This is the first letter from Zachary Morrison, Peace Corps Volunteer Trainee in Senegal, West Africa.
An official disclaimer: These are the observations of Zachary Morrison and do not reflect the views of US Peace Corps as a government organization.
10-16-06
Hey everyone! Its good to here from new people!
I forget what all I’ve written so forgive me if this is redundant, I’ll tell y’all a little about my host family. My Mom’s name is Awa (a very popular name here) and my Dad’s name is Abdoulaye. Pappa is about 62 and Mamma is in her 50’s. I have three older bros, Demba, Mammadou (about 25yrs), & Papis (about 24yrs), one older sister named Fatou (another very popular name here) her son Ammed, and a younger bro named Souliman (19yrs). Each night I get home from the training center which is a 2min walk from my house and I hang out with the fam until they break the fast. We live in the old part of town where the French military was quartered, so all the buildings are concrete and utilitarian in a French sort of way, with lots of concrete walls enclosing the different compounds. Its kinda a nicer part of town, vaguely reminiscent of American suburbia.
We break the fast at 7pm with bread and tea and then they pray for 15 mins. They pray outside on large mats and that’s where we eat when the weather is nice. Then we just hang out till dinner which for me and my nephew Ammed is about 8:30 or 9pm and 10pm for the rest of the fam. We lie around they talk, I listen, I work on my homework and we just do alot of nothing. Dinner is good, usually a huge bowl full of rice with either beef or fish and veggies. The beef is good, the fish is bony and very fishy so I don’t eat a ton of it, but all in all I eat pretty well.
I got good reviews from my family on the integration check-in that the PC staff does. Apparently I am pretty well integrated, which is one of PCs biggest priorities. At staging they asked us to brainstorm specific examples that would signify to us that we had integrated into our families and communities and surprisingly no one said “getting high fives American style from your host bros” or “having your host mom walk around topless mid day because of the heat” but those have been clear signs to me that I’m no longer just another skinny little white boy fom Cleveland Ohio.
My fam has hosted several pcts (peace corps trainees) and I’ve met two of them so far. Both are COSing (close of service) right now and both look a lot like me surprisingly. Skinny, Midwestern, some facial hair, and thin framed glasses. That has been something I’ve noticed to be pretty standard among the male PCTs and I think it is because of that that I don’t really feel too out of place here. I’m here is Black, Islamic West Africa and when I put it like that I can’t imagine a more foreign place in relation to where I grew up, but I fit the PC stereotype pretty well so anyone who has had some contact with PCVs is not too surprised by me or how I look.
The few things that make it hard to be here are the American things that are not quite right. The Pepsi in the plastic bottles just like at home, but they are so flat and made with a slightly different formula which makes them just different enough to be completely disappointing, or the hamburgers with french fries and a fried egg on the burger itself (its good but just a little too different) Everything else I can handle. Getting on a bush taxi and finding 15 people packed into and on top of a pickup truck sucks, but that’s just public transit Senegalese style so I can deal with it. Or the bustling markets, or eating fish and rice almost every meal, or eating out of a communal bowl with your hands, they are all just cultural eccentricities and therefore easily justified and ignored, but watching a dubbed American sitcom and hearing Daymon Wayans with a cheesy French voice over just doesn’t do it.
Oh well, all in all I am very happy here. I feel more alive and productive than I have before, despite the challenges, or probably because of them.
Keep writing and I’ll try to respond individually as much as possible.
Thank you all,
-Zack
10-24-06
Hey guys, it was a huge weekend for me! Happy Korite (pronounced Kore eat tay) which is the festival at the end of Ramadan!
On Friday we finally got our site announcements. There is a small basketball court in the back of the center and on the court is painted a large map of Senegal with the regional centers and major towns marked. They had us all close our eyes and our APCDs (Assistan Peace Corps Directors ie our sector heads/our immediate bosses) walked us out and set us in our regions. When we opened our eyes we could see where we were and where everyone else in the group would be which was exciting and difficult at the same time. I’m in Kolda region which is in the southern most part of the country directly south of The Gambia. The name of my village is Medina Abdoul and I’m roughly 20k outside the regional capitol city of Kolda (named Kolda). All five people in my language class are within 10k of me which is nice because we have had to begin to rely on each other to deal with the stress of the lang classes. Because of where we are located we are pretty isolated from the northern part of the country, but there are a lot of our stage (pronounced stahj and refers to our incoming group) down in the south which is nice.
I also got my first in country parasites last week from walking around Thies and not washing my feet 5times a day. I stepped in a mud puddle to avoid getting hit by a cab and didn’t think twice about it but then that night my left foot was super itchy. In the morning I had thin wavy red lines running down my foot. The med people said they were more like ringworm and gave me stuff to put on it. None of the creepy worms that burst out of you skin Aliens style… yet!
