And You Thought It Was Over

I don’t know why, but ever since I came back from Senegal I just feel like I’m in a funk. Normally I’m as busy as a bee and can’t wait to just dive into things, but now I just feel like “being” for awhile. And I guess I just have to deal with this. Sometimes I feel guilty that I’m “wasting” time or that just plain bored, but it does feel nice to notice time without being ruled by it. I recall a passage from the Odyssey where the Titaness Calypso tells Odysseus that time is just a thing that humans created in a futile attempt to measure the infinity of eternity. At the time, in my sixteen year old American know-it-all manner, I thought that with technology we had finally woven time into the very fabric of existence. But now I’m glad to realize just how relative something as absolute as time can be. I can allow myself to take a few days to craft a wonderful response to an email without obsessing that the recipient will think I hate him/her for not responding within 24 hours. Leaving Senegal has been harder than I’ve thought – certainly not as easy to verbalize. But there is something to be said for crawling into pajama pants in a heated home and watching movies while the snow blows outside. A few more reentry posts to follow...

School Daze - Almost Over!

I’m writing this blog post as a warm-up exercise to finishing my final Senegalese Society and Culture paper en français. Last week I took a two-part French final: the first was a comprehension exam with lots of information hidden in sidebars and the second was a ridiculously easy grammar test which made us all feel like we had wasted our time sitting in class. I also handed in my final history paper with neither pomp nor circumstance. Yesterday, I took my Wolof oral and written exams. This past weekend, I had heard several other students saying that their final would just be three paragraphs – one in the past, one in the present, and one in the future. Our exam had the same questions – at the end of four pages of grammar exercises! My professor was very willing to help us along though and it went fine. I had reviewed my phonetics packet for French and just read the 40 three to four word phrases aloud with no trouble. Tomorrow, our Public Health class is analyzing the data we collected to determine how much and what kind of malnutrition, if any, is present in the village.
Final exams also mean teacher evaluations! I’ve been lucky enough to only have one professor merit a truly bad evaluation from me – the rest were either all excellent or just good enough. This semester, however, I was very open and honest about issues that needed to be addressed. Exams also mean goodbyes and I’m attending a goodbye dinner tonight. Tomorrow we have final housing meetings and a Reintegration seminar. Contrary to popular belief, final exams do not necessarily mean concentrated studying. Jen and I had reviewed during our road trips and during downtime this weekend and felt perfectly justified in taking yesterday afternoon off to hang out in my room eating ceebu jen, talking about our lives, and taking pictures with my grooming mitt.

Edit: The paper is now 2/3 of the way done and not due until Friday!

A Faticki Weekend Continued

After we left the mental hospital, we visited another Poste de Santé. Jake and I had stayed at one in Samba Dia (Jen ended up as an unexpected guest!), but this was much nicer. We’re talking faux-marble on the outside waiting benches nice. This also happened to be the “living laboratory” where the double-blind experiments on conjugated vaccines were carried out. A partition separated the preparation area from the actual exam room so that the patient could not see what was going on. During the next short leg of our journey Madeleine, Jen, Jake’s father and I had a discussion about drug trafficking in West Africa and why it was more of a problem in the United States. We then arrived at a church that had a hospital wing and were greeted by a nun in a full habit. Of course, this being Senegal, the head nurse with whom we were supposed to speak was absent, so we more or less just chilled outside speaking French and Wolof to the nun. After a wonderful dinner of fish n’ fries (which is Kate’s FAVORITE DISH EVER since it’s all her family is willing to feed her), I chatted for awhile before heading to bed around 11:30.

Sunday came more quietly and as I was freezing in the shower, I heard soft church hymns. I actually enjoy the Muslim Call to Prayer, though I prefer it as an accompaniment to my dinner than breakfast. We all descended on the delicious village bread which is made with whole grain instead of being stuffed full of sugar and air like the Dakar version. Traffic wasn’t horrible on the way back and I was able to carry on some very interesting conversations with Andrew. Then back home to homework and napping!

