Jan 29 2007

This has been a fairly eventful week for me. When I was in Kaolack last time we had a good time celebrating birthdays by eating good food and having a couple of beers. My stomach had some trouble but that just comes with the territory. When I went back to the village my brothers were eating a small animal which turned out to be a squirrel. They caught it out in the bush and roasted it over an open flame. It actually looked alright but I did not eat any. I have hear stories of other villages where they regularly eat rats. It is a good source of protein and there are a lot of them around.
One morning I was sitting around at the water tap while the women were filling up their tubs for the day and there was a big fight between two women. I dont know what it was about but they started by yelling at eachother. Then it progressed to a little shoving and then slapping, hair grabbing (there were extensions lost) and wrestling. One of the fighters had her small child on her back but fortunately one older lady was able to free the kid while others were pulling the fighting pair away from one another. It was pretty intense the kind of fight in the states where the police would have been called and some one would have been arrested. People just kind of laughed about it. I wish I knew what they were fighting about. Oh well, it all seems ok now.
One evening, I was sitting around the compound and one lady yelled for my dad. He went out and then everyone else followed so I got up to see what was going on. The faucet on the water tap had busted and water was being sprayed all over. Women had their buckets out trying to collect what they could. The village has to pay for the water it uses so we didnt want to waste the water. Well they tried for a while to turn the knob to shut the water off completely but that was not sucessfull so one of the me ended up hammering a stick into the pipe. It did the trick for the night and I guy came out the next day to work on the problem. But we couldnt use the tap so we rigged up the pully system and pulled water from the well. the water table is deep about 30-40 meters and you only pull up about 15 liters at a time. It is a lot of work to get the water...I know I did it a few times--really good work out.
The day when we had well water the village was busy. See they think the well water is better then the tap water for certain things like laundry and making clay bricks. Plus the water from the well is free so if they have the energy they can use really as much as they want. The women brought their laundry out to the center of town and the men started digging clay for bricks. The sun wasnt out that day either so it wasnt too hot. everyone was out and about so it was pretty fun. The next day the tap was fixed and everything was back to normal. I cant quite figure out why they dont just continue pulling water if it is free and supposively better than the tap water. My guess is they have to pay a certain amount for the running water regarless if they get water from it or not.
Last Friday I went to visit a friend in another village. We had fun chatting and walking around the village. I met with the nurse from Peace Corps on Saturday. She came to my village for a routine check in. then I rode in the fancy Peace Corps Land Cruiser back to Kaolack. I am off to Thies for training again on Wed. I will be on the internet a lot up there so write some emails and tell me exciting stories from the states. Ok got to run!