Mbaldoo!

(m-bahl-doh)

That’s how you say “good morning” in Sereer. If someone says that to you, you respond with “fedee jam” (fay-day jahm). Then there are several greetings asking about the family and your health that follow, and other ways of greeting each other during the afternoon or evening. Salutations are serious business in the village of Soussane.

Soussane, not to be confused with Sessene (a small town along a main road where Agrecol has an office), is a hamlet of a few dozen families, five kilometers of dirt road away from the main route. Agrecol though it would be best to send me to one of their newest sites for my internship, and they just got their organic gardens at Soussane off the ground in the past year.

In some ways, it’s rather like my fantasies of the Little House books as a girl – the town still gets all its water from a well (though I buy bottled drinking water because of my weak American stomach). My host father is the head of the village, and so we were among the first to get electricity, which is still being installed in other homes – until those arrived, only the school had electricity. It is enough to power lamps in the evenings and to charge cellphones, but to charge my computer I have to go a little further afield.

I can either ask a neighbor on the other side of town who has a more powerful electrical system, or go to the Agrecol offices (a journey which can range between fifteen minutes and an hour, depending upon whether I go by horse cart or car), or to Beersheba, a little under a mile away. Beersheba is a faith-based center which offers training in organic farming. The latter two have wifi as well, though I also have a 3G internet connection if I want to work at home. It’s a bit slow out here though, so I can’t post any pictures as yet.

So far, my schedule is split between helping at the village preschool a few mornings a week, helping with the organic farming, and doing things with the Agrecol offices. I can’t start conducting interviews until I get IRB approval, which I’m in the process of applying for, but until then I can do a lot of reading – as usual, I practically brought a mobile library with me.

The food is a lot more carbohydrates and a lot less meat and vegetables than I’m used to – at this rate, I think most of my body mass will be millet by the time I go home. Fortunately, I’m rather fond of it, and I really love the feel of meals eaten around the communal bowl.

Soussane is not the kind of place that gets all that many newcomers, and certainly not white girls like me, so all the kids here find watching me to be endlessly interesting. If I just sit down outside with my journal or my knitting, a crowd of them will gather. All except for the littlest ones – I still frighten some of the babies.

As per the usual, everyone, adults and children alike seems to like to watch me knit – I really wish I had brought teaching supplies with me, but I shall have to figure something out.

There is so much to say about life here that I have to cut myself short for this post – I’ve got a couple themed pieces in mind for later. Will post a lot more in the weeks to come!