Girls Night

Being in Peace Corps Senegal can be really stressful and sometimes you just need a litte break, some time alone, to regroup before you can even think about continuing to live and work here. Enter girls night. Christyne, another volunteer in my region, offered to have three of us over for a nice relaxing girls night. I showed up yesterday morning and she had filled up an inflatable swimming pool in her back yard, which we filled with ice and sat in all afternoon. Then we watched chick flicks (PS I love you, Juno and Atonement), while eating chips and salse. For dinner we made burritos, and then we spent the night hanging out in the pool and talking. So much fun. None of these activities are possible without buying something from the foreign import store here, and all are things you can only do with other Americans. This morning when we got up we made pancakes with realy syrup that she had in her kitchen. Real syrup!! They were amazing. I am full of pancakes and not at all well rested because I was up too late but I am happy. I am refreshed and renewed and happy.

Good thing because tomorrow is going to be a busy day. My meeting on Friday with my girls group went well. 30 girls showed up, the rest will probably show up at the next one. We have dvided the girls up according to grade and I will meet with the older students on Mondays and the younger girls on Fridays. So I will now be at the middle school twice a week, every week. Much as we tried to explain what it is we want to do with these girls in this girls club, they are all still really confused, and quite frankly so are we as we figure out what to do. There is a female teacher who will be the chaperone and liaison for us. She is really great and motivated and she will be very helpful to me by speaking Wolof when I cant and also making things culturally relevant for them. Sometimes its hard for me to think these girls will take anything I say seriously when I have next to nothing in common with any of them. So my first "real" meeting is tomorrow after school and I will spend the morning in Thies meeting with potential work partners. One of these days I will also find time to get back to the youth library and keep working on that project. This should be a nice, busy week for me in Pout.

Golden Anniversary

This is my 50th blog posting, so for both of you that read it: congrats! Things are going well here in Senegal. Trying to get back into work at site has been a little frustrating after I got back from vacation because nothing happened while I was gone since I wasnt there to nag people into doing things. Oh well. I have since started going to the youth library every morning again and will continue to do so until what feels like the end of time, or until all 5000 books are entered. Whichever comes first. Havent gone to the middle school yet as classes are cancelled in preparation for the big cultural festival this weekend. There will be a huge party tomorrow night and I get the feeling its going to be the Senegalese equivalent of the prom. I am planning on going, but God only knows.

As I have very little work to do today, I came into Thies to hang out with Daniel and Chris for a little neighborly bonding. We cooked chili for lunch which was sooo good. Chris's host family tried it and didnt like it even though the Senegalese have a dish thats really similar called ndembe. In the words of Chris's host sister "it tastes good but I dont like it because I dont know it". That is the perfect way to summarize the Senegalese feeling towards any food that isnt Senegalese. That means anything. They eat cebb u jenn every single day for lunch and that is perfectly ok with them. Its really the only way to go about it. Introduce something else and it throws off the whole balance of things. The Senegalese are very comfortable with the familiar and its just interesting to see their attitudes in comparison to my American desire to try any and every type of new food I can. I love ethnic food and have really enjoyed getting to know Senegalese food, but I now understand that they do not want to know or appreciate my food in the same way.

My host family has requested hamburgers for dinner tomorrow night and I am going to cook them with fries, but I am hesitant about them liking it. I may very well end up eating all of the hamburgers by myself, which I know I can do after eight months in country.

St. Louis Jazz Festival

Just back from St. Louis (Senegal, not Missouri) where tere was a big internatioal jazz festival. Read all about it at www.saintlouisjazzfest.com. As Peace Corps Volunteers we couldnt afford to go to all of the formal shows which were kind of expensive to get in to, so we just played around on the beaches all day and then at night, after the official concerts were over, the bands headed out to the bars and EVERY bar in St. Louis had live music. Sometimes people in the bars would just step right up and join in on the guitar or drums. One drunken Mauritanian volunteer did some scat on the microphone and refused to give it back to the band, which was possibly the funniest thing about the whole weekend. Im not a huge jazz enthusiast but the music was really grea, there were loads of Peace Corps Volunteers from all over Senegal and from Mauritania, our friendly neighbors to the north, and it was a really great time. A great vacation.

I am now in Dakar where I am hanging out with my university student tha came to visit me last month and is headed back to America on Wednesday. Tomorrow I will head back to Pout, buy a big bag of mangoes, check in on my kitten who most likely has come down with cabin fever, and get back to work. I dont have any official work until Wednesday when I have a meeting at the middle school about my girls group and a computer course at the preschool. Then things will just kick back to the normal swing of things and it will probably feel like I never left.

In other exciting news, the new volunteers who got here in March swore in on Friday and are now in Dakar hanging out with us until they go to their sites next week. They are all pretty nervous about it. I remember those days. It appears that I am now a seasoned Peace Corps Volunteer and am expected to know stuff when the new kids ask about it. Hmmm.....didnt I just get here last week?

8 month anniversary in Senegal tomorrow, btw!! V. exciting

Business As Usual

In response to the questions, Ellie eats cat food I buy from the foreign import store and drinks milk. I gave her water instead last week and she stuck her nose up at it. My cat is a snob already. Oh well, so am I in some ways.

