Bakel, Monkeys, Donkeys Oh My!

It's been awhile since I last posted, and a lot has happened (at least for village life).  A week ago, I made my way to Moribugu, the village where Jordan (Moussa Diarra), the other Bambara volunteer lives.    He lives in a region called Bakel, a sub-region of Tambacounda.  He is about 250km from me in an area that borders Mauritania and Mali.  I rode up with Cheryl Faye, the new director of Peace Corps Senegal.  Peace Corps encourages us to ride with PC vehicles if we ever have the chance and our travel plans align.  We had some good conversation about the future of Peace Corps Senegal, and the five week challenge party that we are going to have at her house in Dakar in a few weeks.  We also saw about 20 small monkeys on our way up...I'd have to say that was definitely a highlight.  We first stopped at another volunteer's site because Cheryl was doing site visits in the region of Bakel.  This volunteer is an agroforestry volunteer who speaks Pulaar du Nord, which is what most of the volunteers (except Jordan) speak in the Bakel work-zone.  We then arrived at Jordan's village and after a tour of his site and his Master Farm Cheryl continued her way north and I stayed in Jordan's village.  While our plan was to have Falaye (our language instructor meet us in Moribougou for our language seminar) that didn't end up working out and we decided that it would be better to have all of us meet in Botou.  I decided to stay in Moribougou, since I had already made the trek, and Jordan and I spent a few days in his village and the neighboring villages, greeting people, working in his Master Farm, talking with the school teachers about their future projects, and speaking Bambara.  It was so interesting to hear his Bambara as it is a bit different than the Bambara spoken in Botou.  The region of Bakel was very cool, besides the monkeys, there were mountains (hills more like) and huge spots of erosion (which while aren't "cool" per se are very interesting geologically and ecologically).  The state of his land and the work that has to be done up there is different in many ways than the work that I think I will do in Botou, but there are similarities too.  It will be interesting to continue our service together and see how our villages react and work with us in the projects that we hope to do during our two years.  Unfortunately I was sick for most of the time I was up in Bakel so I hope that I can go back later and see more of the land and maybe even one day nearby Mali or Mauritania!

We left at 5am on a bus to Tamba and came back to Botou.  It was a terrific homecoming.  I got a huge hug from my host mom Raki and from Sorkhna (hugs are not common at all for the Senegalese).  People were singing Halima naa naa, which means Halima is coming/is back.  It was so great to be back home, and to really feel like I belonged and back where I am supposed to be.

On our second night I woke up to the sound of some serious crunching noises in my garden and I looked out my window and saw that there were donkeys eating away at my garden. I was furious, but didn't want to go through the ordeal of waking someone up, or going out in my shorts and risk being seen by my family (shorts aren't taboo but not something that I would wear in front of my family).  I decided just to wait and see if the donkeys would leave, or if someone else would come out after hearing their crunching. Not long after I got back in bed I heard Kooli, Seynabu, Raki and Bouna out in the garden trying to shoo the donkeys out of my garden.  In the morning I woke up and saw that the donkeys had eaten all of my cucumbers, most of my tomatoes, my sunflowers, basil and the peanuts and corn my family had laid out to dry in the garden.  I talked with Bouna who said there were 7(!!!!) donkeys in the garden in the middle of the night.  They had pulled out the wooden post that had been in the ground holding the door together.  I was upset, but there wasn't much we could do about the garden except fix the fence and hope the donkeys don't come in again.  As it turned out, it was a big deal for my village.  All of the village elders, including the Iman came in and toured the damage.  Bouna would tell everyone that came how much I had been working in the garden, watering twice a day, etc.  He clearly was very upset about the donkey business (particularly because they were not all of our donkeys but neighbor donkeys as well).  I think the village was also concerned that it could easily happen to other people's fences as well.  Most of the donkeys aren't tied up and instead just wander around.  After they all toured my now garden museum they all sat down in my compound and had a meeting about what to do.  They asked me if I wanted them to pay me for what was eaten.  I said certainly not, I had seeds that I could replace what was lost, but that what I really wanted was for the fence to be fixed so that it wouldn't happen again.  They decided that those whose donkeys had been in the garden had to either pay money or help with the rebuilding of the fence.  It was quite the ordeal, and even today as I was leaving Botou, people were coming up to me and apologizing for the loss of my garden, telling me how bad donkeys were.  Jordan and I reseeded most of the beds that had been destroyed, and although my two and a half months of work are now in the bellies of asses, I hope that something will be growing again when I come back from my technical training in Thiès.

This month I will spend most of it out of site.  I am going to Thiès for a few days to spend sometime with my friends around my birthday.  Then we are going to Dakar for W.A.I.S.T (West African Invitational Softball Tournament) which is a big sports-like event with Peace Corps volunteers and other expats in Dakar.  Then we head back to Thiès for two weeks of intense technical training.  Then I head back to Botou for two years of service!  I am excited to learn the rest of the technical things, like grant writing, that I need to know for my service, but I also will miss my family and my community in Botou as they have become the best family and community I could ask for in Senegal.