My Home for the Next Two Years

I am in a really good place and so stoked on my permanent site placement! In December I will move to Malem Niani, in the Tambacounda region in the southeast of Senegal. Malem is considered a large village by Senegal standards (3,000 people), but it felt very small when I visited. Everyone was extremely welcoming and excited to meet the new volunteer! I am the fourth Peace Corps volunteer to serve in Malem, and I think it will be helpful that the community is already accustomed to working with Peace Corps. I just returned from spending 3 nights there for Volunteer Visit. VV used to be called "demyst" because it was a demystification of where we will be for the next two years!

Below is the Tamba region in orange. You can see the regional capital Tambacounda right above the tip of the Gambia. I am 70km up the road from Tambacounda, which I can get to fairly easily through flagging down public transit, or take a nice long bike ride on a flat paved road!

Malem is a road town and receives many travelers as it is on Route Nacional, which connects Dakar to both Mali and Guinea. My village has electricity from 7pm to 11pm every night meaning I can get cold drinks in the evening! This is a real luxury that most volunteers don't have. My home doesn't have electricity. My family (The Gory Family) is currently building me a small mud hut near their compound. When it is finished I will have my own fenced in backyard and private latrine. Half of my village speaks a dialect of Mandinka (which I am learning), and the other half of the village speaks Pulaar. This should be an interesting challenge and hopefully I will pick up some Pulaar also! Mandinka is not spoken in Dakar or Thies, so I will also have to learn some Wolof to be able to navigate public transportation. Beyond that, french is also spoken in the major cities and very useful. It looks like I am aiming to learn four languages in the next two years, I'll let you guys know how it turns out...

For Volunteer Visit I stayed with Nicky Olerich who is a current Health and Environmental Education volunteer in Malem Niani. She is from Huntington and has been in country for a little over a year and a half. I feel so lucky that I will have her to show me around for my first few months. After she finishes her service there will not be someone replacing her.

During our visit, Nicky, Adam and I took a Charette, or horse drawn cart, 12k into the bush to visit Adam's site. Adam will be living in Dawadi, a small village north of Malem. On our way there our charette popped a tire and we had to call another one. On our way back, our charette broke down again and we had to hang out for 3 hours with all our baggage half way between our sites!

I am so happy to be placed in Malem and I love the people and the environment. There are many trees and at night the stars glitter brightly in the sky; I am glad I brought my constellation guide! Because I am in a road town, we will almost always have access to fresh vegetables and eggs which is AMAZING! Most villages in Senegal don't have access to vegetables during the dry/hungry season. My families compound is literally right next door to a middle school and I am really excited to work with them on agriculture and health projects! I will be leaving my computer at the Peace Corps Regional house in Tambacounda. It is a central meeting place where all the volunteers in my region can come a couple times a month to cook food together and reboot. It slightly resembles a Fraternity house but is awesome nonetheless. During Volunteer Visit the current Tamba volunteers threw us a party and we got to meet most of the people in our region!

I definitely miss my friends and fam and it will be hard not being with you guys for Thanksgiving and Christmas! Know that I am doing well and thinking about all of you :)