Photos Posted see My Photo Link

Bridget is doing well. I spoke to her this morning. She is enjoying tabaski in her village. I posted some of her photos today on the My Photo link. They are pictures she took during training. Posted by Bridget's DaD

Sickness #1

I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and got everything you wished for. I got a plastic bowl with a lid, some sugar, tea candies and small glasses. We had a Yankee swap thing at the beach. The beach was awesome. It was really clean and pretty and we stayed in a great place. you should all come visit me just so we can go to the beach. Got to swim in the water, it was a little chilly but not too bad. We met some volunteers from Guinea and one from Zambia. I ended up staying 2 nights instead of the planned one night. When I got back to the regional house I got kinda sick though. Stomach stuff. A lot of people had it. I ended up resting at the regional house for a couple extra nights, watched some movies and did a whole lot of nothing. Now I am taking some meds for it so I am starting to feel a little bit better. I can rest more in the village.

There isnt really too much to report since the last post. It was not as hard as I thought it would be to be away for Christmas. Although it didnt feel like Christmas at all. I have been out of the village for 6 nights and I am actually looking forward to going back so that is a step in the right direction. And now I have just under 6 weeks until I return to Thies for In Service Training(IST). Today I have been in country for 3.5 months. I have a lot of time on my hands to figure these things out. And it is a really big accomplishment. Getting through a day is a big deal. Having little things like IST to look forward to really helps. Ok, I know this one wasnt very exciting but I will come up with more for you in a couple of weeks. Love you all! Happy New Year and Tabaski!

Happy Holidays

Well I am back in Kaolack again for the Holiday and you know what that means...Hamburgers. More importantly I get to see my friends and take a break from my life in the village. Thing have started to settle in a little more for me the last couple of weeks. People in my village are warming up to me and i am warming up to them. My Wolof is coming along and it is easier for me to converse. I am getting used to everyday life in the village. It is kind of like camping. I go to bed early and wake up early, cook over a gas stove and sit around the cooking fire with my family to keep warm in the mornings. It has been getting pretty cold at night dont know what the actual temperature is but once I get a thermometer I will let you know.

Ok well the last two weeks...My days look pretty much the same. Dont do a whole lot. I am assured by other volunteers that will pick up in the spring. They did let me go out to the fields to gather peanuts one day. It is not fun and I really dont need to do it again but I definitely appreciate all the work the do just to get those peanuts. I went out with my mom. She has this little hand hoe thing that she uses to dig up the ground a little bit. All the greens have been removed and the peanuts are left in the ground to be gathered. The ground is pretty much dry, hard sand now. The women and some of the kids go out in the fields and bend over and hoe and pick up the peanuts one by one and stick then in a bucket or in a fabric pouch thing that they wear around their waist. Of couse I was the talk of the field when I went out with my hat and my water bottle. They questioned my ability to dig for peanuts. I did just fine. I did leave the field early because all the women didnt want me to get hurt or tired. When i got back to the compound my 21ish year old brother (who mind you had been laying around in his room drinking tea all morning) gave me crap for coming back early. I said some stuff in English that he couldnt understand. It is very theraputic to talk in English.

Last Sunday I had the chance to go to the big weekly market in Berkilan. I went with 4 other women in the village who bought and sold peanuts there all day. For the first 3 hours I was there i just sat there and watched as they did there thing. They were buying smaller quantities of peanuts from people in the market for 250cfa per kilo. then they would fill up large rice sacks with about 30 kilos of peanuts and sell them to someone else for 300cfa/k. it doesnt really end up making them that much money because each rice sack costs 100cfa and the round trip travel costs were about 1000cfa. they each probably only sold 100k. i dont know you can do the math. plus they were in the market so they had to buy things like fabric and food. It was kind of like spending a Sunday at the mall in the states. you go cause you need one thing but you end up eating lunch there and buying those new shoes too... spending mre money they you were expecting. This market day was particularly crazy because the big islam festival, tabaski, is coming up.

