Mold take 2, Bring in the Macaroni

Ok, no, there is no moldy macaroni. So I am not good at titleing.

And also, reading through that last entry. I am not really as good a writer as I like to pretend I am. At the least I need to go back and fix the typing errors that I still blame on the french keyboard. -This one right now has especially sticky keys to make it even more fun to use. Ghaa! stupid shift-period!

Ok, so where was I, oh yeah, so trying to pull myself together from terrible day. Eventually it did stop raining and my pants at least dried as I wore them. Eventually night fell and one of my other shirts I had hanging up in my room was dry enough to put on for the evening. I sat with my family while they broke the fast, they asked concerend questions and neighbors shook their head and gave the usual 'the rainy season is very hard'. I slept on a mat on the floor that night, it was hot and humid enough anyway not to want to sleep on a matress even if they wernt so wet and piled with papers.

Anyway, so the next couple days were more of just getting things fixed and getting things dry. I put everything back out again the next morning, cemented part of the floor, gave all my clothes bed sheets and my sister (keeping pants I was wearing and two shirts, one with a huge tear in the back). I cleaned up everything as best I could, the cameras seem rather deceased though. Then over the next couple days I went to reasembling everything better than it was. I hung up my bags and sleeping bag. put the trunks up on tin can legs, put the surviving three boxes with semi drying papers up on cans too under the bed. I fixed up my water filter in a nex brick stand and threw out everything that looked gross or i realized was not important enough to keep.

It was rather inconvenient not having clothes or sheets for several days, It involved a lot of sleeping on a bare cot and probably not looking so great. But then I didnt really go out much except to hang out with the men in the village center. I was fasting with them again and didnt really have the energy to do much else.

A couple days after my cleanup began we had a hard rain that didnt last long but dumped a lot of water. When I went out in the afternoon I noticed all the men from the neighboring compounds were all gathered over near the boutique. There was a well there that hadnt been used in a while but, low bricked with crumbling cement. In three-quarters of the way around the ground had split and sunk a couple inches in a neat circle a couple feet out from the well walls. The men were tsking about how much rain there has been this year, something I thought was generally a good thing, but they were saying how full all the wells are and how they hoped that none of the other ones fell in. then with poles they pushed in the top bricks as best they could then filled the full well, it had water maybe two meters down, with dirt and rocks so no one would fall in it and it wouldnt collapse anymore.

Anyway, so then there was Korite. Korite is the day after Ramadan is over, when the moon has been spotted again and people, instead of sitting around all day not doing anything, we all sit around and eat and drink water and eat some more. The moon was spotted a night earlier in my area than people expected to see it. Some villages kept fasting for a day and I, since no one had told me different the night before, woke up all early and had breakfast and went back to bed, only to get up to everyone else having breakfast. Not that that was terrible. My sister brought me a dozen begnets wrapped in a sheet of newspaper to snack on and when I went out into the village I had more cups of tea.... well, it was enough to make up for not having any for a month.

I remembered my family had chicked last year and so I was excited that we might have that again. Still sitting with people in the village center, girls started bringing bowl after bowl of lunch and set them for everyone in the neighborhood to eat. I was surprised to see we all were having cow meat with our macaroni and onion sauce and potato chunks . It wasnt bad and I actually was pleasantly full at the end and not wavering on mildly ill.

Dinner that night was just leftovers from dinner, but I was excited the next day to have millet again for dinner. We did indeed have chicken at my house and somehow those leftovers lasted a couple days after.

In the last throws of the rainy season, we have been having really hard rains and really hot nights, with the icing on the cake of tons of mosquitos. They should be on their way out soon though, when the rains end my area is not usually so buggy.

Living in the Mold

Yes, unfortunately that is a pun... all too true...

...or wait, maybe it is not a pun at all since I really just mean it in the moldy sense... oh dear.

Maybe a good title could have been Mold, Maccaroni and Mosquitos...

To start with, the bike trip finished well. It was a good break from site and one of my longest times away from site at one time and it was only a week and a half! The Kolda house was very nice to me and I had a fair amount of food and recovered well from being sore and broken from my trip recovering back to my usual uselessly feeble self.

After a few days to get back on my feet, wash some clothes, realize I had forgotten several items of clothing along my trip, eat my weight in pasta, and listen to some quality music, it was back to my own region. This involved a 4am car up through the Gambia, across river and borders. The garage in Kolda was one of the most frustrating experiences ever, and I wont go into that, we did leave, near around 5, but we left, bike on the roof and all, bloody rediculous thing. I had deliberated riding all the way back home, actually do part of a whole leg of this big curcuit with just biking. But alas, I am not strong enough for that, have never crossed the border before even in a car for a reference, didnt really know the way, and there werent any pcvs to stay with for a good chunk of the way and would have had a long haul all the way to kaolack. Anyway, so I am a wimp, and took a car up to Mbour instead.

