Looking Good on the Last Day in Keur Sadaro

Mboor!

We made it!

can you believe your sons and daughters went [almost] 10 days with

shower buckets

hole toilettes

cockroaches

?

but the babies were CUTE

mr k said 'oh well its like not super beach paradise'

WHAT?

im not trying to sound overly grateful or anything but this....

IS BEACH PARADISE WHITESAND WARM WATER SEASHELL FLOORS BREEZE LUXURIOUS ROOMS TOILETTES BREEZE AND SHOWERS AND

TOILETTES

WHAT WAS HE TALKING ABOUT?

and about the experience, i mean the village, i dont understand why we're getting this luxury, dont get me wrong, i dont mind not understanding or even getting it, but

we're getting really spoiled. i might be exgagerating but coming from a villiage with limited electricty and um.. different living conditions... i dont have an objective perspective anymore on anything and anyone. 'all i know is that i dont know ' in fact i dont even want to sit here and reflect its too nice to loose yourself in a realm that is unreal, abstract, and focused all on the worry of tommorow, when what is outside your window is so beautiful

so as hemingway once put it:

'the necessity to put a thousand intangibles into a sentence, now, before lunch, is too bloody.'

but we just ate lunch so....

i guess swimming will just have to do it, there will be more blogs coming up i just wanted to inform that we're all happy, sickness arose, but nothing that could not be handled by our doctor, Katerina.

everyone was in good mood leaving and while i know you'll worry about what i just said either way and nothing i can say will cure that, i just know that we needed a bit of reminding of the sanitary alertness required in the country, and we're hopefully all on out best lookout.

-monak

See you in 5 days

We'll be Keur for 5 more days so there won't be any new posts. When we get to Mbour we'll set up a flicker page with tons of photos. We'll also summarize the projects at that time. See you soon.

-Andrew K.

Village Festival

There was a festival put on by the villagers for two nights of our stay. It was about a human who found magical powers to fight lions, or something like that. It was very funny, and most of us were called to do some very innappropriate dance moves in front of the entire village. And I'm just gonna stop there.

St. Louis.

I'm sorry to say that I left Keur Sadaro with no small amount of relief. While the village had it's pros, the absence of running water was starting to wear on me. While I miss my family back there, the three hour bus ride was amazing.

It was basically the same as the bus ride from Dakar to Thies, and only one really notable thing happened. We stopped at a tremendous Baobab tree, which is the national tree of Senegal and the biggest (on average) tree in the world. It was hollow in the center, and about eight people could fit inside. It also would probably take our entire group to circle around it. 

Besides that, though, the ride was unspectacular. We passed through arid semidesert and small villages that could have been Keur Sadaro.

St. Louis, now, was a different story

We arrived in town at one of the nicest hotels in the city. It had running water, a TV with fourteen channels, and some Western food. Which is why it was one of the nicest hotels in the city. 

After taking a couple of hours to eat, settle in, etc. we went out to find an ATM. Once it was found, we made the mistake of placing our entire group outside of it. Needless to say, we were immediately mobbed by throngs of vendors.

Don't get me wrong, they were really nice. Some of them stopped to talk with us after they realized that we probably weren't going to buy their stuff. But they were so entirely mercenary about the whole thing. They'd pester us until we'd buy something in order to get them to shut up. I resisted the temptation, but it was an effort.

Later, Waylin (Lick '11) and I walked out into the city to find one of the vendors who was selling Senegal t-shirts. We came back to the hotel fifty dollars poorer (collectively, for all you moms out there worried about money), loaded down with crafts, and without Senegal t-shirts.

It wasn't really our fault; the vendors were crafty. Basically the first man we saw upon exiting the hotel paused to talk with us. He explained how he had American friends who go to the university across the river, how he likes just walking along the waterfront, and that he was in town for the Jazzfest that ended two weeks ago. Then, all sly-like, he mentioned "I sell bracelets to people at the Jazzfest; that's why I'm not in my village. Would you like to see a few?"

I have to admit, though, he was the slyest of the bunch. Other merchants would simply catch us looking at their wares and ask if we wanted them to show us around the shop. Since it was hard to say no, we would look around, and try to spend as little money as possible.

The last man we saw, though, was the worst of the bunch. He noticed the small African drum Waylin had bought, and told us that his brother had sold it to us. When we said that probably wasn't true, he pointed in the exact opposite direction of where the store was really located and said, "Yeah, you got it over there. but I have a bigger drum than him, only thirteen thousand CFA (26 dollars)."

After we said a couple of times that we didn't want the drum, we realized that it was pointless. Instead, I tried to BS him that we were going to come back next Wednesday to pick it up. I'm pretty sure he swallowed the story, but we still ended up paying 3000 CFA up front (more as a bribe to get him to go away than anything). Then, we walked back to the hotel with no small relief.

The people here are also more casually...not rascist, but ready to profile than Americans are. For example, when me and Waylin (who is Asian) were walking down one of the streets, a little boy passing by said "ching chow" to him, and went on his way. And also, one of the older men started chattering away in Japanese when we neared him.

That night, we ate at a non-profit hostel for single mothers and there children. The place was really interesting because they take in young mothers (some only sixteen) and their children, and teach them how to sew or cook or bead in order to generate income. The money we paid for the meal with went to the organization, and we're going back there tonight, also.

Okay, I've exhausted my mental capacities for righting at the moment, so I'll close with this. Never take a shower for granted.

-Aaron M.

squatting exercises

i set out on this journey i had a few questions in mind.

before i introduce some grand thinking questions, i have to inform you that we have arrived in St. Louis and all [most] of us are alive.

I'm kidding we've gotten some golden freedom, showers, and toilette's, we couldn't be more releived.