Tabaski from what i understand of it is celebrated for the profit, Abraham. He did not have children so he asked god to give him some so god agreed only if Abraham would sacrifice one child to him. So Abe had a bunch of kids and when it came time to kill one he went out to the bush to do it. He had his eyes closed because he didnt want to watch, fortunately god stepped in and switched the son with a sheep so abe killed a sheep and not his son. So each family kills a sheep on the day of tabaski (which this year happens to be new years eve) and eats it. We also get all dressed up and the girls do thier hair and henna tatoos on thier feet and hands. It is a rather extravegant event from what I hear. Should be interesting. I have no idea where they get all the money to do this because it is not cheap. I expect they blow a lot of the money from their peanut harvest now instead of saving it for later on in the dry season when food harder to come by.

As for Christmas...Well I am headed to the bach tomorrow with 17 other volunteers from the region. We will be there for Christmas eve and day. Christmas night I will be back at the house in Kaolack where i am going to eat canned ham and instant mashd potatoes so kindly sent to me from my parents. Let me tell you it doest feel like Christmas at all. I did buy a present today-we are doing a yankee swap type thing at the beach. And the other day I decorated a small fake christmas tree also sent from the states, but I was alone in the hut and it made me more home sick really then anything else. I wish I could be home to celebrate with you all.

Right now I do think this is the right place for me to be. I keep thinking about coming home but really what would I do if I left here. I want to be here. I want to do something even if it isnt much yet. I want to learn the language, teach them about life in the US. They all have this desire to come to the US (I know this first hand from the dozens of marriage proposals or people just asking me to sponser them in thier quest for a visa) but they dont really know what it is like. Half of them dont even know where it is. My villagers thought the US was really close to Korea. Thank goodness I brought that pocket atlas.

Aside from geography lessons there are other things in my village that I know right now I can change. We have a well that has not been in use since 2003. I have several rough estimates that it is between 45 and 60 meters deep. It has no cover. Kids run aound it all the time and it is scary. I want to work on getting something to make it a little safer. Trash-things like old batteries and scrap metal are often found by kids and played with or put in thier mouths. Maybe I should start filling the well trash. (just kidding I know that would contaminate the water supply and create a bigger problem). I have the knowledge already to help them with all these little things. I am slowly building trust too so my villagers are gaining some confidence that I do have a brain and can help them. Ndank ndank. Little by Little.

Ok well I am going to sign off here but before I do I want to wish you all happy holidays and thanks to those who have sent me stuff in the mail. I do greatly appreciate it. Emails too are still great I like to hear about what you all are up to! Love you!

Hamburgers

I had 2. They were great. Now it is time for me to go back to my village. I have an hour car ride and then I think it is going to be too dark for me to ride my bike back to the village so I will spend another night in Kaffrine. just got a phone call so i am going to run

Happy Birthday Dad!

The first 2 weeks in the village have been really hard. I went from the high of being in training, with lots to do and living in a relatively comfortable environment to the slow life of a village and no ammenities. It has been really difficult for me to adjust. My town only speaks Wolof and the have a funny accent hat at first was hard for me to understand. There isnt a whole lot to do and They wont let me tag along to the fields to help them pick peanuts. I have had plenty of time to contemplate everything...life in general, the goal of development, if the 43 years the PC has been in Senegal has done absolutely anything, if this is really what I want to be doing. Havent come to any real conclusions except for the fact that I have to stick with it to see what happens and what conclusions I will develop. I cannot tell you how much your support means to me. Knowing that you believe in me even when i dont believe in myself really helps me get though.

