inshallah, learn it, live it, love it

under the health tree in Kaedi

My bowels are regular. If my only news was this, dear readers, it would be enough for jubilation. There are volunteers who cannot get over the squatting-over-a-hole thing. Others haven’t done – won’t do? Can’t do? – the deed since Philadelphia. Still others refuse to reveal personal details of any nature, moved by fear, prudishness, selfishness (it is a PCV duty to commiserate, share details and suffering), or an unmentionably bad ailment. Luckily, I fall into none of the above categories. However, in these extreme conditions where even a trip to the bathroom is uncertain, I am beginning to understand the phrase inshallah (meaning “as God wills it” – a popular utterance that follows nearly anything, such as “session will start at 4:30, inshallah” or “we will pass out vitamins before next year, inshallah”).

The facilitators subjected the volunteers to far fewer powerpoint presentations today. Instead, we got a brief session, an intro to language, and approximately 40 kilos of books. The weight requirement from Headquarters suddenly makes so much sense; by abandoning my precious novels in a forlorn pile on my living room floor, I made space for “Culture Matters,” a non-specific catch-all guide to navigating foreign customs as a PCV; “How to Grow More Vegetables,” an optimistic guide that ignorantly assumes access to rainfall; and three hundred plus pages on how to integrate environmental concepts into a rigidly programmed educational system. I might have unloaded another jar of Noxema for this literary goodness…

On a less sarcastic note, I learned my first Hassaniye, Pulaar, Wolof and Sonnike this afternoon – it was my meal ticket at lunch time. We were taught the local greetings and were expected to use them (all four of them!) before we could enter the refectoire to eat. Don’t quote me on the spelling, but here’s a taste of these percussive and bouncy salutations. Each pair represents a hello and the appropriate response (a hello back, if you will):

Hassaniye: assalaamu aleykum - waaleykum assalaam

Wolof: nanga def - mangifi req

Sonnike: omoho - ma jaam

Pulaar: noumbagda - komoado