AmyFaye la tudd.

Sorry I haven't been able to write for awhile-I've been at my homestay for two weeks without internet. Just a heads up-this post spans about a week and a half because anytime I sat down to write, I would get about four sentences in before being interrupted for lunch or to dance with the kids. So since I last wrote I have been living with a Senegalese family for three weeks. Writing about my experience here is nothing like writing about my time in Italy because oftentimes there are simply no words to make you understand what I am seeing and doing everyday.

Right now I am lying in my mosquito net fortress, protected by barred windows and doors as I can hear my family outside my window talking away in Frolof (french + wolof) and listening to Justin Beiber, Rihanna and sporadic announcements from very serious french men. I live in a tiny, rural village of roughly 100 people (probably 75 of which are little kids) about 2 km away from the city of Thies. The houses are built around a central area where the men gather to shoot the shit and the women gather to pull their water from the well. The houses are contained within stone walled or thatch fence compounds and most have large courtyards with large shade giving mango trees (which families sit under most of the day while eating lunch, drinking tea or just hiding from the sun). When you walk inside my compound, you usually find my family lying on large mats (basans), lounging on wood stools or hanging the laundry on the lines to dry.

I live in a well-off family, obvious by the size of my house and the variety in our lunch and dinner bowls. You enter my house through a steel door which has bars that are open to the outside (same with the windows). Once you step through the door you are in the tiled foyer (a tiny room that contains two wood tables off to the side and chairs and mats when it is pouring outside). Off of the foyer are five doors which lead to mine and my family's bedrooms. I still haven't figured out who actually sleeps in which rooms. My bedroom is a tiny stone room with a bed, wicker chair and curtain as the only furniture/ornaments.....o and a picture of a stern looking man staring at the camera-which hangs right next to my bed. I hang my clothes on the curtain rod which covers my door and my water filter and toothbrush sit precariously on top of my bath bucket.

On the far side of the courtyard is the kitchen and my brothers' rooms-again a small stone building with open windows and doors. The kitchen is a stone room with wood tables piled high with laundry buckets, spoons, cups and platters. Bottled spices line the windowsill and my aunt, sisters and mom cook rice, vegetables and fish in a bowl atop a coal pit.

I live with my yaye (mother) Sophie, my aunt and uncle-Amy Faye (my namesake) and Eladji-both of whom are french teachers at the local secondary schools, my grandma Amy Sow and my dad Abdoullaye (who is actually only there on weekends when he is not working at the bank in Thies), sama raq yu goor (little brothers)-Ahmed, Chiakh, Issa, Babacar, Pab and Sole, my mag yu goor (older brothers)- Moussa and Bouillar, my raq yu jigeen (little sisters)- Ndaye Amy, Mararem and Seera, and my aunt Amy Sow. While in the village, I go by my given name-Amy Faye Diiahte because visitors are always given senegalese names as a means of integration and protection (it feels weird when someone calls me Erin now).

Every morning I make sure to throw on a long skirt or long pants before leaving my room and then I take my daily bucket bath. As strange as it sounds, I'm actually starting to like my bucket bath. I shower in a small tiled room, with a thatch wood door and my clothes and towel hang over the door as I pour cup after cup of water over my head. The only hard part is getting all of the shampoo and conditioner out of my hair-can be quite challenging some days. After showering I crouch by the chicken coop while I brush my teeth (the other day there was a worm on my toothbrush-good thing I looked at it before putting it in my mouth!) and then sit inside the foyer for my breakfast of baguette with butter and instant coffee. The Senegalese love their sugar so for the first week I was drinking a cup of coffee with an entire shot glass of sugar until I finally couldn't take it anymore and told my family that I drink my coffee black. You should have seen the looks on their faces-they thought I was crazy! (But then the next day I noticed that my 17 year old sister was drinking black coffee too :) Once I'm finished with breakfast, I walk across the street to my extended family's compound for morning greetings. I walk around to 7 different rooms asking every person "naka nelaw nga bu baax" (did you sleep well), "naka yarum bi" (how is your body), "naka waa ker gi" (how is your family), "naka suba si" (how is your morning), and any other arrangement of greetings. Another volunteer, Brent lives in this compound with my aunt and uncle, along with my new best friends-13 year old adama, 12 year old awa and 16 year old Hadee.

