My Puppy Fell Down the Douche, March 2014

Douches are wonderful things.  Think about it; they're low maintenance, they're where the term 'douche bag' originates from, and they solve sanitation problems!  And open deification is a terrible problem.  In fact, I plan to work on a douche-building project to address the negative health effects of open deification.  But douches also pose a security threat.  A threat caused by an overly large douche-hole and an inquisitive puppy. 

The scene was set when my puppy, named by my brother after the famous Senegalese singer 'Youssa-Ndor,' decided to run away the night before I embarked for a month-long set of trainings and conferences.  Figuring the pint sized bundle of inquisitive energy would either re-embrace his origins in the African bush or realize that making it in the real world is hard and thus return the next day for dinner, I left my village unconcerned.  The trouble announced itself when I took a call from my host father as I was boarding public transportation in a distant town.

Saliou: "Yassine, your dog returned."

Erin, hearing the puppy barking in the background:  "Great!"

Saliou:  "There's a problem, he fell down the douche.  What should we do?"

Erin: ........... "Get him out?"

And then the public transportation took off and the ensuing cacophony made it impossible to hear the rest of the phone call, or any of my thoughts beyond 'ohhhhhh....shit. Literally.'

For those of you who may be curious how my puppy fell down my toilet or why I thought this was an unsolvable problem, let me acquaint you with some basic knowledge about douches.  I have one of the cheapest version of douches, pictured here.

It's covered in a lot of dust, so you probably can't see the particulars too well.  It's just a pit dug out of the ground covered with a concrete cover with a hole, covered by a bag, where I'm able to do my business.  On the plus side, I've gotten very strong legs from so much squatting.  On the downside, this version poses several hygienic and  structural security risks.  As my puppy found out all too well.

From what I've asked my family and some basic deduction on my part, I learned that my puppy took his favorite game of 'tugging-the-burlap-bag-filled-with-sand-which-covers-the-douche-hole' a step too far and removed the bag, and then fell down into a mixture of my excrement and trash.  Thankfully, I haven't been using my douche for too long so it wasn't an actual sea of waste for my puppy to drown in... not a pleasant way to go.

Nonetheless, I was pretty concerned that my puppy would suffer from the buildup of gasses in the douche (it smells pretty bad), starvation and lack of water, or just bake to death beneath a concrete roof in 100 degree weather.  In typical fashion, for the first couple of days I decided I wouldn't call my dad.  This was two months ago and my lack of confidence in my language skills led me to believe that, even if I did manage to think of some brilliant method to save the puppy, I wouldn't be able to communicate it in Wolof.  And I didn't want to hear that my puppy had died in the douche.  So I traveled with my friends to Thies and Dakar, and I must say that listening to their suggestions, sympathy, and comments did not make things better.  My friends could not think of a single way to get the puppy out of the douche- and we Peace Corps Volunteers are a pretty resourceful lot!  One friend reminded me that, even if they got the puppy out of the douche, my problems wouldn't be over.  My family would either create a major health risk by letting a feces-covered dog run around the village or lock a feces-covered dog in my room for a month.  Gross. 

Deciding that I needed to warn against these possible scenarios, I tried to call my dad.  Every other day for three weeks.  First, his phone was dead.  Then, his phone was out of credit.  Then his phone was dead again.  Finally, I was able to get through to my dad and, after greeting every adult in my family, asking about work and children, commenting on the weather, explaining when I was coming home, etc. I was able to ask about the fate of my pet.

"Oh, your 15 year old brother got him out..."

Um...how?

"It was very hot..."

Yeah.... but, how?

"Very hot, the dog whined a lot.  The puppy cried..."

Yes, well if you fell into a pile of poop that was bigger than you I think you'd cry too.

"See you when you get home!"

Once home, I found the puppy clean (how on Earth did they manage that?!?!?!) and was unable to get the specifics on how the rescue operation occurred.  I suppose it will always remain a mystery.  I'm about to start my douche-building project and I'll be enforcing some strict safety measures, such as having the douche-holes no larger than the size of a coffee can so that children and puppies cannot fall in.  Otherwise, they'd be in deep.... well, you get the idea.       

  

The Case of the Broken Computers, Feb 2014

February was a rare month of high-living for me as I had several conferences back to back which kept me in Thies and Dakar for an entire month.  I experienced good fun, good friends, and most importantly, good food.  Seriously, after two straight months of village food I'd lost approximately 15 lbs (though part of that may have been due to my recent bout of Giardia- see my last post), so good food was paramount! For those interested, my itinerary looked like this;

Work Zone Coordinators' Conference, 2 days
I'd been recently appointed a coordinator for the 6, soon to be 7, volunteers surrounding me.  All of the coordinators met to discuss cross-sectoral collaboration, how to organize the work zones, and how to better communication between PCVs and PC staff.

SeneGAD Conference, 1 day

The 'Gender and Development' conference for PC Senegal where I gained lots of information about gender-based projects I plan to do in the upcoming year.

All-Volunteer Conference 1, day

All 260 PCVs in Senegal were invited to Thies to attend a variety of presentations on work projects around the country and bounce ideas off one another. 

