Prayers

Ngone's Aunt Seynabou passed away. She was the wife of Ngone's mother's younger brother Moussa, who is shown on this blog building our house in Ngone's village. She had 10 children, and was the age of Ngone's oldest sister Aissatou. Seynabou was with Ngone's older brother Lassi, who was taking her to the hospital, when she passed away. She told him that the sickness had won. The doctors had told her that nothing more could be done, she had numerous tumors supposedly, although from my experience in West Africa these things are never very clear. Ngone had told her brother Lassi to take her to the hospital regardless. Faith and humility live in abundance in that part of the world, and were very present in this case. We wish to thank everyone for their previous support. We definitely extended her life by a couple years with the previous operation. Ngone's mother is very troubled by the news. She wishes she could be there to help them. I encouraged her that she is lucky to be in very good health, and her and Ngone just sent some money today for Ngone's sisters to help them with food since this is the toughest time of the year over there, rainy season. Ngone's oldest sister Aissatou is also at her dying old husband's (this is her second husband which was sort of a symbolic marriage since her first husband abandoned her and her first four children) bedside and is very low on food. We are trying to encourage them to make sure the kids are all in school as well, and Ngone insisted to me that making sure their mothers can feed them is the first step in making sure they go to school. More on that soon.

You saved a life in Africa!

I should have written this post a long time ago. When we visited Senegal in August we saw Aunt Seynabou in Packy. It didn't seem appropriate to me at the time to take a picture of her, otherwise I would share it with you. It's hard to explain how I felt seeing her, but I certainly felt a great deal of appreciation from her beyond her telling us and all of you thank you. She had recovered and was just grateful. I also felt a great deal of respect for her and how she handled herself. Being there amongst not only her but also visiting a number of villages in the area, including a couple trips to villages where people had just died, and being amongst the communities which are so communal and guided by long-standing traditions, gave me an overall sense of respect and challenged me. In our American lives we are not nearly as connected with each other. We don't usually sit under a shade tree in the middle of our neighborhood and chat with each other all afternoon. I think we used to though.

Extended Family

The ChipIn app for facebook apparently doesn't work right. It doesn't show the contributors. We've now raised $350 from my mom, Grant, and Aunt Kathy. Ngone spoke in more detail with her mother. We're going to send over $500 tomorrow. Operation is supposed to be Monday or Tuesday this week. We'll keep you posted.

Aunt Seynabou

Ngone's Aunt Seynabou has continued going to see doctors. The latest tests confirmed that her tumor is benign. She has been on medication (thanks almost entirely to your contributions) which has helped her pain and earlier stopped the bleeding. But she is now in more pain. She found a new doctor who ran the latest tests to confirm the benign tumor and determined that he could operate. She believes the operation is necessary. I worry a lot about the likelihood of the surgery being successful, but I am no doctor and we can only know so much.

The surgery is supposed to be next week and she needs $500 for it. If you know anyone who can help please encourage them to do so. Unfortunately we can only put together about $100 right now.

This information is based on a phone call today from Seynabou's husband (Ngone's maternal uncle) to Ngone asking for help. This is the first time he has called her to ask for help since this started. His sincerity is readily apparent. I spoke with him a couple months ago when we had called her family. Ngone will call and get more details in the next couple days.

Thanks for all the support you've already given! She will be forever grateful. She already is. The alternative, which has occured for countless people there, would be for her to return to her village and pray.

I would just like to add "We are the world! We are the children! We are the ones who make a brighter day! So let's start giving."

thanks Chris

Aunt Seynabou Update

Aunt Seynabou has gotten better with the medicines prescribed by the doctor. Apparently she still needs surgery, but the doctors want to keep doing tests first. 

Update

Seynabou's village, Packy, has been praying for all of you and thanks you for your help.

She is still waiting on the test results. Please say a pray for her.

My computer crashed, but Apple is repairing it for me.

Seynabou's Thursday

Thank you for the generosity of Faith Vaught. Like Greg, she knows a lot more about this than me from winning against cancer. I also want to thank those who previously donated: Amanda Vaught, David Vaught, Tom Vaught and Kris, Elia, and Seb!!!!! This makes me happy in my heart. Ngone really appreciates your support.

