Kolda Regional House

Im at the Kolda Regional House, which surprisingly took only 2 hours by car (115 km). We came together for regional meetings to discuss current projects and future interests. I still need to find out what my village is truly interested in so they will work on it without depending on me. There are a plethora of projects that I would love to stick my thumb into, but people often make the mistake of talking the community into projects that later fail because they they only showed interest to make the volunteer happy.
1.) With support, I would love to work on pre-elementary education because children here do not get the chance to do basic things like define motor skills by coloring or learn the importance of handwashing before snack time. As a result, they go to school without ever holding a pen, writing their name, oh, and speaking french, the language of schoolhouses.

2.) I am also interested in the collaboration of a fruit orchard with bee keeping. There are more than enough mango trees around, but cashew and citrus expansion could be a focus.

3.) Speaking of Mangoes, I will soon have the opportunity to learn about solar fruit driers. If my village (or a surrounding vil) could package mangoes, they could even have the chance to market them. Lets take this one step at a time.

4.) Agroforestry is my title, so trees are my game. Along with drying the fruit, I want to learn about grafting for improved varieties of fruit.

5.) The obvious: I will be trying to teach better gardening techniques, implement the use of compost, and discuss nutrition and health practices.

After the meetings, we decided to spent our night together at the kitchen table with arts and crafts. (crayons, scissors, stickers!) Yes, it may have been a little resemblant of a fifth grade group project the night before the due date, but it was heart-warming nevertheless. We colored 40 nametags and posted them by our beloved hometowns.

Thanksgiving

If only I knew how many pounds, or rather kilos, of food I consumed during Thanksgiving in the Tamba house with about 20 other volunteers. Luckily we had a few older volunteers with mothers that sent over a few very precious ingredients for the day including Marshmellows and cider drink mix, which was out of this world. Because the turkeys were a little pricy and the processing of the frozen birds is unknown, we got 5 chickens instead. Five. We baked two and beer can grilled the rest. We benefitted from the delicious taste and protein, but bypassed the tryptophan! Mind you, we managed this entire familiar, comforting feast on mostly substituted ingredients and a lot of work in one small kitchen with a gas oven (that I needed help lighting).
Summary: Thanksgiving was a success.

Travelling Alone (bum bum bum)

Two days before Thanksgiving, I biked down the dirt path out of my village as the sun was rising next to me. I dont know why I havent done this sooner (maybe because its 630am). I had to head into town to store my lifesaving bike, find breakfast, and flag down a car to go to the next big road town before making my big move into Tamba for the holiday.

The entire process went much smoother than expected. Ive been building up this big scary image of the "garage" and the people lurking around the janky cars. It is a miracle that any of the vehicles are functioning. The characteristics of a typical Senegalese car is as follows: multi-cracked windshield, bent or broken bumpers and mirrors, wire-rigged handles, the worst possible emissions test, and lets not get into the general aesthetics.

On the first bus, we crammed more people in than we ever got close to in college (and that says alot). It took an hour to drive to get to the Velingara garage because we stopped ever 5 minutes to pick people up on the side of the Route National. What are bus stops?

During my hour wait to fill a 7 passenger car at the garage, only one man sat and chatted until he was bored of me. By the end of the conversation, I was "married" to a strapping toubob American lad in Keougou, the next region over. I still had to bluntly refuse to give him my phone number after using 5 different get-the-hint lines.

The last sprinkle on top of this trip was the nice bungee cord that secured the broken passenger door.
Summary: It took me 5.5 hours to go 140 Km (googlemaps suggests less than 2) and I will now enjoy the company of my friends :)
I FOUND MY VILLAGE ON GOOGLEMAPS. My hut is located at the yellow star.
Saare Meta

Thanksgiving news to come soon!

First Vil Thoughts

Dust
After only a 5 days, I have come to terms with the fact that I am always going to be dirty. Literally. I cannot walk from my outside slab of cement, that that my grandparents would refer to as "the throne," to my back door without redusting my momentarily clean feetsies with dirt. To emphasize this, my allergies would like to add that the inside of my newly built hut must have internal dust storms because I cannot sweep it enough. I hope the dust doesn't attack my electronics too quickly.

Yes, Im in Africa. Perhaps I should have realized I was going to be living in a field. I cannot say how many times the current volunteers have complimented us newbies on how CLEAN we were up to this point. Don’t worry, Im not going to give in this quickly. Im just going to have to adjust my tactics… Im not sure how this aspect is going to later help me in life. If nothing else, this is added to the general appreciation column.
Food
Village food has been surprisingly amazing. First off, we have cows from which I drink fresh milk occasionally. From milk, by a process that I may not want to know, they also make kosam, which I have eaten for breakfast with lechery or bread. It tastes something like grapenuts in sour, thin yogurt (despite that awful description, its quite tasty). This should have been my first thought: Im not eating rice at every meal now!

Time
Im struggling with the local concept of time and how flaccid it is. I don’t know how to schedule my time between studying Pulaar, hanging out with my new village family, my sane-Jessica time, figuring out what I REALLY want to do here and even some much needed exercise.

Goodbye PC Training Center

Training is actually completed and its time to load up everything that we've collected in our summer camp like training center rooms and scatter across the country. We planned on departing in the wee hours of the morning, but of course left 3 hours late. The Peace Corps is oh so organized. The seventeen of us going to Tamba and Kolda were lucky enough to spend several hours together crammed into only one PC bus. As you can see, we had so much luggage that it overflowed off of the top of the bus and into our isle, under our feet, and even in the small space reserved for opening the door. With that being said, we had to be creative with getting in and out. Being the tree climbing Ag people, we resorted to climbing through the windows.
9 hours and an entire pack of cookies later, we got to our hotel in Velingara (a 2 hour bike ride from my village). The only thing that didnt make it was my poor, neglected Nalgene that was sitting under my seat. I dont know why I ever thought it would live for 2 years.
Move-in date: November 10, 2011

New & Preferred Address!

Jessica Cochran

Corps de la Paix Americain

B.P. 157

Velingara,

Senegal, West Africa

This is a semi-close by town that is easier to access than my regional capitol, Kolda. Ill be keeping an eye on it, so dont be shy!

Swear In

We are the PC Ag Stage, officially sworn in on the 4th of November 2011. The last 9 weeks have reached across the entire spectrum of emotions, from unbelievably shocking to surprisingly delightful. We are now sanctioned volunteers and will be pushing those boundaries much farther, which might be in the definition of being a volunteer.

After celebrating Tabaski, this mighty fine looking crew of 54 people will be parting ways for villages or a handful ofcities. Im incredibly excited to jump into this next stage of service, which, for me, will start on the 10^th in the village of Saare Meta (close to Kounkane if you’re curious).
NEW ADDRESS: Coming Soon!!