stories from my little peanut brain

I originally started this blog to showcase my time in Senegal, but now it's just a boring old regular blog

[philosophyquotes]

“A flower does not think of competing to the flower next to it. It just blooms.”

— Sensei Ogui, Zen Shin Talks

[texanpeanut]

Not Normal

I’m thinking about the Peace Corps a lot these days. I’m thinking about my experience, the organization, volunteers, and my experience with life in my village and returning to my life in the United States. It’s taken me a while to process everything, and it’s mostly come in bursts. But since I haven’t been working due to the stay-home order, I’ve been reflecting in full force. I finally don’t have anything left to distract me from confronting the past and my present reality.

When I came home in September, I wanted everything to be normal. I wanted to wear cute clothes. I wanted to be fit. I wanted to have a car, a job, and a romantic partner. I wanted to forget all the messiness and cringe-worthy moments of the previous two years. And in doing so, also tried to ignore my messy and non-normal career and academic plans. Even though I applied and got into my top graduate program, which I had been eyeing since 2017 and involves living a year each in Wales and Vancouver, I kept denying that it was my reality because moving abroad once again for this program would disrupt the charade of normalcy I was desperately trying to keep up. However, so many things are not normal now that I can’t pretend anymore. To be fair I do have some cute clothes, I am fit, and I still have my car. But I don’t have my job for the moment, and I am accepting that I will probably not have a romantic partner for a long time. However, I’ve found that choosing to simply accept all of this has been liberating. I don’t care about trying to be normal anymore. My Peace Corps experience was messy as hell. My career and school plans are messy as hell. Everything is messy! But that’s the entire point of living. Liveliness is change and messiness and unpredictability. When we first arrived in Senegal, the staff members and older volunteers told us to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. And I’m finally starting to do just that.

In this post, I’m going to attempt to reconcile the good times and the bad times of my Peace Corps experience, explain my reasoning for going home a couple months early, and reflect on the past 7 months I’ve been home. There’s a lot to unpack and it will get personal, so buckle up.

 I don’t remember my last blog post. Maybe it was something about vacation or future projects planned… I don’t want to read it. Ha! To be completely candid, my second year of the Peace Corps was a bit of a shit show. It was difficult. I think this is something a lot of Peace Corps volunteers don’t share with the world – the struggles we all face during our service. We want to post this amazing, picture perfect story to all social media. An Instagram post with our favorite work partner, a Facebook post about the amazing ceremony we went to, a blog post about our project that’s going fantastically. We’re changing the world! We’re learning so much! This is life changing! Well, it definitely is life changing. And we probably are helping some people. We’ve made at least a few friends in our village. And we’re experiencing so many new cultural traditions. But it’s also far from perfect for a lot of us.

 I started the second year strong. I had just come back from vacation in Europe – a week in Austria with the boy I was completely in love with at the time, and a week in Rome with my family whom I will love forever. To conclude my two weeks abroad, my two best friends from college came to visit me in Senegal and went all the way to Medina Arsas, the village I called home for two years. We spent New Year’s Eve in my hut, playing bonanza, eating rice, and going to bed at 10 pm. I loved having two people I loved so much see my space and meet the village that welcomed me. It was a very special time.

My mom, sister, and me drunk on several carafes of house wine on our last cold night in Italy (dad taking the picture).

Melissa and me hugging in the Kedougou sunrise.

Caro and me on the single road that went in and out of my village.

After so many refreshing fun weeks with people I cared about, I was ready to dive into work and move onto some bigger projects. In my first year I had stayed small, focusing mostly on 1-on-1 trainings with neighbors, showing them how to create tree nurseries and plant trees on their compounds. It was fun and fulfilling, but I felt like I could do more. I wish I had stayed small. Or maybe I’m glad I tried. Either way, in January I had a community meeting to discuss potential projects, and everyone suggested a community garden. I explained that we could do this, but I would need to write a grant and it may take a while for the money to come in. And most importantly that I would need the collaboration and support of everyone in the village for this to work out. That’s the thing about Peace Corps – we don’t come in and do work for other people. And we don’t force people to change their ways. We are invited to come in, and we work with our communities to plan projects and build upon their resources to make them happen.

A realistic depiction of a training - straight up lounging after teaching about cashews and eating some chicken.