Ok so now onto the interesting stuff in my village. Here is how a typical day goes for me. I get up around 7. I am awake much earlier because the women are up pounding millet or the donkeys are heehawing. I go out of my hut and say hi to my family. I have started making breakfast in my hut because they eat millet for breakfast and i cant stomach it 2 times a day. We have it for dinner too. I usually eat a banana, 2 cookies/bisket things with peanutbutter and a handfull of dried fruit and nuts so kindly sent to me from the states. I have also started drinking coffee. It is the only way I can drink the powered milk...have to add coffee and sugar. The powerded milk is good because it has some protein. After I eat I sweep out my hut. It gets really dusty everyday. Then I go outside of my family compound and chat with the ladies as they gater water from the one tap that the village shares.

The water is very interesting. The tap is locked up most of the time and one lady has a key (I try not to think about what happens if there is a fire in the village). she comes in the morning and in the evening for a couple hours each time. all the women in the village have to load up on water for the day. And it isnt cheap, it costs 10cfa for one pan. my guess is the pan holds about 5 gallons of water. I go through one pan a day. After the bucket us loaded up with water they lift it up on their heads and take it back to their compounds. Once in the compound they pour the water into another bucket or a clay pot right from thier heads. The whole thing takes talent. I cant do it yet but i think i am going to start trying half a bucket at a time. They are going to laugh at me but maybe one day i will be able to do it like them. Right now my mom brings me my water. My big accomplishment yesterday was to help one of the ladies get the bucket from the ground to her head. all the women around the tap didnt think i would be able to but I did and I was proud of myself. Everything in baby steps.

Around 10am the women go out and harvest peanuts. I dont go because they think it is too hot for me blah blah. I dont really do much until lunch, take a nap, read, study Wolof, meet with my tutor. He speaks english so thats a good escape sometimes. Around noon the women come back from the fields with a bowl of peanuts on their heads. They prepare lunch and we eat around 2. We have been having rice with some peanut/dried fish sauce. Not the best thing in the world but what ever. Some times we get fresh fish and have that with our rice. After lunch I take a nap. Then I go sit outside our compound and shell peanuts with the women. They let me do this but often tell me to stop because it will hurt my fingers. The honest truth is that it does hurt my fingers (i am developing calases) but i need the busy work, i need to do something with my hands or I will lose my mind. Plus I am out being social which is good.

A quick side note about peanuts: 100 kilo or 220 lbs sells in the market for 10,000cfa or 20usd. Bottom line that is a lot of peanuts for not a lot of money and it is the only cash crop that my villagers have.

I take a bucket bath before it gets dark and then we eat a millet and sauce dinner around 7-730. I dont eat a ton of it cause it isnt very tasty. I usually go to bed and read for a bit around 830. I know it isnt very exciting. Village life is very slow not only for me but really for all the villagers. There is alot of time to do nothing.

I have started going on short bike rides in the bush. The closest village is about 2k away. There is a lot of sand and biking isnt easy but i hate running and I need to do a little physical activity. I have also started to think more about what work I want to do. I have read through some of my paperwork and am starting to understand that everything I want to do will have to be done in baby steps. One day at a time or ndank ndank in wolof. I am trying really hard to settle into this mentality. It is hard and will take me a while to get used to. I have 2 more months left until I am back in Thies for training and I am hoping that I will adapt to my village and life will get a little easier.

Since I have been in my village I have made it up to Kaffrine a couple of times. It is about 7k north and there are 2 PCVs who live there. It is definitely nice to go up there because they have stores and electricity. Good to get away from the village. I am going to have to go up there a couple times a week just to buy food to supplement my diet and to charge my cell phone. I do have some cell reception in my village. Actually it is out in the bush by a big tree where i get the best reception. I dont have any in my hut so my phone is turned off most of the time.

Right now I am in Kaolack. I will be here all day and most of the day tomorrow (if anyone wants to call I will be in range). It is nice to be here to use the internet and I am going to eat a hamburger after we are done here. After a millet and rice diet everything tastes so great. I am excited! i might even get 2! Ok well thats about all for now. I dont really know what to tell you so if you have questions let me know and I would love to talk about life here. I will try to get back here tomorrow before I leave but there are no gaurentees. I love you all a lot and miss you tons. Keep the emails, letters etc coming.