Hey again,
Today, Wednesday March 23rd, is my third day at my internship site. Our whole MSID group left Dakar Monday morning to drop everyone off at their internship sites. We took the southern road first, and since I was the closest one to Dakar, I got dropped off first. While I was glad to not have to ride around in a bus for two days, it was a little disappointing not to be able to see more of Senegal, and see where everyone else will be living. Danielle was right after me, since Fatik is only about an hour or so past my village of Sessene.
Sessene is right along the southern national highway, a little less than 2 hours southeast of Dakar. When I arrived at my family’s house, it was pretty similar to the houses I saw in Toubacouta. The “house” is actually more like a collection of one room houses with a open courtyard in the middle, surrounded by a reed fence. My room is actually my own little hut, with a bed and a table. There is also a kitchen hut, what seems to function like a living room, the girl’s room, and two others (I’m not sure exactly who sleeps there yet). So far, I’ve spent most of my time in the living room, the girl’s room, and outside sitting under the big tree in one corner of the courtyard.
As far as I can tell so far, the family is composed of four adult sisters, one brother, my parents, and a bunch of kids. All of my sisters have small babies. I asked how old the two smallest are (5 and 8 weeks), and one of the older ones is 5 months I think. He’s just started to eat a little solid food, but he doesn’t have any teeth, which makes his attempts to eat solid food pretty funny. So far, I’ve mostly talked with my sister Rama, because she speaks French. I was very relieved when I met her, and learned she speaks French. Although she’s the only one of my sisters who speaks French, it makes life, and learning Wolof much easier. She learned French in Dakar where she worked as a maid, until she got pregnant and came back to her parents house. She said that a lot of employers won’t hire (or keep) a maid if she gets pregnant, because they know it’s nearly impossible to work full time with a newborn. Her husband is still in Dakar, but he calls her periodically. I haven’t asked yet, but I think my other sisters’ husbands must be in Dakar or Thies too, because I haven’t seen any adult males except my dad and one brother. My brother, Cheikh, also speaks French, but I haven’t really seen him since the first day. I met him and a bunch of other guys, who are family friends I think, but they seemed to disappear after I met them.
Here the men and women live in almost completely separate circles, with the women staying in the house, and the men spending most of their time out. They come back to the house to eat, sleep, and drink attaya, and even at meal times the guys eat around a different bowl than the women. Actually I think that it’s probably easier for me this way, because the few times I’ve gone out with Rama to visit people, about every other male I meet asks if I’m married. Depending on my reponse (I alternate between the truth, and joking that I have four husbands) I usually get an offer of marriage, or a request for me to find them an American woman to marry. Yesterday, after he got over laughing, this one guy actually said he would be my fifth husband. The Senegalese love to joke, but I think there is a little bit of truth in all the marriage offers I get, because most of the Senegalese men think that because I’m white, I must be rich, so they figure they might as well offer to marry me and see what happens.
In general, I’ve been told that the village is pretty empty right now. Since it’s the dry season, a lot of the young, working age people are in the cities. I think it’s very likely that I have more brothers and sisters that are in Dakar, because I don’t think it’s coincidence that all four of my sisters who are here have small children. Since there are a bunch of little kids, there is plenty of work to do around the house. As far as I can tell, none of the women in my family work outside the house, probably partially because there isn’t really anything else to do, but they’ve let me help some. On my first day I helped with the laundry. They seem to do some wash each day instead of my family in Dakar who has one laundry day where they do it all. I think that might be because they don’t have as many clothes, especially for the small kids who grow out of clothes fast, so the clothes they do have need laundering more often. Yesterday, my mom also let me try to make cous-cous. They make it from millet flour, sometimes with some corn flour too, basically by adding water to the flour so it clumps up, and then mixing it until the clumps break up. It took me a really long time, and my cous-cous still had some balls that were too big, which my mom quickly fixed after I was done mixing. I don’t think it was too bad for my first try, but I’ll have to practice a lot to be able to make it anywhere near as efficiently as my mom. Also they told me that Saturday they will teach me to make a Senegalese meal, and I chose to learn to make yassa, since it’s my favorite one.
