Friday, June 13, 2008

Pictures... I Hope...

So, I will give this a try. These pictures are all kinda random. And I dont have many anyhow.















First here is one of my stuff at home in Atlanta before it got all packed up. It was very early in the morning.

Yeah, I have way too much stuff... yeah.
















This is some of us before training enjoying our last night out in the states. Wonderfully chilly America and all its wonderful food...















Traveling can be very exhausiting. Yep.

We drove from Phili to New York, then flew to Brussels and from there to Banjul and THEN finally to Dakar where we were then bused to Thies.















This last one here is of us finally making it to the Thies training center. It was after midnight and it was kinda like most of s wernt sure whether to be giddy and excited or completely and utterly exhausted at the thirty something hour journey we had just finished.

Well, thats it for now. More pictures to come including my home near Thies and my hut and village here. For some reason many of my pictures appear to be very dark and so I didnt put up a bunch, or maybe this monitor just sucks bad, I'll have to figure that one out i guess.


Oh right, so maybe a post.

So this week was... interesting. As all weeks tend to be. I went to Dakar last weekend with Mbour neighbor, Jen, and we had a quick little tour of cool places by Jared. It was a cool weekend, spent quite a bit of money, but I figured I would and I think my budgeting is going rather well. I only really prchased two things besides meals and transport and all. I got a big jar of apple sauce from this rediculously large grocery store that is in the downtown area of Dakar, I think. And I got a jug of bissap syrup that you add water to to drink. It is very tasty and very very strong. I did the recomended 4 parts water to 1 part syrup and it was unbelievably sweet. I had to keep adding water as I drank it and hoped my teeth wouldnt fall out.

Getting back home Sunday night was also... interesting. I dont think I will put all of the reasons for that here in type, but I will say that I was rather disgrunteled and didnt even really know who to be pissed off at. Also, steps 34 through 78 appear to involve 'fence repair'.

Tuesday brought me back up again when my birthday package from my older brother, David, finally arived and I took the morning to go to Mbour and get it. It is undescribably excellent and has tons of great sugary things to get me through a day! Jen also came and visited me for that afternoon. I was excited to finally have a visitor for once, it was the first time anyone has visited me with either of my serere families or villages. It was the first time that I saw the language thing from the other side and for once I knew more of what was being said than another volunteer. That being said, I wasnt really sure what to do once she was here, I mean my village is not Dakar or even Mbour, only one boutique and some gardens and goats and thats about it for excitement. Well, after lunch with my family (though my moms were up at some wedding in a neighboring village), we walked around a bit and made our way to the village chief who live a fairly good ways away from my compound. It was really crazy how windy it was that day, there was dust and sand everywhere and the wind, which blows fairly constantly anyhow, was rather fierce.

So, lets see, yesterday it was overcast all day and fairly cool, and this morning it really looked like it wanted to rain in the morning. It might, for all I know, rain while I am gone this weekend.

Oh, right, this weekend. So I am off to Popinguine to flit away more money and see some folks from around my region, including some that I havent seen since training ended a month ago. Err, thats it i guess. Eventually I will really pretty this blog up too. It is just kinda hard from a cyber cafe to get a whole lot done at one time and with out many programs, and in French...

Boo jaf lakas!

Friday, June 6, 2008

Day to Day Me

Well, that last post was very rudely interupted by the power going out. I ended up paying for the half hour and trying to bike back when, after a few blocks, my pump made this awsome little 'pop!' and it decided to stop pumping. And then my fron tire was very flat. Some kids were walking by right when I was about to throw my bike into traffic and they said in wolof what i imagine was, 'there is a guy who can fix your bike around the corner'. I was in no mood to probe for more information so i just followed, dragging my bike along.



magically, there was indeed a tire repair place right around the corner and even more magically, working there were two serere speaking men! pure awsome. so after a tense half hour of inflating the tire, finding the hole, lighting the tire on fire, inflating the tire again, fixing my pump somehow... everything seemed to work out. I made it home in record time and before the sun set.



But anyway, so what do I do everyday, thats what I wanted to write about before, I am not even really sure what I do, well let us see:


I generally seem to be waking up between six and seven in the morning. At five fourty-five-ish the roosters would rather I wake up but I am trying to confound them and maybe eventually they will ease up. Whether or not it is a good idea, and I have heard varrying exclaimations, I have tried to run about every other day, which seems to be turning into Mon, Wedn and Fri. I dont really run that far or that fast but it feels good to do something like that, though the sand likes to get the better of me, and it feels like I am running through thousands of grains of very small rocks... weird.


Anyway, so my run usually lasys till seven or I may finally get up at seven, either way I am up and then going to pull water. For many male volunteers this apparently is a tricky situation and I have heard that they end up getting water from their families or something like that. For me, my first day, within my first two hours at my site, i had asked my counterpart where to get water. He grabbed me and my bucket and we walked to the closest well, he dumped water into it and then put it on my head. 'like that' he said, evidently it was what the former volunteer had done everyday so it was not a big deal for me to do it as well. So now I pull water every morning and every afternoon, about five or six buckets a day (it is not an enourmous bucket) depending on what I want to do that day: watering stuff, baths, drinking water, laundry, all that good stuff.



