Tales of a Thirty-Something

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Ok, so I know I've been all about asking ya'll for money lately, but I thought I would try one more time with my last big project here.  Here, let me paint you the picture: Girls here have it hard. Much harder than the boys.  Cooking, drawing water, washing, math, science... you name it and they do it.  Most don't ever get the option to go to school- in fact many times they're married off by the time they become teenagers.  Most of us at that age were bratty and awkward looking; whereas, these girls are running households and breastfeeding.  It's a sad reality here.  As I've said before there is a direct link to girls' education/female empowerment and the level of development of a country. Trust me, I've seen charts...in college (a place 99.9999% of my girls will never see). Who is that .0001% you ask? Let me tell you about one of my best friends here. Her name is Rougy. She's a 15ish year old girl in middle school who lives in the village next to

So, I’m back in Senegal after maybe the most amazing vacation ever.   The weather was perfect, the leaves were changing, I got to eat all my favorite dips, drink all my favorite beers.   It was nothing but awesome.   My most heartfelt thanks goes to my parents who helped make it happen, and everyone else who helped to entertain me. I really couldn’t have asked for a better time.   All that said, many of you have asked for ways on how you can be involved in my projects.   For all my non-funded projects, positive thoughts and prayers are always helpful.   And, while I don’t do many projects that require funding, I do have 2 projects out right now. SUPPORT GIRLS EDUCATION   The first is one of my most passionate subjects. It’s a collaborative effort with many other Peace Corps Senegal volunteers to help keep girls in school.   The cultural practice here is for girls to quit school outrageously early to help with household duties in order to prepare them for marriage when they

They    came. They saw. And they conquered. Jenn and Margaret just left the land o’ Pulaar for the land o’ plenty.    They gave up three weeks of their real-world lives to see what encompasses my semi-real-world life here. It was three weeks that sped by too fast for sure.    We laughed. We cried. We drank. We ate. We declined marriage proposals.    We WERE Senegal.    They did it all, and to be perfectly honest, I definitely didn’t make it easy for them.    To call them troopers, isn’t even close to enough.    In short, they faced not only culture shock, but also cases of the African stomach, threats of gangrene, intense sunburn, broken-down transportation, midnight goat and donkey calls, and among other things, the craziness of the 4 th  of July annual Peace Corps Senegal party. We started the trip in Dakar. They arrived early in the morning, fresh-eyed and energized for all Senegal’s opportunities.    That lasted about 30 minutes until the jetlag caught up with them. So our first

525,600 moments so dear So, I’ve passed the year mark now, and I’m having trouble pinpointing where the time has gone.  It seems that the days here are long, but the weeks and months speed by.  I’m sure most of ya’ll are wondering what it is exactly that I’ve done since being here, especially since all my photos seem to be either at parties with a hundred other Americans, or they comprise of several upset-looking villagers huddled into one large ball of Pulaar. As for a heads up, here are a few of the pictures I took while trying to be sneaky, but as for the rest, uploading pictures here takes about a year and a half, so most of my pictures I have taken, I am waiting to upload for when I come home to AMERIK. First let me explain as to why most of my pictures  are of expressionless villagers- mostly in large groups, and usually sitting on a bed.  My villagers LOVE getting their photos taken, but their version of a picture, and mine are not exactly one in the same.  Their idea of

525,600 moments so dear. So, I’ve passed the year mark now, and I’m having trouble pinpointing where the time has gone.  It seems that the days here are long, but the weeks and months speed by.  I’m sure most of ya’ll are wondering what it is exactly that I’ve done since being here, especially since all my photos seem to be either at parties with a hundred other Americans, or they comprise of several upset-looking villagers huddled into one large ball of Pulaar.  As for a heads up, here are a few of the pictures I took while trying to be sneaky, but as for the rest, uploading pictures here takes about a year and a half, so most of my pictures I have taken, I am waiting to upload for when I come home to AMERIK. First let me explain as to why most of my pictures  are of expressionless villagers- mostly in large groups, and usually sitting on a bed.  My villagers LOVE getting their photos taken, but their version of a picture, and mine are not exactly one in the same.  Their idea of th

My Dad just came!! I feel like I was preparing for his visit for so long, and then it just happened so fast. He came in to help with an eye clinic Peace Corps was putting on in my regional capital. Dad at Work We had a group of American doctors come over to perform surgeries/consultations and to teach the Senegalese doctors an appropriate method for removing cataracts. We got my Dad involved, and bing, bang, boom…Poppa Brooks comes to town. It was so cool to not only just see him but to also work with him.  Ya’ll should have seen him.   Patients gathered early and they stayed late.   He was like robot-seeing patients from sun-up to sundown. It was a task just to get him to take a lunch break. I was so proud.   His equipment was old, and his patients were anything but normal, but he tirelessly checked eye after eye, and set them up for surgery.   I mainly translated or filled prescriptions for glasses, but I did get to see a couple surgeries, and I even touched a cataract.   So,

What’d you do for New Years?   It’s a pretty standard (almost obligatory) question for people my age.   In America it usually involves getting dressed up, maybe dinner, and a nighttime of fun.   While I love all those things, my New Years here probably trumps any and all New Years I’ve had at home.   To begin, as most holidays here tend to do, it got stretched from a single night into a solid week.   I guess I should also preface this with the fact that most of the wonderfulness that was my holiday came from the fact that I was out of my village.    In the past couple of months, for one reason or another, Saare Boyli has handed me mountain after mountain of frustration.   Now, I don’t say this to evoke a pity-party or demand sympathy, but merely to lay the foundation down of why it was so awesome to be out of “Penda Sow”-mode. So the week starts with an evening in Dakar….and Youssou Ndor! We happened to arrive in the middle of the African Arts Festival and he was putting on a free