However, this is very difficult to translate to your village. Or at least it was for me. I think because of the long history of European, North American, and Asian NGOs coming in to “help,” which really means just building something and then quickly leaving most of the time, that’s what was expected of me. I was essentially expected to come in and wave my magic American wand to fix all the problems in the village and build infrastructure and just make things happen in the blink of an eye. But that’s not how I wanted to work, or even COULD work for that matter. And this ultimately caused problems. I had told my tech team (basically my supervisors) about the plans my village and I came up with, and they were on board and willing to help, but my village didn’t understand how long it would take to get resources from the Peace Corps and weren’t doing the things I asked of them to move the project along. So, things kind of fell apart, and they decided to get immediate help from another NGO. I was devastated. Not so much for the project – I knew my village was getting the well they wanted and I was glad they could connect with an organization that moved faster on things like that. I was mostly worried about my tech team thinking I was an idiot. Two of them were very understanding and supportive, but the head of my tech team, basically my boss, was extremely unsupportive. He said some things to me that were absolutely heartbreaking, and I remember at the time just feeling devastated at his disapproval. What’s funny now is that I can’t even remember what he said. Just goes to show what can simply blow over in a year.

 Anyway, this totally wrecked me. I went into the Peace Corps thinking I was going to use the skills I learned in college, learn new skills, and help a community make the changes they desired. I had tried so hard during pre-service training and worked so hard during my first year to learn the language, make connections, start small, all so I could just do a project. And it didn’t work out. I felt that all my efforts were for nothing. On top of this I had lost my dog to a botched spaying surgery in the previous year’s fall and felt responsible for not preventing it, even though I felt at the time I was trying my best, and then later that spring the boy I was in love with for two years broke my heart by telling me he wasn’t ready for our relationship. It felt like everything was crumbling around me. I had no idea how to deal with it. Part of me was productive in work – I held a few more trainings in neighboring villages where I felt less shameful about the failed project in my own village. But a bigger part of me shut down my emotions and just grew more and more anxious each week. On top of this I started to feel the pressure of “what the hell am I going to do when I get back?”. I began putting pressure on myself to get accepted into a good graduate program, to move out of the house, to find a good job. And I wasted an obscene amount of energy trying to figure out why the hell this guy wasn’t in love with me when I had been so in love with him and trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with me? And I kept mostly all of this inside, to myself. I would only talk about it occasionally in explosive, usually drunken, bursts when I just couldn’t handle it anymore. Hardly productive.

 So, I started to binge drink more and I started to have panic attacks. I have had anxiety for a long time, and in college occasionally suffered mild to moderate anxiety-fueled panic attacks. However, these new panic attacks were drastically different and more severe than what I was used to. I began having nightmares in which I thought I was dying. I would wake up with my heart racing convinced I was having a heart attack, but could always blame it on a bad dream. Until I had one while I was awake, and thought that it was the single 1mg tablet of alprazolam I took earlier that morning that was going to kill me. Which is hilarious, considering alprazolam is what’s commonly prescribed to TREAT anxiety and panic disorders. I called one of the Peace Corps Medical Officers and explained that I thought I was dying (I mean wouldn’t you, if you had a racing heart, couldn’t stop shaking uncontrollably, and had sweated so much you were basically swimming in it?), and she explained to me that no, that was just a panic attack, everything’s fine. Well I had never had a panic attack like that during my waking hours and it freaked me out to say the least. All the near-death nightmares started to make sense. I had kept my anxiety in long enough that it started to make its way out into the form of violent shakes and sweats and a frantically beating heart. I realized that if this was going to keep going on, I couldn’t stay in Senegal. I couldn’t live in my village constantly in fear of collapsing. I couldn’t do it anymore.

 So, I went to Dakar and talked to the PCMO I spoke with on the phone. She suggested I stay and told me that volunteers have panic attacks at site all the time. I thought well who the hell are they and why haven’t they gone home yet? Or maybe she didn’t understand the severity of my symptoms, because panic attacks with such severe physical symptoms are the absolute worst. Then I spoke with the counselor the Peace Corps worked with, and she validated my desire to go home. And I felt okay about it. So, I went back to Kedougou, cried a lot, spent one last night with my village and packed my things, cried some more, and spent one last night with my friends. These last few days were the hardest and most emotional. I had really grown to love so many people in my village and so many of my fellow volunteers. So, even though I knew I was making the right decision, it was a very difficult one.

The dungeons girls helping me get two years worth of stuff out of my hut in a single night.

