Artisan Expo!

I've been in Dakar for the last few days to the Artisan Exposition. Every year artists, who work with PCVs, travel to Dakar and have a two-day exposition/market. This year Alyssa was the expo chief and I was her runner/helper. She did an AMAZING job putting the expo together. The artists were from all over the country and sold: wood sculptures, silver jewelery, beaded jewelery, cloth bags, clothing, art work, traditional crafts, and a variety of other things. The first day the artists sold from 10am-5pm.
The second day the expo started with a training for the artists while volunteers sold for the artists. During the expo the artists created a network and elected a board to run the network. Theoretically they will be able to start planning and eventually take over the planning for the expo. After the network was created there was an instant increase in comradery and togetherness with the artisans. They started buying things from each other and collaborating on projects. Matar, my tailor/artist, is working with a leather artist to leather handles on some bags.
Another huge success of the expo was in the marketing. Usually notices are sent out by people who work in the office but this year Alyssa and I decided amp it up a little. We put flyers all around downtown Dakar hoping that it would attract some new clients... and it totally did! We had some people fill out surveys and most of the clients said they heard about the expo from our flyers downtown. One woman owns a boutique, heard about the expo from the flyers, and ended up buying a ton of stuff to resell. At the end of the expo we totaled the amount sold and this year we had tripled last year's expo total! Overall it was a HUGE success!
In addition to a great expo, we spent the weekend making delicious meals! The first night we made amazing taco salad, that was followed with bacon mac and cheese (made from Velveeta my mom sent), then Tamar and Alyssa made brisket and latkes, and last night we had pasta with an arrabiata sauce.
I'm at the training center in Thies right now to give a presentation this afternoon and then back to site! After that it's only a few days until I'm off to the US! I'm trying to load up the next few days with things to be busy so they don't drag on. I'll post my pictures from the expo tonight or tomorrow when I'm back at site.

KO

Bambey, every day

So the last few days have been productive but mostly uneventful. My counterpart has been taking me to meet people and everyone seems really excited to do work. I know that doesn't mean they're actually excited to do the work but it's nice to have a whole wide range of possibilities.

A few days ago my hfdad told me that his sister's husband had died and then didn't bring it up again so I let it slide to the back of my mind. Then last night I saw my hfsisters plucking chickens and I got really excited, chicken for dinner! Awesome! Then people started arriving at my house. By the time dinner (two chickens) was served there were 14 of us - not that I'm complaining most volunteers never get chicken. I was starting to realize it probably had something to do with the death so I made sure I got up early this morning, put on Senegalese clothes, and went downstairs. I found my hfmom and asked, quite bluntly and very un-Senegalese (but there are somethings you just can't beat around the bush) "what's going on? why is everyone here?" She explained how 3 days after a death everyone gets together to offer prayers but that wouldn't be happening at our house! They would be going to the sisters house! They would just be eating lunch here.

By the time I got my bean sandwich and came back everyone was up and starting to get moving for the day... then more people started showing up. I'm not really sure what was happening at our house and what was happening at the other house, but around lunch (we had chicken again) there were about 30-50 people here. But backing up a little...
I'm a big fan of helping in the kitchen, not only because I enjoy cooking and grew up helping in the kitchen, but I feel like it also earns me points with the women in the family as well as helps me with my Wolof a little. Almost every Senegalese dish involves onions which is a task that I had previously been forbidden from because (mom and all the mom's out there reading this blog don't freak out) the Senegalese way to cut an onion goes against everything I was ever taught about kitchen safety. You basically let the peeled onions sit in water when you're not dicing them (so they're slippery and wet when you pick them up) then you hold the onion in your left hand and, with a horribly dull, flimsy knife, you slice towards your other hand to make cuts across the onion, then you slice through the onion, again towards your hand. Obviously, the first time I tried I cut my finger and have since been forbidden from helping. I was given easier tasks like pounding spices until today when I was DETERMINED to actually help. I explained (mostly through gestures) that if I could use a flat surface, I could cut the onions and they let me! A small step for cooking but a large step for me gaining respect, or at least not seeming like a total idiot, with the women!

Other than that I've been a bad family member and I've been kind of hiding in my room for most of the day. My language skills still aren't good enough to even follow a conversation and there isn't really much to do. I've started studying for the LSAT, we'll see how that progresses. Oh, speaking of language skills, I was able to say "I'm tired so I'm going to go drink coffee" that was really awesome.

And in one last bit of news, I think I made my hfmom amazingly happy today because I was hungry. Yep. I didn't even do anything, just be hungry, but she was so happy she was telling everyone. I'm guessing it's because I rarely eat a ton ever and the fact that today, I was hungry, made her overjoyed. So excited she walked up next to me and said "she's hungry!" and patted my butt/side.