Keur Sadaro-

All of us seem to really be enjoying getting know new people and becoming a part of a new community. Some are repairing schools, some are helping cure bacterial infections, but what threads between everybody's task is the will to become a part of something outside of themselves. The names we are given like "Bige Bop" are actually not only our name, but the name of all our siblings as well. Names in american culture often define a large part of our identities: where we come from, who our parents are, which leads onto greater things to be assumed and shape us. Here, our names are not our own and stand as a symbol for being a member, a segment. Names define kids as the offspring of a father, the word 'individual', has a different significance. If the unit to which people see their foundation is their family, not just themselves, what can be answered if one were to ask: why do you get up every morning

Families, communities, are the point of relevancy. This makes the tasks at hand need a different system of completion. The idea of purpose is changed. I know that's obvious but when you live this variation, it creates completely different dimension by which you can choose to live by. Everything that you have every done has a million alternatives and everything you can do becomes measureless. That option, this new choice, is either loathed or embraced and your vanity is useless. Villagers live for more then just themselves and singular endeavor is not understood.

I know it took me a while to get to this, i beat around the bush [ because i'm young and stuborn and i don't like to admit i'm moved].

But i promise there is still enough time to relax and be less overwhelmed.

I step out of my room and I see kids, compounds, sand, and 1 tree, the borders of its shade wrapping in the people. The evenings are beautiful, a favorite time. You lay on a mat in the courtyard and the best part is, its too dark to see how dirty you are. The breeze is refreshing, revitalizing compared to the hot wind during the day, heating instantly and making you perspire the spicy lunch you just ate. No, the best part of the night is calming down and sitting with all the members of your family. Everyone is fatigued and eventually it evolves into feeling looney, this is where the best interaction occurs.

Now, the beach of St. Louis calls, so till tomorrow.

-mona k

Keur Sadaro

Sorry that the blog hasn't been updated in a while; we were in Keur Sadaro, and subsequently did not have wi-fi. Since it is impossible to document everything that happened over the past week, I'm just going to ramble on a bit. Bear with me.

We arrived in the village to what can best be described as chaos. Pretty much all of the people in the place and the surrounding compounds had assembled in Keur Sadaro's small market square. Kids and adults were shouting at everyone and everything, and the chatter was immense. I'm pretty sure that the little kids in the school tried to sing a song for us, but I couldn't hear more than one word in twenty, and I didn't even understand that one word. Later, we were claimed by different families, and walked to our houses. None of us were allowed to carry any baggage.

I shared a compound with Amanda (Drew '10), Justin (Lick '11), Annika (Lick '11), and Sydney (Lick '10) that was maybe a kilometer away from the main village. Yes, it was one big happy family, I know, I know. We were all given Wolof names (I was Bara Chow), and were named after one of our brothers or sisters --usually the cutest one. 

The kids in the village are by far the best part of the experience. There are three defined groups of them: the 3-5 year old kids, the 6-10 year old kids, and the 11+ kids, but usually, I can't get any more accurate than that in telling their ages. Nobody cries, though, which is really nice.

I think the reason for that is because the moms are too harassed to respond to crying children, unless it's really bad. For example, my "siblings" were running around one day, pretending to be goats. One of the boys fell, tripped by another. After three wails (more for form's sake than anything else), he noticed nobody was rushing to his help, and simply picked himself up and ran off. 

The kids are also obsessed with teaching me Wolof and French. I think it's really helpful, because I could tell that my Wolof has expanded since the first day in the village. They were especially persistent in teaching me my body parts, and always in a certain order. Also, the fact that French verbs sound almost exactly like Spanish verbs.

The older kids were as much ruled by hormones as teens are in America. But they don't even bother asking people out; they just go and propose to us. Apparently all the girls have gotten marraige proposals so far. Most of them were jokes, but some people were serious. The female villagers are more sly, though. One cornered me in my room after she brought me an egg sandwich for dinner (which was amazing, I must say). We were sitting on my bed, and was asking about my life in America. Later, she asked "Do you have...wife?" I denied it. Then she asked if I had a fiance. Realizing what she was hinting at, I said yes really quickly. Later, when we were going through my yearbook, She saw a picture of me and Clare W. dancing in the play, she pointed at it and decided that that was my fiance. I didn't try to argue; it was a ready made excuse.

However, the kids were really annoying when we were trying to get work done. They were trying to be helpful, you can't deny that. But there is such a thing as being too helpful. I was in gardening, which invariably included digging lots of holes. However, kids would snatch shovels out of our hands and dig themselves, or trample other plants while they were planting new ones. The chaos grew worse when Mr. Cusin chose to award the hardworking kids with soccer shoes. He was immediately mobbed, with everyone claiming he worked the entire day. Needless to say, all the plants were trampled, too.

Besides the actual work, though, the village is great. The living conditions are way better than what I expected. My room is about the size of my room at home. It consists of a large armoir (or however you spell that), a dresser, and a mattress that doesn't look too infested by bedbugs. For someone who was expecting a natty blanket on a dirt floor of a grass hut, it wasn't too bad. 

The food is also really good, for the most part. It usually consists of rice, a few carrots, sometimes onions, and a meat of some kind. There also seems to be enough of it. I was expecting only to get a tiny parcel of rice and meat, but instead, I eat about as much as I do at home. While crunching down bones gets a little tedious, the food is amazingly delicious.

However, I have had way too much mangoes. I'm pretty sure that my family's occupation is mango farmers, so mangoes make up a large part of the diet. I end up eating about five mangoes a day. For someone who doesn't like mangoes that much to begin with, now I am sick to death of them. 

The village is a definate experience, I must say. Some parts are amazing, some parts are horrible, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to come out of this trip a new person. At least, someone who will never take a bottle of cold water for granted again.