After the water thing is done, i sweep out my room, straighten things up and have breakfast on my own. This generally consists of some combination of cereal with powdered milk, chocoalte milk i make with hot chocolate mix, and half a loaf of french bread with either chocolate spread or honey. It is very small, but it generally holds me until lunch.

Then I try to be 'productive' until noon. This generally involves me walking around the village, finding various groups of people doing stuff - pounding millet, building a house, gathering leaves or firewood, often people just sitting around - and I sit with them and talk, or try to, find out thier names sometimes, where they live, what it is that they are doing and how to say it all and I try and write down as much as I can.

At about noon, I head back home for a bath, they feel really good in the heat of the day, and it gives me some time to decompress from the morning. Then I go and sit with my family and the neighbors out by the tree between our compounds until the food bowls start ariving and eventually I go and get a meal with my dad as well. Lunch, almost without fail, is greesy rice, a mouthful of carrot, and a greesy fish - fun stuff.

Then, my afternoons vary, I usually walk around more and talk to people, but only after it has cooled down a little. I often sit under the tree more till then and drink tea with the neighbors and try to understand their conversations. Sometimes I just walk around and try to explore the neighboring villages and areas around my village, I feel like the more people I know, or rather the more people that know me, even outside of my village, the more work I will be able to inspire. I hope.

Then around six or six thirty I get back home and pull more water, perhaps have myself another bath, try to recover from the inevitable afternoon misunderstanding (they seem to happen at least once, sometimes five or six times, every afternoon), and maybe i sit and read for an hour.

My family always eats when nearly all the stars have come out, around eight thirty-ish, which is earlier than I ate with my family in Thies, and it is much earlier than many other volunteers eat dinner too. Dinner is the meal that varries the most, though not really that much. It is always saac, or couscous senegalese with some kind of sause. most often it is hot salty brown water with a fish, this is my least favorite as fish + night = fish bones stuck in mouth/throat. we also have various leafy sauses, usually they are alright, and usually they are about the temperature of liquid lead. and my favorite sause that we have is the spicey bean sauce, where if i close my eyes it is like chili, well chilli that is missing many of its main ingredients, but thats why i close my eyes.

And thats about it. I turn in pretty early, nine thirty or so, and usually read for another hour maybe, or until i get tired of winding up my flashlight, or until the cricket who lives under my bed gets tired and decides to call it a night, but he is usually on his own time and pays me no mind.

So yeah, there is that. I know many of yall were wondering what it is i do and i hope that kinda makes that, well, spelled out.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Errrm...

Travel seems to be a big part of many of these days. I would rather it not be as I am starting to become rather fed up with my bike. Or rather, I am becoming frustrated with the tires as they seem to prefer to be flat, and are flat, each and everytime that I look at them. The rest of the bike is working splendidly besides getting me covered in greese. This morning, after bikeing almost to Mbour in record time, i was sourly interupted suddenly when the back tire decided that it would only hold air for a hundred meters at a time. I spent a good little bit of time then this morning after walking the rest of the way taking apart the bits and gibbles, even puting the tire under water and only finding one very unimpressive hole that I patched (perhaps badly, but it was my first patch and no one to tell me how). That fun little episode certainly has not stopped the tires, both of them, even now, from going flat each and every chance that they get. I will leave for home a little early and assume that I will stop every twenty feet to fill them up again. Tomorrow, among other things, will be fix my bike day. Hopefully freal this time.

[as is the way of things, this is when the power decided to cut out]

Sunday, June 1, 2008

The Beginnings of More Substance

Ok, so here it goes, I can do this...

Right, so I have been at my site now for nearly three weeks, the language is comming along and everything is so far going fairly well all things concidered. Hmm, i really need to recap a great deal of information, this may take many posts.

How bout starting with now and we will go from there.

So I had my birthday on Friday, it was a good day, very chill, just the way i like it. There was a funeral in my village in the afternoon and all day people were a bit aloof and acting funky, not in a bad way, just distracted and then all of the sudden all these tiedye clothes in the evening with the only explaination of- they are for sleeping in. but i am rushing myself. so anyway, mostly a good relaxing day, i got to read, write some, i didnt tell anyone in my village that it was my birthday mostly cause i wasnt sure what theyd do and they probably just would not care. all the same i walked around some, took some pictures that will eventually make it into this blog theoretically, and talked to the kids who were equally not invited to the funeral i guess.

well, at first i was invited. some people said i should definetly come and i should even take pictures. then my family asked if i was going and then when i said i was thinking about it they said no, i should not go. and then all day folks walked by me chillin in the shade and they would ask if i am going and then say i really should not go.... yeah, i was confused as well.

then yesterday, saturday, i left as early as i could, though dramatically later than i wanted, and biked to mbour for internet stuff like this and meeting up with some other volunteers for just some lunch and then i would ride back in the afternoon. well that didnt really turn out quite like that, after lunch we had a grand ole time on the beach where i decided that i could just stay here in mbour and go back today. this gave me much more time to lounge around and eat chicken and vegitables that i am severely lacking in my village.

So today, i get to use a pretty good cyber that i found and it even has english style keyboard settings and everything, YAY!

My serere is comming along, i can understand folks when they talk slowly and speak clearly at least (though they never do), but i feel like there are lots of words i am still missing in every conversation and i can never really get them to repeat them or define them, though, such is life.

Well, ok really more updates to come and i can recap all the goings ons and whatnots...