Over the past 7 months that I’ve been home, I’ve found myself in tears on more than one occasion over how much I miss Senegal. This was surprising to me at first, because during the second half of my service I blamed Senegal for a lot of my unhappiness and anxiety. But Senegal had nothing to do with it. Maybe the expectations from my Peace Corps tech team had something to do with it, or the lack of mental health resources offered to us. But when I really think about it, my tech team hardly put any pressure on me. My village didn’t really care that much about the work I did or didn’t do. All the pressure was coming from within myself and I just didn’t know how to stop it. It’s true, a lot of things about Senegal did stress me out – the heat and dust, hectic and unpredictable public transportation, the lack of privacy, corporal punishment, men in general, etc. But the things I miss are so much more powerful. I miss hosting trainings with my friends and neighbors who were interested in growing trees. I miss sitting with my host family around the fire after dinner during cold season. I miss my host siblings laughing at me for not being able to pound corn the right way. I miss sitting with my counterpart in his compound and playing with the chickens. I miss my host sister’s son greeting me every morning. I miss sitting with my neighbors and cracking peanuts. I miss the kindness from strangers. I miss feeling welcomed and part of a community. Sometimes I wish I could go back and do it all over again without the pressure I had put on myself to be perfect. I may or may not have gotten any more work done, but I have a feeling I may have been able to cherish the small, sweet moments so much more.

My host family and me on my very last morning. Back row from left to right: Binta, me, Khadija/Neene, Neene, Mariama. Front row from left to right: Baaba, Bailo, Diariatou. <3

To end this post I’d like to say I think I’ve come a long way with self-acceptance and compassion since leaving Senegal, but most of this growth has happened over the past few weeks. I’ve recently started to feel a sense of being liberated, as I mentioned at the beginning of the post. And I love it. I’m forgiving myself for all the things I did wrong during my service, I’m accepting the things that didn’t work out the way I wanted them to, celebrating the things that went well, and I’m looking forward to my next few months in Houston and my next couple years abroad. I know there will probably be some hard moments, things may go wrong, and it won’t always be sunshine, but I’m more than okay with that. I’m comfortable being uncomfortable, and ready for a messy, amazing, lively future.

Me just vibing in the backyard smiling the day I finally got my official grad school acceptance. I’m excited for the next big step. Love y’all. xoxo

[texanpeanut]

home

During my first few months of service, I thought about home a lot. No, not the Dreamworks movie with Rihanna, but everything familiar and comfortable I had left behind in the US. I remember lying in my twin-sized bed after lunch with my host family, sweating my ass off, on the verge of tears, thinking about my dogs, my bike, pavement, listening to music in my car, air conditioning, getting dressed up, hotel lobbies, Disney World, carpet, hardwood floors, backpacking, sleeping in tents, smoothies... oh, and I guess all my friends and family members I was away from.

Once I moved to my permanent village I would come up with endless ways to count down the time until I could go home (just 4 months until vacation, then 6 months after that I'll go on another vacation, then 4 months, vacation, then 6 months and I'm done! OR It's January 2018 now, so 2018 is basically over, then it'll be 2019, and I go home that year, so I'm basically done already). I guess this sounds concerning to someone who isn't a volunteer, but it's not really. I just was having a hard time feeling at ease while trying to adjust mentally and physically to everything new around me.

Now I've lived here for 15 months and have about 10 months left. I still think about home a lot, but in different ways. There's the US as home - the place I'll go when I COS, where I can blend in again, where I can backpack the AT, where I'll probably go to grad school, where I'll look for eventual jobs. There's my parents' house where I'll spend the holidays at the end of the year, where I'll avoid high school acquaintances at the grocery store, where I'll snuggle my dogs until we both fall asleep or one throws up on the pillow, where I'll spend at least one day shamelessly watching South Park for hours on the couch. But there's also a kind of home here I've found. In the beginning I associated home with physical comforts. Daydreaming about my big soft bed definitely helped distract me from the real mental discomfort I was experiencing, but now I think of home a little bit differently.

I think home can be a moment where you feel completely free to be yourself, a person who makes you feel light as air, or a place where you can take both your phyical and metaphorical pants off. Home is cooking a meal together and drinking shitty wine and staying up until midnight watching Vine compilations on YouTube. Home is letting the sun warm your face as you drive over the Gambia River at sunset. Home is the feeling of pride and awe as your garden plants/children germinate and explode out of the ground. Home is a warm greeting from a neighbor who you haven't seen in a while. Home is the dumb joke your host dad tells every day but that still puts a smile on your face. Home is not caring what we do as long as it's together. Home is ugly-crying at the airport without embarrassment. Home is staying up late with your sister on Christmas whispering in bed so no one else knows you're awake, talking about everything and nothing. Home is getting wine-drunk with your family to distract yourself from the fact that it's 45 degrees outside. Home is playing the bean game. Home is talking about sex with your best friend on a hotel rooftop. Home is not needing your earbuds on a 5-hour drive because there's just so much to talk about.

