don’t get it. None of this will work if you don‘t scale up.”

For the majority of us, however, it was the newly-launched blog--not updated since take-off that had us most crippled with anxiety.

As for those next couple of weeks, our listening-skills would benefit greatly. Rather robust these days, our attention-spans still bear the stretch-marks of every shilly-shallied PST session. The mud hut, like Late Night television, was always calling its next guest. We would cheer and swoon as the next one took stage. Sometimes, we even briefly divinized that misshapen and scabby 2nd year volunteer, who, having returned from the front-line, never failed to regale us with drollery, misadventure and all of her cross-cultural whoopsie do’s.

A few weeks later, West Africa now gurgling in our stomachs, we were temporarily released from our foster-care. Animated and hot-blooded, we paraded to the catholic compound. Everyone took his or her turn, hoping to tell the next great village tale.

Retiring to our neon-bed linens, with the loose dopamine from our Prophylactics oozing in our skull, our dreams to save the world soon became rabid nightmares of murder and suicide. In the mornings, we would disentangle from our skuzzy, saggy mosquito-nets, spread blobs of jelly onto bread and we would listen, hazily, to the early morning echoes of LCF’s flirting.

On our second retreat to Theis, given that our most recent and uninterrupted fortnight of Senegalese role-playing had not left us dizzy enough, we were swiftly blindfolded and spun like dreidles. When we broke free of the bondage, we gazed down at our toes. In between cracks and fallen leaves, we contextualized, in cartographic terms, where we would begin our new life.

Never in our two years here, would we ever showcase, so fantastically, our need for improvement than Demyst. Depending what direction we left from Theis, some of us traversed through hilly, verdant jungles, others of us, hobbled along tawdry, windswept scrublands. Regardless, every forty kilometers or so, we would break at some nondescript juncture and some new non-African creature would emerge from the roadside thicket. Our anciene’s escorted us out of the Sports Utility Vehicles as if we were embedded journalists. We spent much of the week on a short and secure leash; occasionally our chaperone slackened it so we could perform one of our new cross-cultural tricks: how to prepare tea, dance the Mbalax or, for the very daring, how to properly place shoes down in between you and the person praying.

Once we returned from Peace Corps True Life, we quickly took to the beach for some of our own uncensored recreation. Undressing, splashing and capering, we absorbed the moonlight like werewolves; anticipating, in the evening’s heat, our own reincarnation. A few weeks later, as we swapped our street-clothes for stiff-wax, the process truly began.
We all took an oath to be Senegalese and stuffed ourselves with mini-hamburgers.

Volunteers Step Up to the Perma-Garden Challenge

Volunteers Step Up to the Perma-Garden Challenge

The 15th of September, PC Senegal showed once again permaculture is not just a pot-smoking pastime reserved to those with Patagonia stickers on their Nalgene water bottle. Instead, the St. Louis perma-garden training, which occurred within a sprawling wave of perma-garden trainings around the country, helped Senegalese understand that if we all want to be around to care for future generations, we should consider soil-fertility and food-security in terms of how Mother Nature herself would. Encouraging methods that have zero-dependence on chemicals, that also conserve water and maximize space, we hoped to convey, if only at the domestic level, one can revamp vegetable production more cheaply more bountifully and you guessed it, more sustainably! Stretching from Kolda to St. Louis, from Kedagou to Linguere, the core message of the trainings are being heard loud and clear: Go a little deeper and good things will come.

Last May, APCD assistant Nathan Danielson, with perhaps Austin swooning in the back, thrust the Urban Agriculture Program into a ‘go sustainable or E.T.’ state-of-mind. Challenging every Urban Aggie to host a perma-gardening training at his or her site by August 15th, Nathan spiced up the summer with a little friendly competition. When the results came in, 12 driven volunteers from all six serving regions rose to the challenge. Some of these challengers commendably organized and hosted their training in time for the August 15th deadline and others, like myself, did so forgivingly after.

The Urban Ag’s who medaled included Austin in Tambacunda, Maya in Kolda, Mary in Linguere, Emile in Louga and myself in St. Louis. Besides the city-slickers, many of the cowboys from the Sustainable Ag program lassoed onto Nathan’s calling as well--herding some of these fresh ideas back to the farm. These buckaroos included Steve Sullivan down in Kedagou and Meg Thomson in Kolda and in the region hosting the largest number of trainings, Kaolack, there was Cassie alongside the lone S.E.Der Byron, Mike Kelly teaming up with Ben Magen and finessing one on her own, Danielle Stoermer.

