A new post will be up next week about the Girls' Leadership Conference we just had in Tambacounda. In the meantime, here is another installment of the five senses.
If you want to check out the photographs from the conference follow this link :
http://liannareed.smugmug.com/Peace-Corps-Senegal-2014/Tambacounda-Girls-Leadership/
Sounds!
Goats sounds like children. When they cry, sneeze, cough, or are thirsty. It can be very disconcerting at times when you think a young child is in distress when really it is just a kid. The sound of getting a flat tire is one of the most disappointing sounds that I've heard so far. The air wheezing out of my tire, while on my bike, makes a pleasant bike ride into a relatively unpleasant bike walk. My uncle Daouda's phone speaks the numbers of the person he is calling...in English. So I often here 7-7-6-5-4-3-8-5-1 or some similar combination. It can be very distracting when you are woken up by the automated voice speaking in English but I have just used it as a teaching tool for my siblings. The French radio or the Senegalese radio with music is also a frequent alarm clock for me. Donkeys braying is one of the most identifying sounds of village life. I've gotten used to it while I'm sleeping so that it no longer bothers me. Although it does sort of surprise me when I walk by a donkey braying because they fart while they are braying...who knew? The donkeys did bother me at one point when my family started keeping them right outside my hut because I could hear them peeing, their stream is apparently very strong. The call to prayer is a sound that has become a sort of comfort, a marker of time throughout the day if you will. The other odd sound is that cows don't moo here. What is up with that? Babies cry a lot. And my other alarm clock is the sound of the pulley on the well. The sounds of Senegal and of my village no longer alarm me in the ways that they used to when I first arrived. But I wouldn't say that they are all comforting sounds.
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Saturday, March 21, 2015
6 month-aversary
Hello my wonderful readers around the world! I thought I owed you a post because it has been awhile. I have been back in Botou for about three weeks, next week is our Girls' Leadership Conference and eventually my real life should start...
Just kidding.
Life in Botou is wonderful, complex, beautiful, and my whole life right now. Yes, sometimes it seems boring or slow, but I have come to love my life as a villager in Botou. I spend much of my time with other villagers, my friends and my family. Sometimes my life here seems like a hiatus from my real life, as if it isn't my real life but some sort of break that I'll stop after 27 months and go back to my America and my "life." But in reality, and something that has become clear from the moment that I became comfortable in Botou, my life is here. Botou is my life. Peace Corps Senegal is my life. At the same time my life is so much different than those of the lives people are continuing at home.
I love walking through my village, taking photographs of people and their babies. I enjoy shelling peanuts, listening to village gossip, and most importantly speaking Bambara and getting to know my fellow village mates. But sometimes it is hard when there doesn't seem like there is much to "do." I'm working on a grant for my school garden, waiting for my tree sack and tree seed order to come through, and helping people with dry season gardening techniques but all of those things are very slow coming. Minutes here, minutes there. But I've also come to realize that my job is speaking Bambara, learning about people, and being in Botou.
I will post a blog next week about the Girls' Leadership Conference!
Just kidding.
Life in Botou is wonderful, complex, beautiful, and my whole life right now. Yes, sometimes it seems boring or slow, but I have come to love my life as a villager in Botou. I spend much of my time with other villagers, my friends and my family. Sometimes my life here seems like a hiatus from my real life, as if it isn't my real life but some sort of break that I'll stop after 27 months and go back to my America and my "life." But in reality, and something that has become clear from the moment that I became comfortable in Botou, my life is here. Botou is my life. Peace Corps Senegal is my life. At the same time my life is so much different than those of the lives people are continuing at home.
I love walking through my village, taking photographs of people and their babies. I enjoy shelling peanuts, listening to village gossip, and most importantly speaking Bambara and getting to know my fellow village mates. But sometimes it is hard when there doesn't seem like there is much to "do." I'm working on a grant for my school garden, waiting for my tree sack and tree seed order to come through, and helping people with dry season gardening techniques but all of those things are very slow coming. Minutes here, minutes there. But I've also come to realize that my job is speaking Bambara, learning about people, and being in Botou.
I will post a blog next week about the Girls' Leadership Conference!
Sunday, March 1, 2015
Post Pre-service Training
I just finished PST 2 (Pre-Service Training) which was the final installment of our technical training. These past two weeks were full of techniques, practices, and more English social stimulation than I've had since PST 1.