Home isn't just a place that exists in my memories anymore, but it's something I find everywhere, everyday. In these next ten months I'm sure I'll think about the US a lot, what it'll be like to go back, what my next steps will be, etc. I'm sure I'll have days where all I want will be a hot shower and my bed, or nothing more than to go on a long bike ride on a nice, paved road. But for now I feel comfortable enough here, thanks to my amazing host family, my amazing real family back in the states, my supportive friends who let me bother them on WhatsApp early in the morning, and my volunteer community here in Senegal.

I've been thinking about this since November, but have had a hard time sitting down to write it. It was difficult to write after Lyra died but I'm trying to get back into it. I've also been busy with work, travel, and vacation but now I'm getting ready to start 2019 with a somewhat less hectic schedule, so hopefully that means I can crank out some more of these. I'm hoping to do a little review of 2018, talk about some of the books I've read so far here, and hopefully do a little work update. More to come y'all - I haven't abandoned this yet.

Thanks for reading my mushy musings and please accept my cyberhugs,

Maggie

[philosophyquotes]

“We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other’s opposite and complement.”

— Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund

[philosophyquotes]

“To live in the world without becoming aware of the meaning of the world is like wandering about in a great library without touching the books.”

— Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages

[philosophyquotes]

“Deep feelings always mean more than they are capable of saying.”

— Albert Camus, The Myth Of Sisyphus

[texanpeanut]

Lyra

Before I left home for Peace Corps Senegal, I spent a lot of time saying goodbyes. I said goodbye to friends from school, friends from home, and my family, thinking I was done with goodbyes for a while.

As it turns out, I've had to say a lot of goodbyes here, too. At the end of pre-service training you say goodbye to your fellow trainees, older volunteers go through close-of-service, some of your friends terminate their service early or go home for medical reasons, and some people have to switch sites for various reasons. They're always hard for me. It's not the kind of thing that gets easier over time. I haven't gotten used to the feeling of seeing someone you got so close with leave so quickly.

A week ago I had to say my hardest goodbye yet. Not to another volunteer, but to my dog. She was an amazing companion and I don't think her loss can go without saying anything, so I'd like to share her story, our story, here.

She first came into my life December 31, 2017. I was spending time inside my hut with some of the kids in my village when all of a sudden a boy runs inside and tells everyone "the dog came back!" The rest of the kids run outside immediately and when I go outside to see what's going on, I find them all throwing rocks at a tiny puppy, cowering against the fence of our compound. Naturally I'm outraged, yell at the kids to stop, and scoop her up in my arms. I had no idea what to do. I decided to take her back to my hut, give her some water and peanut butter, and let her rest while I figured out the next step. I called and texted some other volunteers and asked my family about it, and decided I would let her stay overnight then see what I would do in the morning. In the morning there was no going back. She had stolen my heart and I gave her a name - Lyra. I had just finished His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman and was in love with the story, so it was the first name that came to mind.

Lyra and my host-nephew, Bailo, on the day I found her. 

Lyra turned out to live up to her namesake. She was full of energy, super spunky and bitey, and would not let anyone boss her around. She was pretty easy to take care of, though. She loved to snuggle and followed me everywhere, and was always receptive to meeting new people and dogs. She was my running buddy, my roommate, my fur-child, my sweet baby. I poured so much love into her. She was my favorite thing about site - even when I was having the worst of days I was happy to be in village because that's where Lyra was.

When she was a puppy she used to curl up in my lap and fall asleep immediately.

Our first selfie. 

Sweet potato nap time :) 

One of the weirder things she brought back to my hut. 

We had a great time together for about nine months, then things started to go downhill. After several months of trying to set a date with the veterinarian in Kedougou to get her spayed, it finally happened September 25, 2018. The surgery seemed to go okay at first. She was pretty groggy afterward, but perked up the next day. I could tell she was still in a bit of pain but figured that was normal post-operation. We rested in Kedougou for a few nights, then traveled back to site together.

I had only been back at site for two nights, then on Sunday morning September 30th, shit hit the fan. I had slept in and was eating breakfast and watching a movie on my laptop when I looked over at my bed and saw a lot of blood coming from Lyra's stitches. I freaked out and tried to help her, tried to keep her from licking it, but every time I touched her I was met with growling and snapping. So I quickly got dressed, opened the door to my hut in case I needed help, then called another dog-owning volunteer for advice. While I was on the phone, Lyra got up and left my hut to go walk around. The other volunteer and I decided that if she was up and walking she was probably fine - I just needed to go get her and make sure everything was clean. So I hung up, finished getting ready for the day then set off to go find her.