Most mornings I meet my wolof teacher Yoro (who we affectionately call KG) because he looks like Kevin Garnett and is constantly wearing a Timberwolves hat. After living in Michigan for a few years of study, he has become a huge KG fan and he even got to meet him. Under the shade of the mango tree outside of the school room, we sit in our plastic chairs and on school benches 2x too small, as we go over vocab and verb structure in Wolof. It is nearly impossible to study in peace, so although I technically have plenty of free time, anytime I sit with a book in my village, I am quickly surrounded by droves of children who play with my hair, demand pictures and insist upon reading every word I write or I look up and realize that the village teenagers/men are just staring at me. In Senegal it is also very important to greet everyone that you pass by and it is perfectly acceptable for people to interrupt conversations or classes to ask how you are and how studying is going. It's nice at first, but when you can't have one uninterrupted conversation, it gets old fast.

After class I usually retreat to my house to sit with my family under the mango trees, or to my room to take a short nap. Most people stay inside their courtyards in the middle of the day because of the intense heat and whenever the 'crazy America' says she's going to the field of for a walk anytime between the hours of 12-4, the response is usually -wonte dafa tang, xar tutti-but it's so hot-wait a little! So while my family chats around me (90% of which I can't understand), I sit on my little wooden stool studying wolof, being teases (usually about not having a boyfried, fiancee or husband) or washing my clothes by hand-as my mother watches over my shoulder to tell me every 10 seconds that I suck at washing clothes (or at least that's what I imagine she is saying).

Some days are easier than others but everyday promises a varying degree of difficulty. While I love my experience, and I truly, truly love every single person in my family, there are so many things to get used to-lack of communication and thus feeling like a 5 year old being the most difficult. You quickly realize how lucky you are to have grown up in a place and society that allows for and encourages elevation of social status, equality of the sexes and education for all. I keep thinking back to Mr. Jean's class (especially since my little brother is currently taking his class) and the day when he told us that we were born lucky. We could've been born anywhere in the world, and yet we all lucked out to have grown up in America and enjoyed all the opportunities the country had to offer. It really is hard to understand how lucky we all are and how many opportunities we are given everyday until you see such lack of opportunity that exists in so many parts of the world. Just to give you an idea (and I'll talk more about this later)-my friend (another female volunteer) and I were sitting on our blanket about 10 feet in front of the entrance to the mosque in the village center two days ago, when we were informed that we had to move (literally 10 feet off to the side) because women were not allowed to sit in front of mosques. I don't know if this is the case in all villages, but you can imagine my embarrasment, frustration and anger for being denied the right to sit on village ground simply because I was a women. The fact that women are denied the right to enter a place of worship is astounding to me because I grew up in a place where women were afforded the same rights as men in almost all areas of society.

I also didn't realize how emotionally trying it would be-getting close to my family. My 17 year old brother Pab was the first of my siblings to approach me about learning english because of his dream to travel to America someday. Since then, most nights I have been teaching almost all of my younger siblings and cousins and my aunt Amyfaye. They're vigor for learning is incredible and I wish more than anything that I had hundreds of english books, notebooks, dictionaries, pens and pencils and an actual time and place to teach them all. Most nights we sit in a circle, writing on tiny pads of paper by headlamp, as I teach them how to say 'how are you' and 'my name is'. The other day I asked my 13 year old sister what she wants to be when she grows up and she said-an english teacher in America. If I could take her home with me and get her into college, and give her the same hospitality that she shows me everyday, I would do it in a second.

I'm so thankful that America has taken such incredible strides towards gender equality (compared to the rest of the world). I'm thankful that I was able to play sports growing up and that I was able to go to college; that I wasn't expected to get married at the age of 18 or spend everyday, all day cooking, cleaning and taking care of the kids since the raw age of 10. Every morning I wake up at 7 and my 17 and 15 year old sisters are already sweeping the yard, washing the dishes or preparing breakfast.

Here girls don't play soccer in the villages and they especially don't play on teams or with the boys and men who get to play everyday after work. Even for me as an American, my family/the entire village doesn't want me to run by myself, so I either run with the other volunteer Brent, or sometimes with one of the volunteer's brothers. All I want to do is go on a morning or evening jog by myself, not trail behind a 6'8'' man with legs longer than my entire body.

I wish that all of you could have this experience-even if it was just for one week. So instead, read this and I want you to think about all of the things in your life that you should be thankful for: Be thankful for running water which allows you to shower whenever you want and at whatever temperature you want, and be thankful for the lightbulb over your head. Be thankful that there is a pharmacy right down the street and a doctor you can call if anything is wrong. Be thankful for the bike, the car or the motorcycle you ride to work or school everyday and the cup of coffee and fruit, cereal or poptart you eat for breakfast every morning. Be thankful for the healthy clean food you have waiting at your fingertips and for the refrigerator that keeps all of it fresh. Be thankful for face clothes, bandaids and mosquito spray-little conveniences that we all take for granted. Be thankful for the farmers who produce your food so that you don't have to and for the water that comes out of your sink-water that does not have to be filtered every time you want a drink. Be thankful that you rarely have to worry about worms, unidentified bug bites or snakes in your room and be thankful that washing clothes or cooking meals does not take most of your day. Be thankful for something cold to drink and for the fan or AC that keeps you from sleeping in a pool of sweat. Be thankful for music to drown out the sounds of babies crying and for the internet which allows you access to all the information your heart desires and communication with anyone whenever you want.

