New Beginnings

It’s been a little over a week since I official arrived in Koumpentoum as an official PCV. I’ve heard from other PCVs that the first couple weeks is supposed to be the most difficult: you begin the process of adjusting to a new area, language, dialect, climate and suddenly the 40+ other Americans you’ve been surrounded by day in and day out for the past 9 weeks are all gone. During the first three months, we are instructed to not to start any projects, but to take the time to get to know the community and learn the language. With these being basically the only two vague goals, that leaves a lot of room for innovative ways to occupy one’s time. Typically, I start each day with a list of goals that I would like to accomplish that usually involves greeting people that my ancienne worked with or people that I might actually end up working with, reading my book, and working in my garden. Other than that, I pretty much just let the day unravel on its own and I’ve been pretty busy.

I spend a decent amount of time with my new family, which consists of my mother, aunt, mostly high-school aged kids and two other men that live in the compound – one is my counterpart, Balla, and he works in the Mayor’s office and the other man works for a NGO in the Health Sector of Koumpentoum. The family is Bambara (an ethnic group that descends from Mali), but speaks Wolof and French as well. So far, the family has been really patient with my Wolof and incredibly caring over all. The boys usually help me in the garden and sometimes just drop by my room to look through photos, chat, and listen to music. The girls also like to frequently visit my room (when I’ve been spending too much time on my own) also to chat and look through photos. My mother and my aunt (who is also my namesake) are very involved in the women’s group. I’ve tagged along a few times to the women’s group meeting and am starting to get to know some of the women in my community.

As an Environmental Education volunteer, part of my work involves encouraging individuals to become self-sufficient and environmentally conscious through gardening. Within my first week at site, I managed to meet the leader of a local GIE called Les Ami des Tous which already laid the groundwork for a community garden in town. Unfortunately, the garden had a few problems with the fencing, so a couple weeks ago, animals managed to penetrate the garden and eat everything. We are basically starting from scratch. I’ve been spending my afternoons working with the women on composting and getting the soil ready for the rainy season.

As an attempt to avoid the mid-day heat, I’ve been keeping myself busy with little projects. So far, these projects include: painting one of the walls black in my room in order to use it as a massive chalk board, putting up photos in my hut, studying up on composting and gardening techniques, and configuring a map for my personal backyard garden. Slowly but surely, I’m laying the groundwork for a successful next two year of service.