That's it for Bambey, tomorrow I'm supposed to see the schools. Oh, one more thing, I REALLY can't wait until I can speak Wolof because I think my hfmom's pissed she has to cook dinner for everyone, I think that's what she was muttering about to some of the other women, but I'm not sure and I wish I knew!

KO

Food, glorious food!

I feel like this is a kind of long overdue post but I’m finally in the right place to write it. Food in Senegal… something I could talk about for days and days on end – I’ll try to keep it short for your sake. Let me start with why tonight’s an awesome night for writing this entry: dinner was epic. I’ve heard about this chicken place from a few volunteers and because dinner was supposed to be beef and peas, a few of us decided to skip out on Center dinner and try the chicken place. I wish I could give a better name but it really was just a chicken place. The room was dingy and dirty, as one of my friends described it “the type of place you think you’re going to get tetanus just from sitting there.” Nervous at first, we had been warned about the nature of the “restaurant” so we ordered (a half chicken and fries for each person) and waited. Food in Senegal, for some reason, takes SO LONG to cook (probably because they’re cooking over a fire, but it’s still hard to get used to) but about 45 minutes later we were presented with maybe the most glorious meal I’ve seen (at least that I’ve seen in a while). Just asking to be devoured was half a roasted chicken, a salad covered in tahini sauce, and a mound of French fries. The only thing untouched on my plate was the salad (I’m still very nervous about uncooked veggies) but I ate the sauce off of it so if the salad was going to make me sick, the sauce will probably take care of that. A short cab ride back to the Center and an apple left over from dinner, I’m here!

Now, on to the rest of Senegalese food (you’ll have to deal with some misspellings but I don’t really care about spelling dishes correctly). To start at the beginning, breakfast. If a Senegalese person eats breakfast, it is most likely a piece of French bread (very, very store made) and it possibly, but most likely not, has butter, chocolate, or processed cheese on it. If you were going to have an expensive breakfast (about 125 CFA so $0.30US) you can get beans (a kind of spicy, cooked beans) on your bread. If you’re REALLY going crazy and splurging they can add a sliced hardboiled egg for another 50-100CFA. For lunch you’re usually looking to get some cheb u jen or fish and rice in Wolof. It’s the national dish of Senegal and its cooked rice with fish in the center of the bowl. Aside from breakfast all meals are served in large communal bowls and, depending on the family, you eat with spoons or your right hand. With the fish in the center of the bowl is usually a carrot, cabbage, potato, manioc, and maybe some other vegetables that have been cooked down for HOURS. Cheb u jen can also be red (if it’s cooked with a tomato sauce). At the beginning of my time in Senegal I thought all cheb tasted like rotten fish, I’ve gotten used to it and only taste the fish if I’m eating it, not so much if I’m sticking to rice.

For dinner, usually, families can get more creative. I like to think of dinner as being broken down into 3 types: rice meals, couscous meals, and special meals. First, rice meals. In addition to cheb u jen there are a million other things you can do with rice to make a communal bowl. You can make a peanut sauce (maffe I think) or a vinegary onion sauce (yassa), you could cover it in okra and oil (something that starts with an S). As far as couscous goes, the most typical is with a sauce from the never-die tree. I used to HATE this meal because the couscous texture isn’t great and the sauce just tastes like salt… but I recently found out that this tree is AMAZINGLY FULL of vitamins and wonderful things (that my diet is otherwise lacking) so I’ve changed my perspective on it a little. You could also have couscous with bean sauce or tomato-y sauce (don’t think Italian food, think a can of condensed tomato sauce with a ton of water). Now for my favorite… special meals. These come, very, very, infrequently but they are amazing nights when they do happen. In the village it’s either a pasta night (we eat with forks not spoons) or peanut butter rice. The pasta is cooked with oil (not olive oil, think vegetable oil) and served possibly with onions. Peanut butter rice, however, is my favorite dish, and I’m still trying to figure out what it’s called and if ANYONE outside of my host family eats it. It’s basically rice mixed with Senegalese peanut butter (which isn’t as sweet as US peanut butter). It comes out looking like a risotto kind of and is AMAZING. Finally, in special meals, I’ll include whatever it is that PCVs make for themselves on their gas’ in their rooms. Scary, I know, but I’m sure I’ll have some good recipes by the end of two years.

In other, unrelated to food, news, I have only one more full day at the center then it’s back to the village for 10 days. I’m really not looking forward to this village time but will be happen when it’s over (because then I’ll have only 7 village days left ever). Other than that, tech sessions have been going well, we learned about feasibility studies today. I’m still not sure what I’m going to be doing in Bambey but the more I learn about composting the more it might be a possibility. My, brief, understanding of it now is that I wouldn’t be doing any composting, I would be working with the city to set up the business of composting in the town. Who knows… I have a while to figure it all out. Epic thanksgiving plans are already underway (I need a holiday to look forward to!) so I’m sure that will end well once I get to that point.

Expect one last blog tomorrow before I head to the village Saturday.

A prochain,
KO