And the cold season has come

>>Happy Thanksgiving All! I am so thankful for all the love and support I receive from my family and friends back home. Without you, my life here would not as sane as it is now.

I think I mentioned that I was going to be teaching a little at the school at my village. At first it was just for Grade 6. I found out a few weeks before I started at the school that my youngest host sister—Grade 6, age 12-Fatou—could not read. This is a major problem if she is going to ‘middle’ school next year where everyone is expected to speak and read English. So after talking to her teacher, we came up with the plan of doing a joint after school study class. The teacher-Mr. Kieta-talked to the school’s Headmaster, and then talked to all of the student’s parents to get approval. (Usually when the kids are done with school for the day they do chores or just play). Before I had fully assessed at what level the kids were at, I just started with the basics = ‘Raise your hand if you know what sound the letter A makes?” Most of the kids got the easy ones, but when it came to Q,W, I, E, and etc, no one knew. I had them write in their notebooks “A is for Ant” and then draw a picture of an ant. Etc etc. We did like 8 of these each day, then played the Whisper Game = kids break into teams, sit side by side, I tell the first person in line a sentence, and then each kids whispers to her/her classmate to the left.…usually the sentence gets messed up somehow in translation/transition. I had them say ‘The ant is in the tree’ for the letters A and T, for example. We did this through to whole alphabet, and then started with compound letters: Th, Br, Sh, Bl, etc. I can only do this job after school when I am not working on my other jobs, so sometimes I only teach for two hours once a week. I am not a teacher by trade, and I told myself when I applied to the Peace Corps that I did not want to teach English for two years, but I feel that this is one of few ways to ‘get to’ the younger generation here. After a month of this, the Grade 5 teacher straight up asked me “So Lamin, why are you only teaching Grade 6, my Grade 5 could use some teaching as well?” I didn’t like this approached but agreed to help out with Grade 5 anyway. So sad when these students are pushed from grade to grade without learning much; I can point the fingers toward many factors of why the education system here flawed. Overall the teaching is going well.

The past few weeks I was assisting my village nurse-Modu Saine-with two campaigns: the giving of deworming medication to all school ages students to all the schools in our area, and then another campaign to do give Vitamin A and deworming medication to kids (not going to school) above the age of 6 months to under age five. Overall the kids did not like this, and since there were children at these remote villages that I have never seen before, a lot were scared by the white guy; understandable because white folk are not very common at all in these neck-of-the-woods. And the medication did not taste good, they said 'leki ma na welani' = your medicine is not sweet. These campaigns were funded by WFP and UNICEF, I believe. At times we had to lie to the children and tell them it was 'minties' (candy) but after one kid at it and then spit it out and started to cry, the jig was up and they were all afraid now.

Now that the rains have ceased, it is time to harvest. To harvest the coos depended on the grower and when the grower planted to seeds to when he/she would/must harvest. But the groundnuts (peanuts) were mostly harvested at the same time by everyone. People would gather up all of the groundnuts into big mounds. The groundnuts are the same as we have in America, peanuts, and are then gathered in rice bags and sold. This, from what I can gather, is my villages main source of income, which only comes once a year. I am told that buyers will come soon and buy the bags of groundnuts. There is a storage building that I guess they work out of when they come. Hopefully they do not rip off my village, their own people. I don’t help with harvest; I have too many meetings and campaigns to help in the field. The men, as well as the women, go out early in the morning, come back in the late morning to rest and eat, and then they may go back out again. It’s back breaking work; they always tell me ‘the work is too much’ and ‘my body has pain. (‘ligge ko hewi’ and ‘bandu ma fof hebi mussa’ respectively in pulaar).

And on the note that the rains have finished, now it is the cold season. Therefore, I wake up from a malaria medicine induced dream to having goose-bumps and being cold. Its at that point that I must cover myself with a sheet and fall back asleep before a rooster jumps on my thatched roof and starts to cry out his territory. Oddest thing, really, being cold in Africa. But cold here is hot where I come from in the states--Seattle. I tell the villagers that the coldest it gets here, is the hottest it gets where I come from (those of you know what that temp is--bout 90F--at most)...and they don't believe me...even if I say 'in the name of God almighty' in Arabic, its tough for them to believe. me. I hear the coldness will stay with us until Feb., and then it will started getting hot again. Now, it's only cold in the wee hours of the a.m., then at 11am you can feel it getting warmer, one starts to sweat. In all honesty, I have no clue what the actual temp here is at times, I just guess. My body has acclimated to the intense heat, and my med-kit thermometer only goes up so far.

I spent Thanksgiving with friends here. One of our American administrators hosted all the volunteers to come to his house and cook a big and fantastic meal. It was nice to be able to eat turkey and mash potatoes even if we were not at home. Yet, it could never compare with being with family during Thanksgiving, and the turkey was not as good as my mother’s. This was my first major holiday away from home, but there will be another year of missed holidays before I come back. I knew this part of my service would be the worst; I knew that being here during this time of year would make me reflect what I left behind back home more. Family is big here as well; when we have Koriteh and Tobasky (major Muslim holidays), everyone goes home to visit family and not work really gets done for like a week. So I think they’d understood why I’d be away with other PC friends or sad around these times here. Most volunteers received phone calls from loved ones back home, thus the international phone lines were all busy and clogged. My family was one of the unfortunate ones to not get threw, but I know they tried and tried to call. All of you back home reading this, know I was with you in spirit during your turkey dinner. This year I am thankful for all of you, reading this now, and for your support (I really cannot stress that enough)

Yesterday was an All Volunteer (All Vol) meeting, where all PCV came to the capital area. The date was fitting, right after Thanksgiving. We all met as a big group (about 100 volunteers), and then in separate sectors. It was good to see everyone, and to get everyone together for an event like this. Crazy how many volunteers we have in this small of a country. The meeting was only one day, and now we are all dispersing back to site. Today is National Cleaning Day, always the last Saturday of the month, so to travel farther then the Kombo area is nearly impossible. The roads will be closed from 11am-1pm, and all/most the businesses close and the employees clean the environment and the roads.