| Sunday, October 31st -- Halloween Shannon called
earlier than usual because she had to get back and get ready for the Halloween party.
She is going as a fifties housewife with a flannel nighty and curlers in her hair.
Flannel?! In that heat? She said it cools down considerably in the
night, but it's still difficult to reconcile that with the 130 degree heat that awaits her
in Matam. She was excited about the pizza that they would be having at the party
that night.
There has been a current Peace Corps Volunteer at the training center for several
days that works just a few miles from where Shannon will be. Her given name is Cira,
already a Pular name, so she didn't need another one. (How did a family from Chicago
come to name their daughter Cira?) Shannon will be getting her Pular name
soon. Cira likes her assignment very much, and she and Shannon get along very well.
It was reassuring to hear that there will be someone nearby that Shannon can relate
to.
The package that I sent has arrived in Senegal, but Shannon doesn't have it yet
because it didn't pass customs. It's just a pair of old shoes. The initial
plan was to go to the post office along with one of the Senegalese trainers who would help
her with the appropriate bribery techniques. The latest plan is to go alone and hope
that her naivete and innocence win them over. I'm waiting for the next call to see
if she has the box yet, and I'm wondering how to increase the likelihood of my Christmas
package getting to her.
Since Shannon can't read this, I can say here that I'm
sending her a needlepoint Xmas stocking with her name on it -- not the one that has hung
from the mantel for the last 23 Christmases, of course -- we couldn't possibly part with
that. So far all I have to put in it is a Titanic audio cassette. That seems
like an odd thing to send to Senegal, but what isn't? I'm going to look for a small
thermometer too, playing on the Minnesotan preoccupation with weather. Maybe
weather isn't such a good thing to dwell on, but it's difficult not to. She has
requested some Kraft macaroni and cheese and also Rice Krispies because she found some
marshmallows in a store. What a Christmas this will be be! I hope she'll be
with some of the other Americans for Christmas day, 1999. Hopefully she will be home
for three weeks for Christmas 2000, and home for good for Christmas 2001.
Some of my initial worries have been put to rest, and some new ones have cropped
up. She won't be abducted by political dissidents because Senegal is one of the most
politically stable countries in Africa. She won't be lonely because she will be
close enough to Americans, and the Senegalese are extremely friendly and appreciative of
Peace Corps. But that heat! There's a reason those Africans have all that skin
pigment and the northern Europeans don't! Will she be able to keep enough sunscreen
on hand?
------------------------------------------
November 5, 1999
Shannon called to wish me a Happy Birthday. I opened her gift while we were
on the phone, a painting of a mother
and child done by the host father of one of the other trainees, and it is being framed as
I write.
It was a cloudy day when she called, and although she is still happy to be there
doing what she is doing, the novelty is wearing off. She has been writing letters
regularly, but not quite the one per day that she started out doing. She is tired
all the time. All the learning she is doing takes much mental energy, and she's had
no opportunity for physical exercise.
She had visited an Internet cafe and checked her e-mail, but she didn't have time
to answer any of her messages. She also checked the website (this one) and noticed
that I had the BP (post office box) number incorrect in the address on the home page.
Oh, no! I'm afraid that I might be the cause of her not getting some mail!
I had BP 229, and it is really BP 299. (I've changed it now.) Soon she
will give me Cira's address in Matam, then any mail that might miss her in Theis can be
sent to her via Cira. At the cafe she didn't have time to read any of the reports so
the surprise of her exciting Christmas gifts won't be ruined.
Shannon had a big adventure recently when she went to a dance club where one of
her host brothers was playing. She realized later that she had used bad judgement
when she walked in ahead of the rest of her group of friends, all Senegalese men and
women, because a man ran up to her and tried to kiss her. On the mouth, I asked her?
She wasn't sure because she was able to dodge him, but she was quite taken aback by
the whole incident. She ran back and grabbed her friend's hand and told him she
would be sticking by him the rest of the evening.
...I just sent off the first box for Shannon's Christmas. By opulent
American standards it's pretty pathetic. Stationary, a paperback book, a small 2000
calendar, and dried foods. I'm just hoping that the insignificant value might
increase the likelihood of Shannon getting it.
In a couple of weeks Shannon will be spending her week in Matam, the location of
her future assignment, and she's very nervous about how she will get along with her level
of French. Sometimes she's feeling cocky about her ability to actually hold
conversations, but then just recently she overheard someone speaking and couldn't tell if
they were speaking French or Wolof. Because both those languages are so prevalent in
Senegal, they sometimes get blurred. Something like Spanglish, I imagine.
Cira told her that after four months in Matam she could pick
out phrases in Pular, and after six months she could hold around 8 repeated conversations.
That's about where Shannon is with her French right now. She can answer
questions and discuss such things as the weather, malaria, diarrhea, cultural differences,
and her progress in French. (Except for the weather, those aren't the usual topics
of repeated conversations that we have here.)
After her week in Matam she'll start instruction in Pular.
In Matam she'll be spending two nights with Cira, two nights in her own mud hut
(her future home for the next two years), and two nights at the regional house.
That's where she'll be for Thanksgiving with all the other PCVs from Matam and
Podor. It so happens that they are all vegetarians too. Shannon surmises that
the Senegalese in the northern region must think that no Americans eat meat. If they
only knew all the ways that Peace Corp volunteers are untypical Americans!
During the course of our conversation I suggested to Shannon that I send her some
plastic picture frames, but she declined. I asked why, and she said she didn't
know how she would hang them on the walls of her mud hut.
Seventh Report |