In St Louis, I was spoiled rotten, having both the expert hands of Massaly and Arfang and the cheerful support of other P.C.V. and P.C.T.‘s who all happened to be passing through for Demyst. The day was certainly enlivened by the batch of fresh faces, including Jen, Clint, Michelle, Rachael and Claire of the new Stage and of course, enriched by the seasoned wisdom of a few old-timers i.e. PCVL Casey! Emile of Louga was an indispensable body on the logistical front! And Rachael Gardiola brought the women!

Although it was a hot day in Africa, it was a scorcher by St. Louisian standards! Despite the sopping sweat, we were pleased with how the day unfolded .The response of the twenty-three Senegalese who participated was decidedly favorable.

St. Louis, as we said, was just the most recent in this summer’s series. This past June, Maya Lau, down in the depths of Kolda lead the pact, hosting the first ever perma-garden training at her demonstration site. In the towering presence of Tech Trainer Yusipha, Maya and her supporters had an engaging crowd. Happy but not quixotic, Maya realized that if her participants did not walk away masterful, they at least left with broken up snippets. As she explains in her own words,

“It’s more important that they incorporate certain elements (e.g., double digging, soil amendments) of the permagardening method into their existing farming practices. A successful training is one where locals feel like the new techniques are affordable and adaptable, and it's important to emphasize during the training that they can mix and match the new methods in a way that works for them”

Emile in Louga and Mary of Linguere stripped the Neem as well, when preparing for their brilliant trainings, held in July and August respectively. Having attended Emile’s, I saw how often overlooked communication can be between gardeners and that a training is much more than a tutorial on new techniques but a rare forum to share experience. The scintillating round-table discussion that emerged in Louga was a colorful example that those in a common profession itch for an environment to exchange ideas. As Emile points out,

“The training provided an opportunity for leading market gardeners in the area to come together, exchange challenges and work towards solutions, especially in the local context of Louga.”

As we slowly say goodbye to the rains and look towards the cooler gardening season, the agriculture program can proudly rejoice in our summer of sustainability. Thanks to Peter Jensen from PC Tanzania and his rousing introduction of Perma-Gardening last December, coupled with Nathan’s competitive twist, Peace Corps Senegal, in just three months, steamrolled a healthy set of ideas far and wide. In our gardening practices, if we continue to promote more tender-loving-care, we will help our Senegalese friends reexamine soil-fertility as something delicate, too be protected and nurtured like a 4th wife or perhaps a 9th child.

The first annual Perma-Garden Challenge was a tremendous jump-start. Thanks to the 12 triumphant volunteers, the scope was expansive: nearly 208 farmers received the training--85 of them being women. Some of this success may have been garnered by the ‘I challenge you’ component, that I predict, will serve as a seminal approach for boosting initiatives into the future. But as we have taught with the double dig, the ultimate challenge is not to scratch the surface, it is to go deeper. It is to ensure that all the roots of Senegal have the capacity to grow strong.

To all the Peace Corps volunteers who will have fulfilled Nathan’s Perma-garden Challenge, he wanted the Sabaar to know the highly-anticipated T-shirts will be rewarded at the All Vol Conference this December, as well as an exhibition, he calls the “Perma-garden Hall of Fame” which will be on display to remember everyone’s hard work!

Richard Ross

Knocked Flat

The bleakness of their stares reflected strikingly against the white, freshly painted walls. Little boys, some as young as four years old, dangled their brittle legs off a wooden bench. Their little bodies receded underneath black droops of cloth. On their heads rested the same cloth but it was detached and pointy at the top. Somewhere in between, their soft faces emerged--besmeared with eye-crust and flies. The one seated to the far left, suddenly, was the first to go.

Reluctantly, he dismounted. Standing up, the little boy was received by an elder, a caretaker of some sort, who hoisted off the thin cloak and unveiled the boy’s deathlike frailty. Around his teensy waist, dividing his naked youthfulness into halves, sagged a string of rawhide trinkets. Dewy eyes looked on as this unclothed boy followed his caretaker away. Shortly, he returned, wet and quivering. Clinching his jaw, holding his breath, he fought the onrushing tears as if he was pushing back the raging sea. But before he and the others realized what would occur next, he was shuffled through another swinging door.

