Health Meeting and Camels

I just posted my blog that I typed last Monday, so I thought I’d go ahead and do one for today. In fact, I may wait to post this until Wednesday just so it looks like I post more often than I do. Or not.

I was really determined to post once a week, not just to satiate my ravenous fan-base (as if that were true), but also because it’s important to me to communicate my experience here. One of the Peace Corps goals is to share other cultures with Americans and so, I kind of feel a sense of duty to do that. Therefore, I hope I’m doing a good job of it. Please let me know if I’m not. Things aren’t all as shiny and new now that I’ve been here a year and so, I don’t feel compelled to write down my impressions of every little thing. I’ll keep trying to remember to note interesting things as they happen. But seriously, the last month (and the next one too) have been crazy with travel and busy stuff, so I’m not as regular at posting, and I apologize for that.

That being said, this week was also uber-busy. I visited with the COSers in Kedougou and saw the new stage again, because they came down this week to do their volunteer visits. When we did training we did a 10-day “Community Based Training”, where we went out to volunteers sites to experience training in a situation much more like what we’d be living in during service. Training structure has since changed and the trainees are now based in villages in the general Thies region. Basically their whole PST (pre-service training) is CBT style. So their volunteer visits are for about a week and for many of them, it takes place in their actual site, with the volunteer they will be replacing. They have specific tasks that they are meant to complete and they’re able to have a much better idea of their future 2 years before finishing training. Sounds good to me. On the way back from Kedougou, I spent a night with Holly and Camille in their village to help out with Camille’s volunteer visit and share news about the potential for the girls’ group in Sinthian Koundara, then headed back to my village.

EE club was a big bust last week because the kids are on vacation and even though I hand-wrote invitations (that sounds a lot nicer than they actually were), no one came. Fine. I sort of expected as much. Not a big deal really. Next time.

Saturday was the Senegalese Independence day, and I celebrated by cleaning/reorganizing my room. I made a “bookshelf” by turning a cardboard box on its side and putting it up on some paintcans. It looks amazing.

I also caught a mouse in my rat-trap, which is awkward because the rat-trap is huge and mice are small and so it only got caught by the tail, but it died anyway and hopefully that takes care of all the rodents in my hut because honestly, the lizards are starting to get bold and while I highly prefer lizards to mice and rats, one animal-type is quite enough, thank you very much. And lizards don’t freak me out.

And the GREAT news this week is that we finally had the very important health meeting and it went very well. As a result of that meeting, we’ve planned another meeting with the health committee to create an action plan for the next 3-6 months. I am very excited about this. Very very very excited. And so, right now I’m sitting in the World Vision office talking about how to run the meeting/training in creating and following an action plan, and am finding out that World Vision might be able to fund a lunch for the committee so that we can have a full day to discuss problem/solution management and really do a good job with this. I’m thrilled. So much stuff seems to be done poorly here (mostly things like EE club meetings and occasional village-wide stuff)… poorly is a bad word to use. Stuff just feels half-done sometimes. I am really glad to have another organization here to support me and work with me and help me make this something WELL done, not half-done. WELL done is nice.

And later this week is EASTER!!!! Which is fun and exciting. Also fun and exciting is that I have a meeting with my boss this week to discuss all the things that are going well, are not going well, and are not going at all so that I can begin to re-assess my work plans for next year and have an aggressive strategy for raising environmental awareness and addressing health issues in my community. Sounds productive right? I have every reason to believe it will be. As a year-in volunteer, I have the advantage of having done most of my “figuring out what the heck is going on” part of service and can now begin the “so much work my head is spinning” part of service. I still have a lot to figure out and maybe in 10 years when I’ve had time to process this experience more fully, I’ll get it. Maybe. But for now, I’m loving life. And that’s about all I can ask for.

Also also fun and exciting is Maggie’s birthday/Easter special: We’re going to ride camels… and sleep in Bedouin tents. I think they’re Bedouin. Did I mention Senegal is partly desert… as in Sahara desert? That’s right, the Sahel region is the edge of the encroaching Sahara, and that same Sahel region itself encroaches right into Senegal. And they keep camels there. And I’m going to ride them. This may not be the best idea, given that I’m afraid of riding horses, but I will try oh-so-hard not to cry when I’m up there on top of that camel and just remember that it’s an experience I’m sure I’ll remember forever.

Hey Monica! Did you hear what happened in the war the other day? A soldier fell off his camel!!!!!! (hilarious laughter ensues)

Miss you all! Happy Easter!