Aside from the technical practices that we learned, which I'll get to later, we also learned about Monitoring, Reporting and Evaluation (something we here call, MRE). This is the method with which we as PCVs use to record and report on our work at our sites while in country. This process is multilayered and comprehensive as some of the data that we report goes to Peace Corps Headquarters in Washington, while other pieces of information stay in Peace Corps Senegal for our sectors individually, and, for my program as a sustainable agriculture extension agent, some of our data also goes back to Senegalese organizations working on improving practices, seeds, etc. It is a lot of paperwork (digital of course), but also pretty straight forward and it seems like a cohesive way of collating data and information and disseminating to the sources that can best use the information. I'll have more of an understanding of how collecting this data will actually look once I'm in the field. We report this information through the Volunteer Reporting Form (VRF) that is used worldwide by Peace Corps. It is a bi-annual extensive account of all of our extension activities and the way that our work is aligned to our project framework.
We also learned about how to apply for grants through Peace Corps' system. I can use grants if my village expresses an interest in a project that would benefit the community, address their needs in terms of food security, etc. We can also use grants for group projects like the Girls Leadership Conference that Tambacounda will be hosting later this month. Some of the grants are funded by USAID or NGOs like One Acre Fund, World Connect, etc. while others are funded through community and families members back in the United States through a partnership program. It was all a lot to process but I am excited about the many opportunities that I have for my two years of service in Botou and in Senegal.
Our technical training was also much more specific than what we received during PST. I'll give you an overview of what we learned and if you want me to expand on anything please let me know. We learned about our seed extension program for field crops, SRI (System of Rice Intensification), permaculture planning and implementation, earthworks (boomerang berms, contour berms, cuvettes, etc), pruning, seed selection and storage (vegetable and field crops), companion planting, intercropping/mono-cropping, advanced gardening techniques (staking tomatoes, helping cucurbites climb), Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR), vegetable propagation, integrated pest management, soil fertility management, chemical fertilizer best practices, and a few other things that I'm sure I'm forgetting. It was quite the comprehensive education, particularly for someone like me (typical Peace Corps volunteer with a liberal arts degree) and I appreciated that they do give us a baseline of knowledge so that we can go back to our villages with something to teach them. It is exciting and overwhelming and thrilling, and many other different emotions, but I'm very excited and looking forward to settling back into life in Botou and beginning the technical work of my Peace Corps Senegal experience.
Aside from the technical practices that we learned, which I'll get to later, we also learned about Monitoring, Reporting and Evaluation (something we here call, MRE). This is the method with which we as PCVs use to record and report on our work at our sites while in country. This process is multilayered and comprehensive as some of the data that we report goes to Peace Corps Headquarters in Washington, while other pieces of information stay in Peace Corps Senegal for our sectors individually, and, for my program as a sustainable agriculture extension agent, some of our data also goes back to Senegalese organizations working on improving practices, seeds, etc. It is a lot of paperwork (digital of course), but also pretty straight forward and it seems like a cohesive way of collating data and information and disseminating to the sources that can best use the information. I'll have more of an understanding of how collecting this data will actually look once I'm in the field. We report this information through the Volunteer Reporting Form (VRF) that is used worldwide by Peace Corps. It is a bi-annual extensive account of all of our extension activities and the way that our work is aligned to our project framework.
We also learned about how to apply for grants through Peace Corps' system. I can use grants if my village expresses an interest in a project that would benefit the community, address their needs in terms of food security, etc. We can also use grants for group projects like the Girls Leadership Conference that Tambacounda will be hosting later this month. Some of the grants are funded by USAID or NGOs like One Acre Fund, World Connect, etc. while others are funded through community and families members back in the United States through a partnership program. It was all a lot to process but I am excited about the many opportunities that I have for my two years of service in Botou and in Senegal.
Our technical training was also much more specific than what we received during PST. I'll give you an overview of what we learned and if you want me to expand on anything please let me know. We learned about our seed extension program for field crops, SRI (System of Rice Intensification), permaculture planning and implementation, earthworks (boomerang berms, contour berms, cuvettes, etc), pruning, seed selection and storage (vegetable and field crops), companion planting, intercropping/mono-cropping, advanced gardening techniques (staking tomatoes, helping cucurbites climb), Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR), vegetable propagation, integrated pest management, soil fertility management, chemical fertilizer best practices, and a few other things that I'm sure I'm forgetting. It was quite the comprehensive education, particularly for someone like me (typical Peace Corps volunteer with a liberal arts degree) and I appreciated that they do give us a baseline of knowledge so that we can go back to our villages with something to teach them. It is exciting and overwhelming and thrilling, and many other different emotions, but I'm very excited and looking forward to settling back into life in Botou and beginning the technical work of my Peace Corps Senegal experience.
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