Counterpart Workshop and Dakar Day

This past week I’ve been doing a lot of traveling for Counterpart Workshop and a trip to Dakar. Follow along with my convenient subheadings to find out more!

Counterpart Workshop

This past Monday through Wednesday, our training stage hosted a Counterpart Workshop at the training center. A counterpart is a local Senegalese person in you community that will help you to integrate into the community, help you assess the community’s needs, help you find projects to work on, and be a general resource for language learning and cultural questions. My counterpart is an awesome woman named Kadiata Bah who runs an organization who runs an organization that teaches agricultural techniques to three surrounding villages near Taredji. She is the perfect counterpart and really understands that my role in the community to be a teacher and help facilitate her work (not to hand out money or be a knight in shining armor). She already has plans to start a demonstration garden at her organization’s location in Taredji and know a lot about the agriculture of the area.

Coming into the Peace Corps with doubts about what I could possibly do to help Senegalese people improve their agriculture system when I have no real expertise or local knowledge, I have been reassured by PC Senegal’s counterpart system. I will in fact be trained in agriculture technics by the Peace Corps and will be passing them along to someone who will stay in this community and is actively working with people in her community to pass along this knowledge. After Counterpart Workshop I have been slightly reassured about the sustainability of my work in the Peace Corps. I will still have to see how exactly my relationship between my counterpart, my community, and myself unfolds, but for know I am pretty content with my function as a volunteer.

Dakar Day and the US Embassy

Yesterday, we took two 25-seater PC buses from Thies to Dakar to see the PC Senegal office, apply for Senegalese residency, and get a general sense for the city. My first impression was that Dakar is practically like any other Western city I have been too. There were malls, bowling allies, resorts, a theme park, museums, organized roads, a highway, and a new traffic signal. Compared to Nairobi (the only other major city in Africa I have been to), Dakar was much more organized from my first impressions, qualified by the fact that I only spent a few hours there.

Peace Corps Senegal’s office was made up of a three-story air-conditioned building with a marbled staircase. The offices of the Country Director, the program assistant directors, and the admin are all located here as well as the medical office. We filled out a lot of paperwork and were introduced to all the people who work at the office, which were to a great relief of mine all Senegalese nationals minus the Country Director and one of the doctors.

The most interesting part of this trip was getting to go to the Atlantic Club – a mini-resort with a swimming pool, tennis courts, etc. that PCVs get free admission to. Here, we were met by two representatives of the US Embassy to discuss the services they provide to PCVs in Senegal and safety concerns for us. After that we got to eat American style cheeseburgers, and it was wonderful. 

In terms of  logistics, I found that I will be moving to my permanent site on November 11^th, so don’t send me any more mail until I have a new address or I will never get it.  Until next time! 

Volunteer Visit

Sorry this post is a long one, but there was so much to say about my not one, but three sites I will be working at! If you don’t care to read the details of the cities I’ll be working in and the projects, you can feel free to skip down to the highlights of the trip.

This past week I spent visiting my future permanent site of Taredji. My and my fellow stagemates Raphael and Erin who are also going to the North stayed with a group of volunteers who live in Ndioum, a pretty large town on the Rue National (the main highway throughout Senegal).  We got to see our sites and learn more about the communities we will be living in and the projects we might be working on. My situation is unique among volunteers—I will be living and working in Taredji as well as overseeing projects in Ndioum and Podor.

Let’s start with Podor. Podor is a city of around 12,000 people right on the boarder between Senegal and Mauritania (the two countries are divided by the Senegal River). It is a very historic city and was once occupied by the French and even has a 17^th century fort. The city also gets a small amount of tourism (I saw one French family on vacation with their two children while I was there). A volunteer who is COSing (Close of Service) used to be located in Podor but had to move to Ndioum during the middle of his service. He made a beautiful hospital garden in Podor, which is now mildly run down. I will be taking over this garden and hopefully reinvigorating my work partners there to keep with the project.

                                                                        The fort in Podor

                                                                    Podor Hospital Garden

 Looking out from Podor over the Senegal River and Mauritania 

Lounging on the side of the Senegal River 

Next stop, Ndioum! Ndioum is a regional capital for Peace Corps Senegal. This means there is a regional house there where volunteers in the North can stay from time to time. Also, three volunteers who used to live in Podor now live in Ndioum. It is a fairly large city but somewhat smaller and less organized than Podor. Ndioum is about 40 kilometers from Podor and on the Rue National. Ndioum had a very nice hospital that is currently the largest hospital in the Department of Podor (soon to be usurped by Pate). The director of the hospital is very excited to start a hospital garden there, and the project has already been approved by Peace Corps. Once I install at my permanent site, I will assist the other volunteers in Ndioum to build the garden which will help to cut food costs for patients.

Finally Taredji, where I will actually be living (inshallah, because a home for me there is yet to be found).Taredji is a road town at the junction of the Rue National and the road that takes you to Podor, thus it receives heavy traffic and essentially grew out of its prime location.  Taredji has about 5,000-6,000 people split into two areas of the town. There are two potential projects I am really excited for in Taredji. One is a school garden at a primary school. The director of the primary school is so excited about the garden that he has already fenced off an area at the school. Right across the street is a local CBO that does a wide variety of things including women’s rights, democracy, and trainings of various kinds that I am still learning about. Here, the organization wants to set up a demonstration site to teach farming techniques and best practices to the surrounding villages that the organization already has connections with. This is essentially what my whole job is as an Urban Ag volunteer, so I am really excited to have such a motivated organization to work with. 

Future site of the demo garden in Taredji

Highlights of VV

•       Lounging by the Senegal River and looking out to Mauritania
•     Almost driving into the Senegal River on the way back to the training center
•     Eating hamburgers and cake at the regional house
•     Meeting my awesome counterpart at the CBO who wants to name me after her
•     Climbing to the roof of the old French fort in Podor
•     Sleeping on the roof every night in Ndioum
•     Being woken up to the terrified crying of a baby goat stuck in the yard
•     Being woken up by the sounds of the mosque and Justin Beiber, simultaneously