Life in the Village

I am officially living in Africa Africa. My life in Dakar hardly counts compared my life in Bow, a small village 27km outside of Matam (which is a full day's drive outside of Dakar- up to Saint-Louis and east along the Senegelese River). Where in Dakar I had a bed, I now have a mattress pad on the floor with a hard as rock pillow. I wake up bright and early every morning to the cock-a-doodle-do of roosters and the children getting ready to go to school. In Dakar, I lived with a family of 5 and 2 of their relatives- in Bow, I live my host family  and almost all of their relatives. There is my host dad and mom (Oumar and Hule), 2 of Oumar's son's from his first marriage (Muhamed and Papa), Oumar's parents (neene and baaba), Oumar's sister (Ndiaya) and her children (I think she has 4 but I'm not quite sure exactly which children are hers), Oumar's sister-in-law (Hawa), and on the weekends another one of Oumar's younger sisters comes back to stay while she is not in school. On top of all these family members, throughout the day there are a number of people who come to eat meals and rest under the shade, aswell as the 4 men who come everyday to work on the house Oumar is building. Instead of a small TV, there is radio that broadcasts in Pulaar (the native language) and the use of my laptop and internet is limited to when I travel out of Bow to Matam (a 27km/16 mi road that in a developed country might take a bus 25 minutes but here takes almost an hour). The daily 2-3 electricity shortages has now develped into no electricity 24/7, except for the nightly TV watching at the neighbors (a time I can also use to charge my cell phone. The TV, I found out the other day, is actually run off the battery of a car that is hooked up to an electrical outlet which allows the children and teenager alike to gather every night and watch either American action films that have Spanish subtitles or Indian soap operas dubbed in French- I can't tell which they prefer yet: not being able to understand one words and seeing lots of good guys vs. bad guys chase after eachother with guns or being able to understand the horrid excuse for a TV show. In place of my toilet and shower are an outhouse and a bucket of water with a bar of soap. Over the past week I've actually come to enjoy the time I spend with a cup, spooning water out of the bucket, scrubbing the day's accumilated dirt off my body. Having to squat everytime I have to pee or worse is better that the harsher reality that my left hand has taken up the post of permanent asswipper as toilet paper is in no way an option when there is no flushing toilets.... I'll let that one soak in a bit for you as it took some time for me to embrace this aswell- you can even re-read the last sentence if you don't believe it's true.
  The first few days of all the changes were difficult- my mind actually tried fighting my body and it took me four days before I could actually take a poop (sorry if you don't like potty talk but this is part of my experience that must be shared). Now, I have become accustomed, not yet fully adapted, to life in the village. There is always people around and something to do. I have gone to the river, which Bow borders, to swim and help my host aunt and cousin do my laundry. It's just like you'd imagine, women of the village come to the river and do their laundry topless while the children (under 5) run around and play naked. One major cultural difference is that women's breasts are not some hidden secret only to be discovered in Rated R movies or when you get to 2nd base. Boobs are everywhere because they don't have a sexual connotation. They are not for play, they are for nursing your child (which they do from infancy until age 2). If the child is hungry, no matter the place or the company, the baby feeder is pulled out. I have yet to go topless at the river because I don't know how they would react to Toubab half-nakedness. I have also gone to the garden with neene a few times and picked the wild fruit along the way. It is the garder where I will be commencing my first project. The garden is run and kept by the women's organization of Bow and it is my first mission to help them improve how they govern and utilize the organization, to hopefully make it run so that the women can receive the maximum benefits a well organized group can produce. My project, however, has already come across a speed-bump: communication. The language barrier has hit its peek because the women don't speak French and my Pulaar is so minimal right now. I am hoping that sometime this week and can get someone to help me translate so I can interview the president of the organization and potentially a few members.
  In other news, sadly, to all those who advised me to go on a safari while I am here, it's not possible- there are no giraffes or lions for miles and miles. I have, however, traversed the desert in a large vehicle possibly similar to one taken for a safari and from what I have watched of Planet Earth, I can use my imagination to fill in the blanks! Until the next time I have internet sehil-am (my friends in Pulaar).