A Faticki Weekend (sans Pu Pu Platters)

I just returned from a weekend in the region of Fatick in the Sine-Saloum area where I conducted a public health survey for a course. Nine of us left Dakar at 9:30 am on Friday morning to be met by our comrades at a later date. Predictably, we were stuck in traffic at 10:45 in the town of Rufisque and had plenty of time to listen to the radio. Our favorite songs? A techno remix of the "Titanic" theme (for clubbing?!) and "Scrubs" by TLC. According to the latter, "a scrub is a guy who can't get no love from me, hanging out the passenger side of his best friend's ride, trying to holler at me." All of the female passengers agreed that this accurately described Dakar men and resolved to sing, or at least hum, the song the next time that they were hissed at. I worked a little on my Wolof homework, as we all know the week before finals is the PERFECT time for a field trip, before passing out. Upon our arrival, we ate delicious ceebu jen and were shown around the research facility where we would be staying. The goal of the team was to test whether a conjugated or a non-conjugated vaccine for meningitis would be more effective - important when one considers that Senegal is in the "meningities belt" of Africa and experiences severe epidemics every eight years. We read, talked, and hung out for the rest of the day before peacefully reposing under mosquito-repellent nets in our individual cabins (which looked like tiki huts).

Saturday began early with the 5:45ish call to prayer being blasted over the compound. Several birds were apparently awakened as well and decided to praise Allah for the coming morning by shrieking at the top of their lungs. I took a freezing cold shower in the 65 degree weatherbefore walking around a bit and taking some pictures. Breakfast was amazing village bread with chocolate, cheese, and lots of milk. We then split up into three teams in order to measure the height, weight, and arm circumference of local children in order to determine if any were acutely or chronically malnourished. The data we collected and will analyze this week will go back to the village chief who will speak with the families and use the figures if any NGO's (non-governmental organizations) come by offering to help. Jen, Kate, Andrew and I set off to measure 20 representatives of the under-2 set, a daunting proposition. Since the researchers had been in place since the 1960s, the mothers had been measured before and were very cooperative when our Serer-speaking guide approached them. Most of the children screamed, but we had a few who slept through the procedure, alxamdulilaa ("thanks be to God" in Arabic). We even encountered a set of female twins named Awa and Adama - versions of Adam and Eve. That afternoon, we received a tour of a psychiatric health center. Conviently, Jake's psychiatrist father was visiting and was able to help us understand what some of the drugs were used for in the US. Yet things were still rather off - the doctor was out for awhile, and our tour was initially led by a bipolar patient who described his white happy pills. Computer lab closing in five - will write back with more tomorrow!

PS I got a beard trim the other day and now look far more Euro-chic than Backwoods-brush.

Weekend Round-Up

I spent most of my last actual weekend in Dakar engaging in the Senegalese national past-time: waiting. The archbishop of Dakar was ordained as a cardinal on November 27 and was coming to celebrate Sunday mass in a stadium. My maid used a portion of her meager salary to purchase tickets for the two of us to go to the Welcome ceremonies on Friday, while Maman took care of the Sunday arrangements. Friday afternoon, we arrived at the stadium at 3:30 pm. The cardinal was supposed to arrive at 5:30 pm, but did not actually enter the stadium until 8:22 pm. The ceremonies took three hours: dancers, middle school pom-pom girls, and a high school interpretive dance regarding Christian Africa. Yes, readers, I sat in the stadium for 8. Freaking. Hours!!! Saturday, I finished my history paper and celebrated by going "en ville" with Jen to buy gifts at Sandaga. After dinner and a little studying, I went out with my friends to a club that holds a "Once a Month" Party. Sunday morning, I awoke after too few hours of sleep at 7:15 am to get ready to go to 10:00 am Mass. This time, the cardinal arrived at 10:30 am and the service began at 11:00 am. Considering how many people were there, it was a surprisingly efficient affair: the service was done by 1:00 pm and Communion took 20 minutes! They had deputized most of the local priests and things went smoothly. I went home, passed out, ate wonderful yassa poulet (chicken with a delicious onion sauce over rice), passed out again, and finally woke up at 6:15 to call my family and be productive again. Though I spent a total of 13 hours in a stadium, it was still a wonderful weekend. One of the side effects of having to wait so long is that I had to be very productive when I wasn't. Now if I can survive the rest of my two finals week and a trip this weekend to Fatick to do a survey on malnutrition!