Today Ngone's brother Abdou went with Seynabou and her son and daughter to the Hospital Fann. The doctor said she needs to come back tomorrow to get a type of x-ray. The doctor said she has a tumor and needs to get surgery.

Seynabou is very tired. She said thank you for your help and she is praying for everyone who sent the money for her. She said something like "These people don't know me and are doing these great things for me. If they knew me what would they be capable of? They must be very nice people. Ngone and Chris are very lucky to have them."

If it were me I think I would be taking hostages and/or dead by now. This is another example to me of the patience and dignity of the African people.

The money you sent along with the money collected amongst her family will cover the tests tomorrow.

Seynabou

Thank you Grant and Greg! Grant, I couldn't think of a better face for American foreign policy in Afghanistan than yours. Greg, you definitely know something about surgeries, and I believe foreign policy as well. 

Aunt Diop, her real name is Seynabou Ndione, went to the doctor today in Diamniadio with the little bit of money her family collected. They referred her to the Hospital Fann in Dakar, the capital. That hospital is where Ngone and I visited a Peace Corps volunteer last year working on a garden in the AIDS clinic and psychiatry ward.

We sent over the $95 by Moneygram. Ngone's brother will pick it up tomorrow morning (it's almost morning there right now this evening in Alaska). Ngone talked with her mother this morning and made arrangements for getting Seynabou to the hospital and encouraged her to get the operation as soon as possible. Seynabou almost fainted getting home from the doctor in Diamniadio today. Ngone spoke with another friend in Senegal whose mother had a similar health problem and said that if you don't get operated on you will die. Scary. Apparently her stomach is bulging out and she is still bleeding.

Check back for updates.

Aunt Diop

We just completed our Bob Marley's birthday fundraising and like clockwork Ngone spoke with her family yesterday and her Aunt is seriously ill and needs surgery. Apparently she needs a hysterectomy, although I am no doctor. It sounds really severe with serious bleeding. She has had more than 9 kids. Her family is the poorest amongst the surrounding villages. I intended this fundraising to reach outside of Ngone's family, but this need has arisen making such rules meaningless. If you ever wanted to save a life in Africa this is your chance. 

This is Ngone's mother's youngest brother's wife. To give you an idea of their way of life, they live hand to mouth with always barely enough food for the 9 kids. The 9 kids by the way are not the mother's choice in this culture, although these women wholeheartedly respect God's will, like many religious people around the world. Also their house has no roof.

Apparently surgery is outside of their family's realm of possibilities so they are basically resigned to praying for her. No one has asked us for anything except Ngone's brother Lassi said it would be nice if we could send a small amount to help feed their kids. Please pray. Ngone thinks other villagers will chip in. We'll see what happens.

A Tree in Africa

During an internet search I stumbled across this video of our Costa Rican friend's Missionary project. At time 6:19 in the video there is a nice close-up of Ngone's older sister Aissatou's daughter.  Then at time 6:30 in the video you can see Ngone's uncle Housseini and Ngone's mother Fatou Diouf sitting with the Costa Rican missionary (with the beard) in front of our house under construction in Boukhou.  Apparently some of the families have removed their children from the Missionary home in Thies because of the Christian activities. But Ngone's mother has been a key local supporter of the Missionary, as has Jig Jum.

At that point in the video it makes it seem like the Missionary is saving the little boy on his lap from his grandmother (Ngone's mother) sending him to be a Talibe. That is true in a sense. But the boy shown in the video is not Ngone's mother's grandson. The Missionary is however taking care of one of Ngone's mother's grandsons and two of her granddaughters. (Girls are not allowed to be Talibes).  Ngone's mother did previously send one of her other grandsons to be a Talibe, our nephew Dao Pooy, but he's now back at home. He is doing fine and is the boy we took to the hospital to cast his sprained ankle. That trip to the hospital is a whole nother story:

Hospitals in Senegal are a very sad place. In the emergency room I talked with a mother consoling her son with his head broke open who had been to the hospital multiple times and they just gave her token prescriptions and her son was now obviously on the verge of death and she was fighting to get attention from the doctors who were busy caring for other people we could see and hear who were about to die. The condition of the hospital rooms and bathrooms is worse than some of the grungiest places in the country. There must be foreign aid money coming in from France and the USA for the hospital!? There must be national government money for the hospital!? Where is it falling through the cracks? We actually met a cousin of Ngone's from a nearby village who worked in or around the emergency room as a nurse or doctor and was very nice and helpful and took care of Dao Pooy. There are surely some other saints and angels there amongst the intense despair and hopelessness. They need help!