I sat beside the others; no pair of feet touched the ground besides mine. All of the little boys, including the first, were Talibé. They had been brought by the Dara (a Koranic school) to a volunteer-based health clinic to be circumcised--a traditional procedure to preserve the Fitrah--i.e.the purity of creation, for Muslim boys. Unlike other Islamic circumcision rituals however, where the operation can be performed as early as the 7th day of infancy, in Senegal, the boys wait until a more primary age, such as five or six--an age that can box the day’s toe-curling trauma into a takeaway memory.

The boys remaining on the bench soon followed. However, against the crescendo of horror that now pelted off the white walls, their reluctance to join the others grew palpable. But on they went. As they returned, they were naked and shivering. The frightened bodies were then shepherded directly towards the frantic shrieks. Passing them, on the way out, were the first to be finished. Waddling and still wheezing, their little features were screwed up. All the teeth-gritting from the pain had left their faces exhausted and puffy.

Soon, the bench filled up again. Most were too busy adjusting to their new discomfort to notice that I had stood up. Moseying around, I stepped outside to catch a break from the unsightliness of it all. When I walked back in, the older caretaker of before stood over them. Menacingly, he sniffed for runaway tears. Although freshly altered, the lot of them promptly buried their gulping sobs. The slowest to suppress, the littlest, was smacked. Furiously crying now, he added an audible hysteria to the still bleakness and as his crying strengthened in pitch, the pacified ones and I withdrew to a half-zombified daze.

Against the white wall, that relentless bounce, the playful ‘let’s pretend’ that the Talibé palliate their wearisome circumstance with, was knocked flat. The street-kid in them too had vanished. It seemed that the circumcision had a greater effect: the thick foreskin of the Talibé identity, the very construct that causes us to be callous, had been scraped off as well. What remained, staring back at me, was a true identity-- the little, motherless child.

Upon leaving, offering a few sympathies in Wolof, I made an attempt to mollify the littlest one’s irrepressible tears. But he paid no attention. Again, I patted his shoulders and urged him to regain his composure but he would not. It was rather clear today he would not outplay the bleakness. His dislocation, the recent trauma, the raw pain had wedged too deep `

Raising the Dead

When I first arrived to Saint Louis, I became the 4th Urban Agriculture Volunteer to serve in the city. In my service, like other generations, I've been granted a piece of land, located behind the municipal office of aggriculture to call my own. The space's purpose is to be used as a demonstration plot. A place where the volunteer can experiment new methods, gain better understanding of those methods and eventually have them on display for the public's interest. Inviting Senegalese to come and visit,to ask questions, to conduct trainings and to promote participation from the local community are all goals of the operation. Unfortuately, in my situation, there was a considerable gap of 7 months between the preceeding volunteer and myself. To the dismay of our project's intent, the garden was left unattentended and spent those days leading up to my installation, litterally rotting. When I first layed eyes on it, it was as if I had inherited perditition. I was now assigned the responsibility to raise the dead, to transform brimstone into a healthy, workable soil. And so, with the fresh eyes of an untrained farmer, collecting and composting dead fish, I've begun to confront the challenge. These photos were taken roughly December 2009!

The greener photo was taken March 2011! With time, hardwork and fishguts, life is rightfully restored!

A Review I wrote for the PC Senegal Newsletter

The Untalented Take to the Stage and Shock

The First (and perhaps last) PCV Talent Show

One of Andrew Horowitz’s greatest accomplishments as a Peace Corps Volunteer, aside from scoring the highest level of Wolof of all time, was to have the intuition to never refer to the Thursday evening before WASTE as a ‘talent show.’ Instead, by introducing the event to Senegal as a friendly “Open Mic/Photo Contest,” the former Gambian volunteer kept expectations low. Thus, to no one’s chagrin, the evening‘s entertainment hosted performances and photography good and not so good, mediocre and fantastically wretched.

Granted, time has passed and wounds are healing, but we at the Sabaar thought compelled to remember the awes and the awkwardness of such an outrageous evening.
The night begun as most Senegalese events do, to the dim-witted lyrics of Akon. However, performed acoustically by the evening‘s front-men, host Andrew Jandhal and coordinator Andrew Horowitz, “Sexy Bitch” was the perfect warm-up for the smut and vulgarity to come.

