4th of July Abroad

This was my first one. Weird, but as resourceful peace corps volunteers we made the best of what we had and had a good time celebrating kicking Terry's country out a few hundred years ago. The Kedougou region, which is the farthest inland and hence most isolated part of Senegal, threw the party, which they do every year. I figured as I was already going across the country I might as well make a vacation out of it and for the past two weeks have almost entirely circled Senegal. Granted American roadtrips are much more fun and comfortable, my expectations were pretty low and I had a good time. I started last week travelling from Pout to Kaolack for the night, where someone kindly stole me cell phone off the roof while I was sleeping, then to Tamabacounda for a night, spent 3 nights in Kedougou celebrating with other volunteers, then another night in Tamba, went up through the Futa (which is the northern part of the country) and stopped at a volunteers house in Galoya for a night, 2 nights in the regional house in Ndioum and then headed home today hopefully. A perfect vacation. I have seen so many new parts of the country on this trip and couldnt be happier really. Unless I hadnt had to buy a new cell phone, that sucked.

Most of the time spent in regional houses was dedicated to tv time, since I dont ever get to watch tv or movies at site. Watched a lot of Flight of the Conchords, Sex and the City, and, most importantly, the Ndioum house has the third season of Law & Order SVU, so watched almost the entire season over the last three days. Soooo good. It was my first Law & Order in almost ten months now!!! We also did a fair amount of cooking. Quiche, banana cream pie, banana bread (there are a lot of bananas this time of year), cookies, breadsticks, chili, etc. Gotta take advantage of actually having access to a kitchen, which almost none of us do normally.

The fourth of july itself, the purpose of this pilgrimage, was so great. Kegoudou threw an awesome party. They cooked up a storm making us all fresh bread, hummus, tasiki (sp?) sauce, pork bbq, potatoe salad, pasta salad and coleslaw, all in mass quantities. There was a lot of sitting around, followed by much dancing, a lot of trash talking other countries and yelling about America, and even a few fireworks which were really small and unimpressive by American standards, but they were magical here. Apparantly I was the most excited about them. I think I embarrassed Erin by cheering my head off for the little explosions we got to see. They were cool, alright?

Kedougou is where we all pictured ourselves going when we thought of Africa. Its probably what you the reader are picturing right now in your head. The rainy season has just started so everything is green and beautiful, loads of baobab and nime trees in bloom, the most picturesque villages you could ever imagine everywhere. I dont know quite how to describe it but its beautiful. I wouldnt want to live there (I enjoy being spoiled) but its amazing to see. There are some waterfalls about 30km from Kedougou that a lot of volunteers biked out to for a day and really enjoyed but I didnt bring my bike so Im hoping to go next year. Ill have to actually start using my bike in advance so that the trip doesnt kill me, but i think I can do it.

So happy (late) 4th of July to everyone, and more news to come.