Kaam Jalaa Ndank oo Ndank

IST now looms barely more than a week away. That means retrning to Thies for three weeks of additional language and technical training. I hope to get a small handle on some wolof vocabulary and, importantly, figure out just what it is that i can technically do. Inshallah.

This past couple weeks has seen me somewhat productive. I had made a very small pepineer (tree nursury) behind my hut with thirty-five bags to plant in. As of this morning, I have all seven nebedaye (nutriious plant of a billion uses) about a foot and a half high, thirteen of my twenty mangos are up and growing strong (thank you david!), (though my backyard friend 'scampers' or possibly a giant angry rat bit off the top of one of the mango sprouts and it hasnt recovered), four of my six lemons have come up, and my two maad (sour-patch-kids tasty fruit with ugly exterior) are starting to emerge from the soil. (I would have had one more mango but my backyard friend 'scampers' or possibly a giant angry rat bit off the top of one of the sprouts and the stem hasnt recovered, I put a couple of lemon seeds in next to it in case the mango is done for.) I know that a bunch of people in the village already have some of these trees or they have pepineers of thier own in their gardens or resting above their chicken coups. However, some people have expressed varying interest in some of them though it is clear they figured I would have had many more than I do. Well, next year, when i have an actual good head start on the rainey season I plan on haveing a nice big ole nursury, filling a corner of my yard space, next year. This year though, as the trees get big enough, i guess i will start gifting them out to folks, hopefully in some kinda orderly fashion. It sucks that I am going to be away from my village for three weeks cause i wont get to take care of them though with the rains they should, i hope, could possibly survive anyhow...

My community assesments have been coming along in spurts and stalls, but gradually I am conecting dots and figuing things out. There seem to be like a million NGOs working in and around my village. One that gives out money for the villagers to buy peanuts, one that owns annd helps maintain a huge garden in the center of the village, one that gives mosquito nets to school children, at least one that pays for additions on the schools, latrines and gives out money and medicine, two more own a garden and a tree nursury to the south west of the village (the tree nursury place has a billion trees and, no joke, at least 2000 seedlings in bags), and there is another group that is doing health education in the village that I have been helping out with. I am sure there are more that I havent yet discovered the funcion of yet but that will reveal themselves. There also are a variety of groups within the village doing farming and agricultural activities.

While of course I feel all of this is amazing, fantastic for the people in my community and for the health of the environment, I do have this nagging feeling that I am just a redundant actor, repeating the same lines that have already been said, are already being said, and that will continue with or without any of my imput. I guess on the optomistic side that leaves me to branch into neglected areas and expand on awareness and do more to actually correct problems people are already thinking about. Not that that makes any of this any easier though.

Ooh, on a different note, I have to talk a little about how cool yesterday was. So yesterday I came into Mbour also, actually yesterday was my second day in a row here making this the third, but that is because I dont plan ahead well and the first trip was more of just a waste of a morning. Anyway, so i walk out to the street from my village and it usually takes me a little while to get a bus into town but like in two seconds an alham pulls up and it is almost empty, which i would say is rather unusual from the ones i have seen. Getting in i ask how much it is and the driver says 200cfa. 200! that is about fifty cents and i usually pay twice that amount or more. so cool. Then, as we come to the cross street where i would like to get out, the bus stalls out and rolls to a stop. the driver hops out and opens the hood and i hop out, happy to be right where i want to be. I had some fabric that I wanted to have made into an outfit so after wandering the market for a while trying to figure out how i will find a serere speaking tailor who will not try and rob me, a guy approaches me, picks me out for a PCV and asks about other volunteers, in serere! He tells me his friend is a tailor and pretty soon we are agreeing on what i think is a very resonable price (though i guess i will see today when it is done if it is quality work). Then after lunch where the guy forgot to charge me for half of what i had and he looks confused when i hand him more money, i went back to the market to buy some shoes. Practically the first ones i try one are good and, again, at a good price. ...weird good day at the market... Then after meeting up briefly with my good PCV friend Jen, i walked up to the tourist grocery store to buy cereal. As i was early there and crossing the road, my old pair of flipflops broke. one of the little posts snapped off right in the middle of the street. after hobbling to the side of the road and trying in vain to put the shoe back together, (i was not really worried cause i had just bought another pair!), a guy in military uniform beckoned me to a small room where he offered to fix my shoe. He was even another serere guy! he took a bit of twine from his mosquito net (i am not sure how i feel about taking that), and made a neat little fix on my sandal. I got home to a beautiful sunset and my neighbor had made me this sweet desert thing from millet (not my favorite thing in the world but a nice change and a really nice gesture). All in all it was a really... fortuitous (is that a word?) day. really nice and convenient things just kept happening. A nice little breather from my normal struggles.

Well, gotta go now, started drizzling here just now, awsome, good thing i remembered my rain jacket!