Jen was hosting some PC trainees at her apartment so that they could see wha a volunteers life is like and get some good first hand knowledge stuff. I came over to scare them with my village wisdom and my crazy self. They seem good sports, much more understanding and less culture shocked than I recall being all the time. The next day I had a great big package at the post office. I was super excited but had planned to ride back home on my bike. I shoved the box under everything, but only had one rope long enough to go around everything, once in one direction and once in the other. It was a miricle that it didnt explode all over, or throw me to the ground infront of a speeding truck, or fly off the back and get run over on its own. I got back home, back to the village, back to my hut, feeling accomplished and worn out, and ready to get things going again, fasting and all that leading up to Korite. Ready to get school and projects going after a nice little break. Then I walked into my hut...

So yeah, just to clarify- I often hate going on long trips, if for no other reason than for the fact that my backyard is under constant attack from curious goats and chickens tearing down and puncturing the fences, weeds are stubborn, geckos poop all over my room adding to the layer of sand that is sure to blow in through the window and the beetles that are drilling into my roof beams keep leaving absurd amounts of sawdust all over everything. So thats what I expected when I came home. Instead, in the dwindling light of dusk, I saw the backyard looked ok, but the floor of my hut was covered in a weird film, and my bed felt gross. That night I slept on my cot with the mosquito net pulled over. The next morning was the revelation.

To cut to the chase, it must have rained when I was gone. Quite a bit too. If it rains really hard, for a long or short time there is a decent chance that in front of my front door becomes a lake mesa above the larger lake that forms a few meters out from my hut. This water threatens to leak into my room sometimes and so i have cleverly dug a small trench, placed even with where the roof drips down, sloped so that the water can run into my backyard, which is also at a lower level than my hut. In fact, there is no reason water should be up by my hut at all, the ground it is on is higher than whats around it, its just that there is an inconvenient build up in front of my hut making a big mound even bigger around the edges. Anywho, so water falls from the sky, the ground is inundated, it puddles, the lip on both my doors is about another inch and a half above the door jam itself and above my interior floor. The water was enough to spill over this. And keep spilling over this.

From what I figure, with water stains and whatnot, this must have leaked in to capasity. Nearly two inches of water on my floor with enough time to soak into everything or else evaporate before I get back to find my floor covered in a layer of mold.

So, well, that day was fun. First was pulling out the matress and getting at under the bed stuff. I kept a few boxes from care packages and had, well mostly just papers and stuff in them. Nothing super important- notes from training, a bunch of pamphlets and handbooks from the former volunteer, various odds and ends and visual aids for different activities. Also a couple novels. Those all were wet and gross but salvageable, I start laying them out on the matress outside, and start to worry about how one could ever get the floor clean. Other things under the bed- shoes not worn since swear-in if ever in this country, along with a pair of nice-ish leather sandals I got a while ago are growing some funky blue fuzz all over. My canvas messenger bag and army bag are both soaked and fuzzy too. My sleeping bag, dripping wet, doesnt seem moldy though. All that goes out into the sun.

Then I see the box that I use as a nightstand, it is soaked like a sponge and I realize I kept 'valuable things' in it. My passport is all curled and funky but ok. My film camera is home to several forms of life and when I open it, water poars, it literally poars out. The old digital camera my brother gave me before I came to country is no better, somehow also full of water. The camera straps and bags for both have long hairy white mold that makes me want to throw up when I touch it. Thats awsome. Out in the sun too.

Just when I think the worst is that, those are the only things coming in direcct contact with the floor, or in a cardboad box that was. I realize my clothes trunk is dripping. Sure it sits on little runners and is nearly an inch off the ground, but alas, not enough. I fling open the lid as my stomache drops, this seems rather more serious than I had thought. The top layer of clothes seems ok, moist, but ok. then the middle layers, bright, cheerfully colorful mold erupts from all corners and folds. The lowest layer, of course, had the all too likely just-bought-bright-red-fabric. So several items are horribly stained and splotchy. The bottom of the trunk had time to form large rust spots over several items and leave a big permenant rust stain on the floor.

