Back from Palmerin

I'm back in Dakar, as of a few hours ago. (No internet in Palmerin, so no blog updates.)
I'm very busy trying to work, and also I got up at 3AM this morning to get here, so this is just to say that I had a fantastic time there (beaches, palm trees, baobabs, sunsets and such...) and I want to take everyone I have every known back there to see it! My interviews went well as well... I was getting sort of bored by the end, to tell you the truth, asking the same questions over and over, and I was mostly thinking about all of the final putting-together work I have to do, but everyone was very nice and welcoming. The women are phenomenal. The stuff they're doing ranges from small to sort of medium-size enterprise, but everyone thinks big. Ah, too much to say, too little time!
Happy almost-Thanksgiving!

For Poppop's men's discussion group!

SEM Fund Kiva Page

I have found the SEM Fund profile on Kiva.org, for anyone who is interested! And here is a link to some of the groups from Keur Gu Mag in Diourbel (wolof is spelled out in many different ways, because it's not originally a written language, remember). The site is the SEM site, but each group links to their kiva loan page. I met with groups from Jabbot, Propaf, Tocossone, and Kheweul. (And maybe others, but those are the names I recognize.)
SEM Fund Diourbel page

I also found that a Kiva Fellow (volunteer) who visited Senegal to meet with Kiva's partners in the area visited Keur Gu Mag, too. Ibrahima Faye showed me a picture of him that he had in an album, so I was surprised to see the same picture when scrolling down the Kiva Fellow blog... here's the link to the Fellows Blog for Senegal. The picture I'm talking about is in the entry called 'Happiness'.
Kiva Fellow Senegal Blog

Wow, that's lots of links. I'm clearly procrastinating, but at least you, dear readership, get to reap the benefits of my web-surfing!

the beginning of the end

I'm quite happy to be back in Dakar. It felt like a homecoming, much more than the other times when we have come back from trips away. I finally feel at home in this city, like I could say that I lived here for a short while without qualifying it as "well, sort of" or "not really". Of course, this realization comes at the same time as my realizing that I have no mental (or actual) map of the city and can't get anywhere without a taxi. Oh, well.
My schedule seems to be somewhat figured out for the rest of the ISP period. I leave Dakar again on Saturday (hopefully very early in the morning) for Palmerin. I should have Saturday afternoon and evening and all day Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to do more interviews and research. I haven't decided if I'll come back late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning, but I'll be back in Dakar for the Thanksgiving dinner that one of the other students is hosting. (Her family is coming and apparently her mom is going to re-create every aspect of a traditional thanksgiving dinner. Fear not for my holiday meal!) Then I'll stay in Dakar after that, doing some more research, interviewing people from my NGO and writing my final paper and preparing the oral presentation. We have a few days down in a nice hotel near Mbour, as a sort of exit-orientation period, where we give our presentations and relax by the beach and say goodbyes. We go back to Dakar on the 13th and grab our bags and those of us who leave together on the group flight will head to the airport! I'll leave with the group but stay over in Paris for a few nights and be back in the states on the 17th or so, I think. It's all very fast approaching and sort of exciting. Given the mini-breakdown I had in front of the ice-cream section of Casino the other day, I'm finally starting to feel homesick! (Breakdown in a silly way, not in an actual breakdown way)(Casino is the French chain of supermarkets here, so it's like a slice of western/pre-packaged/expensive/organic/air-conditioned/materialistic/clean goodness in the middle of the goats and dusty streets of Dakar. We all sort of lose it when we're in Casino. I won't tell you how much I spent on cheese the other day...).

Anyway, that was a grammatically convoluted paragraph, but what I'm saying is that I miss you all and I'll see you sooner than you think!
xoxo,
Robin

diourbel, day 5...

Still in Diourbel but leaving tomorrow morning for Dakar. Won't I ever be pleased to get back to my computer with the keyboard that doesn't stick and such! Had, I think/hope my last interview today. At least for diourbel. Tonight I'll try and squeeze some more information out of Ibou and photocopy some eco village paperwork and then tomorrow morning i'll stay just long enough to go to their meeting with the UN group that is helping them with their solar oven project. I'm planning on leaving right after, 1pm at the latest, so I'll probably leave around 3 at the earliest. Senegalese sense of time is quite different, you know.
I'm a little stressed about getting my audio files back to dakar and getting them translated and transcribed and everything, especially since I'm planning on only spending one or two days in Dakar before leaving for the second eco village in Palmerin. I also need to go to a tailor, just for fun and shopping purposes, but what with all my meetings and tabaski coming up (big muslim holiday) i dont know when i'll have time to go or if they'll be too swamped with work to see me.
Despite these little stresses, I'm doing well and having fun. I'm feeling much better, the cold persists but no more sore throat. Also there is a magic plant that cures colds and athsma here. I'll try to bring some home with me...
xoxo,
robin

So far things here have been pretty up and down. The food is amazing! Last night I had this crazy salad with pasta and apples and saucisson... my friends in Dakar would kill me if they knew what I was eating... really good ceebu jen for lunch every day, with lots of stuff in it. The focus groups/interviews are going well, I think, but Im going to have a lot of work to do when I get back to Dakar. I hope I don't go back and think of something I needed to do here.
The people are nice. I had a sort of bad experience while trying to find a cyber cafe Ibou's daughter, Khady, because we ran into some of her guy friends and they were a little bit obnoxious and rude. Not intentionally, but they dynamic between them and Khady made my feminist hurt. Hard to explain on this crappy keyboard. Did I mention yet that cyber cafes SUCK?
But things are going well here and I just got some e-mails from back home that made me smile. And Ellen is very nice and good company... it's always nice to have someone to bounce things off of. And she likes Buffy. Enough said.
ahhh gotta go

Diourbel is fine. Not as hot as I was scared it would be. The focus groups have started... whether or not my consent forms are good enough for Conn IRB remains to be seen, but I'm attempting to do everything by the book. I had BOW TIE pasta on plates with silverware last night!!!! crazy!!! and french cheese!!! The peace corps volunteer's name is Ellen. She's very nice. Cyber cafe keyboards suck.
robin

Delays

I haven't left for the Diourbel yet, although I was supposed to. I've been sort of sick (mostly a cold/throat thing) for a little while. I was hoping it would get better, but it was worse, and I couldn't imagine doing four hours in a crowded taxi over bumpy roads while I was feeling feverish and nauseaous. I'm feeling a little better now, however, so I'm leaving tomorrow instead. I'm also trying to get lots of paperwork sorted out for college, which is proving to be quite a hassle. I've already submitted all my information about 'human subjects research' to the SIT IRB board, but now Conn needs me to do all the same stuff over again. Which also means I'm going to have to translate my informed consent form and questions back into English. I need to be able to use this research in the future and at Conn, so I'm trying to get them all the information they need... but since I could be doing interviews and focus groups as soon as tomorrow, I realize it's getting into a bit of a gray area.
So I'm going to go translate and explain and add new signature lines on the consent form and such technicalities and take some more meds and drink lots of water and hope that it all works out okay!
I've moved out of my homestay and into a small apartment (if you can call it that) with my two girlfriends here. It's two rooms and a bathroom, a rooftop place that another student's homestay family regularly rents out to SIT students during the ISP period. (ISP = independant study project). We pay to eat with the family, too, so it's practically like another homestay, but it gives us a measure of independence that's really nice, and there's wireless internet here. However slow, it's very nice! I'll only be here on and off when I come back to Dakar from traveling, but the other two girls, Zoe and Jaime, are living here for the whole month.
Bye for now, wish me good health!
Robin