Death, divorce, and drinking tea.

The past few days have been full of adventures for myself and quite frankly everyone around me! First things first, on October 26th was Tabaski, a day jam-packed with meat, fancy boubous, and biking. I do not have a host family, so instead of spending the day hanging out in one compound, I traveled around Tamba visiting families I had grown close to. I biked out to Tamba Soce with Nic and James, and there we ate with several work partners and two researchers from the organization Simenti. After that, we went to visit another work partner, who, unfortunately, was not at home but we took a picture with his beautiful wife instead. After this, I went home and fell asleep for a few hours, and then moved onto house number 3, the home of Camara, who was a former guard at USAID/Yaajeende. Then, before going to sleep, I moved on to Djibi's house, a traditional Pulaar family that took in Nic and I. There are two girls that live in Djibi's compound that were my girls camp girls last year, and those two girls also come over to do laundry from time to time. At the end of the day, I had three meals composed entirely of meat and onions, maybe with some bread and pasta, depending on the family, and then, I had leftovers the next day! It was overall a great day, and it felt good just to go around and greet people.

James, Nic, and Madame Koulibaly in Tamba Soce

A few days later, on the 1st, the new volunteers for the Tamba region came up for their volunteer visits. It was incredibly fun, as having new volunteers in the region is rejuvinating. It is nice meeting new people and having new energy come into the region. The following Saturday we went to Bolou, a Bambara village 10K outside of Tamba where one of the new volunteers will be living. I was very impressed with the village. It was beautiful, full of trees and small gardens, friendly people, and lots of watermelon. Fatu, the new volunteer's host sister, took us around to greet people in the village. Overall, the village is 99% Bambara, but I kept trying to speak Pulaar, and sure enough, I found the 1% of Pulaar speakers, and one of them lives in the volunteer's compound, so I was pretty happy about that.

Volunteer visit in Bolou with our lucky new agriculture volunteer!

Yesterday was an emotional day for me. For the past few days, my neighbors have been fighting like crazy. I mean, serious fights- yelling, screaming, throwing things. There was one morning when they were fighting so bad that I did not leave my apartment until they were done fighting- I did not want to accidentally step into the middle of a potentially violent situation. So yesterday I was talking on the phone with one of my friends when my neighbor came over to get meat from my freezer (did I mention that there are lots of frozen sheep heads in my freezer? Because there are, and they are not even my sheep heads!). Then, the neighbor's husband came over and told me not to give her the meat, then returned the meat to me, and told me I could only give the meat to him and never to give the meat to his wife. I was generally confused over the weirdness of the meat ownership argument, then went back to my phone conversation. Later that day, my neighbor showed up to tell me that him and his wife were getting divorced- AHA! I thought. THAT explains the meat argument. It turns out that his wife was moving out, and both of them wanted to keep the meat for themselves. I actually had a long discussion with the husband about the situation. Divorce in this country, while becoming more common, is still pretty rare, so he told me all of the procedures that he went through to try to prevent the divorce. He took his wife to religious leaders, and paid traditional healers large amounts of money to create medicine that would "fix her head." In the end, I feel that the divorce will be better for both parties, especially the wife in this situation as the relationship was becoming potentially dangerous for her. However, I was heartbroken, because I had grown close to the wife and her two adorable kids, and the wife was the only Pulaar speaker in my apartment complex. I miss the kids already. Now, the kids and wife are totally moved out, and I have no way of contacting them. Eugh.

It's hard living in the city without a host family due to the simple instability of the type of friendships that I develop- I hang out with teachers, principals, NGO workers, students, farmers, and housewives, all of which are randomly moved by the government to other regions for work, moved by their family to other schools, spending all of their time in the fields, or, getting divorced and moving randomly to an undisclosed location. The principal at the college at Tamba Soce was recently moved to a different school as well, and I had spent alot of time hanging out at the school getting to know the staff- but now I have to start over and develop a friendship with this new principal. It will be fine, but all of these mini-goodbyes (or mini not goodbyes) can be challenging emotionally.

On a positive note, Fatu and her friend Tenne came over and hung out yesterday, and we drank tea, and played with the cat.

This is Tenne. About half an hour before this picture was taken, she was so scared of the cat that she literally ran from it screaming whenever it walked by her. One of the funnest/coolest things about my job is teaching kids that animals are wonderful companions and will be nice to you if you are nice to them! Tenne = convinced, nonetheless cat = not so sure.

Fatu and Tenne think they can guess Nic's password. Nope.

Today I went to the T.S. school and met the new principal for the first time- and he's Pulaar! He seemed very sweet and hardworking, and made a good first impression. I hope he will be good for the school. I paid the inscription fees today for my nine Michele Sylvester Scholarship girls as well, which I feel very good about. I have gone to the school several times, and one of my friends went to check on the school as well, but the school seemed no longer functioning. The makeshift school buildings were collapsing, and vines had started to grow on the collapsed structures. The teachers were not there, there was no trace of a staff, and only a few of the students were milling around. The school is doomed, I thought to myself- but no! Today, the school was buzzing with students. The teachers were back, and were teaching classes! The principal was meeting with parents! The parent-teacher association president was enrolling his daughter! The secretary was keeping track of students and filling out paperwork for the new students that just came from elementary school! I gave my prize student her certificate of honor for being a scholarship recipient, and she had the biggest smile I had ever seen!!! It felt good. I'm hopeful that Tamba Soce is on the up and up.

On the way back, though, I committed a major social blunder. I live in an apartment complex that is behind the local cemetery, and although I know it is an active cemetery, I have never seen a funeral service there or seen any bodies or burials at this particular cemetery. Today, I accidentally rode my bike through a service. I turned onto the road to my apartment complex, like I do every single day several times a day. To be honest, I bike that road so many times a day that turning onto that road is completely automatic. I notice some guys praying, but don't think too much about it- people are always praying in that area, which is also near a large Koranic school and truckers usually stop there to rest. It is only when I ride closer do I notice the white-wrapped body shaped bundle in front of them. I panic. I was in the situation that I had already biked so close to the ceremony that it would have caused more distraction if I had stopped, but also realized that what I was doing was NOT ok. I covered my field of vision with my hands out of respect, kept my head low, and veered as quickly as I could to the side as far away from the service as I could get. I will not make that mistake again, that is for sure. I feel strange about the whole deal. Funerals are so private- the last thing people want is a foreigner riding their bike through your service, more or less a female (the service was being held by all men.) I am just glad my head was covered and hope that I did not cause too much of a distraction. Yikes. Lesson learned. Apologies.

Oddly enough, the shock and distress I felt at accidentally interrupting this ceremony has left me nostalgic for Taiwan. I was in Taiwan several years ago during Ghost Month, where people celebrate their ancestors in various ways. I sometimes felt awkwardly voyeuristic observing Ghost Month traditions, even though I was welcomed to observe these traditions and sometimes these displays were very public. The same shock brought back waves of emotion from Taiwan, and thus, I am craving cold sweet green tea and milk, which I found very comforting while in Taiwan.

Alas! The day is young. I am going to have some tea, reflect on this funeral incident until I feel less weird about it, drop by the PEPAM office and shop for marathon supplies!! The marathon this year is happening on December 9th, so everybody come on down!

And! Here is a not in any way related photo of some of the many candy bars available in Senegal!