Chip In

When Ngone called home recently she found out that her younger sister Khady (introduced earlier in this blog) had been laying on her mother's bed for a couple weeks sick and without eating anything.  She also found out that her older sister Ami's daughter was seriously ill. Ngone sent home some of her hard-earned money to pay for their doctor's visits.

I have found over the years that paying for doctor visits and prescriptions and annual school fees and supplies are the most effective ways to help.  But you kind of have to wait for someone to call in need.  Inevitably they do.

In the spirit of Ngone I am setting up a fund to help pay for doctor visits and school fees, and will be reaching out to provide that assistance to those outside her family.  Over the years I have found that a doctor visit and prescription costs around $40, and annual school fees and supplies for one student around $30.

Be one of 111 people to contribute $3 to this fund by Bob Marley's 64th birthday, February 6th, 2009! Thank you for supporting these strong people in their hour of need, and I will keep you posted with stories of who and what the money goes to. We are setting up the fund with an earlier donation from my Uncle Tom Vaught of Springfield, Illinois. Just click on the Chip In link to the right and you will be connected to PayPal directly to make a secure donation using a credit card.

No Rice

After we left this summer we heard from Ngone's family that there was no more rice in Senegal! Due to shortages some Asian countries banned exporting it. The people of Senegal drastically altered their diet to eat couscous-based or potato-based meals instead. The Serere people - a large ethnic region which includes Ngone's village - traditionally ate couscous-based meals, so this was in a way like a return to that traditional diet. But for a couple decades now they have been accustomed to eating rice at lunch and couscous at dinner.

Rice and many other foods have increased dramatically in price over the past year.

My Personal Post-Development Perspective (MPPDP)

I discussed with like minded friends and family my dream for doing development work on this trip to Senegal, and possibly staying on if all went well. So I wanted to give my final informal treatise on that subject. I have become consumed with the subject of West African development for the past 8 years. My development philosophies have been largely influenced by my Peace Corps service in Mali and by my wife Ngone (from Senegal).



The ultimate test of a development project is its sustainability. All projects start with a good idea, but most end failing the critical test of sustainability, maybe either because the local people could not afford needed repairs or the priorities of the local community did not match those of the donor community who installed the project. As I learned in Peace Corps training these failed projects are littered across the landscape of West Africa, in the form of broken well pumps, empty school buildings, health centers with no maintenance or equipment, etc. Over the years I have come to believe that the entire concept of development is largely unsustainable. The idea that foreign aid or capital will start a project sets up an expectation gap that the project can only materialize or continue properly with outside aid and/or advice. A current example is a Peace Corps Volunteer we met in Dakar this time around who managed a USAID-funded garden to provide "sustainable" nutritition to patients at the AIDS clinic of the hospital. The garden was surviving with continued doses of funding, but it was a very expensive garden, and the volunteer observed a lot of funding going to waste, not confident how it will do after he leaves. The volunteer decided to start his own garden with no funding in the psychiatry ward of the hospital, which received no USAID or outside funding "because it's not AIDS-related". He built the raised garden beds with used tires. And his garden was doing almost as well as the expensive one built with foreign aid. This volunteer's approach is similar to mine. I find it very troubling to engage in the imperfect top-down development process, and choose instead to look for home-grown endeavors.