I heave the trunk outside, i start, pulling things out. Maybe, i say to myself, if i just leave them in the sun, it will all be better. I start to mutter to myself, have to stop, sit down, get up, go find my sister. My sister and aunt are cleaning some fish when I walk over. They all asked me last night if the water went in my room. I said my usual responce, as i had always said, and as I then hoped, 'no, its dry, dirty but dry'. Well, that was wrong.

'Water. Water went in my room. Water is in my room. It broke... It broke... My clothes are broken.' I think that is all I get out to them. They look at each other with raised eyebrows before getting up and following me back to my hut. After much tsk-ing, they saw to my clothes. My cot was set up outside, they start piling stuff on it. This pile is washable, this pile we need to go get re-dyed, this pile is ruined so throw it out. Great. Now keep in mind I am still wearing my clothes from yesterday, the clothes I slept in, the clothes I biked in from mbour in. I have some other clothes with me, that I had on the bike trip, not clean but not molded. And that is all my clothes.

Then my sister gets to helping my clean everything else up. We pull the bed frame outside. The water filter and the other trunk and my shoes and everything outside. I put my big basin to the side and throw the things in it that are not messed up- my notes and drawing pad, my spare sheets, my clothes from the bike trip. The dresser is ok, it sits up pretty high so water couldnt get into anything, the wood soaked up a bit and I am not sure about underneath it or behind, but that can wait. We sweep first, and sweep and sweep. Then pull up the flooring sheets and sweep some more. Then we replace the flooring sheets and mop them with a couple of my shirts that fell into the ruined pile. Then she leaves and I start laying out all the papers and notebooks in the sun. The clothes are a big mess I can get to later, but the paper needs to get dry.

Oh, my brothers care package that I got included a random handful of bite-size airheads, I ate all of those that morning. That was nice.

It wasnt really a sunny day, still technically the rainy season of course, but I was too flustered to care except that the books would take forever to dry. With the floor swept and cleaner, I could tell some obvious places that needed cement repairs- the floor had caved in in a couple places and along the wall there is always issues with the cement being helped in crumbling my bugs and wildlife and those all needed to be sealed. Luckily I had some cement left over from a different hut improvement episode so I got to work on that too. The floor needed to dry so I couldnt begin right away and had to do it in stages. Sometime that day, afternoon, its hard to tell cause it is still Ramadan and so no lunch to give reference, The skys darkened and a storm suddenly and violently rolled in. I went to work as fast as I could, trying to prioritize what can get wet and what cannot.

Cameras went in first, then the mattresses rolled around the papers and books. The bike can stay out and my plastic shoes but not the leather ones. The bed frame should come in, and my water filter and canvas bags. The sleeping bag can stay out, its the best wash it will get. The clothes on the cot can stay out, they are already wet and moldy, they cant get worse in a couple hours of rain. The cardboard boxes should come in, as wet as most are, some may be salvagable at least. My pillow and towel and my most recent care package of course need to come in. By this time it is pouring. Like, step outside for a second and you are soaked to the skin. And I have to keep running back and forth, trying not to spash things or drip on the things already inside. I notice the water is rising again at the front door. Great, I forgot to scoop out that trench again so the water will go the other way. As I go out to the back to get my shovel, I realize I forgot my big basin. I run over grab that, dash back inside. I have to pour out more than a leter of water thats already collected at the bottom through all of my other clothes. So, a quick update, now all of my clothes, including what I am wearing and had brought on the bike trip, now all of them are at least soaking wet, if not filthy with dirt or mold or rust stains. This is awesome. Shovel, run back out to the front and start shoveling away. The water is at the lip of the door frame and some is slopping in as I shovel. My younger mom walks by. 'You should not let the water go inside,' she adds helpfully. I glare at her, 'I know!' I yell above the rain dumming down on both of us. I felt bad for yelling at her like that, but seriously, I coulda figured that one out.

When I am done, I go back inside to wait out the storm. I am dripping a large puddle over where the floor was just finally drying. For lack of a better option, i just stand there in the middle of the floor. I pull of my shirt, heavy and wet, and tear a huge hole in the back of it. Sigh. Even better. The bed frame is in the middle of the room on its side. I pull out a book Ive borrowed from the volunteer library, a book on science and spirituality, specifically Buddhism, by the Dalai Lama. I tie my dripping hair back and try to read. Or rather, I try not to go tottally crazy at my utter helplessness.

+As this is turning into the longest journal entry in my life, I should stop here for a breather and make a new one with the wrap up to this pointless story and maybe talk about the Korite and other relevent things that have been going on...