Talking to one of the other volunteers, we've agreed that we're in a constant state of fatigue. Feeling good in Senegal is something completely different than feeling good in America. Just the other day I woke up with 26 (we counted) tiny, itchy bug bites all over my back. I suspect bed bugs but who really knows? Cool weather is also a relative term. If I don't have major swelly (sweaty belly) and if I can stand having my hair down until 10 am, it's a decently cool day. Yesterday I was so hot, I went into the shower and poured my entire bucket of water over my head. Too bad the water was hot from sitting in the sun all day :(

There are so many nice people in the village and everywhere I go I have kids running up to me yelling my name, and villagers calling out- 'how are you Amy Faye?' and 'you're so beautiful!'. One of my favorite villagers is Modal Camera, a farmer in his 30s who lives in a tiny hut in the middle of his field. He has taken it upon himself to water our garden every morning and he always greets us enthusiastically every time we head down the sandy path towards his house. Since he knows I love ataya (Senegalese tea) he or his younger brother bring over a glass while I'm working in the field-so delicious!

Exercise is still the hardest change for me to grapple with since I can't go on runs or play soccer whenever I want to. All I want to do is run for miles and miles with Roscoe at my side. At the center exercise is easy because most of the volunteers love playing sports or going for runs-the day before I left for my village I played 3 v. 3 soccer with 5 of our senegalese teachers and one other volunteer.

have to run to find out my language proficiency-will finish writing later-sooooo much more to write!

Yesterday was sweaty. You have no idea how hot it is working outside during peak daylight hours, wearing pants and laboring with a shovel and hoe. Regardless of the fact that all of us felt like we had just taken a salty bath, it was by far the best day of training so far. In the morning we split into our program groups (I'm agroforestry and there is also urban agriculture and sustainable agriculture-I think mine's the best because we can plant crops and trees) and went around to different training stations. First, I learned how to prepare a garden bed by double digging- which is when you take off the topsoil to expose the subsoil, move the subsoil around, add amendments (compost, manure, charcoal ash...) and then you put the topsoil back on. I feel like I'm in pretty good shape but there is no shape like farmer shape. I'll need a lot of practice before I'll have the energy to dig beds like that all day in the hot sun. Station number 2 was vegetable peppinieres which are small vegetable plots. We all were given seeds to plant so soon we will have fresh peppers, eggplant, onions and cabbage :) From there we moved on to composting (something I've always wanted to learn to do) and we all made a 1m compost pile full of dried leaves, manure and cardboard paper. We'll be turning and checking the progress of our compost piles throughout our pre-service training. Finally we were brought into the air-conditioned training room where we learned all about soil-interesting but it was much better doing hands on work. As soon as field training was finished we learned how to repair and take care of our sweet mountain bikes that we will all be issued. After two years I'm going to be a pro with bikes-I have a feeling I will be changing my tires and fixing leaks a lot while I'm here. After all of our work was finished we had a session on safety and security which included a tour of the red zone (the area by our training center where we aren't allowed to go). It was the first time any of us had been able to leave the center and it felt like we were all on parade. 50 of us marched through the dirt streets as children ran from there homes with huge smiles on their faces, asking us how we were and yelling hello. People were sitting all along the road in fold out chairs, staring as we walked passed and brave kids would kick soccer balls at our feet (testing our skills). A couple hours before dinner we were all brought to the bar where we enjoyed cold beers, surprisingly delicious wine and even a whiskey and coke. We all packed the entire bar as we sat around flinging bottle caps at other peoples' cups and enjoying freedom from the center. It was sooo nice to finally be able to have bare shoulders-at the center, the dress code requires that all women cover their shoulders). I have to admit, being in such hot weather, being a little dehydrated and tired, alcohol went to mine and everyone elses' heads so much faster than normal! After dinner we all returned to the bar and it was nice being able to get to know everyone better and ask current volunteers questions about their sites. Around 10pm we came back to the center and within minutes a dance party broke out. Seedee, one of the Senegalese trainers here, and another man brought out their drums and played music for us as we all danced insanely to rhythm. Another Senegalese teacher, Pob, tried to teach us some dances and we pretty much all failed miserably. Yesterday was by far the best day of this week and I'm sure there will be more amazing nights to come.

