On Thursday, we gathered on a concrete pad with a painted map of Senegal to receive our site announcements for where we would be working for the next 2 years. We were blindfolded and then taken by the hand to our location to stand, given an envelope of the Close of Service (COS) report from the last volunteer, and told to wait until we could all remove our blindfolds and know where our sites were. I was quite certain that I was going to go a village close to the Senegal River on the northern border of Senegal and Mauritania, but was surprised to learn that I had been placed in a region of Senegal called the Djolof, in the village of Diagali, pronounced Ja gally. I recieved a beautifully written COS report from a previous health volunteer that was very sincere and gave me an understanding of his emotional connection to the town.
After our site announcements we gathered with our northern regions for quick introduction and Q&A session, began packing, and then anticipated a 6AM departure to our sites for Volunteer Visit (VV) to be given by a current volunteer in the village or a similar village. The next morning a small group of us loaded into a Peace Corps vehicle and left Thies as the sun was coming up through the African Mahoghany trees. We drove north along the coast with a flat horizon of palm trees and Baobab trees in Millet and watermelon fields on both sides of the road. We continued for over an hour driving and finally getting to see a little more of this country we will call home for the next two years, we dropped off our first passenger at a gas station with a volunteer, and continued on. Finally after stopping we turned right and left the palm trees and the coast of Senegal to see the arid north central that we would call home. Driving east into the interior of the country we began to see large herds of Brahma-like cows, sheep, and camels in herds along the sides of the road. The terrain was very flat and the vegetation was a savannah of annual grasses and scattered trees. We arrived in the town of Dahra to be warmly welcomed by a two PC volunteers and fed and taken around to meet school directors and mayors and markets. Once we had been fully fed with locale fare I was taken to a catch a "bush taxi" with one of the volunteers. The location of my permanent site was inaccessible during my VV and there was is not a volunteer currently in the site so I was taken to a similar site that spoke Pulaar and was similar in size to my permanent site. My translator and guide was a health volunteer from Southern Oregon who had been in Senegal for about 8 months and had been site for 6 months. So back to the "bush taxi"
As we sat in the shade next to a boutique with people talking the language, I had been learning but me understanding nothing, about me and the having Becca, my tour guide, telling me what they were saying, a truck pulled up and stopped in front of us. The truck had what looked like a latter rack over the truck bed and the truck bed was full up with bags of rice, across the top of the latter rack were wooded boards that were tied down for people to sit; with surprise I was told by Becca that this was our ride and that I should get on quick because there were only a few good seats, I think there might have been one. We loaded up and headed into the savannah for a 90 minute ride going by little fields of peanuts, millet, and cowpeas, passing small isolated family compounds and small satellite villages until we reached a larger one that would serve as my example of my final site.
