Koumpentoum – Home Sweet Home (to be)

We received our site placements! My site is a road town called Koumpentoum. It’s located in the Tambacounda region which is located in the south-east of Senegal. It recently acquired “ville” (city) status last year with a population around 12,000 people and growing. It will be interesting to serve in Koumpentoum during this transition time. They just built (administratively and physically) a new mayor’s office. The city is currently building a hospital and has hopes to install a second forrage (water tower) soon. Since it falls on the national road, Koumpentoum serves as a connecting city to get to other villages in the bush. It’s a very ethnically and linguistically diverse city with languages of Wolof, Pulaar, Pula Funta, Fula Kunda, Bambara, Mandinka, Sereer, and French. Since Wolof is the most widely spoken language in Senegal, I’ll be fine with just speaking Wolof and French. Home sweet home for the next two years!

Demystifying

During the PST (Pre-Service Training) period in Senegal, the trainees spend about 5 days visiting a currently serving or exiting PCV. In the PC jargon, they refer to this stay as “Demysting”. Ideally, if you are going to a site where there is a current serving volunteer or a volunteer who is about to COS (Close of Service), you would go to your site and stay with that volunteer. Your “ancienne” (the preceding volunteer at your site) or “Sitemate” (another PCV serving at the same site) hosts you for a couple days, helps you to familiarize yourself with your new community, and explains the details of current projects in the community.

Before heading to my site of Koumpentoum, We -- me and the other PCTs going to the Tambacounda region - spent the evening at our regional house in Tambacounda (the city). This gave us the opportunity to meet all the volunteers currently serving in the region and a night to unwind after a day of traveling across Senegal. The PCVs made us dinner and gave us a royal welcome to the region with a surprise themed “Lady Gaga” party. Sigh. Good times.

My anienne, Carla, was an Environmental Education Volunteer and stuck around an extra week in Senegal in order to host me for demysting in Koumpentoum. She was a fabulous hostess and it was fantastic to have her introduce me to all the dignitaries, counterparts, and good people to work with and to know in the community. We spent a lot of time running around meeting people and visiting important sites – the mayor’s office, the schools (Koumpentoum has a lycée!), the Education Inspector’s Office, the radio station, Eaux et Forets (the local Bureau of Reforestation in Senegal), Prefects’ Offices, Poste de Santé (Health Post), etc. Since my site is larger than the typical EE or Health Volunteer’s site, we were pretty busy trying to fit everyone in. It’s a little difficult right now attempting to keep everyone straight, but once I get to site, it’ll be nice to be able to recognize faces even though I might not remember the name or title.

My host family seems to be really sweet. There are mostly women around because my “host father” passed away a few years ago. A family friend, Balaa, was asked to live in the compound to be a “male figure” in the house. Balaa works in the mayor’s office and is also one of my counterparts. I haven’t figured out exactly how the family makes it money, but they eat really well, which means I’ll eat well! From what I’ve experienced so far, the women in my compound are phenomenal cooks and there never seems to be a dearth of vegetables (I’m sooo lucky!). My family has their main family compound and a “secondary compound” right off of the main one. They have about six rooms that they rent out of the secondary compound to seasonal workers and to me. My room is a good-sized room that is already fully furnished (thanks to the previous two PCVs at my site) with a private douche (latrine and shower space). Carla also rented out the small room next to the main room which was used to host travelling PCVs in the area, but now she uses to store gardening supply. I’ll probably continue to pay for the second room and use it to store my bicycle, gardening supplies, and miscellaneous items. I also have a nice fenced-in backyard / gardening space, which Carla has some veggies and fruits already planted. Basically, it’s fantastic!

Koumpentoum has one awesome community garden already, which was started last year by a GIE called “Les Amis de Tous”. Carla and I spent time working on garden transplants, watering, and making a Pépinière (Tree Nursery) with the woman who frequent the garden daily. It’s uplifting to see a successful community garden in action, because we talk about them often with our EE work. Apparently, a women’s group in Koumpentoum wants to start another community garden at the other end of town (closer to my home!), which would be a good project for me to learn about and to jump in on once I get to site.

In addition to Peace Corps’ presence Koumpentoum, JICA also has a presence. JICA stands for Japan International Corporation Agency. It’s the equivalent of US Peace Corps only it’s a program for Japanese. The JICA program is similar to Peace Corps in that volunteers receive technical and language training and serve for two years in a developing country. Their program structure is slightly different than Peace Corps in that a small group of JICAs live in a somewhat urban area together, whereas with Peace Corps, PCVs are usually more isolated from other PCVs. Koumpentoum has five JICAs that work in various sectors of development. Carla and I had dinner with them one evening and they all seem really sweet. Carla got along with them all very well. I’m not sure if she collaborated on any projects with the JICAs, but there is always that potential. Also, they just seem like awesome people to get to know.

There are so many other potential projects that I could be involved with in Koumpentoum, but I’ll elaborate on those as they unfold. There is still so much I need to learn about my community and its needs. After talking with my ancienne, it sounds like some potential projects could be a city-wide waste-management project (something that is already kind of in motion in the mayor’s office, but needs some major logistical assistance), a public latrine project, a new water tower, community gardening, reforestation efforts, small enterprise development with women’s groups, and school clubs – business, environmental, girls’ empowerment, etc.