I am officially covered in mosquito bites. They're all over my feet, arms, back and sides and no matter how much bug spray you put on, they still seem to get you. Luckily I'm very used to getting eaten alive so it's not too bad. Today we had our cross cultural fair where we learned about the different aspects of Senegalese society. We tasted delicious juices made of different plants (ginger juice was by far the most pungent), learned how to eat fish with our hands and pull miniscule bones from our mouths, how to wash ourselves before prayer, how to put on a pagne and the art of seduction with binbin beads. Tomorrow we get to leave the compound for the first time and I'm thinking about chopping off my hair in town. It's getting to the point where my long hair is a bit of a nuisance in this hot weather so it might be time for me to suck it up. We also get to ride bikes tomorrow and work in the field...should be a good day :)

Phone Info

Asaleem Malekum,

We just received our cellphones today and incoming calls are free so if you would like to call me at any point, here is my information:

Dial 011 then 221 and then my number: 773 60 59 98

Make sure to check how much it will cost you to call. I'll also put this email on my blog so you can delete this from your inbox.

I usually finish here around 1.30 your time and I am free sometimes during the day. I'm not sure what my service will be like (especially when I go to site on Tuesday) but feel free to call me :) PS-I wont have my phone on me for a bit because I am going to leave it to charge.

<3 Erin

Day 3

Good morning everyone!

Last night a bunch of us played volleyball and soccer for hours in the humid, sticky weather. It reminded me of Mexico where I played beach soccer all day everyday. I already have a reputation as a soccer player here (I scored 4 goals :) and I emphasized the fact that I would love to work with girls and create soccer programs. I also think it would be amazing to build upon Wangari Maathai's Green Belt Movement and expand it in Senegal. The goals of this program are to empower women through the planting of trees, and then I could easily fuse sports into this program.

Last night was brutally hot and humid so none of us slept. I actually slept through my alarm (which I never do) and woke up an hour late! This morning I opted for a last Luna bar instead of the bread and chocolate and a nice cup of tea. First think we had our program overviews where I met all of my leaders and went over the syllabus in detail. I can't believe that I'll be living with a Senegalese family at the beginning of next week! After that I had my French interview which surprisingly went well and I was able to hold a conversation for 10 minutes. I ended up talking a lot about my brothers and their sports, and my love with animals (I stuck to the easy words!). We've had a lot of time off today so I've been catching up on email and studying my wolof for my test tomorrow. ...I should be fine but I definitely need to study more! The rest of the day is pretty much free except for some health overview so hopefully later on I'll get some soccer in and get to sleep early!

Hi Everyone (Asaleem Malekum),

I won't be able to write a long post unfortunately because I'm on someone else's computer but I just wanted to let everyone know that I arrived safe on Wednesday morning. Staging was quick but good and I absolutely love all of the volunteers-they are all amazing people. It already seems like I have a lot in common with them :) Better yet, we had our interviews today so they can get a better sense of where in the country to place us and it sounds like I might be able to work with cows for one project and run soccer/basketball camps for girls in another! I can't wait to find out where exactly I will be going and what I will be doing.

"Survival" Wolof started today and to my surprise, although French is the national language, it doesn't sound like I will be using it very much. It's much more likely that I will be learning one of six regional dialects (Wolof being the most widespread). So far I love the language sessions and I have learned basic greetings (including the very important-do you have a husband?). I also found plenty of people who like to stay active so in two days I've already played a game of soccer, basketball and volleyball.

John Foskett this is for you: The food is absolutely delicious. We eat large pieces of baguette for breakfast with chocolate and peanut butter and lunch and dinner are eaten from a communal bowl (4-5 to a bowl). Dinner and Lunch usually consist of a rice base with delicious meat and vegetables with onion or peanut sauces. It's been a little hard adjusting but everyone is in the same boat so it makes me feel better about missing home.

This morning I woke up to the sound of birds chirping (which actually sound like monkeys) so I felt like I was waking up in a tropical rainforest. The days so far consist of language classes, quizzes and interviews, introductions and training overviews. We can't leave the Peace Corps Center until Monday when we are allowed to walk around Thies and use our allowance. And then on Tuesday we all live for our homestays where we will train for two weeks at a time and then come back to the center. Supposedly its hillarious and completely awkward because at that point we won't know enough Wolof to have real conversations! Even still, I'm so excited!

I feel immensely better today but yesterday at several points I thought to myself: "why did I decide to do this again". This was after learning about squat toilets (sans toilet paper), the fact that I will definitely get violently ill and get staph infections or some variation at some point, and that the malaria pills will most likely give me intense nightmares, anxiety and the feeling of a sunburn. But then I think about the support I have from my family and the fact that I have been wanting to do this for 6 years and that I am positive I will love the experience. I'm sorry I can't write more but I have to give up the computer-will write soon!

Love you all,
Erin