Hey everyone!!
I am alive (still YAY!)
I am going to try and sum up stuff that has been happening for the last 2-3 weeks.
I went back to my homestay village for 7 days. It was much better than the first two days there. I think the shock of senegal and the language and the serious motion sickness made it hard. My family is amazing still. I keep learning new things everyday about them and I'm pretty sure my sisters and aunts think I am one serious idiot in America.
For one thing it took my 5 more days to figure out that my father had a second wife and thats who we were visiting after sun down. SHe lives on the other side of town. We travelled at night because it was Ramadan and muslims fast from sun rise and sun set and so no one had energy to do anything in the middle of the day.
Don't worry I did get to eat in the middle of the day because Children don't fast. I still felt like a jerk for eating while everyone else didn't.
Another thing is that I am trying really hard to be involved in family activities like cooking, cleaning, and going to the market. I suck at all of them.
Cooking-I cannot cut onions for the life of me. I had this super dull knife and I was trying to be graceful like my aunts and when I dropped the onions in the bowl my 12 year old sister gave me a look like "are you serious? What do you eat in America.?"
Cleaning-we have these short bundles of hard straw for sweeping and I cannot sweep right. And don't even get me started on laundry because the first two days I was in village I successfully bleached half my close (and all of my nice shirts). Go me
Going to the Market-I don't know if I ever want to go again (I know I will because I like to eat) but just watching the flies crawl over fish and the unwashed vegetables makes me want to run away screaming. However I was only sick for two days when I got back from village and so far I have been good. The food isn't bad, its just limited. The good news is that I haven't found anything that I would not eat. The bad news is that it will probably be bad when I do, because I will likely eat it first and get sick afterword.
I learned all of this especially on Korite, the end of Ramadan. We heard all this stuff about how it was going to be this big all day party with lots of food and dancing and music. It didn't turn out that way.
We got up same time as usual and when I stepped out of the compound I looked down the road as they were slaughtering a cow. Hmm that explains the sounds of distress. I passed several other animals being slaughtered and I have to say that the Senegalese are really good at it. If I was killing something I would have blood all over me.
We (my mother, sisters, and aunts) spent the whole day cooking. We ate breakfast at like 9 and didn't eat again till 4pm. And this was a day I needed to take my malaria medication which you can't take unless you eat. We made TONS of cous cous (or lechiri as it is called here) with raisins and butter and sent out pots of it to wish everyone a great year and much success. We also put in the cow meat (you guess from which cow)
You want to know what the men did? Eat and sit all day. No cooking or cleaning or thank you this meal is delicious. Everytime they came in it was like they got a seat and something to drink and then left. This is probably insensitive of me but this country would fall apart and the men would starve and live in dirty huts without women. Hopefully I will be proven wrong in the next to years but so far I have not.
Oh I got a traditional outfit which I wore for 15 minutes on Korite (because it was friggin hot). I got pictures but I forgot the cord so no posting today. Sorry.
And I got a hamburger in Senegal. You know what comes on hamburger? A piece of meat, egg, mayo, ketchup, mustard, and french fries. Yes the potatoes are in bun. It was delicious.
Fast forwarding to now, I am writing this post in the Kolda regional house. One of the volunteers hosted me, Darren, and Jess for I think 4 days (time here is lost on me). He showed us around and around his current agriculture projects. He shall be referred to as the Ag Rockstar.
And his trusty site mate, shall always be referred to as the Cook King because we ate BBQ pizza and as I speak he is making cinnamon rolls.
Everyone in the Kolda region is really nice and welcoming. I really lucked out in my placement. Did I mention that I found out where I am going to be? Its in the Kolda region but I dont think I can post it (I'll check and report back). It has 167 people and it hasn't had a volunteer for about a year.
I will be living in a hut, with concrete walls and a thatch roof.
This will be very interesting.
Oh and never cross the Gambian border without your passport. We were so lucky we had someone who spoke french with us. We got to the last check point, we are in this HUGE peace corps van that has our stuff, our bikes, and a fridgerator on top of it. It is super obvious that there are people on this bus (like 6 plus the driver.)
The driver turns around and tells this will go alot quicker if we duck and hide and he pretends there is no one on the bus since it is raining and we don't have passports.
Hysterical laughing. PS We didn't have duck because it stopped raining but now we are taking the long way around the Gambia because I don't think they will let us back in.
I will report more later but other people are waiting for the computer.
I love and miss everyone!