WAIST, 4 days

The volunteers all traveled to Dakar to spend a weekend living with gracious ex-pats who hosted us in their homes.  We volunteers were able to take a hot shower (the only ones we get all year), use fast wifi, unashamedly took advantage of the Western food our hosts offered us, and most importantly, used their washing machines!  The West African Intramural Softball Tournament is a tournament that the expat teams take quite seriously, but is seen as much more of a social event by us volunteers.  The tournament involved an AMERICAN STYLE BBQ!, a talent show (where PCVs made us all proud with group dances, traditional Mexican dancing, competitive jump roping, and original songs about Peace Corps Senegal girls), a bowling night, and a Marine-hosted dance.

My regional team in our costumes for the softball tournament.  PCV teams traditionally wear costumes, our theme was 80's cyclists.  All garb was bought at local thrift shops.

My friends and I about to eat ice cream for the first time in 4 months!

PST2, 14 days

The last bit of my training as an agricultural extension agent.  I now have pretty in-depth knowledge about integrated pest management, grant writing, permaculture, earthworks, malnutrition, teaching methods, seed extension, seed saving, soil fertility management, etc.

A view of my team's permaculture challenge, we did all the earthworks and planned where different vegetation would be most efficient.

Master Farmer Training, 1 day 

Learning how to work with our local Master Farms.

So overall, I gained a lot of experience and knowledge.  But I most gained confidence in my language skills.  After two months of living in village, I knew that my Wolof skills had gotten exponentially better but I had no bench mark to compare myself with.  When all my friends and I reconvened in Thies, I was able to see how much my friends' language skills had grown.  We were able to speak Wolof, Mandinka, various dialects of Pulaar, and Jahonke , but unfortunately most people in Thies and Dakar only speak Wolof.  So when my friends and I would go out, I was usually the token Wolof speaker who haggled for taxis, asked for directions, and ordered at restaurants.  The inefficiencies of a country that has so many languages aside, this was a huge confidence boost as I realized that my language skills had improved so much and I could actually survive (and occasionally thrive) in Senegal.  As I did in... 'The Case of the Broken Computers' (I've been reading far too many Agatha Cristie novels lately).

THE CASE OF THE BROKEN COMPUTERS

Travel and dust are hard on computers so by the time my friend Dana and I found ourselves in Dakar, both of our computer screens had broken.  Dakar is the only city in the country with computer stores, so we decided to try our luck at getting them fixed. 

Three of us decided to brave the adventure; Ian, Dana, and myself.  We figured between two different dialects of Pulaar, a Wolof speaker, and various levels of French we should be able to accomplish the mission.

Step 1: We heard that the Western-style mall had a store that fixed computers.  When we stopped in the mall before bowling and found out that, in fact, there was no longer any such store at the mall and it had apparently moved downtown near a hotel.

Step 2:  The next morning we piled into a taxi and took a 45 minute ride to the hotel downtown where we then walked inside what is perhaps the fanciest hotel in Senegal.  We thought we would blend right in, we had just taken hot showers that morning and even brushed our hair!  But everyone was wearing suits and we stood out with our hiking pants and village-style flip flops.  A quick trip to the concierge's desk gave us directions to the store.

Step 3:  The store wasn't well marked so we walked past it and had to stop in the building for the head of Senegalese banking to ask for directions again.

Step 4:  We found the store.  I explained our problems in Wolof.  The service lady told me that she could fix my PC but not Dana's Mac.  She wanted to charge me $130 and have it done in the morning.  We conferred and decided to ask if another store would fix the Mac.  Our lady was not pleased and told us about another store, gave us directions in rapid fire Wolof, when I didn't understand she yelled "Good Lord" in Wolof and stormed in the back.

Step 5:  The only part of the directions I understood was that computer store #2 was next to a famous roundabout.  So we stopped in the UNESCO Dakar office for directions, no big deal.

Step 6:  Walking through the downtown streets of Dakar to the roundabout, I was worried that we couldn't find the roundabout so I asked locals on every corner and every one of them told us to keep going strait. 

Step 7:  We continued going strait.  Found the store. 

Step 8: I explained our computer problems in Wolof to the cute Senegalese men.  They giggled.  So then I explained the computer problems in French.  They laughed... and responded in fluent English.  So after feeling so accomplished for explaining computer problems in TWO foreign languages we were able to decide on a much lower price for both computers and get them fixed in under 5 hours!

Step 9:  We spent the rest of the day seeing the sites of downtown Dakar, eating ice cream, returned for our laptops, and hopped in taxis to return to our lovely host families. 

I had thought that maybe the only way to get my laptop fixed would be to wait until a PCV I knew was going home for a visit and have them take my laptop with them to get it fixed at an expensive U.S. store... so needless to say I was pretty thrilled that I was able to explain our problems in French/ Wolof AND that we were able to get them fixed so well at such a low price.  Thriving in Senegal!

***Disclaimer, since this story has taken place many, many more faux pas have been made so I may downgrade this from 'thriving' to just 'surviving.'  I'll take surviving though!

The triumphant Dana and myself at the American style softball field.

My stage's "get well photo" for our friend who had to be medivaced to the U.S.