A New Year and New Starts

So I have a blog to post about December, only it is saved on my thumb drive thingy which this computer does not like and i dont feel like writing it again, so that will come later.

I do have a mess of new pictures up, stil more to go, but theres a bunch up there from october and on. I am in Dakar now but going back to Louly on tomorrow. I had come not really for the new year bu that was fun too. Every kid in the city seemed to have bought noise makers and fireworks and spent all day and night setting them off, i think they are still going off actually, fun. I went with a couple other volunteers who had their families in town and we ate at an Ethiopian place that was really nice and really different from what I usually eat, on either continent, but good. After that we just watched episodes of the Office at our regional house, someone looked up and anounced it was after midnight, we didnt even gt up, and yet i still stayed up nearly all night.

My real reason though for coming to the city was to speak to my boss, who i found out is on vacation, and to work on a grant proposal for a latrine project i am having no luck getting started. It does no help that the community has requested really fancy latrines -you know, with walls and a zinc roof that is a latrine/bathing room combo- and so each one is kinda expensive, relaively, but then when they want fifty of them, one per household, that skyrockets the price beyond all my hopes.

Unfortunately I think i will go back, probably have another village meeting with fun speech giving, and do my best to explain why and how this project needs to be scaled down, maybe by number of latrines, more likely just by reducing each one to the bare nesesity of concrete slab with hole in it over a two meter pit. I doubt anyone will be thrilled by this, but it will at least be something better than nothing which is he current norm. People just go to the 'woods' which does not really exist so they go behind trees or in brush for bathing and bathroom, even, and especially dangerously and hazardously, at night.

I have mixed feelings about all of this. When i first got to my village I did not want to do any such project where money is just given to the village for some construction or other with no rel sustainability or passed skills to anyone. Other NGOs may do this but Peace Corps is not of that kind to throw money at problems. At the same ime this was a project idea totally pushed by the village and could really incorporate heath semenars on the importance of hand washing and be a resonably sustainable betterment of peoples health.

Anyway, its still much work left to do with whatever happens.