A Thousand Little Stories, take 3

More from those little things that happen to me that make me think- 'i should make a blog entry about that' but then never do-

wells and water-

The rainy season winds down with some nice big storms. Hard rains that last an hour or two or more. Winds that knock down fences. Clouds that roll in and streak past without warning. Lightning that shimmers in the distance and tolls overhead. It was after one such storm, just before noon the skies opened up and soaked everything immediately, but then for good measure kept going for a bit, drizzled for longer, then sun and steam. I was out by our boutique and a group of old men was gathered around staring at an old well that has sat there unused, looking at it like it was full of vipers. Keeping there distance too. Naturally I walked right over and looked too. The ground all around it, about two feet from the concreted well itself, had cracked and sank about a foot. The concrete of the well was buckling and fissures ran down several feet. This well has never been used since I have been there, but this was different. Now our wells dont go that deep in our village anyway, the wate table is close, so 12 or 13 meters is plenty deep. The rains though have swelled all our wells and the ground everywhere is squishy. It was kinda scarry seeing that well like that. They threw rocks into it, then pushed the upper blocks themselves in, then filled the whole deal in with dirt. Before it fell over the rim into the water that was less than two meters down, I spotted the carved initials of the mason and '1987'. Harsh season.

healthy babies-

I occasionally help my aunt with baby weighings around the village. She is helping out the local health hut, collecting data on children under 2 so that peopale can keep thier kids healthy. Aound on one of these trips we come to a compound. My job was to frighten the kids as much as possible by, a-being there, b-hanging a scale from a tree branch, c-greeting them all in a friendly non-threatening manner. Oh and occasionally asking them why they were afraid of me. That usually got them to tears the fastest. I dont really know what it is about the scale that frightens them so much. I think it is just that one kid, usually a baby will cry at it- ok, so it is hanging in a tree, they have to be pulled from their mothers chuckling arms and swing in it a few seconds before I pull them out, bounce them a few times in my arms, maybe toss them into the air and hand them back to their parents. It is kinda frightening. Anyway, so one kid crys and then that gets more of them going, thinking surely it must have electroshocks or I will throw geckos at them or something. Then the older kids, the four five and six year olds, get the idea that making the younger ones cry is actually the funnest game in the whole wide world. They taunt them, push and pull them for maximum tear-age. Those kids are great, really help me make friends... Anyway, so on this day we were at a big compound but only a few people were there. The first few babies were fine, grumbly, confused, but fine. Then with only two to go, one busrts into a fit. We get her weighed and she hides behind her mom after, afraid to look at my face. My big scary toubab face. Then the lat girl. She is clutching her moms leg, tears roll down her face. I crouch in front of her, make soft cooing noises, put the harness-thingy on the ground like a pair of ants she could step into. Basically I pull out my whole arsenal of scary tactics I have learned from all my classic horror films where the boogey man goes around weighing kids and leaving them otherwise alone. I reach for her hands to urge her forward, she is hit by a hard sob, leans slightly forward and throws up at her feet. O....K... The mom appologizes, it didnt get on me, and I help wash off the harness straps. After that she is quieter, moaning, but we weigh her quietly and leave without any other incident. Look at me go, keeping all the kids in my village healthy and happy...

proof of integration?-

So a couple weeks ago I came into Mbour and bought a couple plastic chairs for my family. The ones they have are breaking, legs falling off and whatnot, as would be expected in a house of so many kids and very few forms of entertainment. My dad had asked me about chairs months ago, but like most things my parents insist I buy early on, I avoided it on principal. One of my lovely passive aggresive strategies to show that all toubabs are not money fountains. Anyway, I do ease up sometimes. So I bought these two chairs and I am a couple kms from the garage, but I dont do public transport, also on principal, so I do what any normal Senegalese person would do, put them on my head and started walking. It occured to me, sometime soon, after a couple blocks, that I surely looked rediculous. But the Senegalese do carry lots of things on thier heads-buckets, bags, rice sacks, matresses, firewood, haystacks. In my own village I carry water on my head from the well everyday, usually several times a day in both afternoon and morning. And I sometimes carry dirt too, and most recently, over the course of several weeks, a few hundred trees in small sacks. Anyway, so I was hyper aware of people walking through town back to the busses that would take me home. I was sure everyone must surely want to stare at me. The wierd thing though was that I felt like I got less stares, and less people called out 'toubab' than usual. It was strange when i expected it so much. Actually only one little girl muttered 'toubab' as I walked past that I noticed, surely some kind of distance record in Mbour. It may be that people dont really stare or yell at me that much usually but cause I was looking for it so much more and noticed so many people just going about their business that it seemed odd. Either way, I mark it as a victory for community integration.