Site Visit

Well, site visit has gone well and not so well. Ian and I were finally able to get out of John’s site at noon yesterday (still with two empty seats which were subsequently filled along the way rendering the whole waiting a day and a half to leave thing frankly dumb), making our trek from Mamou to site a total of three days. I’m betting we win for difficulty of getting to site.

When I got here I was brought to the Sous Prefet’s house, who is the government-appointed leader of the sous-prefecture which is comprised of five districts. My district, where my village is actually located, has a population of a little over 4,000. The Sous Prefet is really cool and speaks very well so I can understand almost everything he says! So does his wife, which is great because I can speak to both of them very easily, even in my broken French. The others are not so easy to understand, but such is life. At the SP’s house I also met the President of the CRD, which is an elected position and if I understood correctly the same dude has been the CRD Pres since the beginning in 1992. I also met the Director of the Primary School. Then I ate rice and sauce. It was a chicken sauce with manioc (I think). I didn’t eat the chicken, but the sauce itself wasn’t bad. Until it hit my guts 7 hours later and I spent half the night in my toilet, which is actually like 100 yards away from my house and requires me to leave my house and my yard and travel down a path where I met strange men each time I went. More on this later.

After food, we went to tour the government buildings. We went to the Centre de Sante where I met the Doctor (at least, they called him a doctor) and saw the facility. It is basically this: a waiting room with benches and a desk and some signs about tuberculosis, 3-4 sick rooms with 2 beds each where sick people can come and rest and be hooked up to IVs for 3 days (if they are not better after 3 days they are sent to the closest larger city), a room where he gives injections, plus two offices (one for him and one for the Chef du Sante who was sick and in the bigger city). The doctor’s office had a fridge in it where he kept the medicine, but the fridge wasn’t working because he was out of gasoline to power it (there is no electricity in my village). Oh there were also two rooms that had something to do with pregnant women, I’m assuming delivery rooms, but I did not know the right words to ask if he had a midwife he works with for those as well or what.

I also saw the Salle du Reunion, which is just a place to hold meetings and sensibilisations (I will be using this a lot), and the offices of the Sous Prefet, CRD Pres and I think the last one was my counterpart’s office (he is the Chef Cantonnement du Forestiere) but I also think the SP referred to it as “my” office as well. Who knows.

Then I was taken to my house, which is in the middle of town right near all the aforementioned places. It’s very big with 4 bedrooms and a living room and…no toilette. When they walked me to the toilette (as I said before, about 100 yards away) I was kind of distraught but thought, hey, it’s only for two days and then I can tell them if they want me to live here for 2 years I have to have a toilet at least on my property. …and then I had diahrrea all night and decided there was NO WAY IN HELL I would live with this being my only toilet. In fact, once I just popped a squat in my yard because I got sick of walking there and having to saluate every weird dude who said, “Hey, blanc, ca va?” on my way there.

Oh, also, I say it has 4 bedrooms but one is a store room that the owner is using and one has an old woman living in it that the SP said if it wasn’t cool, she would go away. And I’m like…really? You want me to kick an old woman out of her room??? But seriously, I need my house to be MY HOUSE and I simply cannot share it for two years while I NEED my privacy, space to cry, and freedom to walk around without my knees covered.

Anyway, before the diahrrea, the SP sent who I think is one of his daughters, Hoodia, to show me the pump, which is like 1 kilometer away. She got me a bidon of water and I decided that either A. a petite will be getting my water for me or B. I will be using my bike to trek bidons back and forth once a week to build up a stockpile of water in my house.

Then I told her I wanted to take a bath, which I was told I would do at the SPs house, but she took me down to this watering hole where this girl was doing laundry on the rocks and was like “Here you go” (in Pular). I was kind of like…should I be doing this? But then both Hoodia and Kadiatou (the SPs other daughter, I think) stripped into their underwear and started washing themselves and my clothes and I was just like what the hell. It was actually kind of nice. The water was nice and cool and it’s always fun to bathe outside, though I don’t think I got as clean as I do with a bucket bath and I saw a worm in the small bit of water left in my gobelet today so I hope I didn’t get schisto or something from doing that, though I did make sure to ask them before doing it “is it not dangerous?” and they said no. I guess all the women bathe down there.

So after my night-o-diahrrea I was awoken by a “conk-conk” on my door (that’s what they say when they’re knocking) from my counterpart who had shown up with two other dudes and I answered the door bra-less in my tank top and pagne, which was kind of embarrassing, but he took me by surprise.

So after another trip to the bathroom, we took off for the pepiniere which must have been like 3k away near the President of the Groupement’s house. The groupement is the group of people who work in the pepiniere. The site is right next to the river, so there is a ready source of water and is fenced in with a metal fence to keep the animals out. There are no actual trees in it right now, that’s my job, though he said the groupement works on Tuesdays and Saturdays though I’m not sure what they do.

After the long walk back, he asked if I still wanted to go to the schools and I told him another time because I felt like dying. I then spent a few hours laying in my bed feeling miserable until Hoodia conk-conked and I went back over to the Sous Prefet’s house and spent the entire afternoon kicking it with his wife, Hoodia, Kadiatou, Mamadou (7) and Alpha (1.5). He was out of town for the day and won’t return until tomorrow so I didn’t get to talk to him about my house concerns, though I did write him a note about it I plan to drop off before I leave tomorrow. However, his wife speaks French so I talked to her for awhile about various things and I think we will be friends. I would guess her age as late twenties.

Tomorrow is market day so I’m going to try and hit it before Ian shows up with the taxi (inshallah) and purchase some avocadoes, of which the SPs wife said there would be many.

I would say the thing that would have improved my site visit the most would be the lack of modified stool. Second most would be having a bathroom in/around my house. Thirdly, more clean clothes. And last, no old woman living in the room next to me. The end.