Transition Phase, part I

Hello! Counsins, I greet you. Nic and I are currently in the Ndioum house waiting to hear about our new house in Tamba proper. We went by Agnam and picked up all of our stuff, and it was really bittersweet. It feels great to know that the troubles we had in our site are behind us, and that we have been given an opportunity to essentially start over but with better language skills. I can't help but really hate the feeling of not belonging anywhere in particular for the time being. We spent a week in Ourosogie and I have no idea how long we will be here floating with all of our stuff packed, but I hope it's not too long because I want to get going with work pt. II for real this time. Tamba is decently far away from here, and it's hard to have any influence or say over what's going on down there and we haven't a clue at this point where we will fit into the work plans of the region. It's totally possible that we might not fit into the work plans of the region at all, especially if Nic gets a job with Yaajeende and I end up getting placed directly into an NGO, a possibility, although I feel like it is more likely that I will be doing HIV/AIDS work with local schools (thanks, Future Builders, for preparing me for this...I feel fully confident in my ability to do HIV/AIDS outreach and comfortable with my knowledge- my only stumbling block with respect to HIV/AIDS outreach is language). But who am I kidding?

I live in an "inchallah" world. Inchallah roughly means "if God wills it." It's typically thrown in at the end of any discussion of any sort of plans, as explanation for changes in plans or a reason for the unpredictable nature of life. Also, people say it whenever you make a plan with them and they do not really want to do it, but that's another story. The will of God here is deeply ingrained in everyday life, and one of the cultural issues we talked about during training when we first arrived was how to work within a context where we are at the same time expected to induce behavior change in our local friends and neighbors while they themselves believe that their lives are dictated by the will of God alone. If a child is sick, it's the will of God. If a meeting falls through, it's the will of God. In a way, it makes a lot of sense. Plans are constantly changing; I have never had so many plans fall through in my life as I have had here. Life is constantly changing. Death and illness are unpredictable. Usually the rainy season is reliable, but this year the shortage of rain fall has endangered the crops of people that do not live on the river. Entire stores and markets vanish from one day to the next as merchants travel to the next village, hoping to make a few extra cfa. It's difficult to rely on anything except for the cycles of the moon. There are days when I want to talk to the ICP at the health post and I arrive only to discover it's on strike. Sometimes I want to go to the market to buy canned foods only to discover that the canned food seller has decided to travel on. The lady that sold tuna sandwiches vanished one day. The power is constantly off and on, with little regularity. The family that I lived with put all of their buckets outside every time it rained out of hopes to collect as much water as they could, uncertain of when the next rain storm will come and provide some relief for our sandy dry town. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Sandstorms? Kittens? New babies? A car?

All of this to say that all of our potential plans are going to happen, inchallah. We may move soon. We may move later. We may get the jobs we want. We may get jobs we had no idea even existed.
"Inchallah" actually quite a useful phrase. Instead of having to skirt around my plans if they aren't certain (and they never are these days), I can just state what I wish to be the truth and follow it with inchallah.

Please review the following examples:

The American Way: Well, I think that there might be a possibility that I could come back to the states and possibly enroll in school to study something medically related.

The Senegalese Way: I am going back to the states to be a doctor, inchallah.

The American Way: If I can get together the money, I might go on Amazon and try to find a camera to buy if there are any good deals.

The Senegalese Way: I'm buying a camera, inchallah.

I feel like once my service is over I can see myself using inchallah until my brain figures out that I'm no longer in an area where people get what I am saying. It feels good to state what you wish the truth to be as truth even if you aren't certain about it.

On a positive note, I saw this totally amazing and crazy looking bird the day before yesterday.

WOAH!

It's called a hoopoe. Thanks, wikipedia, for the awesome photo. They're totally interesting and make crazy sounds and hang out by the Ndioum house. Kingfishers are in the same family group and they are the state national bird of Israel. Who knew?