I left our compound and looked around in the cornfields out front but didn't see her, so I came back and told my host family I was looking for her then went to go sit in my hut for a little bit in case she came back on her own. About 5 or 10 minutes ticked by before I got anxious and decided to go look again. This time I walked behind our compound and found her lying in the tall grass.

From afar I could tell there was a lot of blood, and as I got closer I saw that her stitches had come completely undone and her intestines were spilling out of her body. She was still alive at this point, but I was panicking, and ran to go get my host dad. He was not very helpful and told me to stop crying (which wasn't really an option for me at this point). So I frantically called a couple other volunteers trying to figure out what to do, and they convinced me to bring her back into Kedougou. I was scared the journey into Kedougou would make things worse, but they helped me realize it was basically the only option. My site mate called someone from my road town to come pick us up from village, and then we paid for an entire car to get us to Kedougou as quickly as possible. My sitemate sat in the back with her and held her down, because every time I tried to comfort her or keep her from moving around she would bite me. At one point she bit my hand so hard I thought she broke it.

We got her to the vet around 6:00 PM and sat outside with another volunteer while the vet operated on her. About an hour later he was done, and she looked how she did at the end of the spaying operation. Sewed up and groggy. Somehow he had put her intestines back inside of her, and I thought everything was going to be okay.

We walked her over to the house where we were met by other volunteers and were all hanging out together while she rested. Not long after we laid her on the ground, she started throwing up blood. A scary site, but we got her to drink some water and cleaned her up a little and again, I thought it was going to be okay. I went to go take a shower, came back, and relaxed for a little while with everyone else.

Eventually I looked down at her and noticed her chest wasn't rising and falling anymore. We gathered around her and felt her heartbeat for a few more minutes. She twitched a couple times, and then there was no more heartbeat.

It was the worst day. After a day of experiencing the whole range of human emotion, I was left heartbroken. I called my mom on the phone and cried so much I think I used up all the water in my body. I had made so many plans in my head for us. We were gonna go back to America together. We were gonna ride around in my car together. I was gonna take her to the dog park. We were gonna hike the Appalachian Trail together. She was gonna go with me to grad school. She was supposed to be my companion. And then it all ended.

The one good thing about this whole horrific experience was the support I got from the other volunteers in my region, and other volunteers who reached out to me over the phone. Maura and Cason helped me get her to Kedougou, Dustin met us at the vet, and Paige, Chase, Archie, and Ellen helped me say goodbye to her the next morning by helping me have a burial for her.

I wish none of it happened. I wish she was sitting next to me as I type this with her head in my lap. I wish she was here to go running with. I wish I could still pick her up by the armpits and dance with her, like we used to do in my hut. I'm grateful for the times we were able to spend together and the short life I was able to give her, and I'm sorry the end of it was spent in so much pain. However I felt like I did everything I could to help her, and I'm glad she won't hurt anymore.

Doing what she loved most - eating peanut butter. I hope there’s lots of peanut butter in dog heaven. 

Her first dog toy sent to me from a friend from home. 

Goodbye, buddy. You may not be with me anymore, but your memory will stay in my heart forever. 

RIP Lyra, December 2017 - September 2018

[texanpeanut]

my dog died a horrific death yesterday and a part of me died with her. i feel hollow. i wish i could lie in the ground with her and snuggle her one more time. i wish i could scoop her up by the armpits and dance with her in my hut forever and ever. this feels like a bad dream that i'll never wake up from. i'm gonna spend some time with the Bluths until i forget who and where i am.

[philosophyquotes]

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.”

— C. S. Lewis

[rooish]

Y’all ever have a week that’s like, a yee without a haw. A ya without a hoo. A hoot without a holler. A proverbial snake in ones metaphorical weathered ranglin’ boot.

[rooish]

You know what them boys say. Don’t squat with yer spurs on, but I wore them darn spurs anyway didn’t I Larry

[texanpeanut]

Rain makes corn, corn makes lacciri

Throughout most of my life in the United States, the weather didn't impact my life all that much. Hot weather meant shorts and t-shirts and waking up at 6 to make sure I could go for a run before the sun became too intense. Cold weather meant dreading taking a shower, spending a few extra minutes every day pulling on multiple pairs of tights and leggings, and running in the warm afternoon to avoid that burning feeling in my lungs. And rainy days meant staying inside to watch a movie or read a book and running on a treadmill.

