Darou Khoudoss: Homestay #2

I just arrived back at the training center in Thies after a two week homestay in Darou Khoudoss. My sitemates, Robert and Kyle (although in Senegal known as Lirouane and Ibrahima) and I decided that our immersion during this “community based training” is equivalent to being a Chinese person being sent to Texas to learn Spanish. We have language classes every morning (at my house in the shade of a mango and orange tree) with a native speaker, Pape our Peace Corps language teacher, have workbooks to look into, but are expected to practice speaking outside of class. However, there isn’t really a lot of opportunity. Our families we are staying with speak Pulaar, although not everyone, and frequently speak Wolof or French amongst themselves, and our community is scattered with the random Pulaar speaker. If we go to the market to buy anything (the boys need supplemental calories most often in the form of donuts, cafee tuba-hot , highly sugared, caffeinated beverage- bean or beef skewer sandwiches, fried fish stuff, or mangoes) we speak Wolof of French, unless we visit Kyle’s mother who sells peanuts. The last day of our homestay we had our first language proficiency test where I was able to introduce myself, talk about my family back home and in Senegal, and ask questions. At this time Pape also shared with us that we are learning the most difficult language in training. Although the verbs are regular (three different kinds –ugol, -agol, -egol), we have already been introduced to six tenses, and we haven’t even started to learn the 24 different noun classes (rather than 2 I have previously been exposed to because of French; masculine and feminine). Joy. I am hoping the upcoming volunteer visit where we will be visiting the current volunteer we are replacing will be a necessary opportunity for learning.

During this homestay we had a really productive time in the garden (and it is coming along really well considering the immensely sandy “soil” we are dealing with. We visited a nearby groups’ garden, and ours is actually coming up!). Our compost looks like soil, we transplanted eggplants, jaxtu, hot pepper, and onion which all have taken; we planted our pepinier with lettuce, onion, tomato, cabbage, eggplant; we also planted our field crop beds with cowpeas, corn, millet, peanut, and sorgum; we also planted a bed with carrot, radish, bissap, cucumber, and pepper. We also planted a live fence and mango trench (yay for agfo technologies!) I have been put in charge of watering in the morning, which makes it easier to get out of bed, and an excuse to do yoga if I have energy and time before class. The hardest thing for me about the Senegalese diet is the timing. I do not do great with seven hours between meals. Further, the lack of variety.

Ohh typical Jackie, I lost my phone. It wasn’t totally my fault. It fell out of my pocket in the bathroom- no opportunity for retrieval. I’m getting a new one within days!

Yesterday, the last day of our homestay, was great! After the language test, we spent the day at the beach, the nearby group met up with us, we came back to village, and went to a party the community was having. We ended up unexpectedly speaking on behalf of the Peace Corps (thanking the village for the opportunity to learn Pulla Futa there), talk about nerve-wracking! I do not like public speaking. Random people went up and rapped, there was a skit, and lots of greetings and long introductions. Great immersion although everything was in Wolof and French.

I find out tonight where I will be going for the duration of my service as a volunteer!!! I think it will be Kedougou in the southeast, bordering Mali (CLIMBING!) and Guinea. Fingers crossed!