New volunteers - and some reflection!

Well, the new volunteers have arrived looking fresh and keen! They are a mixed group from England, Uganda, Zimbabwe, India and The Philippines. Oh and The Netherlands if you include Jaap and Janneke who arrived a few weeks ago. They are a nice bunch, and all bring a lot of experience and skills with them.

L-R: Rao, Aisha, Juliet, Joe, Munya, Janneke, Jaap, Helen, Martin,
me (holding a fruit plate - a present from our friend Carl the juice man!), 
John (old vol) and Johnson.

The last couple of weeks have been all about showing them around, giving advice and trying to relay all the information that we were given when we first got here. There's nothing like showing someone else how to do something to make you realise how much you have learned, or how far you have come. The things that felt so unusual and unfamiliar when I arrived have become so normal to me now, almost without me realising. I suddenly see that the confidence I have to yell 'Bakau' or 'Traffic Light' in the middle of the street in order to attract a 77 driver is a new found confidence - and one that has built up imperceptibly over the weeks and months of hailing bush taxis. Before you know it I will be hissing at taxi drivers to get them to stop! 

Listening to the language lessons going on as part of ICT takes me back to when we were learning the unfamiliar words, and trying to memorise everything we were taught. Now when I enter the VSO office in the morning I am grilled with 'how are you, how is the morning, did you spend the night in peace' in Wolof or Mandinka as the volunteers practice their greetings, and it makes me realise how much Wolof I use now and how much I have learned since it was me taking those lessons six months ago. 

Watching everyone become familiar with benechin and domoda, rolling fufu in their hands, or drinking wonjo juice takes me back to when we first did all of this stuff. And it was only six months ago, I'm hardly a veteran - and I certainly don't want to sound like I am patronising the new volunteers. It's just that so much seems to have happened in that six months it could almost be six years! 

And yet, at the weekend I realised that because I hadn't actually watched the meat man cut my meat he hadn't cut it up for me, and because I hadn't examined the meat he selected he'd given me mostly bone, and because I cooked the onions in palm oil (in the absence of vegetable oil) my whole dish tasted unlike it should - and I remember that as experienced as I suddenly feel I still have so much to learn about life here in West Africa. Sometimes I feel that I am learning to be an adult all over again, learning how to shop for food, how to cook, and how to use systems that I am still unfamiliar with, as if starting from scratch.

Yesterday I found myself facilitating the Employers Workshop - the first meeting between the new volunteers and their employer/partner organisation. I hadn't expected to even attend, let alone run the session, but there I was. At lunch two of the new volunteers asked me how long it had taken me to prepare for the workshop. I laughed and explained that I'd only learned I was going to it an hour before it started, and that I was making it up as I went along. They were shocked, and said they thought I seemed completely in control and confident - which was nice praise to receive. I can definitely say that it's one of the main things I have learned since I have been here - how to facilitate a workshop for a room full of people without any notice... or perhaps more simply, the art of just winging it!