Here in Senegal the weather affects more than just my running schedule - it determines when I can do my primary work and how well my work will turn out. It also affects a whole bunch of other parts of my life like what I eat, how I travel, when I can do my laundry... and yes, it still affects my running schedule.

In this post, though, I want to focus on the work we've been able to do as a community with all the rain we've been getting over the past few months. With the first real, heavy rains in June my village was transformed from a sleepy cluster of huts to basically one large farm with people working at all times of day, either breaking up the ground, seeding corn, cotton, rice, and peanuts, or getting in between the rows to pull out weeds. The change has been amazing. During the dry season, I used to stand on top of my raised latrine to peek over my backyard fence like a little meerkat to look across my village and see who was home or what was going on. Now if I were to look over my fence I wouldn't see a dry, open expanse but a field of corn over my head. The corn is so tall and absorbs so much noice I usually think no one is around until I get right up to someone's house and hear all the visiting going on.

A path through the corn.

My own backyard has transformed quite a bit too. During dry season it was just a brown barren patch of land that I used as a space to do laundry and bathe. Now it's a jungle of okra, hibiscus, moringa, and plenty of weeds. And of course some of my work partners' fields have transformed quite a bit with the addition of some new agfo technologies I've been trying to extend!!!

Okay, sorry for that awful segue, but for the bulk of this post I want to talk about cool AgFo work because AgFo is so cool and I've touched on it a little bit here and there in other posts but this post is gonna be AgFo rekk. Okay and maybe a little bit of other stuff but... yea. Sit back, relax, and get ready to learn about trees and how awesome they are for the environment!

I've been starting real slow at my site. Like painfully slow it seems at times. But I've been really cautious to meet my village where they're at instead of just dumping a bunch of stuff on them that they're not interested in or not ready to do. They've never had an AgFo volunteer before, so people have vaguely heard of things like tree nurseries and grafting but still aren't quite sure how to incorporate it into their regular farming practices. So I've just been working with a few people so far and hopefully next year will move on to some bigger projects. The technologies I've been working on so far with people have been compost, intensive moringa beds, tree nurseries, and live-fencing.

First, compost. Most people reading this are probably already familiar with compost. It's not really an AgFo technology as much as a sustainable gardening technique but it's pretty cool regardless. When I was in college, we sort of had an on again off again compost pile in our kitchen for our random food scraps. It never really panned out. The thing about compost is that you need the right ratio of nitrogen (green stuff) and carbon (brown stuff) for it to work. With only banana peels and egg shells you won't really get the right finished product. When I teach people here how to make compost, we mark out a big 1x1 m square and then fill it in with 10 cm layers of fresh vegetation and dry vegetation. If it's available we also add fun stuff in between the layers like manure. Some light watering, a piece of plastic to cover it up, and a stick in the middle to judge how warm and moist it is inside and voila it's done. The next step is to turn it every couple weeks to air it out. The awesome thing about making compost in rainy season is that you don't have to water it and it breaks down a lot faster than it would in the dry season. After about six weeks ideally you have something super nutritious to amend your soil with, and then your plants grow amazingly. :)

After a morning of showing my friend Bonnoit how to make a compost pile. 

Alright, on to moringa. Moringa is basically a super plant. It grows so well in almost any condition, can be used in many ways such as a wind break, live fence, fodder for livestock, and the leaves are incredibly nutritous. It's especially high in calcium, magnesium, phosphorous, and potassium, plus fiber and protein. When the leaves are dried then ground into a powder it can be added to water or milk and fed to infants and small children as an easy vitamin boost, and many families will cook into a sauce and serve it over rice or corn couscous (the corn couscous is called lacciri in Pular... now you understand the title). Normally moringa grows as a tree and many people wait throughout the whole dry season until the tree gets leaves again in the rainy season to harvest it. And because trees uh grow pretty tall the leaves can be difficult to harvest. An easier way to get leaves year round is to create a moringa intensive bed. You basically just create a garden bed and plant moringa seeds in a 10x10 cm grid. It takes 2 or 3 months for the moringa to grow to a meter tall, then you can cut it down to about 15 cm and let it grow back again like a grass. It's so cool! I've taught a few people this technique and created a little demo plot in my backyard. I gave my family all my leaves when I harvested it as a gift and they were so excited.

My garden bed about a week after seeding.

Harvest time! 

