The Return of the Beast... ie My Appetite

The environmental assessment is going pretty well I think. I made my maps and although I had hoped to have all the graph part of my presentation done before today, I’m well enough into it that I’m feeling good about it. After the last few graphs are done (and colored, crayola style) there remains the “semi-structured interview”, which means finding as many answers to as many questions as I can in order to get a good idea of how money, environmental resources, garbage, labor, and everything else is managed in the average household. Some of it I know already but a lot of it is questions that I haven’t asked yet. Especially involving land tenure. I know more or less where different people (or neighborhoods) have fields, but as far as ownership… that needs to come out of a conversation with a couple of different people. Basically, to answer Christy's question, the Environmental Assessment is just for me to see what is going on in my community and help me and my trainers figure out where to go from here. It's a tool to help me get to know the village to be an effective volunteer, and it works surprisingly well. I'm learning more about my village every day. A focused kind of more... things that I ought to know about and might not get unless I seek them out, say if I have to put them in a presentation or something. Kind of like when Professor Snape makes them write a report on werewolves so they'll put 2 and 2 together. Yeah, I did just make a Harry Potter reference. Not sorry.

I realize that people have been posting questions in their comments and I swear, I really want to answer them. I will try to take some time and focus on those in my next post. I really appreciate them and want to encourage them. Thanks, keep them coming.

Yesterday, I went with some friends in search of soft-serve ice cream as a momentary break away from the village. It took most of the day to get to [the undisclosed location], only to find out that the man who owns the machine couldn’t make a profit since his only customers were the occasional white tourist. Now, he only prepares the soft-serve if he’s given advance notice. We couldn’t get a hold of him. No luck. But it was nice to have a brief break and some fresh company. We also got the contact info for the soft-serve man and will try another attempt, perhaps after the rainy season… in a couple of months or so.

Of note this week was a conversation with a group of men in my village where I was able to tell a little about why I’m in the village (believe it or not it’s to do more than just learn pulaar and hang out), what I think development work looks like (not just handing out money, but making work better here), and talk about their desires for our village. I’m getting a table this week and a chair, which the carpenter in our village is making for me. We talked a little about how he’d like to work out of the village but doesn’t have the equipment or a workshop there. He currently needs to go to Velingara or Dakar or some other city to use their machinery. I think that it may be possible during my service to look into helping him set up a business, especially if Velingara gets a Small Enterprise Development volunteer in November, as I’ve just heard we’re supposed to. Potential development project one.

Potential development project two is the result of the same conversation. I asked, what do you want for the village? The response was a place to have training sessions. And a place that can seat about thirty people so we don’t have to do our meetings at the school all the time. And also a place for the youth to get together and possibly have parties or events. I asked, -do you want a community center? -No. -In America, many towns have community centers that the people use for different things: parties, events, meetings, educational things, whatever the community needs. Here, it might look like a compound with a big building and maybe a shed where you can lock up some things… that’s a community center. Is that what you want? -YES! She understands! That’s what we want. If they’re serious about it, and if the rest of the village is also interested, that may be something I can work towards. So these are the questions I’m taking with me to IST, besides the EE issues I wanted to learn more about.

I’m kind of tired this week because I have not been sleeping as well as I would like, but the good news is, somewhere around the time I got back to Tamba after the 4th, I got my appetite back. I have not had much of an appetite most of the time that I’ve been in Senegal. They say appetite change is a common part of adjustment to a new environment and new diet, so I was hoping to get it back soon. Yes, Charoma, I have lost weight here. Not enough to be worried about it, but enough to notice. Many girls gain weight, but without much of an appetite, I lost weight in PST and the first several weeks at site. In recent weeks I stopped losing and have sort of leveled off. Now I’m hungry again, so we’ll see if I fluctuate or if I stay at about where I am now. It was weird and disconcerting at first because my weight is pretty stable in the States and I’m not used to having clothes suddenly fit me weirdly. So I am glad to have my stomach back in a familiar state. On that note, I’m going to go find some lunch. I hope you’re all well!