Travels with Tavish

The next week after traipsing to Lombel, I went on a short biking adventure to the Diakhanke (an alternate spelling of Jaxanke, my local language) area of Kedougou. I came into the city of Kedougou from my site (40km), then the next day biked out to a town in the Diakhanke area (61km) to help out with another volunteer's training. The other volunteer was helping her Master Farmer, Dembo Tigana, conduct an Open Field Day. Master Farmers are local farmers who receive funding from Peace Corps to be an agricultural extension agent in their communities. They each have a 1-hectare farm demonstrating agricultural techniques including composting, live fencing, tree nurseries, field crop spacing, and many others. Part of Master Farmers' work includes conducting Open Field Days, large half-day trainings with 50-100 participants, 1-2 times per year. In following with the theme of "things that are not near my village," there is no Master Farmer near my village. (Also included on...

At the end of October, the new Sustainable Agriculture and Agroforestry volunteers came down to Kedougou to check out their villages for a couple days, as I did last year. I came into the city to meet them again and welcome them to the region. After they returned to Thies, some fellow volunteers and I took a day to go to the Lombel waterfall. It was a longer walk than we expected (only about 2 miles, but very slow going because there was no trail); the waterfall was definitely worth it. A quick post today. More posts coming very soon. Enjoy the pictures! Watching our footing as we follow the river to the falls The beautiful Lombel waterfall My friends and I at the waterfall My friend Andrew climbed up to the top of the waterfall for a look down the cliff A view of the valley from the top of the falls

Greetings are a very important part of Senegalese culture. They are the first sentences you say to anyone you see, no matter your relation to that person. If you do not greet someone, they will not be willing to answer any of your questions or help you. If you greet someone, they will generally be more than willing. This applies to family members, neighbors, boutique owners, people sitting in a restaurant you walked into, and everyone else. With someone you know well, greetings are usually longer. If you walk into a space with lots of people, a simple "Asalaam maalekum" will usually suffice. I am breaking this post into two parts because there are a lot of potential greetings that one can use in any given interaction. Below are some of the most common greetings in my village. I have also uploaded some short conversations with people in my village so that you can listen. Not every greeting is on this list, but I'll try to cover most of the rest in Part 2 of this post. ...

Here are some pictures from my site in October: I was hoping that the squash-looking plant growing to the left across my yard would have large yellow squash (fairly common during December-January in Kedougou), but unfortunately it only has small fruit about two inches long. They are okay, but not nearly as good as normal squash. My toxoma's goat had two kids! My toxoma's goat and its kids My toxoma's goat and its kids Last shot of the kids A bee hive (the large log in the tree) made by someone in my village. He will bait the hive soon and hope for bees Close-up of the beehive log The river that passes under the road about 1km east of my village. The concrete added to reinforce the banks clearly did not stand up to the flooding of the river. During the peak of rainy season, the river once came up to the level of the bridge I helped my toxoma's family shuck their corn for a little while one morning An "average village...

The end of September and the first part of October was the start of the corn harvest in Kedougou. The corn harvest brings with it kabaa nyimi wahati (corn-snacking time)! For a few glorious weeks, I was offered a piece of roasted corn or a piece of fresh corn to roast almost every time I sat down in someone's compound. The corn grown here is field corn--not as delicious as sweet corn in the US, but great for roasting and snacking on in between meals. I had heard a rumor a long time ago from a former volunteer that boiled field corn does not taste good, but I disagree. It is a nice change every once in a while from the ubiquitous charcoal-roasted corn. I only ate boiled corn a couple times this season, but I plan to eat more of it next year. If I am not feeling like eating rice, it is much easier to face a meal when I have a few cobs of corn in my stomach. The start of the corn harvest also, not coincidentally, coincided with my host family once again mixing corn lunches and dinner...

Back in March, after I had been at my site a few months, I analyzed the pace at which I was reading books and set an ambitious goal for myself to read 150 books by the end of my 26 months in Senegal. If I kept up my current pace at the time, I would just barely make it to 150 by the end of my service. Since then my reading has ebbed and flowed a bit; I am close to on track. I have also done some reflecting on this goal, thinking about the purpose of chasing a certain number of books. Books obviously come in varying lengths, so the "number of books read" does not necessarily represent the amount of reading one has done. I have so far done a pretty good job of mixing in slow reads with fast reads, fiction with non-fiction. I found myself sometimes thinking about reaching 150 books rather than really concentrating on what I was reading or picking my books consciously. I recently reminded myself that the goal of 150 books was a completely arbitrary number that I chose. Readi...

Question: Do you go to the luumo? (Answer below) Description: It is Tuesday morning around 7am and you have just woken up in your hut in Senegal. It is July, rainy season. Tuesday is luumo (weekly market) day. The luumo is 10km away via bush path. It takes about one hour to bike. When at your site, this is your one chance for the week to go hang out in another village for half the day, get a bean sandwich, and to buy fruit and vegetables. When you go to the luumo during the dry season, you usually bring back some vegetables for your family to cook--so there are vegetables in the bowl one night of the week instead of the usual zero at this time of year. There are guaranteed to be onions at the luumo, and there might be some combination of white sweet potatoes, cabbage, eggplant, jaxatu, okra, and potatoes available. Probably 2-3 of the above vegetables will be available, but sometimes there are surprises. You really like eating fruit in your hut, but fruit has been pretty sca...