News, vacation, pictures, bikes, critters, friends, the 4th

This morning I was sitting in the office at the regional house, realizing I’m not quite ready to go back to site today (the rainy season has a tendency to throw off my plans), and finding as many ways to rationalize another afternoon in Kolda as I can. Luckily I haven’t written a blog post in almost two months and now have plenty of reporting to catch up on.

Since I last wrote we have welcomed a new group of health volunteers along with a few refugees from Peace Corps Mali. I have a new neighbor 7 km up the road from me and another about 14 km in the same direction which means there is now a line of 5 of us running through Mampatim, each about 7 km from the next. This is quite the population explosion considering that Chelsea and I were the first volunteers in the area just a little over a year ago. Now, we are the senior class, answering questions and offering guidance to the new arrivals, which seems funny to me since I’m still figuring it out too. For instance, right now I’m back to wondering how to keep myself busy at site. Unless you’re an agriculture volunteer rainy season can be a difficult time to get work done; most people are busy working in the fields and don’t have much time or energy to humor me by coming to Care Group meetings. The irony is that there is much more to talk about these days with more injuries, infections and malaria cases than during the rest of the year so I’m hoping to focus my energy on what we call “petites causeries” which basically consist of me giving health advice on a person-to-person basis, on the fly, as issues arise – not the most efficient way to disseminate information, but in some cases the most effective.

Construction projects are also ill advised during rainy season, which is why I am so happy to report that my latrine project is done! You can check out my completion report by clicking here. The last few latrines were finished just in time for the big rains to start and the community is looking forward to a much improved level of sanitation now that every compound has a functional pit latrine, including two compounds adjacent to my own which previously did not. I’m thinking of doing another grant like this one in the fall to put a well at the health hut, so I’ll keep you posted as that idea develops. Until then I’m living the life of a villager, hanging out at the health hut with my pal Fodé and learning about medicinal plants.

In host family news, there is a new baby in my compound! Mamadou’s youngest wife gave birth to a baby girl a few weeks ago. It’s her fourth child and Mamadou’s fourteenth. In Senegal babies are not given a name until they are a week old and since I left village only a few days after the birth I don’t know yet who they named her after. There was a lot of talk of calling her Seyni for my American mom, but the baby’s mother is also named Seyni and it’s extremely unusual for a mother and child to have the same name, which means I might have a little namesake waiting for me when I get back to Saré Pathé. I also recently found out that number fifteen is on the way; my favorite host mom, Filijee, is pregnant with her sixth child, which she says she wants to name after me if it’s a girl. So we may have a baby Nafi in the compound in a few months… or we may have one already…

So where have I been for the last couple weeks if not at site? The beautiful region of Kédougou, that’s where! Every year the volunteer community there hosts a huge Fourth of July party and PCVs from all over the country (and a few from the Gambia) show up to have a BBQ and light fireworks and celebrate America’s birthday with far more enthusiasm than any July 4^th party I’ve ever been to or heard of in the states. People have outrageous costumes made and get decked out in body paint and spangles and flags. There is also a tradition of [a few insane] people from other regions biking to the festivities and this year I was one of them. Unlike most of the country, Kédougou actually does have some hills and I remember looking out of the bus as we climbed some of them on our way to the party last year and thinking “Those bikers are going to have some work to do!” I told myself they were crazy and that I would never be so foolhardy as to attempt to bike to the Fourth... there are plenty of other ways to get there. But somewhere along the way I either forgot how far away Kédougou is, or decided I needed to prove something to myself (and this stiff ankle of mine), or resolved that any discomfort and inconvenience would be overshadowed by the adventure of it. I was right. Over 300 km (that’s about 186 miles) in four days and about half of that in a single day biking through the Niokolo Koba National Park was nothing if not a biking adventure. We saw baboons and warthogs and monkeys, stayed with Peace Corps friends and one very nice Senegalese family. We managed to escape the rain, but not the sun. We became very dirty and sweaty, but usually did not have to remain so for long, and we all made it to Kédougou without serious injury to our bodies or bikes. The ankle held up well and while I’ll probably never again bike 125 km in a single day, I think the extra exercise was good for it and overall it was a great trip.

We arrived in Kédougou a few days before the fourth, took a day to recuperate at the regional house and then continued the adventure by taking a trip to the nearby Ségou and Dindefelo waterfalls. We hiked to Ségou the first day through beautiful jungle terrain, so unlike the rest of Senegal. The waterfall itself was fairly small and unfortunately a rock slide had felled a tree right into the pool at it’s base so we couldn’t do much swimming, but the 7 km hike was lovely and well worth the trip. We stayed that night at a local inn and the next morning biked to the village of Dindefelo and then took a short hike to its waterfall, by far the more spectacular of the two we saw (see video below!).

We spent the next couple days in the city of Kédougou, catching up with friends from other regions and partaking in the fun of the Fourth. It was a great little vacation, but by the 5^th I was tired of camping at the regional house (which is actually a compound, not a house) and was ready to get back to Kolda... Home sweet home! Lots of new pictures from the last few months HERE!