Monday night was also my first time working at my internship. I met my supervisor Mr. Pane, who is the director of the organization I work for, Agrecol Afrique. He explained to me the basics of the organization, what they do, main problems, goals, and such. The organization is headquartered in Thies. They work in organic agriculture, advising organic producers and educating people about the benefits of farming organically. Agrecol Afrique also helps the producers with marketing, and in Thies there is an all organic market once a week (I think). The staff of the Sessene office of Agrecol Afrique is Mr. Pane, Mme Faye who works with the women’s cooperative, and Mr. Dia who is the agronomist and works with the producers. It’s interesting to me that they call the farmers, “les payasans” in French, which literally means peasants. That word doesn’t seem to have the same negative connotation in French, otherwise everyone in my organization is very unpolitically correct.
Yesterday I started work around 8:30 am, when Mr. Pane and I went to the office of Agrecol Afrique. They have a pretty nice modern office, with computers but no internet. He was working at the computer, but he didn’t give me anything to do, so I found and started to read some of the Agrecol Afrique newsletters. I haven’t gotten too far since it’s in French, and my head hurts if I try to read French for too long. However, it was useful reading to help me think of what I want to learn, or my “academic goals” as MSID puts it. Mr. Pane said that previous interns have basically just participated in all of the Agrecol Afrique activities, but I can also do some sort of independent project if there is something specific I want to do. The second week of April there is a organic ag conference and market in Thies, and Mr. Pane said I can go to it with them.
Around noon, I went home and hung out with my sisters and the kids until lunchtime (probably about 2 I think). Then around three, Mr. Dia came to get me, and we went to the trial plots of Agrecol Afrique. They rent some land to have a training field to show people how to farm organically. They’ve installed a drip irrigation system to grow vegetables during the dry season, which is supplied with water from a nearby well. He also showed me their nursery plots where they raise the vegetable seedlings to transplant into the field. They are also testing an alternative planting system that uses a constructed trench of sorts where the drip irrigation line is buried underground. They put plastic along the edges of the trench, and have some millet, ash (I think) and some sort of manufactured product to retain water. I’m not sure but I think it’s similar to the water retaining beads that I’ve seen in the US to mix into potting soil. The trenches are still under construction, so they don’t know yet if they will work. Also, Mr. Dia said it was the first time they’ve been tested in Senegal, so they really have no idea how effective it will be. After looking at the projects they have, I helped transplant cabbage seedlings from the nursery into the field along the drip lines. As we were working, I was surprised by the dark brown color of the soil in the field since most of the soil around here is a light sandy color because it’s almost all sand. So, I asked Mr. Dia, and he said that during the wet season there is a river that deposits alluvial material there, so they don’t have to fertilize the field at all since it’s so rich with organic matter. In general, though, I’ve been surprised how many crops can grow in almost pure sand.
The first day I got here, my grandmother gave me a Senegalese name, so now, like Margretta, I am Fatou. There are three other Fatous in my family, and it’s a common name, which makes for some confusion. Rama and I came up with FatouMel for me to differentiate from the other Fatous, but it hasn’t stuck yet, so I think I’ll just have to deal with being one of the many Fatous. Also, yesterday, my mom told me (with some translation help from Rama) that they are going to have a name giving ceremony and party for me. In French, the name of the party sounds like baptism, probably because it’s normally thrown for little kids when they’re first named. I’m pretty excited to see what it will be like, and my sisters and mom have already started talking about what I’m going to wear for the party, and told me I should invite my friends. I don’t know if they will be able to/ want to come, but I’ll at least tell Danielle since she doesn’t live too far away, and she was my roommate in Dakar.
Generally, I feel very welcomed by my family, despite the fact that I don’t understand the majority of what people are saying. I’ve already learned a bunch of new words, and are starting to understand a little more when people are actually talking to me. Mostly they just ask me the basic questions and salutations, so I hear a lot of the same stuff which makes it easier. Yesterday as I was walking to work (it’s a few minutes down the road from my house), I was really happy to hear some people call out and greet me, “Fatou, Fatou.” It was a nice change from “Toubab, Toubab,” (that’s the word for white person) although I still get that a lot.
Love,
Mel
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