Many of us, just to enter, had to yield to expatriate couples, twirling and shuffling in what appeared as a Thursday night Salsa class. Arame, representing the Peace Corps Staff was perhaps, also, representing that same class. After shoving us a few sizzling Cuban hip-thrusts, it surely appeared she was fresh from a lesson.

.No one was as famished for the spot-light than showman Byron Lee, who by the night’s end, treated us to three separate appearances. Dusting off his tap-shoes for the first performance, he whirled around the stage, supplying both the words and the foot-work to a slick show tune. He then returned with a poem, hammering us with it as if he was about to lead a coup. Howling a poignant version of the Peace-Corps blues, Byron made us realize, articulately, Senegalese and Americans are different.

By the very last act of the night, when the spotlight seemed just about saturated, Byron, for a third time proved that it could still reflect off his silky thighs. At first, seeing Byron, we grumbledreally again. However, frisking forward, toeing his latest experiment Alex along, he lit up the room yet again. This time, however, he really proved his testicular fortitude, yanking us in with a an art-form never before seen--the “Booty Gram.“

As the strip teasers skirted around a giggly Margaret, the sudden deviance had the Senegalese wait staff running to Touba for repentance and David J running to City Sports for his own pair of red spandex.

In between the Byron show, there were in fact other acts, albeit a few of them cheesy. One, surprisingly an exception, was Annika’s. Somehow, singing a song solely devoted to cheese, her act proved to be the least cheesiest of the bunch.

Somewhere during the night, I too tested my talent against the erratic stage lights--juggling occasionally. Exhausting my tricks early on, I relied on what I had learned from the young villagers. Stick as many filthy balls and rotten fruit into your mouth and everyone will be happy.

Jessica Scates, it appeared took stage impulsively. Asking Andy to provide the melody, she plodded through a Miley Sirus song unknown to mostly everyone. Her singing voice, not exactly ethereal nor epoch-making, still carried an undertow of sweetness-- onto which every stray note pulled our hearts deeper and deeper .

Nate chose a favorable strategy among stand-up comedians: self-deprecating humor. But in his version, where he lumbered through topics like masturbation, body imperfections and relationship problems, he tweaked the routine a tad. He instead, tackled intimate, rather provocative topics about himself without humor, leaving the audience a bit… uncomfortable. When he left stage, many onlookers were actually concerned.

Encouragement, so it seemed, proved more the appropriate reaction than laughter.

Nate’s performance then again was important; a seminal example that told all other stand-up acts to come, ‘punch-lines are not necessary.’ Adrian, the next ‘comedian‘, appeared as he would for most of WASTE: scruffy, sort-of drunk, and within eyeshot of Claire.
Dragging and directionless were his sentences, the intended ribaldry was never quite conveyed. But he too, served his purpose, preparing us for the evening’s most unrehearsed diatribe, mouthed by Aaron Cohen, of which the staff at the Sabaar wishes not to remember.

In spite of the dips, the evening ended on a high-note. Andy and Andrew returned to stage, bringing renewed energy to a fading, horrified audience. The vibrancy between Andy’s beat boxing and Andrew’s drumming confirmed the synergy that would make this year’s WASTE another wild success. In this respect, the Sabaar thanks the Andrews for their outstanding commitment to fun and invites them back for a fourth next year (which, remarkably, would be still one shy of Peter Treut who, in shorter swim trunks than me made this year his fifth appearance).

In closing, although there were great wisps of talent, I want to be fair and say the next American idol is not in the African bush. And if your name is not “Marissa” you unfortunately had little to show in the photo-contest. But nevertheless, thanks to the carefree headline, the event turned a blind-eye to talent--sort of like most things do here. Talent or no talent, once it‘s back to site, we all steal the show.

My Daughter Natalie (my debut novel)

If anyone had contested, it would have been the bride’s father, a regular at a Sunday mass. He, on the other hand approved the location, and did so rather cheerfully; the cross-wind he enjoyed very much. With his loose pores, he found comfort, realizing that on a late August afternoon, temperature may soar. He expressed this to his wife and her friends. Sometimes, he even changed the topic of a conversation, just to stress how pleasant the breeze would be at his daughter, Natalie‘s wedding.