6 months in

Hello all,

It's been a long while since I've updated my blog, and I apologize for that. It's been an eventful month, what with my IST and the beginning of Ramadan. However, before I begin to recount my adventures, I want to reassure everyone who read my last entry that I have not gotten schistosomiasis, and it is highly unlikely that I picked up schistosomes due to the short duration of my exposure.

Anyways, my experiences...

IST was a bittersweet experience. My first two months in country were spent in the company of over 35 brilliant, motivated, and conscientious trainees. I developed friendships with a number of them and was sad when our training ended because we would not be seeing much of each other for a long while. Indeed, because we spent such a long time apart and our experiences were so different from one anothers, it was inevitable that we would grow somewhat apart and be changed by our experiences. Thus, while it was nice to see everyone, it didn't feel the same as before.

Our IST was comprised of training sessions that were heavily geared towards our technical skills. In our cases, we did general community development work along with health-specific work. Thus, we did things like gardening, tree nurseries, baby-weighings, cooking classes (to optimize nutrition), and so on. In all honesty, I think that the skills I will use the most in my village will be those dealing with gardening and tree nurseries. But you never know...

After IST, I went to Kaolack and spent a week there with a smaller group of people. Having been in the village for a long while without many Americans had made it a bit tough for me to take large groups of them at a time. I needed some time to recuperate before I could go back to the village.

I did make it back to the village in time for the beginning of Ramadan. The daily schedule changes dramatically in Ramadan. Everyone wakes up about an hour before sunrise (4:45 am here) and eats their breakfast and drinks their water. From sunrise until sunset, people are not to eat nor drink anything. Of course, not everyone is required to fast. Children, pregnant women, women nursing babies, and the sick are required to eat their food in order to protect their health (or the health of their children). I have resolved to fast whenever I spend the day in the village, and not to fast when I travel to other cities.

The night before I began fasting, we had a massive rainstorm that caused quite a bit of damage in the village. Numerous people lost their roofs, the school was severely damaged, and numerous crops were destroyed. So the next morning, though they were fasting, everyone was busy repairing the damage from the rain. I don't know how they did it without drinking any water, because though it was cool out, people were sweating a lot from the work they were doing.

I was struggling myself, and it got harder as the day went by. The worst was at about 3 or 4 in the afternoon, when it had been nearly 12 hours since I'd eaten or drunk anything, and the sun was the hottest. But at 5:30 I went and pulled water, took a bath, and soaked my feet (to prevent the skin infections that have plagued me this rainy season). It all felt heavenly, and I felt like I could fast for another 12 hours without any trouble. Of course the feeling didn't last, and I was really happy when sunset approached. We broke the fast with dates, coffee (a spicy blend the locals call Cafe Touba), corn on the cob, and hibiscus (bissap) juice. An hour or so later, we had our dinner. Breaking the fast made it almost (but not quite) worth it to fast the whole day. To be honest, I didn't have a problem with going without food, but the water was really tough. I'm probably going to start drinking water during the day, but going without food. We'll see how it goes.

Take care everyone, and if you're in the states, enjoy the changing leaf colors!

Be safe.