It’s refreshing to say that I have actually been “demystified” as a PCT, although I know there is still so much I have to learn about the life and role of a PCV. I feel so much more at ease now knowing exactly where I’ll be serving for the next two years and to have met a few people in my community. I still have a lot of work to do before PST is over – language and technical development, but I am getting very anxious to actually install and begin life as a PCV in Koumpentoum.

A shot of the community garden through the fence.

Me and my ancienne

My douche! (Bathroom) Quaint aye?

My room! Home for the next two years!

Anna (a nearby volunteer) getting out of her bush taxi into Koumpentoum. Notice the numerous individuals riding on top of the taxi along with a goat.

A baby goat seeking shade right outside my door.

My courtyard outside my room. Check out the gorgeous mango trees. Btw, the donkies aren't always there, they come and go.

A beautiful Baobab Tree

Another shoot of the community garden in Koumpentoum

la gare routière de Koumpentoum (The train station)

An evening with my ancienne and the JICAs

Microfinance with a whole new outlook

Back in beautiful Tassette, my co-trainees and I happened to stumble upon a women’s microfinance group meeting. The meeting was apparently scheduled to take place under the glorious and shady Neem tree that we study under every day, so the meeting actually kind of came to us. I was so excited to sit in on the women’s tontine because I became interested in Tontines while I was studying in Cameroon and ended up doing multiple studies about them in the States. A tontine is a group of individuals who meet periodically and each contribute an agreed amount of money (or good or service) for every meeting. The sum of money is then given to one investor of the group, who can spend the money how he/she wishes. Every investor takes a turn taking the money and then the cycle is repeated. It’s an informal type of credit and lending, but is extremely important in rural Africa and to the informal economy. The tontine we sat in on was only for married females in the community. It began with about 30 women but now consists of 140 women who meet every 10 days and contribute 2000 CFA (about 4 USD). That equates to 280,000 CFA (about 560 USD) for each participate to take once a cycle. We talked with one of women in the tontine, and she spent her money on buying a refrigerator for her family, which she uses to sell ice and bisaap (ice cold sugary drinks) in her community.

Not only do tontines serve an important economic purpose in Senegal, but they also serve an important social function. The attendees were dressed in their finest clothes and make-up all done up. No men were allowed to attend the meeting. The women showed up with babies on their backs and greeted and chatted for a while. Then a few women flipped over some tin bowls and started jamming out (I haven’t met anyone in Senegal who doesn’t have crazy awesome rhythm). Women got up in 2s and 3s and started breaking out some crazy dance moves and then there was some crazy skirt flapping. The dancing evolved into women whipping open their wrap-skirts and flashing a sexy loosely knit under slips and “bins bins” (sexy beads). Up to this point, I was told that it was inappropriate to show your knees in Senegal, so I was pretty taking back when I witnessed the “vagina dance” with all these conservative married women. The dancing also involved a decent amount of pelvic trusting and thrashing – sometimes in your face. There were a few times when the women would pull me and the other female PCT up to the center of the mayhem to bust out our moves. I have to say, I wasn’t able to go full frontal with the village kindergarten teacher present (who, by the way, is the best / craziest dancer of them all). Perhaps that would be the moment when I can say I have actually assimilated into Senegalese culture. Something to ponder. Anyway, so informal microfinance institutions just took on a whole new spin for me. Loving it!

Zombieland

As I mentioned earlier, my CBT (Culture Based Training) site is a small – medium sized village called Tassette. I am staying in Tassette along with two other PCTs from my stage and our LCF (Language and Culture Facilitator). We each have our own home-stay families in Tassette. For Tassette, we are not the first group of “Toubaabs” (Wolof for foreigner or white person) the village has experienced, but it’s been a little while. So naturally, whatever the toubaabs are doing, it always tends to draw a crowd, especially children. 95% of the stuff we do is not very exciting, but nonetheless, anyone of us will develop an entourage of kids just to walk to the market. At first, it seemed kind of fun and sweet, but after awhile, it’s just nice to get your work done without a million little hands reaching out for you and little voices yelling words and phrases that you just don’t comprehend because you’ve only been learning Wolof for a couple weeks.

Last week, my fellow two PCTs and I were working on mapping out our community for a technical assignment. For the sake of time and sanity, we tried to be discreet in our endeavor, so not to draw a crowd. We had multiple waves of followers, but at one point, seemed to have bored everyone off. We had about 15 minutes of solidarity when we realized that children were approaching us from a distance in 3-4 different directions. After just viewing the movie “Zombieland”, the children immediately paralleled the characteristics of zombies in my mind – slowly approaching from all sides in order to trap you and suck out your life (or in this instance, hinder you from completing your task and frankly just to be annoying). I know, I’m being dramatic, but it was slightly frightening. For the most part, I like kids, but primarily in small doses and the well-behaved ones. Unfortunately, that scenario is difficult to come across in Africa.

The usual entourage of children when we go out.