Now - tree nurseries, planting trees, and live fences. Tree nurseries are just a way to have more control over baby trees that you want to outplant into a field or backyard. Instead of sticking a seed in the ground somewhere, you put it in a special sack filled with soil and manure or compost and water it for 2-3 months until it's big enough to be put in the ground. You can start a lot of trees in nurseries. A lot of people in my village were most excited about fruit trees like cashew, papaya, and mango, but a few people were also interested in live-fencing species. Planting fruit trees can be great for a family's livelihood by introducing another food source and possible source of income, but when hearty trees like cashews are planted in fields it can be great for soil longevity and productivity. Normally when a field is cultivated year after year for corn or peanuts, the soil is quickly degraded and during the dry season the soil is swept away constantly by intense winds. However, planting trees can help prevent this. The roots help stabilize the soil, the structure of the trees helps block some of the wind, and the shade from the crown helps keep some of the moisture in the soil. Live fences (basically just a dense wall of a thorny or unpalatable trees that keep livestock out of gardens or fields) do all of that too, but they also help prevent deforestation. Deforestation is a major driver of climate change all over the world and especially in Senegal, so live fencing is a great way to protect fields, prevent overgrazing, and prevent deforestation all at the same time. Ding ding ding we have a winner!!!

Filling tree nursery sacks with a local women’s group. 

My neighbor and friend, Djeynaboo, planting a cashew tree in her field

It's only a little bit so far, but by slowly introducing my village to these new techniques we're on our way to some positive changes. Rainy season is almost over here, but the work we've done over the past few months will last for years! 

That's it for now. Thanks for reading y'all. -Magz

P.S. the plants aren't the only things growing. My once fuzzy buzzcut head is growing out into something long enough for me to style. Look at these bobby pins I found in the market! yay!

[philosophyquotes]

“We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.”

— Swami Vivekananda

[texanpeanut]

a short post mostly for myself

i was listening to an episode of TED radio hour today on my run called Nudge. it was about small ways we can change behavior. i was sort of skeptical at first... as a self-help junkie, sometimes i feel like i've already seen, heard, and read every sort of "life hack" tip out there. so i let my mind wander during the first two speakers, and then tuned in again for someone who was speaking out how to redirect addictive behaviors. he said to help people stop smoking cigarettes, he encourages them to be curious.

curious? i thought. huh. he asked them to be curious about how it felt to smoke. how their body reacted, different emotions it brought up.

i didn't really listen to the rest of the podcast because my mind was stuck on that one idea. i've heard about mindfulness millions of times, but never considered being curious.

luckily i don't have any real addictive behaviors (except maybe cookie nibbling or peanut butter eating), but i am addicted to some negative emotions. mostly anger, fear, anxiety. yes, anger is addicting. every day i tell myself i'm not going to get angry when someone harasses me or talks to me in a belittling way. i'm going to be calm. i'm going to put calmness and serenity into the world. but of course later that day when some man inevitably calls out to me asking where my husband is i start to feel the rage pulsing through me and indulge it. fuck calmness. fuck serenity. fuck that man and his stupid idea that i'm supposed to have a husband or that i owe him a reaction.

then of course afterward i feel bad about it. anger towards an aggravated turns into anger toward myself for feeling angry! blah! it's like the tummy ache you get after eating too much ice cream. a good idea at first but leaves you hunching over the toilet the next morning.

so if i think of anger as an addiction, i can respond to it with the same curiosity and mindfulness that this guy in the TED talk recommended cigarette addicts do. how does it feel to feel angry? what does rage do to my body? no judgment, just noticing. just curiosity.

so i'm going to try it. i'm going to be curious about being curious and see where it takes me. 😌

-magz

[philosophyquotes]

“You only know me as you see me, not as I actually am.”

—   Immanuel Kant

[shiftythrifting]

[greelin]

🌿🐑🌾🐄🌿🐐

they’re snacking

[texanpeanut]

Reflections On a Year Gone By

On September 2nd, as my sept-plas finished its 7+ hour trip to Thies, I found myself feeling unexpectedly pensieve and reflective. Normally at the end of a journey in one of those old, smelly, and cramped Peugots I find myself thinking of how numb my tailbone is, how long I’ll have to shower to get the layer of dust off my body, or when I can get a cold drink of water. But this day was different, because I realized I almost a year ago I was coming into Thies for the very first time, about to start this weird and hard and amazing journey called Peace Corps Senegal.

The ride into Thies last September was different in a few ways. First, I was coming in from the airport in Dakar, so from the opposite direction, and second, I was not in an old, smelly, cramped Peugot, but a fancy, air-conditioned Peace Corps bus. Moreso, I had just gotten off an 8-hour plane ride from New York and was experiencing a huge range of emotions from excitement about a new adventure, anxiety about leaving everything I knew behind, and curiosity about everything that was flying past the bus windows.

