I have been a Peace Corps Trainee for a month now! Sometimes it feels like much longer than that, and sometimes it feels like just yesterday I was hanging out in Vermont, Colorado, Rochester, New York and New Haven. I am back at the Training Center in Thiès until Thursday morning. We just had our technical mid-term exam this morning on all of the various agriculture/gardening techniques that we've been practicing at our CBT sites. I think it went well, although I couldn't remember whether rice had a head or a panicle...pretty sure that when I need to know that, I can look it up in my manuals. We have so many manuals with so much information and while I understand needing a basic comprehension of some of the technical information, so much of the information will become ingrained in my head after months of working and being in the field.
Tomorrow we find out our permanent sites which is the biggest surprise after our language announcement. I honestly have no idea where I might be placed, I know in general the region but after that it's anyone's game. It's pretty exciting because as soon as we get our site announcements we go and visit our sites on what Peace Corps calls Volunteer Visit. This is where we travel (with Peace Corps Transportation) to the regional capitol and meet up with an existing volunteer to visit our future site and ask questions about our site, life as a volunteer there, etc. I even got a bike because my volunteer said that it would make traveling more convenient. I'm expecting this weekend (Thursday-Monday) to be a very intense, overwhelming, and exciting time. I'm trying to think of all the questions I have or should have so that I can be the most prepared installing into my site at the end of November.
Last week we were at CBT for 11 days. It was much less overwhelming than the initial CBT stay but everything is still so unusual and strange. The language is becoming a bit easier although my family still speaks Wolof occasionally but now I am able to decipher a bit better between the two. Last Friday we had our first Language Proficiency Interview which is Peace Corps' method of assessing the level of language comprehension and ability. I was able to speak about my present, my past, and my future using a somewhat limited vocabulary after about 3 weeks of classes and immersion. I think this is pretty great! I was thinking about how much Arabic I learned in a year at Bryn Mawr/Haverford and it is just amazing to see how great of an impact intense culture and language immersion has on one's language capabilities.
I am also adapting more to living with my family and I have adjusted much more to the daily pace of life which has been one of the biggest struggles for me. I appreciate now, the down time under the neem or the gemelia arborea, when the wind is just right and the dapple shade provides a refuge during the hot afternoons. Sitting around is still different, and definitely takes an adjustment but as my language improves (and even when it doesn't) I like trying to make jokes with my family using limited vocabulary to make them laugh or make myself seem silly. One of the younger kids in my extended compound is less than two years old and we call her Mamawa (her name is also Awa) and she has gotten quite close to me over this past stay. Now, whenever I enter the compound she runs up to me saying Awa, Awa, Awa and puts her head between my legs. She's always dirty, covered with sand, but she's such a bright addition to any moment in my day. The other young person who has recently warmed up to me is Mambo, a boy of about two, who wouldn't come near me during my first stay. Now, he greets me as well, extending his right hand or running up to give me a leg hug. It is so nice that these kids have grown accustomed to me and to having me around and it will be sad for both me and them I assume when I leave for my permanent site. Just the night before I left to come back to Thiès my aunt asked if I would come visit or if I would call regularly when I was at site.
One of the times when I was able to make my family laugh was during one evening when we were all sitting outside at the big compound watching TV and these enormous grasshoppers started hopping on top of everyone and everyone was squealing. Mambo is terrified of all of them so he cries if one even gets close to him. I was chasing after them into one of my aunt's houses and then at one point my host mom had one in her hand and I asked her if she was going to eat it and she laughed and said, no, are you? I said maybe in one of the beignets that my aunt Jo cooks and they thought that was hysterical. I'm sure half of what was actually funny was me trying to joke about eating a grasshopper stuffed into a beignet but I thought it was fun just to try and make a joke in Bambara. Now they know that I like to laugh and that me laughing is a part of who I am. It's interesting because not much laughing out loud actually happens in my family. People will smile at something nice or funny, but big belly laughs don't really seem to exist in Senegalese culture so when I can make my aunts or my mom laugh it really brightens my day.
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