To give you an idea of the development work I pursued on this trip, I visited many water and sanitation NGOs in Dakar. I met with the directors of USAID and Peace Corps, and also with officials of those organizations. I attended a water and sanitation conference and spoke with various NGOs, Senegalese government agencies, European and Senegalese engineering firms. A German engineering firm interviewed me about representing them on a proposal in Mauritania. But they ultimately decided not to submit a proposal. They had a German educated Senegalese engineer representing them in Senegal but had not yet won any projects in Senegal (not a good sign for my engineering prospects). I have also conducted research by internet and telephone over the past few years with contacts in Senegal and Mali. What I have gathered is that a lot of the international funding for water and sanitation projects has shifted to the more remote regions, such as Mali and Niger. See for example the West Africa Water Initiative. I spoke with the World Vision director for this project and he told me they had constructed hundreds of bore holes across Senegal over many years. His NGO has now found local Senegalese, Malian, etc engineers to do their water work for much lower salaries than American engineers. I met some Americans who work for NGOs and they told me I could expect a salary of about $1,000 per month to start. Over a year or two I could work my way up the ladder to a better salary. This cumulative research added together with the rapidly increasing cost of living in Dakar led me to decide that we should not stay in Senegal for the long-term. But instead we should focus on the rural projects we had started, including our house in Ngone's village and building on our land on the beach outside Mboro. But also small grassroots projects in those regions. This work is not going to save the world but is something our family can do. We have already provided assistance for annual school tuition fees for our nieces, keeping all the young girls in school, and have sent money for prescriptions and hospital visits when people get seriously ill. This has been relatively small amounts of money, less than we spend on gas. For example annual schools fees are about $40. A hospital visit is usually around $30 or $40.

One last day of idealism:
Ngone's brother Abibou is a master plumber and Uncle Jig Jum has worked with numerous missionaries and NGOs over the years, especially the Dutch missionaries in Ngone's village. After visiting the missionary with Aissatou's children in Thies we were all feeling especially inspired. We set out one day early in the morning to visit a couple water NGOs in Thies who develop water projects with international funding. I had drilled Jig Jum to identify the most remote, desperate village in the Serere-Safin region without water. He told me of Thouly, an especially remote village where they really need help with water. The women walk 5 to 10 kilometers each way to get water and their groundwater table is very deep (upwards of 30 or 40 meters). So we went to Eau Vive (Living Water) and L'eau pour tout l'Afrique (Water for all of Africa) in Thies. When we walked into Eau Vive the receptionist offered us a seat and we explained who we were. Jig Jum had come to their office the previous day and waited 4 hours to speak with someone who told him to come back the next morning with me. The receptionist explained that this person had traveled to another region and that the other engineers were "out of the office." We explained the situation in Thouly and she said they received a request for funding from Thouly a couple years ago. Jig Jum was familiar with Thouly's previous efforts and discouragement. She told us there are all kinds of villages who have requested funding and their NGO evaluates all requests, but there's a lack of available funding. She said to come back next week. Discouraged, we left. I said, "here I am the American asking for funding and they're looking at me like I'm the one whose supposed to be providing the funding." We went to L'eau pour tout l'Afrique (Water for all of Africa). The office was closed and a little girl said the guy who works there is gone. (Guess he's out getting that water for Africa. It's easy to get discouraged doing this type of work in Africa but I had seen this all before during my two years in Peace Corps. Every office I went to, it was always "come back next week." I've grown awfully tired of the symbiotic system of patronage and powerlessness. I believe the only solution is the "third way." My brother Abibou is a great example of the skilled labor force in Africa that is slowly and surely developing the continent to a high standard. These energies are channeling themselves into successful small entrepeneurizm all over the continent, with minimal capital. Abibou now seeks out free lance plumbing work after initially working as an apprentice with no pay for many years.)

