Yeah, see, what happened was...Monday morning I was supposed to bike back with Hilary but I woke up feeling like crap. There's no way I could have biked it. Hilary went anyway and I stayed here to rest. Slept A LOT, it was great! I felt so bad for not going with her. I was going to leave the next morning but woke up to it pouring rain, which is what we were waiting on in order to go back to Manda to work on the garden. SO I'm still here. Mike and I will leave in the morning, but since he doesn't have his bike with him, we have to take an Alham. I was really looking forward to biking back. I'm going to try to bike from Manda to my village tomorrow afternoon, but it depends on how much work we get done at the garden and if I'm beat. I'll probably just suck it up and bike it. I feel so guilty for staying at the house for this long. We get "village guilt" when we're gone for a while. Leaving this house is the hardest thing I have to do here. The littlest thing can convince us to stay. Great people that speak English to hang with, access to a variety of food, power, refrigerator, COLD WATER, and internet. There's showers too but the water is hot. Its still nice to have a shower though. Its the closest thing to America that I have readily available. I don't feel too guilty because I'll be doing work tomorrow so its not all gluttonous... but I have been shoving my face. The boys made tuna melts today for lunch! They were amazing! I'm a little ashamed to admit how much "chicken spam" I've been eating. Its so disgustingly delicious! There's no such thing as cold cuts, chicken breasts or ground beef here. Well, some form of that is here but its a pain in the butt to get plus all the meat you can find usually involves a lot of fat or bones. Whatever, I'm not going to defend my love for chicken spam. That stuff if gooooooood!
Because of the various ways we travel its impractical to bring a lot of stuff with you. Therefore, I left my towel and pillow in village. There's usually extras of both here. This time there's not. The maid hasn't washed towels in a while and the pillows that I can find are scary. So I've been using a pillow case as a towel and a pile of my clothes as a pillow. This is an example of situations where we say, "T.I.A." (This Is Africa). And yes, we have a maid at the house. The volunteers that live in Tamba pay house dues each month. They're 5,000 CFA = $10. Part of that goes to pay Aissatou, the maid. She's worked here for 9 years or something. She must think we're completely crazy. The house is always so dirty. There's stuff everywhere. All of our laptops lying around, empty beer bottles, piles of dishes, people's bags, magazines, mattresses, etc. She comes in and mops around our stuff and washes the sheets and towels. Well, sometimes.
Oh I forgot to tell you. I found out that my host Mom is not actually my Dad's wife. She's his brother's wife. Her husband lives in Paris because he works there. He called the other day and she had me talk to him. It was a pretty difficult conversation in my broken French and janky Pulaar. Someone else in my family lives and works in America, but my family doesn't know exactly where. Since Senegal is so small, they just assume that America is too. Its funny. Because they've heard that it snows in America, they assume everywhere there gets snow. I still don't think that they believe me that in the southern part of the country it can be almost as hot as Senegal. Anyway, I hope I'm around the next time the guy who lives in America calls. I bet he's either in NYC or somewhere really random, like Montana. Whenever I meet people who have been to America or know someone who has, its always somewhere random that they've been.
I think that's all I have for now. I'm going to try to stay in village til the 24th. I'm coming back that weekend for Hailey's birthday and then Hilary and I have to go to Kedegou (where there's waterfalls!) on the 26th for our language seminar. We'll spend 4 days with the other 3 volunteers that learned Pulaar Fuuta from our stage and our language teachers. That's over on the 1st and then on the 3rd and 4th is the 4th of July party at the Kedegou regional house. Its my first all-volunteer party. There's 240 of us "in country" now! Should be an interesting party, to say the least. Hope all is well in Amurka! xoxo
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