Rural Stay with a Peace Corps Volunteer

For a week at the end of march, we were all sent individually or in pairs to stay in rural areas of Senegal in the villages. The villages are completely different than Dakar in every way. Some students stayed with Peace Corps Volunteers and some stayed with local families. In the villages, everyone knows everyone, its sweltering HOT, there are livestock running around everywhere, and they typically only speak their local languages. There isn't electricity in the villages, but in the nearby towns there is. Most of the daily activities revolve around things like pulling water from the wells, doing laundry, picking cashew apples, playing soccer, drinking tea under the tree from 12 to 4 because its too hot to do anything else, and just hanging out. We ate lunch two times a day, once at her host family’s house and once at the family who she considers more her family’s house. We spent a lot of time eating cashew apples and ratties (frozen bissap juice in bags) We also got to roast cashews right off the trees, and eat the first mangoes of the season. This was all I could do to stay alive in the heat, and sit like this under a shaded tree:

This gave me a really good insight into the Peace Corps and what it’s actually like to be in it. We stayed with an agriculture volunteer in her hut, who was 32 so she was a little bit of an older volunteer. I got to sleep in a screened tent under the stars most nights so it was pretty magical! My peace corps volunteer cooked well for us, it was really nice to have something other than bread for breakfast, and to be eating some American food. It was like gourmet camping food. We were definitely spoiled. My peace corps volunteer also liked to talk a lot, so pretty much the entire visit I was just listening to her opinion on a lot of things. I imagine also she doesn’t get to talk to Americans much. I kept getting offered babies because people would say that they would go away find work and get a job and come back and support the family. Megan kept saying how there was a lot of opportunity for money in the village in selling cashews and cashew apples, but people don’t have good work ethic and don’t understand certain things about business. The last couple days we stayed in Toubacouda where the peace corps volunteer central house was. We swam in some mangroves with them and hung out at this nice hotel with a pool for the rest of the day!

These are some kids that did a dance circle for us, its crazy how well these kids can move their hips.

I had always thought about joining the peace corps but I actually found after this visit that I don’t think it’s for me. It also made me think about development in Africa and what our place is as Americans in that. It’s been a question that I’ve posed a lot here, just thinking about development and whether they want us here, what does it even mean to be a developed country, etc. I think that Peace corps is a good organization for the most part because you are actually going in and getting to know the community first, learning the language, figuring out what their local needs are and then trying to use your modern knowledge to help them by teaching through education. They don’t have to accept, but the knowledge is there if they want it. For instance, my volunteer Megan had a bee farm and taught her village how to make compost and things like that. But at the same time, it takes two years to accomplish a project that would take two months in the USA. It’s a very long patient process. Also, Megan was the first volunteer in her village and the first white person for that matter.

In the villages you definitely see much more defined gender roles. You tend to see most of the men under trees drinking attaya while the women do all of the hard house work and the laundry.

Also when you’re in an area like this you sometimes see people who haven’t gone to school or who are illiterate or who have these really defined gender roles and treat you certain ways because of you're white, but its important to knowing that a lot of these people have never seen more than a couple white people before, and that’s one reason why they stare.

This sheep is my namesake!

Sometimes I don’t feel like what is happening to me here is real life. It’s funny how things like riding on top of a car or in the back of a truck has become completely normal and doesn’t even phase me anymore.