In house stress

Sometimes it's the little things that really get to me. Like not having cheese or ranch dressing. Those have even started to seem like insignificant things since the electricity and water at the Peace Corps house have been cutting out so much. I am used to living without in village but when I expect to have internet and be able to shower and I can't it just stings a little more. Not to mention we share this house, all 55 of us. We are never all here at the same time but it can be hard not to step on peoples toes. I have been noted as being loud, dancing at late hours of the night, and after a few beers eating unlabeled food. Well to that I say, 1) I'm a Kraus suck it up I can't do a thing about it, 2) Just dance gonna be OK, I mean this is why I leave village, and 3) put your name on it and I won't eat it. My options now are to find a new place of refuge. I have bought a satellite key, will take my computer and some gin/whiskey to site, and then why would I ever need this place. I'm totally cool with pouring water over my head to shower instead of it falling on it's own, my family thinks I'm crazy I don't think they would notice if I were drunk. I would probably share more of my American candy though, that's a potential downfall for me great for them though. I can bike for an hour to charge my computer more exercise more computer usage no down side. While I'm in the road town I can even get chicken spam and razors, yea we do still shave (some of us). So yea I guess it comes back to ranch dressing and cheese. Oh yea and a pumice stone lol!

Working with Kids

In the past I have not been interested in working with kids.They are loud and dirty and hard to control. The kids here are all of those to the most extreme extent. However, I broke out of my shell and ended up having two amazing experiences.
The first was a day I gave my brothers and sisters puzzles from America and stuff to color with. They even got some American toys my mom had sent like a frisbee, squirt guns, and candy. They were initially very afraid of the pop rocks but after they realized they weren't going to get hurt they liked them. It was so much fun and an experience they never get to have. There were about 25 of them there and I never lost my cool :)

The next thing I did was a school garden. The kids were between the ages of 7-15 I think. It's really hard for me to tell. The teachers did a great job controlling the students and I think they all learned something from it. We had a lot of fun talking about how to make the soil strong and the teachers have the lessons plans from  my previous training so that they can use the garden to teach math, science, nutrition, and basic agricuture/ecology. I plan in the near future to help them make a tree nursery and a moringa intensive bed. A moringa intensive bed is a lot of trees grown really close together just for leaf use. The leaves are really nutritious and hopefully will improve the health of the students.

I am in hopes that by working with the kids ideas will start changing from the ground up. It might be 10 years but hopefully this generation has a better quality of life than their parents and grandparents. The school will sell the vegetables to buy more seeds for the next season as well as supplies for the students.

   

So like what do you do there?

I decided to write this blog as a generalization of what my days are like here. I travel a lot for work and a little for fun. When I am in village I wake up, water my garden, talk to my family, and then get on whatever activities I have that day. I might need to make some compost, plant a vegetable nursery, visit the school, or work with my master farmer. I like to take walks around my village in my spare time or play with my sisters. I go to the boutique a few times a week like you all go to Krogers or whatever. I need laundry soap, food, and sometimes candy for the little kids if they help me in the garden. I sit and talk with my moms a lot when I'm bored. I also always seem to have some meeting with either my dad, my counterpart, or some farmer. I like to do my laubdry in the mornings while its still cool. In the evenings we just sit around. There is no electric so no TV, no light, and really not much to do except wish it was below 100 degrees. When I travel out of site I help other volunteers with their projects, or go to meetings to meet people who can help my area. I go to the Peace Corps house in Kaolack a couple times a month to hang with volunteers and watch movies. Also to use the internet and free phone! It's the best time to have a long chat with your boss about a project, when you can be looking at all your materials and it's FREE! Soon I'm going to a jazz festival in the northern part of the country so yay! When I'm gone I am always worried about 2 things. The death/destruction of my garden and the death/destruction of my cat. So  I'm always glad to go home and clean up my hut and chill. While I'm gone so much dust gets in my hut it's so gross! I know I do lots of other stuff but I just can't think of any of it now....I have read like 10-15 books since I've been here development is slow work. You can't make crops grow any faster and you can't overload people with too much information at once. I guess my life here isn't all that exciting but TIA -- this is Africa.

Garden Work and Farmer trainings

Lot of work has been going down with my Ag duties as well. Below is my garden with Turnip, squash,cucumber, and okra.There are peanut shells on all the beds to help conserve water. Along the fence I had green pepper. While I was out of town for three days they mysteriously died. My family just really doesn't see the value of a variety of veggies in a garden. That just means I have more work to do.Next week Ill start a new nursery and should have all the beds and pepper border replanted. Sheep and chicken have become my mortal enemies.

This week we trained 4 new farmers in our techniques which they will use at their farms and share the knowledge with the locals. It is part of our master farmer program. This is them getting dirty and learning a zy hole like method. They seemed to be really promising guys. Hopefully we can get them set up before the rains come!

 Master Farmers aren't the only ones who have to do trainings. This is the sus ag sector reviewing the techniques we had learned earlier to refresh our memories, share our success and failures,and ask any questions that we have come up with. This took place in Kolda which is in the south of the country. There are a lot more trees there and big ol' termite mounds! I was able to give a talk about insecticide use and I was reminded how amazing bugs really are :)

This is one of the smaller termite mounds

Luma madness

Malaria kills 1 million kids each year. A main goal of PCVs is to educate individual communities on malaria transmission, and prevention. USAID, an NGO, works extensively on this goal as well. Working together we hope to decrease prevalence of the disease in Western Africa. Over the last two months USAID has donated bed nets to every household in Senegal. After net distribution was complete some of us volunteers got together and went around our region talking about malaria and demonstration how to make a cheap mosquito repellent lotion. We used local tree leaves with repellent properties, soap, and oil to make it.We rented speakers had American and Senegalese music. While we were cooking up the lotion, which we gave free samples of, we talked about how malaria is transmitted and how they can protect themselves. We also did a good bit of dancing! I think the people learned a lot. Initially answers to what transmits malaria brought answers like "the wind" and "god". By the end I think they got it! We did these at 5 different Lumas. A luma is a weekly flea market more or less. I feel like it was good work but I just wish there was a better way to educate them. It makes me so mad at the pathetic school system here and the lack of respect for education.