As far as work, the home interviews with the girls continue. I had my first one on Tuesday, one tonight and ten this weekend. It should be a long one but the first one went so well that I am looking forward to the rest of them. I dont know how I am going to narrow it down to four when they are all amazing!! I have been asking if they would be interested in forming a girls club and all signs point to yes, so tomorrow I am headed back to the school while the girls have class to talk to the principal about how I would go about getting sponsorship. I am very excited about this project.

I have spent two mornings this week at the youth library working on the inventory project. Two hours this morning and I only ended up entering 115 books. There are 5000. I will be there a lot in the next month. M. Diallo (the supervisor) is supposed to be entering book information in the afternoons when I am not there, but has not actually started yet. I will go check on him tomorrow. I will not do this alone. After all of the books information is in the database, we will use Access to check out the books and I will spend a week or so showing how to use and maintain the database. Should be fun after all of this horrible, tedious data entry is taken care of.

So thats how I spend my time. Sometimes (like right now) I take breaks to meet other volunteers in Thies for lunch and eat ice cream. I dont care how much weight Im gaining here, some things are just plain necessary to mental well being. Also, I am going to St. Louis next weekend for the international Jazz fest which I have heard really good things about and am super excited to get to go to. I will let you know how it turns out.

Am Na Beneen Muus, Quoi

In Wolof that means i have another cat. Lisa found a kitten at her house and I couldnt say no so no I have a roommate. Her name is Ellie, she is tiny and adorable and my host family is terrified of her. Senegalese, for the mostpart, HATE cats and my family is horrified that I have one living with me. I pretended to throw her at my host brother while he was making fun of me and he screamed like a little girl and ran. My host mother also ran and hid behind me when Ellie went to nuzzle up aginst her. So funny. I know I get a lot of people talking about me, but that happens anyway and now I have some company in the house.

Work is going really well at the moment. I finished the first round of interviews for the scholarship and these girls are aweomse!!! Next round of interviews next week...Still teaching various computer and english classes. More news about them when I have more time on the internet.

Moving On Up

After two joyfully miserable weeks, Ive recovered from this whole strep ordeal. Alhumdulillah as they say here in Senegal (praise be to God). In Dakar at the moment to do some work related stuff at the Peace Corps office here and to talk with my supervisors about my projects, but more importantly to celebrate Daniel (one of my closest neighbors and friends here) turning 23. Last night we made chili cheese burgers (which are a big deal for us pcvs and expensive to make). Erin and I made a double layer chocolate cake with a cream filling and fudge frosting. Yes, it tasted just as good as it sounds. Nothing like not being able to bake at site to make you want to do it. We made the first cake, which obviously didnt last very long, and when Kira got back she was really mad that we had made one without her so we made a second.

So Im just finishing things up here and then off to the garage to get a car home where I have work to do. I had to cancel all my meetings when I got sick and it was so disheartening. I am really looking forward to getting the ball rolling and actually having something to do besides lay in bed all day feeling sorry for myself. I am headed to the middle school to have a meeting with the girls that are eligible for the Michelle Sylvester scholarship program and am really looking forward to beginning that application process. There are 12 finalists from the school, 4 from each of three grades, and each will write an essay on what they want to do when they grow up and why. Then I will visit each of them at home and interview them and their family to see if their family supports them going to school and also to assess financial need. After the interviews I will pick the three finalists and send their information to Peace Corps in Dakar who will select the winner. I am looking forward to meeting the girls and getting to know them. I would love to start a girls club at the school, but one thing at a time. Right now, its time to go home.

In other exciting news, the mangoes have started coming and its glorious!! They are so beautiful and delicious and cheap! And my site is the heart of the Senegalese mango production. Hurrah!!

Visitors, Strep Throat and Other Fun Things

So its been awhile since Ive actually written anything on here and I apologize to both of you who read this regularly (dont think anyone else noticed). As you can see from the title a lot of fun has been going on down here in Senegal. I got back to site last Saturday and everything went really well. Ive been doing a lot of greeting and giving people their suriche (gifts) that I brought them from England. Everyone except for one person has been so excited and grateful and its gone really smoothly entering back into life here. I dont know what I was worried about.

Monday an American student studying abroad in Dakar for the semester showed up for a week long visit so that she could see what life was like elsewhere in Senegal and it went really well. She was super cool and we cooked a lot and I showed her around the town, we went to Thies for a day and to the beach at Popenguine. She had been told that she would be going to a small village with no electricity or running water and was kind of dreading the experience, so imagine her surprise when she shows up in my "village" of 25,000 with running water and electricity, then gets to my house where she gets her own room and I have my own shower. She wasnt prepared for all that Pout had to offer, but I think she had a good time. It was really nice to have a guest, especially one who has been in the country less time than I have, because I got to see just how far Ive come these last seven months. She was really impressed with my Wolof and I was flattered and thought, you know, my wolof really has improved.

Halfway through her visit I woke up with a really sore throat. One thing led to another and I had a full blown case of strep throat. Suck. Its kinda weird getting what I consider normal diseases here. You come prepared to face malaria and parasites, and then when you come down with the common cold youre a little surprised. I guess there are still ways that I myself am unprepared for life in this country. Moral of the story is that Ive spent the last 6 days in bed with my fan blowing on me drinking anything cold I can get my hands on and taking copious amounts of ibuprofen to deal with the pain. Getting sick here sucks. What I would give for a pint of Ben & Jerrys and a Law and Order Marathon. Oh well, at least I dont actually live in a village, right?