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.