Home

Well I made it safe and sound. I have been home now for a couple of nights and am still catching up on my sleep. I am really happy to be here and it has not been as weird as I thought it was going to be. I had a very nice birthday weekend filled with good food, friends and family.

Now it is on to a new plan/adventure. I have a bunch of things that I want to do here like arranging my photos and making a plan for this road trip that I want to do. I will keep up with the blog for you so when there is something new and exciting going on you will know.

one more day

My flight is tonight so I will be home tomorrow morning. I am pretty tired so hopefully I will get to sleep on the plane. Bryn came in yesterday and we went out and about in Dakar. First we stopped by the fish market. It is right along the water where all the boats come in and unload. It wasn't as stinky as I was expecting. Then we headed down to the main strip where we ate dinner. I bought a rediculous pair of sunglasses. Then we went out for drinks. It was a good time. I still dont have all my paperwork done for the Peace Corps yet because the people I need to see have been out all week. They are scheduled to return this morning sometime so we'll see. Today is a half a work day so I have all afternoon and evening off to play around Dakar and spend the little bit of money I have left.

I have big plans when I get home this weekend. First I will probably nap. Then Pat has a guitar concert. Then Tempe and Karstena are coming in for the night. yay for home made good food. Sunday is my birthday. I am excited. When I make some more plans I will let you know. Keep your couches open because I may be making a tour around to see people, the country, and shop for grad schools. Thank you all for your love and support. I will be in touch soon.

final countdown

Well it is coming down to the end of my time in senegal. I have finished all my reports and am waiting to have some interviews with people here. Of course no one seems to be around when I need them to be but i still have a couple of days. My flight is very early saturday morning so I will be home for the whole weekend.

I have been able to sneek in some little walking tours of Dakar and I have plans to visit a couple of touristy places before I leave. I have been spending a lot of money though because Dakar is expensive and we have been eating out a fair amount. oh well. i guess thats all for me now.

goodbyes

Since the last updat I made it back to Kaolack for a night then packed up my hut and am now back in Dakar. It was good to be in Kaolack to pack up my things there and see a few people that I wanted to before I leave. Yesterday I went back to my village with two of my friends to tell my family i was leaving and pack up my stuff. about a third of my stuff went to other volunteers, another third I have and the rest stayed in the village for my family. I am coming home with much less stuff than i came with. I made a very quiet departure from the village, only my family was aware that I was leaving and not coming back. I hid all my baggage (on my host dads suggestion) in rice sacks so that the villagers would not make a big fuss. It was nice to leave that way. I spent the night with a few of the girls in Kaffrine and left this morning for dakar.

So far the goodbyes have been bitter sweet. It felt good to leave the village but still so hard. I feel very fortunate to have the chance to leave but at the same time guilty for leaving these people who have nothing. It was really sad to say bye to my friends here. They have really held me together and have been a great sholder to lean/cry on. They have been so supportive and are behind me 100%. There are really some amazing people over here and I am excited to be able to support them from the states or wherever I may end up. I really cant say enough about how wonderful they are.

As for my plans... I have a lot of work to do in Dakar. I have to write 3 reports, have a few interviews, and do a bunch of paperwork all in the next 4 days. I also have to meet with the nurse a couple of times to make sure I am free of any weird disease/bug i my be carrying. I got this packet of information from the med team and in it is a letter that i am to bring to any future dr appointments. the letter lists all the things I have been exposed to since i have been here (it isnt a short list). after all this stuff I will be cleared to go home. Dont know my flight plans yet but should be back on Friday. It is kind of exciting and scary at the same time to think about being home. I have seen and learned a lot here which has changed my perception of the world. I am going to see things now through new eyes.

ok i am going to get cracking on some of this work. I hope you all are doing well. Maybe I will see you soon.

early homecoming

Well I have decided to leave th Peace Corps. It has definitely not been an easy decision for me to make but it is the right one for so many reasons. To finalize my decision I made some lists with pros and cons of here and the states. the states won hands down. Here are some of my thoughts (i know i dont need to explain myself to you but it is theraputic for me plus I want you to understand where i am coming from)

As you all know I have been having a hard time with my village and my thoughts on development. My motivation to do work here slipped away from me. I found myself motivating myself in another direction to do what I really want to do. (And believe me I have had enough time to think about things in the village I now feel fairly confident that i do know what i really want to do.) My future post PC plans just started rolling and things here were just staying the same and even getting worse for me. I am not happy in the village. I am pretty sure I could push through and stay a while longer but i am not willing to give up my happiness. So I am taking off next Friday.

I feel pretty good about the decision. A huge weight has been lifted and I mentally and physically feel so much better than i have in a long time. I am sad because I have made some great friends here but I plan on supporting them from the states. I am excited about all my possibilities in the states. I want to settle down a bit when i first get home. then I want to work on making a plan for a road trip around the US. So many of you live all over the place so i am going to take advantage of you and sofa hop. I would love company too so if any of you are interested let me know. so i am going to travel around for a bit see where that takes me. life is about the journey not the destination.

I do eventually want to stay in one place and get into emergency management /disaster relief. I'm planning on volunteering with the red cross again because i dont really know how to start in this field. If you have any insights let me know.

before i get home i have to pack up my hut and do a bunch of paper work for the PC. but i tenatively have a flight for next friday. It is so crazy how fast this has all gone for me. Ok i dont know if i feel this blog was satisfactory to me so I may be back soon to ramble on some more.

free iternet so i thought i would post something

Well i am here in Dakar, nothing serious just want to talk some stuff over with the staff here. I am not going to give you the details yet but they should come within the next couple of days.

