It’s been over four months since my last post on this site. Sorry y’all, that’s my bad. I think I talked about how time can get away from you when you do something like the Peace Corps in my last post. I guess we’re seeing now that that’s an all service kind of thing, not just at the beginning. Though, I guess I’m still kind of at the beginning of my service, I still have twenty months before my two years are up. I digress, I should be updating you all on my life here, not going on about how distracted I get.

It’s now been about five months since I was installed, though I’ve technically been at site for around four-ish months because of In-Service Training and a small stint in the capital, Dakar (I’ll get to it). Generally things are good here. Work is still relatively slow as I wait for the rainy season, but I’ve started working on a few projects around town, which feels really nice after what has felt like months of doing nothing in particular.

I’ve started working with the environmental club in their garden at the local university. We’re started small with a tree nursery and soon we’re going to work on techniques like compost and pest management. I’m also working with one of the middle/high schools in town. Me and another volunteer at my site have started an English club that meets weekly and I’m working on starting a school garden there. I’m, of course, still working on my home garden, to varying degrees of success. Not too long ago I had a small harvest of bean and lettuce. After that I transplanted a ton of tomatoes and eggplants which all dried up; the heat, wind, and lack of moisture are not conducive to growing much right now. I’m still getting used to the environment and the agricultural calendar, but I’m determined to eventually make this garden productive.

Going a little further back to February, I returned to the Peace Corps training center for In-Service Training (IST). It was two weeks of mostly technical training intended to teach us some of the more advanced techniques that we’d need to do our jobs. It was generally uneventful until we reached our grafting training, during which I put a half-inch deep cut into the tip of my thumb with a grafting knife. Because of that, I had to travel to the capital of Dakar, where I got four stitches. Once IST ended I returned to stay in Dakar for another week until those stitches came out. It wasn’t all bad though, I had the opportunity to explore a city that I am normally not allow to travel to. I only got to see a small portion of it, but what I did see was incredible. It’s a massive city full of hidden gems to discover including a super friendly beach dog.

By the time I got back to my site, we were in the middle of Ramadan. Before being sent to Dakar I had planned to start fasting with my family, now I had to catch up. Work slows to a crawl during Ramadan, especially for people that have never really fasted before, so I spent a lot of time resting and just hanging out with my family. At night is when things would come alive, everyone would break the fast at sunset and then go out to socialize until dinner time at midnight or later.

Part way through the month of Ramadan, my family had another celebration: a baby naming ceremony. My host sister-in-law gave birth to her first son and we celebrated his naming the week after. During these ceremonies people from around the neighborhood, around town, and family from other cities gather to hear the name being announced, to bless the name, and to give gifts to the family. In return guests are given snacks, candy, and are generally fed a full three meals (lunch and dinner often including meat of some kind, which can be a rarity). Because this ceremony was during Ramadan, the food had to wait but everyone was sure to be at the house at sunset to get their share of the meals. Ceremonies like this one are a microcosm of a lot of the values that exist in Senegal. The connection between family members, hospitality, caste relationships and so on.

Finally, the end of Ramadan came. We celebrated by eating more meat and life slowly started to return normal. Not too long after that, I visited my local capital of St. Louis for the first time to do some reporting with a few of my peers in the region. St. Louis is another beautiful city that I’d like to explore more. We only spent a few days their, but luckily I can return every month.

After that trip is when the work that I mentioned earlier really got started. It was then promptly interrupted by another trip to Dakar that I’ve since returned from. Now with the heat and wind intensifying, gardening is slowing down and the schools are closing in less than a month. This my work slows to a crawl once again. However, this time, it’s the calm before the storm. My busiest time of year, rainy season, is just around the corner. When that time comes I’ll be spending nearly every day in the fields outside of town, first extending seeds, then techniques, then doing follow ups and helping to maintain the fields. Finally I’ll calculate the yield of the fields to determine the success of the rainy season campaign. It’s going to be a lot, but hopefully I’ll be prepared for it, and of course there’s always next year if things don’t work out.

I know this post is already so long and probably a little tedious to read, but I want to start including more than just a chronological list of events. If anyone that actually reads this is interested in a specific topic, let me know! It could relate to my language,  general culture, holidays, family life, or whatever else you’re interested in hearing about. For now I’ll just rattle on about something I’ve been thinking about lately.

When you join Peace Corps, especially certain post like Senegal, you end up having to form a new identity. You’re given a new name, you have to hide certain aspects of yourself that do not mesh with the culture, and you have to develop new parts of yourself to survive. This a weird tension between your two identities, who you “really” are and who you have to be. I put really quotation marks because I’m finding that this changes depending on your context. Sure there are certain things that sort of make up your core personality but everything else can kind of shift around that. Of course this happens would happen back home with things like code switching, but it has never felt more pronounced to me. What complicates this even more is the fact that one of the big three objectives of Peace Corps is to help foster an understand of the US through volunteers. How then do I choose what to explicitly share with my family and friends here, what to leave alone, and what to consciously hide? I have a feeling that I’m going to have to keep asking myself this question all of the way until the end of my service. I hope that as my service progresses I’ll be more able to navigate this but only time will tell.

Anyway, that’s where I’ll call it for this post. Again, if you read these and want to see them more consistently, let me know what extra thing you might want to see. Talk to y’all later!