Also this weekend marks the end of Ramadan! There are now many restrictions that have been lifted because it has ended and people are a lot happier now that they can eat and drink water when they need to. About 30 of us went to the beach in a town called Paupenguine (pron. Pope en geen) and it was beautiful! It was roughly 17 buck a piece for one night and a day and the house was directly on the beach. The water was warm and clear, the sand was white and soft, the beer store was a short walk away, it was great! I only had 4 Gazelles, the natty light of Senegal, and I spaced them out so I was proud of myself. Several people got shit canned and there were about 20 people skinny dipping that night! I decided that drunken night swimming in the ocean, without lifegaurds or even someone capable of competently performing cpr in a third world country is not my favorite recipe for a good idea, but no one died. My worms however didn’t like the salt water which is great news!
Oh well, there is much more to say but no time to say it.
Keep writing please!
-Zack
10-30-06
> Hono mbad-don? (how y’all doin’?) Hopefully everyone is doing jamtan
> (peace only)!
>
> Language classes are going much better but we have an oral test on
> Talata
> (Tuesday) which will be recorded and is kind of a big deal. I think I
> will do ok but I really need to study in order to be able to come up
> with all the proper responses quickly and naturally enough. I am
> pretty worn out at the moment and I am avoiding my family because I am
> worn out. I like them a lot and I feel very comfortable at home but it
> is hard to spend 12hours at the center and then have to come home and
> continue to speak Fulakunda and deal with cultural issues. I went out
> last night which was nice, I ended up hanging out with 4 ancienns
> (PCVs who have been here for a while) and they took me to a little bar
> near the restaurant we ate dinner at. I got home super late relatively
> speaking, around 1am, and I had told my family that I would be back at
> 11pm, so I have been feeling guilty about that today.
> Part
> of me feels like I should feel guilty because I’m not here to party,
> but I kinda feel like its ridiculous to feel guilty because I’m an
> adult, I have been putting the time in everyday for the first month, I
> didn’t get too out of control (I only had 5 beers from 6pm-1am), and I
> have been really working hard. Plus it is because I’m feeling pretty
> comfortable with my fam that I feel like I don’t need to try so hard
> every day to fit in (in the states I saw my fam once a week for four
> hours, here I have been spending four hours a day 6 days a week and
> lots more on Sundays for the last month!) And finally, I feel like I
> really need to have a break from PC and Pulaar and just eat some
> dinner, drink a beer, and speak some English.
>
> Sorry, I just hate feeling guilty and I needed to justify myself to
> myself.
>
> We had a dance of sorts at the center this week. It was called a
> tamtam which refers both to the dance as an event and also to the
> drums that they use at the event. They had a drum troupe come and play
> and we all invited our families. It was fun, mostly the women danced
> and I wish there were more men dancing to demonstrate the more
> traditional male dances but I did my best. Everyone was pretty shy
> including the Senegalese which surprised me, but there were some women
> who got out there and really kicked it up! They tend to dance very
> quickly with lots of stomping and jumps which is cool to watch but
> hard to duplicate. At one point the circle was empty and people were
> just shyly watching so I took it upon myself to saunter out into the
> middle and start dancing. Its totally not my personality to do that,
> but it was nice because after I did what I could more people got out
> and danced, and I got a lot of positive comments from people about
> that one decision.
> I
> was proud of myself!
>
> Right now I’m mostly trying to regroup so I can get some good studying
> done tonight and tomorrow, and PST (pre service training) is starting
> to look like a tiny part of my 2 years which is really nice. I can’t
> wait to get to my village. I’ll be there for three months after I
> swear in and I’ll be getting a feel for the community and for the
> language, then I’ll come back for IST (in service training) which is
> the intensive tech training, and then after IST I’ll really be at my
> site for good, I’ll be a real volunteer!
>
> There are not a ton of animals here in Thies. There are a lot of stray
> cats and a few stray dogs, but Senegalese don’t really have pets the
> way we do in the US. If you can’t eat it or sell it or use it to do
> work an animal is really just another mouth to feed. There are lots of
> exotic birds, they are what really make me feel like I am somewhere
> different. Birds like Horn bills and Birds of Paradise, and there are
> some eagle like raptors here which are really cool. There are also a
> type of bird that soars very high all day long and I’m amazed by how
> high they get, they are raven sized but they get so high that I hardly
> notice them during the day unless I’m looking for them. I think its
> easier for them to glide here because the land is so flat that when
> you get above the tree line the winds have nothing blocking them.
>
> The other exotic thing we have are lizards. We have lizards here the
> way we have squirrels in Hiram, and they scurry up the trees when you
> walk by like the squirrels do.
>
> Well I hope you are all well and Haa laawol gonngol (until another
> time!)
>
> -Zack