On my way here, which was a long 4 hour squashed in the middle seat drive from Kaolack, there was this lady sitting next to me. She had all this weird discolored skin and strange scaring. There are a fair amout of women in senegal who have the same thing. It is from this skin lightening cream they use. I dont know what is in it but it is really makes them look bad. It is funny because they associate lighter skin with beauty and are using chemicals to change and here we are trying to tan and get darker skin. the grass is always greener on the other side.

update

Well my trainer came out to my village yesterday which was later than I had expected. I hitched a ride back to Kaolack with him so I can go to the seed store and get some seeds for the garden I am going to help start when I go to Richard Toll in less than a week. the meeting I guess went as well as I could have expected. My host dad was embarassed that the kids went in my hut but then justified them by saying that the other volunteers before me would let a couple kids come in to water plants in the back yard when they werent home. Well I have nothing right now that needs to be watered. The trainer (he is senegalese) just couldnt understand how kids coming into my hut while I am not there makes me feel unsafe. And he wanted me to talk to them first before I went to the peace corps security guy and wrote an incident report. The whole thing has just been frustrating but i hope it is all behind me.

Well before yesterday my days were pretty full with hanging out with the travelers in my village and in my closest neighbor Carin's village. Our guests left on Thursday and Carin and I hopped back and forth between my village, her village and Kaffrine. We kept busy. We visited one guys house in her village because we were going to help him mix manure in with his garden bed and we ended up staying there for 5 hours. We did no work and sat around while he killed a chicken for us and had one of his wives cook it for us. We tried to save the chicken but it was too late. and hey when some one goes through all the trouble of killing a chicken for you, you really have no choice but to stay and hang out. We were really bored but at least we were there together.

It has been pretty hot lately during the day but is still cooling off a bit at night. last time i looked at a thermometer it was aroud 4pm and it was 105°F in the shade. I dont know what cool is now but i imagine that it is somewhere around 75 or 80 at night and early morning. It is really windy, dusty and hazy too. I am sure I have complained about this before. you sweat cause it is hot and then you walk around (you dont even have to be moving you can just be sitting inside) and in minutes this layer of sand just sticks to your body. I will tell you that shower in the evening really feels great. well I guess thats all for me now. stay tuned.

entry number 50

Can you believe it this is my 50th blog entry? I hope you are all still enjoying it.

Ok there isn't much but I have an update about my situation in the village. I talked to Peace Corps and they honestly were not too helpful but they are going to send my trainer out to the village tomorrow to talk with me and my family to see if we can resolve this issue. I am trying to push through this but it has been really hard for me and hope there is a solution soon. I am heading back to the village when I finish here and hope that my hut is just the way I left it. I changed the lock before I left so that should make a difference.

I am heading to the village with a couple new found friends. We ran into a couple of young travelers yesterday and they are interested in seeing the village so they will come out for the night. It should be nice to have some company.

The last update I was all caught up in other stuff that I forgot to tell you about the election. well there isnt much to tell... it passed fairly peacefully (only a little violence in Dakar) and Wade was re-elected with 55 percent on the vote. It has been confirmed by the legislator so that is that. There will be legislative elections sometime in the next couple of months but they too should go smoothly.

This week is a fairly big deal for the largest brotherhood of muslims in Senegal. They all load up an travel to Touba. This is called maggel. I dont know too much about it but it is like a mini hadj to the town where the leader of their brotherhood was born or died (cant remember which). It starts on the 8th and goes for about a week. During this time it is hard to do much of anything especially travel because most people and cars go to Touba. People have begun the treck already so even going to the garage today to get back to Kaffrine could be interesting. Kaffrine and Kaolack are two major hubs for transport into Touba. I have plans to go through Touba on the 17th on my way to Richard Toll so I will get to see the aftermath of this huge event. Should be a dirty mess.

Well thats about all for me. If everything goes well upon my return to the village you may not here from me for another week or two. Keep your fingers crossed.

lunar ecllipse

So I made it back to my village ok. At first it felt kind of good to be back comfortable and relaxing. I realized soon after that things in my hut had been stolen and tossed around while I was away. I later saw my younger brother using something of mine that he had taken from my room. I felt really terrible to the point where I was so nervous, scared, anxious etc. that I was making myself sick to the stomach. I left the village on Tuesday and havent been back. I physically feel much better now that i am able to relax a bit in Kaokack. Dont want to think about going back there. There had been two other volunteers in the village and I havent heard one story about them having a hard time with theft so I dont know why they are targeting me now. I have phone appointments on Monday to talk about the situation with a couple of administrators for Peace Corps. I will let you know the outcome.

On a more positive note I have had a pretty good time in Kaolack the past few days. I picked up 3 packages on Friday and now have dried fruits and nuts to last a while and some other yummy treats from the states. I have been able to cook really well for myself which is fun, theraputic and delicious. I have also worked on various home improvement projects with some other people. We are covering the dining room chairs, buying a new stove for the kitchen and thinking about painting the kitchen. There has also been talk of rearranging the furniture. there are about 34 of us who share a 4 bedroom house so we need to create more sleeping areas. We need trading spaces or clean sweep or one of those TLC shows to come in and revamp our house.

Last night after eating a grilled pepperoni and cheese sandwich and watching some new to me but old to you TV episodes I went up on the roof and watched the lunar ecllipse. It was pretty cool but we never really saw the total ecllipse just the redness. the moon was very red it looked awesome. We discussed what we thought the Senegalese were thinking as they saw the moon in red. also saw some shooting stars.

Ok thats about all for now. I am trying to keep my chin up and am looking forward to coming to an adequate solution with the Peace Corps. I hope all is well. Miss you and love you all