We then went to the Government's Regional Direction of Hydraulics, which Jig Jum had been told the previous day we needed to visit before doing any water project in the region. We found five men sitting under an overhang in the shade and a machine shed with one old dead front end loader. We parked and walked to the main office, but there was no one there. There were a couple computers on dusty desks with covers over them. Two elderly men on the porch greeted us warmly and offered us tea. We walked back around to the parking lot and found a back building again with a covered computer on a dusty desk, but with a back air-conditioned office with a government official shuffling papers on his desk and gruffing at an underling. He curtly offered us a seat and listened to us. He began to understand the situation in Thouly and said drilling a well and putting up a small water tank would cost $50,000 to $100,000 or more. He said like everybody else there's not enough funding. I think he might of even mentioned something about the President's other priorities but I can't remember. I said there's no way I can collect that kind of funding from church groups in the United States. He said the Director was at a meeting today and would be back the next day, and that we should come back to get his advice. I decided it wasn't worth it to drive all the way back to Thies when chances are he'd be at another meeting or "out of the office." Jig Jum, Abibou, and I passed by the missionary again to get our spirits up with some young African smiles and evangelical prayer circles. We decided not to visit Thouly after all. Jig Jum said the rock and dirt road to get there could possibly be impassable in my Camry. Ngone had warned me that if I showed up in that village they'd think God had come to them and then when God did not deliver they would say it was because of the daughter of Fatou Diouf (Ngone's mother). She said to be very careful not to promise them anything. So on the way back I said if we can't do a water supply project maybe we can do an irrigation/agriculture project. Jig Jum and Abibou thought it was a great idea and Jig Jum took us to a very remote village, called Sipan, where a missionary had helped install a reservoir and pipe from the well. The villagers grew tomatoes, eggplants, okra, and other vegetables in a large field. But the elders told me the young people don't help them water the plants, so even though they're supposed to water in the morning and the evening, they only water every evening, it's just too tiring. Standing out there in the middle of nowhere under the oppressive afternoon sun I could believe it. Most of the young people work in Dakar so the village contains just the elderly, women and children. I could tell the plants were thirsty and could really produce more with that morning water.

We talked about developing a project like this in Ngone's village. There is a rich tradition of agriculture but it has all now almost completely been abandoned with all the young people focused on working in Dakar during the week and only coming back to the village on the weekends. From discussing the project idea in detail I came to realize that each family would be more focused on their own benefit than the traditional communal approach. I think the future of agriculture in this region is inevitably going to be on a capitalist model, for better or worse. I'd like to buy the mango orchard next to our village house and develop it into a farm and hardware/plumbing shop. There's another villager trying to develop his own farm on some family land. He recently put in a well and is getting his farm in order "little by little," ("danka danka" in Wolof, "doni doni" in Bambara) as all across Africa.

As for water supply, piped water has made its way to the more accessible villages including Ngone's village. And 10 to 20 km away are the suburbs of Dakar with new subdivision developments with piped water and sewers. The suburbs are rapidly expanding. The new international airport is being built 5 km further out from Ngone's village. All that nearby modern development is the future of water for this part of Africa. But it's also plenty obvious that the villagers will continue to guard their traditional ways, at least as a back-up plan, as they construct and adopt modern lifestyles.

Pharoahs

Jig Jum is a local historian and has traced the genealogy of Ngone's ethnic group, the Serere-Safin, back 28 generations. The Serere-Safin origins are with those who fled slavery in Egypt around 600 BC. A famous Senegalese historian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheikh_Anta_Diop) argued that the Wolof ethnic group of Senegal are true descendants of the pharoahs of ancient Egypt (check out that link for a fascinating discussion of his originally very controversial theories). However Jig Jum contends that it was not the Wolof but the Serere-Safin who are the true descendants of the pharoahs. The Wolof ethnic group was created as a combination of languages only around the year 1300. But the Serere, Bambara and Peul of the surrounding region of West Africa are true descendants who fled Egypt around 600 BC, and also more truly exhibit the respectful practices of the ancient culture. The Serere and Peul were of the same origins and lived along the Senegal River in northern Senegal until a group explored down to the coast south of the cap vert peninsula of Dakar, where they reached the Atlantic Ocean, stopped, and became the Serere-Safin. The oldest dated fossilized bones in Senegal are from the Serere-Safin region.

