Counterpart Workshop (Bara Nohon) and the end is near!

I am almost done with training and will soon be an official Peace Corps Volunteer, alla sonna (as they say in Bambara, God willing).  Next week this time, if all goes well I will be a PCV and on my way to the beach for Thanksgiving.

We just finished an exhausting few days here in Thiès which included Counterpart Workshop, our final medical exam, our final safety and security exam, and our Readiness to Serve presentations.

Counterpart Workshop was fascinating and exhausting.  My male counterpart, Karim Cisse came from Botu.  He was my ancien's counterpart as well, but for the last CPW Hawa our female counterpart came instead.  He was very enthusiastic and an excited learner.  He participated exuberantly in all of the group discussions and he reminded me a lot of...me as a student so that was reassuring.  The very first day when they first arrived I spent about three hours sitting down with Karim, one of the Jaxanke's counterparts, and some Mandinka speakers as they made tea.  One of the Mandinka speakers starting talking to Karim and I very enthusiastically. He would speak in Mandinka and Karim would translate into Bambara.  I could pick up a bit of Mandinka since it is related to Bambara, but the translation was definitely helpful.  This old man, with few teeth, was speaking in proverbs, which in Bambara we call sendat.  I'll tell you, I can barely grasp the meaning of proverbs in English let alone Bambara, let alone Mandinka, so this was quite the three hour conversation.  I picked up some of the morals that he was trying to tell me. God is within all of us. If you ask God for help, he will only help you if you first help yourself, and one about a a bird that I think was the same as the one about helping yourself.  And then there's the one about something that goes across the ocean and walks up on the other side and still has sand on it...the fruit of a baobab tree...I guess I"ll figure these out when I've been here two years.  Or not... It was thrilling and so much Bambara and Mande all at once. Karim is a great mentor, very patient, speaks French so sometime if I really don't get something he'll translate, but he doesn't use French first which I also really appreciate.

Most of the two day workshop was about sensitizing the counterparts to Peace Corps as an organization and to what Peace Corps does to train us; in language, techniques, and in culture.  For most of the sessions the Mande speakers were together which made the most sense, but was challenging for the two Bambara counterparts, who sometimes had a harder time understanding some of the Jaxanke and Mandinka regional dialects.  I'm still impressed by the languages of these Senegalese people.  Most speak at least three languages, Wolof, French, and one other local language.  But so many speak so many more.  Karim, my counterpart speaks, Bambara, Mandinka, Basari, Wolof, French, Pulafuta, and understands Jaxanke and probably some Soninke as well.  It stuns me, and they are so fluid with their language as well.  Quite impressive if I do say so myself.  There were some really interesting discussions that I could sort of understand in Mande about language acquisition for us as trainees, culture differences, and the general knowledge the counterparts knew about Peace Corps (or didn't as they case mostly was).

While it was great to have all of the counterparts here, it was also exhausting.  Talking Bambara is exhausting all the time when conversation topics are limited by what vocabulary I have in my brain at any given moment.  At the same time that they were here, we also had to study and prepare for our Medical exam and our Readiness to Serve presentations which included a two-minute elevator speech in our local language.  We also had a Safety and Security exam but that one was pretty much common sense.  I spent these past few days getting overloaded with Bambara and putting together a presentation based on our project framework as Sustainable Agriculture volunteers and a two minute diddy in Bambara. I studied a bit for Medical as well although it was all stuff we had been previously tested on.  Everything went swimmingly today and I'm relieved that it is over.

Tomorrow we go to Dakar for the day...still not quite sure what that will entail and I'm still intimidated by Dakar but I'm sure it will be exciting nonetheless.  Next week we have our final LPI and then the official swear in. It's all happening! And so fast! I couldn't tell you this day would come two months ago.