“Newet” is Wolof for “Rainy Season”
According to my calendar, the first rain was June 2nd. I think it rained less that five times during June; which meant I really did not start any “rainy season” work until July. July 4th I returned to village from my trip to Dakar, slept two full days to recover, then July 7th officially started working in my pre-rainy season prepped fields. Every day that it did not rain, and some days that it did, I seeded, mulched, made compost, and/or weeded. This was also the beginning of Ramadan. I did not even try fasting at the beginning. I was battling my first bought of rainy season diarrhea, and decided I needed to be eating and drinking during the day. I continued to work 7-10 hours/day in my field, sick or not, because I was the only person who was going to get the seed in the ground in time.
After a weekend in Kaffrine for a work meeting, and finding out how many people were fasting, I decided to try it. So for a week when I got back to site, every morning I woke up before dawn, ate breakfast, drank a litre of water, and went back to bed. I would then wake up around 8, go to my field until 12 or 1, come home and take a 2-3 hour nap, then go back out to the field for a few hours before going home to shower then break-fast around 7:30. I am not really sure how I did it, but I was not sick the entire time (other than the expected nausea brought on by drinking coffee on an empty stomach), as promised by everyone in my village that you do not get sick when you fast.
Then August 1st I headed toward the coast for the ngente (naming ceremony) of my doctor friend (Naffy)’s baby. I was staying at the Peace Corps office in Toubacouda, planning to spend the night of the ngente at my friends house then make it back to my site by August 4th. But the day of the ngente my stomach had started to hurt, so I decided to catch a late ride back to Toubacouda that night to sleep somewhere comfortable (with a reliable toilet). The next morning my stomach still did not feel quite right, so I went for a run (which I had not done in four weeks because of all the field work). When I came back I felt even worse. I could not eat, was exhausted, boated, and had horrible diarrhea. Another volunteer staying in the office was waiting for a fellow volunteer to show up to celebrate the first volunteer’s birthday. But the other volunteer never showed up, and called to say she thought she had giardia. As we compared our symptoms we agreed that we both had giardia. The next morning I called the Peace Corps med phone, told the doctor my symptoms, she agreed I had giardia, then I headed out to the pharmacy to buy the meds. My first trip failed, 100m away I had to turn around and run back to the bathroom in the office. But the second trip was successful and I made it back with the meds. I spent the rest of that day and the next sitting around the office (OK, and sometimes at the pool at the resort next door) still sick but feeling better. The next day, Tuesday, I felt better so I took some pepto bismol just incase and started the journey back to site. I did have to make a couple bathroom stops, but at least they were not urgent. I probably should not have travelled that early, it stressed my body and I slept for the next two days until Korite (celebrating the end of Ramadan) on the 9th.
A few days later, when I was feeling well enough to go out to my field, I was overwhelmed with a very lush, green, weed filled field, barely a corn stalk in site. I set about hand weeding for as long as I could manage everyday. People would constantly come by and comment about how many weeds were in my field, telling me that my host dad should come help or I should pay someone to help, but never offering to help. One morning as I was eating breakfast at the bean stand, exhausted with the idea of how much work I would be doing that day, someone started giving me crap about how many weeds were in my field and, of course, not offering to help. It finally got to me, so i just did not say anything, paid, and walked out trying to make it back to my room before I started crying. Of course I did not make it, and everyone saw me crying. So as I hid in my room I could hear everyone saying “Mame Diarra’s crying because she has weeds in her field.” Finally, my sister-in-law came into my room and asked me why I was crying. I told her it was because every day people gave me crap about how many weeds were in my field but no one has ever actually offered to help. She said that the next day her, two of my aunts, and my mom would come help. Of course they never did. But the next week (after the weeds had grown enough to stunt nearly all of my corn) some of the women’s group, from the Gambian village near by with another volunteer, who I work with came and cleared most of the weeds. There was more to do that my family promised to do the next day, but they never did. Somewhere in that week I just stopped caring, and felt a whole lot better about my field.
I left for an agro-forestry volunteer summit in Tambacounda the next day. Regionally I was supposed to go to Toubacouda the week before, but I had just been there, and I live so far east that Tamba was closer and cheaper to get to. So I went to the summit with all the volunteers form Kedagou and Kolda, the beautiful, lush, corner of Senegal. There I spent three days becoming more and more depressed by how much “real” agfo work everyone else seemed to have, then headed back to site where I realized that it is all perspective, and I can NEVER again hang out with that many southern volunteers without any of my “Saloum Saloum” Kaffrine girls.
The next few weeks were pretty quiet. I had a little weeding to do, which was manageable, and anything else I had just given up on and was not worrying about. September 6th through 11th I went back to Toubacouda to help with the mangrove reforestation project, which was the most fun I had all rainy season. It included all day planting in the hot sun, a dance party, midnight swimming with bioluminescence, and spending a night in air conditioning with delicious meals.
I came back to site feeling refreshed, and spent the next week not doing much. My beans started to ripen, so I picked some and figured out how to make imitation “baked” beans. The end of the week was my 24th birthday. I did not tell anyone in village that it was my birthday, not that it is really a thing here, and that evening headed out to Kaffrine with a free ride to Koungheul in an AfriCare car that had been doing vaccinations in my area. By the time I was out on the main road I started to feel congested, then a few hours later, while the car I was in was stopped for two hours waiting for some guy transporting $600 of hot peppers to Dakar, I had a full blown sinus headache. I arrived at the Kaffrine office around 10:30pm. There were already ten other people there, so I set up my tent and tried to fall asleep. After maybe two or three hours I woke back up unable to get comfortable and needing to elevate my head, so I sat up at the computer the rest of the night. I had a bit of a birthday celebration that day: red velvet pancakes for breakfast, homemade pizza for dinner, and a few drinks at the bar. Thanks to a couple of glasses of wine, I managed to sleep until about 4am that night, before my sinuses could not stand the laying down. By the next evening I felt much better, but the congestion lasted a few more days after I went back to site.
I think I was healthy for maybe 2 full days. Then, October 2nd I was congested again, which I attributed to allergies, and I started having diarrhea, which I assumed would last a few days then go away. But neither of those things happened. By the night of the 4th I felt feverish, and by the next afternoon I had a 102 fever, diarrhea, aches, congestion, and a sore throat. Thinking I would get better I waited until Monday morning to do anything other then take Tylenol and try to sleep it off. But I was not feeling any better Monday, so I called the doctor. After describing all my symptom the doctor said, “Let me guess, you are one of those people who only gets sick once a year and when you do its awful.” “I wish!” I said, “I’ve been sick ALL of rainy season!” He then put me on two prescriptions and regular doses of ibuprofen. By 6pm that evening I felt way better, and the next day I even carried water for myself and spent some time in my field cutting Okra.
I have already asked some of my local friends for a “tere” to protect me from getting sick next year. Tere are either Koranic verses said or written down, blessed, then wrapped in leather and/or knotted into string and worn on your body as protection. They are used as all types of protection: against snakes, sickness, current illness/pain, protection in travel, falling, even stab wounds. I am definitely going to need one next year, I do not think I can live through another rainy season like this one.
sara in senegal 