Jig Jum, Ngone's brother Abibou, and I visited a remote Serere-Safin village named Sipan to look at an agriculture project initiated by a missionary. After visiting the vegetable field we walked on out to the Baobab forest you see above. Ngone had explained to me that Baobab trees are the homes of the spirits, or ghosts. We looked out at dozens of mounds dotted throughout the forest. The elders explained to me the traditional burial process:

Up until a few years ago the Serere-Safin buried the richest amongst them in buried pyramids. They buried a person's home and belongings with them and each village would then come with all the men piling on a whole lot of sand all day long. At the end of the day that village would sacrifice a cow giving its blood to the spirits (drip into the earth), the meat for the villagers to eat, and place the cow's head at the top of the mound. Then another village would come the next day and repeat the ritual placing another cow's head at the top of the mound, until the mound grew larger and larger.

More about Pharoahs

Ngone, Kathleen Aiza and David Ibrahima's genealogy

Kindred Spirits

Jig Jum reminds me of my uncle Louis Savage. It would be great if they could meet but I don't think that day will ever come, except right here on this blog.

My grandfather commented that Jig Jum also reminds him of his Great Great Uncle Joe Walker.  According to Guv, back in the 1840s Old Joe was what was called a Mountain Man of the Rocky Mountains, which were then remote obviously. They mostly trapped beavers. When they had enough skins they would come down out of the mountains to sell them, spend all their money, and then go back to trapping.  They were fond of the Indians but wary of them stealing their pelts, guns, and knives.  Some of their friends married Indian women.  Old Joe was respected by all of his compatriots and he guided emigrant parties from time to time on both the Santa Fe Trail and the Oregon Trail.  The book The Oregon Trail, by David Dary, describes Old Joe Walker guiding a party of emigrants from Kansas to California, blazing a new trail through the Sierra Nevada Mountains using a newly found pass which is still called Walker Pass.  It is at about 5,250 feet elevation, south of Owens Peak in modern Kern County, California.  The book also describes Old Joe's encounter with Peg Leg Smith at his trading post in Idaho.  Old Joe held his foot while it was cut off after he had been shot by an Indian.

Baobab

This Boabab tree has been dated at 1,300 years old. The Baobabs are called the upside down trees because they look like their roots are sticking up in the air. They dot the flat landscape of West Africa. They are especially beautiful around dusk when the dust glows in the air. But in the day time they provide little shade from the oppressive sun. They produce a dry fruit which is used to make a tasty juice, which has medicinal qualities for digestion (it's an anti-laxative). When a fully ripe dry fruit drops from the tree and hits the ground it can spark a fire.

Missionaries from Costa Rica

We heard that two of Ngone's sister Aissatou's daughters are now living at an "American" school in Thies. So one day we went to visit them with Aissatou and Ngone's uncle Jig Jum Jon (also known Baye Fat, Mara, or Aliou). Jig Jum is also teaching me Wolof.

We entered a beautiful villa in Thies and soon started chatting in French with the Pastor, a missionary from Costa Rica. He has about 15 kids living in the home and they are teaching them French, Spanish, and English, along with computers, bible teachings and other life skills. They also attend the local public school. They will live there up until the age of 18, when he feels they will have gained a solid foundation for the rest of their lives. He explained his approach also as very purposely oriented around the concept of family. He told Ngone and I that his father was a "metisse" African descendant from the east coast of Costa Rica (originally from the freedom seekers who fled Jamaica), so he feels the blood connection to Africa and has always wanted to pursue that.

Jig Jum apparently met this missionary through a mutual friend and has also apparently arranged a number of the children to live there. As the kids filed out to shake our hands and say bonjour he proceeded to greet all of them in Ngone's family's local dialect. (In fact he greets almost everyone he meets in this local dialect). Regardless, I can vouch for the genuine need for Aissatou's daughters to receive assistance. When I first met Aissatou she was very skinny and frail and impressed me tremendously with her perseverance, kindness and honesty. She has had a very difficult life since her first husband completely abandoned her and her first four kids (he has definitely missed out). It is great to see her now much stronger and healthier, and much credit goes to Ngone (and my Uncle Tom) for encouraging her to leave her husband's village and go work in the capital. But just last night I learned that she still often skips dinner and walks a few kilometers home each night from work to save transportation money.

This missionary visit really made me feel better about the efforts Ngone and I have made to help her family. To see a group going farther than us with their work and sacrifice helps give us a positive vision. And the family focus of their work is heartwarming.

