The Return of Souleye

Back at my site again, well i will be when i am done in this cyber cafe. IST was roughly what i expected it to be i guess though with many surprises.

Finishing assesments right before i left back to thies was a bit stressful and hectic, though i think what i managed to understand about my site will be immensly helpful to me in my next two years. Going back to training was kinda weird and it was an odd transition for many people after being on our own schedules and into our own routienes to be put back into the madness that is the training schedule in thies. I suppose i can do some highlights from those three weeks. Seeing all of our training stage again was really cool and it was amazing how much some people had changed and our language ability had grown and all the stories that people had already. Then it was really cool getting to go back to my old homestay family again in Mbambara, the village 19km outside thies where i stayed durring PST. They were so happy to see me and it was an amazing self esteem boost going back there, able to have somewhat actual conversations, and them being so amazed by my serere. they would tell me i can speak serere like a professor. i am not that good but it felt really nice to hear it from them. I also went back to being Souleye again after being Ndiouma for three months at my site. Souleye Gningue is a much more cheerful optomistic person than Ndiouma Diome was in those months in Louly.

In our tech classes that were supposed to be the emphasis of our In-Service Training, i do feel i learned a marginal amount, and with a ton of books and binders i should be able to figure out how to actually get something done in my village. We did go to the Bandia wildlife preserve which is really not too far from Louly (possibly a field trip site with my school). the park had ostrich, many species of antelope, warthog, girrafe and rhino, amoung other animals. while i previously never really liked the idea of a safari (it just feels like it is trivializing the environment), it zas actually really cool and would be a good place for kids to learn about ecosystems and the environment. We also went and out planted trees out in a large field between mbour and joal. that was really nice to get some reall hands on field experience demonstrating many problems that exist in trying to transplant trees.

I got some language training in wolof too. kinda a quick survey of the grammar and the verb structures, but it is enough to really understand most short conversations and it is easier by far to pick up than serere was.

After training was over we had a celbration in Mbour, which was not too bad, and then there was an Environmental Education summit in Dakar. I had signed up for a homestay there with a cool american family but then ended up getting a couple rooms in a fairly nice reasonable hotel (by my standards) with five other volunteers. I felt the summit was very helpful to me and others in our stage though perhaps the older volunteers did not find it quite as useful.

Back to Louly Ngogom then. A good friend and health volunteer of the north, Marisa, came and visited my site for a few days. My village is really pretty with the rains. the fields are all green, the trees look happy, the skys are clearer of dust, the clouds and sunsets are amazing. Also my backyard was full of weeds up to my chest. Just three weeks and it is amazing how nature emerges from the sand. also my bed sheets were covered in mold from the humidity, super gross. It was a nice few days and we only got rained on a few times. i need to finish weeding my yard and patch my roof a little. Marisa left for the Fouta this morning and now i am back to site freal. Still not sure what i am even doing yet, at least till school starts.

Oh right, also have pictures up in a link to the right!