So much has changed since then. With respect to my physical appearance, my pre-departure buzz cut has grown out to a fairly awkward length giving me an appearance resembling something between Einstein and a practical mother of young children, my legs have gone from Texas tan to Senegal snow-white (yes I live in a very sunny country now but it’s not culturally appropriate to show my thighs, so, yea), and I’ve lost about five pounds of muscle due to the lack of protein in my diet (#ricelifebestlife). My eyebrows are also constantly in caterpillar mode because I hate plucking them and don’t think waxing is a thing down in Kedougou.

I’ve gained a lot of practical skills over the past year, too. Now I know how to make compost, double-dig and amend a garden bed, create a tree nursery, plant trees, graft mangos, citrus, and cashews, create a live-fence, collect and store seeds, identify several west african tree species, patch a punctured bike tube, carry water on my head, do laundry well by hand, oh, and uh… speak a new language! I’ve also gotten pretty good at crossword puzzles and cryptograms but I’m not sure I can put that on my resume.

But beyond these fun, surface level changes, my past year in Senegal has taught me a lot of unexpected lessons about both life in general and myself. Here’s an incomplete list of some of the things I’ve realized through experience.

Having a community is crucial to feeling happy and fulfilled. Before I came to Senegal, I thought I could be perfectly happy being a complete loner. My thought was “I’m an introvert. I love hanging out with my friends but I truly thrive on my own.” I still believe I’m an introvert, and I love spending time by myself, but after experiencing days in my remote village when I feel completely isolated, that thought is no longer true for me. After a day spent completely on my own I feel sort of refreshed but mostly sad. The days where I’m busy with work are my favorite, but the days where I get to spend meaningful time with my neighbors and host family are a close second. Aside from my neighbors and host family, though, I’ve come to rely a lot on my real family, my friends from home, and my new PCV friends a lot. I used to think I could solve every problem on my own, and I used to frequently choose time alone over time with others, but now I really see the value in asking for help and doing things with friends even if it it’s not the most efficient or convenient. I don’t know a better way to say it but relationships are more important to me now than they’ve ever been.

Comparisons get you nowhere. In the backpacking community in the USA, many people know the phrase “Hike Your Own Hike.” If you’re thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, this basically means don’t pay attention to how many miles others are doing per day, what other people are eating, the gear other people have, etc. If you feel like you’ve done your best at creating a schedule and packing what you need to have a good trip, that’s your hike and you should enjoy it. I think the same thing applies to Peace Corps service… and I supposed life as a whole. Every service is different. Some people choose to spend more time integrating with their community, other people find more joy in focusing on the technical work. Some people like to focus on self improvement and testing their limits in a challenging environment. Some people come to the capital once a week, others are okay at site for a month at a time. Everyone is here for different reasons and everyone will get something different out of their time here, and every village, town, and city will gain something different from their volunteer. Spending too much time dwelling on other volunteers’ work or language level is wasteful and unproductive because each volunteer is totally different. We’re all just hiking our own hikes.

Including someone is one of the kindest things you can do. This has been real for me both in the volunteer community and when I’m on my own at site. Peace Corps is a really hard thing to do and can flip people around mentally. When we’re all just starting out in training or at our sites, it can be stressful and hard to act like our best selves. Some people you meet might come off as annoying or difficult to be around, but they’re probably just going through some difficult shit. Even the simplest offers of asking someone if they’d like to come with you to go shopping, to the bar, or even just to sit with you can make a world of difference. I think this was something I always sort of knew in the back of my mind, but didn’t realize how important it was until I got to my site. It kind of sucks when your whole host family leaves the compound to go watch the World Cup without telling you. But it feels really good when they invite you to come pray with them for religious holidays and ceremonies even though they know you’re not a Muslim, or when your neighbors offer you a chair to sit in even if you’re just passing by. After experiencing both sides, I know I prefer feeling like my presence is appreciated and wanted, and when I feel appreciated and wanted I’m usually more pleasant to be around. It’s just a positive feedback loop. ^_^

To avoid sounding too cheesy I’m cutting off my “lessons” here. I will definitely add to this in the future, but that’s what I wanted to share for now. Basically it’s been a crazy year with a lot of ups and downs but I’m still here, still alive, and trying to make the most of it. I’ll make another post soon to go over what’s been going on throughout the rainy season and post some pictures! Until then, thanks for reading and I hope everyone is having a wonderful Friday. :-)

-Magz