One of the girls working there for a few months is from Milwaukee. She's shown in the picture above. She was an Americorps volunteer and never thought she would do missionary work but here she is. She is a member of the church in Milwaukee.

Black Magic

As I mentioned earlier I was excited to sleep on my roof under the stars. Well little did I know the controversy I would stir up with this seemingly simple act. No one in the village sleeps outside. They believe that at night the evil spirits come out. Ngone was so scared in the tent that she was shaking and couldn't sleep. She was the first person of the village in hundreds (or thousands) of years to sleep outdoors. So I broke some longstanding traditions to say the least.

Ngone's mother is a traditional medecine woman specializing in fertility. She became a medecine woman back in 2001 or so when she started having visions. She is able to communicate with the spirits. But there are also other traditional medicine men (called Marabouts) who do bad things against people with these powers.

Ngone's mother was told about a new Marabout in a nearby village who came from Mali. So she took us to visit him. He looked like a young man but was actually in his 40s. He said he has a son in the United States, but he lives in a small rented room in a village house with no furniture except for two floor mats. He told us that he couldn't sleep the night before because he knows there is a gris-gris (like a voodoo charm) planted in Ngone's mother's house. He proceeded to read our futures in the sand. Then that night he walked to the house (he doesn't take wheels). He sat in the middle of the compound with Ngone's brother. Then he got up and walked next to the entry door. He pointed at a place in the ground and told Ngone's brother Abdou to dig there. Abdou dug down a few inches and sure enough hit a small thing which looked like a cut goat's horn with things stuffed inside. It looked old. I wouldn't believe he knew exactly where that gris-gris was buried if I didn't witness him point to its location myself. And Ngone and her brothers are almost as skeptical about all this stuff as you and I. He proceeded to say special prayers to cancel the evil effects, including flipping two shells that happened to land open side up, whose openness ensured freedom from evil. The two pictures above are him digging a new hole for the new gris-gris he planted to protect the house.

I also included a picture with the eldest Imam of the village. He prayed at every baptism and funeral, but is now retired and Ngone's mother's husband has taken over that task. The elder's wife is Ngone's father's (he died when Ngone was a few years old) sister. The other pictures are of her (the lady smiling with Ngone) and Ngone's mother.

Ngone's younger sister

We visited Ngone's younger sister Khady where she lives in her husband's village, Cinquante (Cinquante means 50 in French and denotes 50 kilometers from Dakar). She cooked a chicken and rice dish for us called thiebuginaar. My sister Julie had given $20 to Khady as a Christmas present, so we gave that to her. We also gave her the tricycle we had bought for Kathleen Aiza. She was so happy to see Ngone and very appreciative of the gifts. Her husband tried to buy a piece of land to build a house, but the guy who sold it ate his money and sold it to someone else. So they are still living in a room in his mother's house in the village. Khady loves her inlaws. She is so happy there and they love her too. She now speaks their dialect of Serere. She certainly reminds me of my sister Julie, and my wife Ngone.

When I was in Peace Corps in Kayes with Ngone back in 2002 we heard by telephone that Khady was having twins. Ngone was so jealous because she always wanted to have twins. When Ngone was visiting her family before we left for the United States, the twin boy Adama, a big strong little boy, was sick. He got so sick Khady, Ngone and their mother took a taxi to the hospital. But on the way he died in Ngone's lap in the backseat of the taxi. This was a very tragic event for the family of course. But after that she had another baby boy. And since then she's had another girl and boy. She now has four kids: Awa, Papa, Ngone (named after my wife), and Mor, and she's the happiest, most innocent young lady in the world.

The goat sacrifice

We sacrificed a goat to celebrate my sister Erica's graduation from college. Ngone's brother Lassy and Kevin took turns carrying the goat on their shoulders from the nearby Pulaar village. I performed the halal ritual with the eagle knife my grandfather gave to me to take to Africa. Ngone's brother Abibou butchered it masterfully. As I cut its neck I said, as instructed, "Bissimilah, Allah Akbar, God bless America and Erica!"