En jarama sehelaabe am!
It appears it has been about EIGHT WEEKS since I last blogged! ahhh I'm the worst! I have so much to tell you all about, but forgive me if I forget some :) I want to start by thanking Grandma and Grandpa, my beautiful sister and her fiance Brandon, Paula, Debbie, and my lovely parents for the amazingly generous care packages I've received! You are all so thoughtful! Aunt Julie and Uncle Craig, thank you too!!!! I got your package in the mail today! You guys are the greatest.
Moving into my new village was surprisingly not frightening at all. I immediately felt comfortable there and everyone was very welcoming. My host dad is Dello Balde, super cool guy if I haven't mentioned that before. So Dello, being the sweet old wise chief that he is, surprised me the night of my arrival with a party! If I could only put into words the joy and amazement that was going through my head when I looked around to see beautiful African locals dancing wildly to rapid drum beats while a giant burning bon fire blazed in the background of the night sky.
Of course, they love when white people try to dance, so I was pushed into the middle of the dance circle awkwardly trying to re-enact there body movements. Ha! And I thought I could dance? yeah right. These people came out of the womb dancing! Ha, I love it!
The first week I spent most of my time decorating and painting and moving into my hut! It looks great! My room is all kinds of purple.
I have a lovely backyard with a cement pathway to my bathroom area and just enough grass space to grow a personal garden. There's even a little area in the back to snooze under the mango tree when the sun is blazzin'.
I have plenty of pictures hanging up of everyone back home. The villagers get a kick out of photographs, especially my little host sisters!
The time I wasn't spending obsessing over the design of my new space, I was walking around with my two counterparts Abou and Chierno, meeting local officials and familiarizing myself with the area. I discovered Mampatim has about four womens groups already! Most volunteers have to start them, but my villagers are cool enough to where they already have formed their own! Great job Mampatim!
Also great news: my third counterpart, Moustapha, is the most motivated guy ever. He's the English teacher at the local middle school and I've become quite comfortable hanging out there with him and all the other teachers. They're a great group of people with awesome ideas! For example, one afternoon I was sitting with one of the students reading over his final English exam when I stumbled upon one prompt that went a little something like this: Your father wants to marry your younger sister off to a wealthy man from another country but you disagree with his plan. Write a conversation between you and your father to convince him it is more important for your little sister to stay in school. <--- bah! You can imagine the surprise on my face when reading that! The subjects they choose to discuss at the middle school are serious issues that people face here yet no one wants to talk about. One of the biggest problems is early pregnancy and early marriage, some girls as young as 13. As a result of early marriage, they drop out of school. I think its great to incorporate these topics into the curriculum in order to open the minds of the teenagers and provide them with some forward thinking. Once again, great job Mampatim teachers!
These past two months I've been helping out with the Michelle Sylvester scholarship, which has been more than a great opportunity. There's 9 girls from the middle school in Mampatim that qualify for the scholarship, but only three girls from each school are chosen to receive the money. I jumped on board with my friend Kelly, biking out to each girl's village to observe their home lives and talk with them about their interests and what they wish to become. Their responses? Doctors, teachers... the President of Senegal!! :) The first day of June we had a formation in Dabo, a neighboring village about 15K from me, where the scholarship girls gathered to hear from Awa. If you don't remember Awa from past posts, she's the most inspirational woman ever. Awa talked to the young girls about early marriage and rather the importance of continuing their education despite social norms and local pressures. We did an AIDS awareness game with them and then led them to discuss solutions for what they view as prominent problems within their community.
These girls amazed me. So bright and so hopeful with great interviews and great essays, but studying only over by candlelight. To think of their daily struggles is beyond me, yet what they still manage to accomplish. So impressive!
The first big project we got goin' on is the community garden at the middle school. I had a couple meetings with the teachers and the headmaster about planting fruit trees and vegetable gardens for anyone who wants to contribute so the children can cook nutritious lunches and eat delicious fruit for breakfast during school hours. On top of this gardening project, I want to start a co-ed cooking club using the food from the garden to teach them about local nutrition and also possibly break down some gender role barriers! Thats right Senegal, men can cook too :) The teachers would of course be welcome to anything growing in the garden since they've helped so much! So far we have the fencing up and a couple of beds dug.
Tomorrow I shall return to village to start planting, just in time for the rainy season!
I received consent to plant some bright pink and red flowers whose vines will grow wild along the walls of the school. Its going to look beautiful once the kiddies return in September!
Other than the garden and the scholarship, I taught my host family and neighboring compounds how to make all natural mosquito repellant using local ingredients. They seemed to love it and have been using the lotion every night (or at least that's what they say to make me happy). The demonstration went really well so I'm hoping to get my women groups together to teach them. It would be great if down the road they cooked it up to sell all the time, making money for themselves and fighting against malaria at the same time!
I spend everyday trying to get better at Fulakunda. Its coming along, I guess! The importance of bonding with my villagers and my host family is number one. I want these people to trust me and to know I'm here with them to help first and foremost. It gets tough with the language barrier, but everyday you make a little progress and that's encouraging. My host mom and namesake, Bambe, is the most helpful. She's super fun and takes great care of me always.
My church is something great I need to talk about. Its so cute!! The priest there speaks English pretty well and closely resembles Baloo the Bear from Jungle Book. We had a delightful celebration welcoming the Kolda Bishop a couple Sundays ago. Lively singing, children dancing down the isle way and the priest beating on the tam tam drums after each sermon. The most exciting Catholic service I've ever attended, African style! Unfortunately, not every Sunday is like this, but its still beautiful and really really comforting to have that community around.
Its good to be in Mampatim, but its also nice to visit other volunteers close by. My friend Cibyl is only 7K down the dirt road from me, quite the really peaceful bike ride. Her village speaks Mandinka, so I can only communicate with them slightly thanks to Cibyl feeding me the lines. I may be visiting her much more often now that she got a puppy!!!!! I'll be Aunty Chelsea :)
As always, I love you guys. So so much. I never realized how much I love being home until I've been somewhere really different for a while. I can't thank God enough for the love in my life! How lucky we all are :)
Chelsea
