Owe Ñaayaa

I feel like such a remarkably lage amount of stuff happens in between each post i make that i really want to spend ages going over all the million crazy things i have seen, amazing things i have learned, and substatually little that I have actually done. Alas, there is not enough time in the day or at least in this internet cafe.

I have also been trying like mad to get either my camera or my flash drive to be recognized by even one computer here. so far they are all alligned against me ever posting any recent photos and i may have to just wait till IST and try and get a whole mess of em done.

So rereading that last post i guess i had meant it to be less dire sounding and more, well strange, as it was at the time. Recently in my village I have had many up and down moments but overall things have been coming along.

At the beginning of the month I had a grand time out in Kedougou, in the south-eastern part of senegal, where a bunch of volunteers gathered for the 4th of July. It was really cool getting to travel from my familiar -flat, desert, mildly treed- environment down to a different part of the country. There are mountains there with actual forests and the gambia river, we saw tons of monkeys and baboons and even a few warthogs doing their thing. while i could have planned ahead with my money much better, i was able to stay in a super sweet hotel (with AC and a pool!), the food there was pretty awesome (even had half of a warthog sandwitch, tasty), and it was really nice seeing so many other volunteers and friends who i wont often get to see.

Then this past week and a half has been as exciting as always. Early last week I met a guy who works at a case de sante, or little clinic thing, in the village next to mine. He is really excited to work with me, and that is super nice cause I have really been struggling to figure out ways of actually being productive to making some kind of a difference in my village recently. He is working on a 'programe sante comunitare' which is teamed up with the Presidents Malaria Initiative and a bunch of other NGOs with his group focusing on the department of Mbour (the area all around me and the coast near me). In the past week I have sat in on three mini community womens meetings, two were in serere (which i understood most of), one was in wolof (but i could mostly figure out what they were talking about), and all were about family planning and enfant maladies, pretty cool. I have also been to two rehersals for a malaria play a kindergarden group is putting on next week in wolof. While i havent nessesarily been super 'useful' at any of these, everyone seems to really appreciate my presence. (I did give some advice to the child preformers on the importance of speaking loudly, and i did do a little dance entertainment in the other meetings that seemed like it drew in more people to listen to the discussion, so maybe that is helping). Yesterday, I came into town to see the other people that he works with and he wanted me to see what is is that they do. I thought that that would be like an hour or two meet and greet in the morning but it ended up being a six-hour board meeting. I cant really complain too much though, it was in an air conditioned building, with a generator when the power cut out, and the gave me lunch with a million vegitables and a huge meaty fish, and they gave me a cold fanta.

But then just to bring me back down to earth, after lunch they passed around what i thought was tea -as it was in tea glasses with the tea foam and it is what most people drink. As soon as I took the glass, by the smell I knew i had made a mistake. I had had a glass of this only once before, but that was one time too many. They drink a kind of coffee here that is best described as gasoline. well maybe like if you scraped the dregs off the bottom of a really dirty coroded gas tank, then heated that to the point that the fumes burn the inside of you nose and lungs, and it smells about what you would expect of that. It takes my taste buds about 24hours to recover. The people here all seem to like it though, or else they are all into some kinda group denial. Anyway, I think i will have a more productive PC service if i avoid that 'coffee' as much as i am able. That makes up part of one of my two most important rules i have for myself so far. 1 - be careful about everything that i put into my mouth. food and drink and crazy straws. 2 - take care of my feet. something i learned from scouts. i can manage almost any problem, bandages or medicine or switch hands for tasks if i need to, but if i cant get around, well, then i am useless. with a cut on the bottom of my foot and the taste from coffee from yesterday still overpowering my sences, i am rather failing my two most important rules right now. some RnR this afternoon will do me good.

Tomorrow there is another meeting in the moring in the next village and there is more play rehersal in the afternoon so I think it will be a good day. Then saturday i am getting a fancy outfit made for the big presentation on monday where the play is performed and a large meeting is held. I feel like i am scrambling here at the last minute to get my village assesments done before IST which is coming way faster than i would have liked. we go back to thies on Aug 4 and have 3 weeks of further language and technical training where hopefully i will actually know what the heck i am doing.

Anywho, i need to go but some more mangos and head back to the ole village,
Boo ndiki!