Hey, I’m 28! Yeah! Thank you, Mom and Dad, for making me happen! I personally think it was a well-executed plan. =) I love you guys more than you know!
I was in Thies for 2 weeks for In-Service Training. It was nice to be back at the training center and back together with my stage. I absorbed about half of the content of training. Maybe a little less. I was expecting more hands-on training in more detail, but it was a lot of powerpoint presentations and brief explanations on broad categories. Planning these trainings must be such a process and they’re always trying to tweak it to suit us, but its impossible to plan 50+ sessions in which everyone is going to be interested. It was motivating nonetheless and I have a broad array of things I can choose to work on. I am about to start what is called a Baseline Survey which entails talking to the heads of the families in my village to find out what they need, what they want, what they have already, who gets sick and why, how many deaths from malaria, etc. It’s a lot of data collecting. I think it’s a valuable thing to do and have, however, Ramadan started yesterday and from what I’m told it’s difficult to get any work during while people are fasting. Ramadan lasts for 30 days. I’ll do my best, trying to catch people as early as possible while their bellies are still full from breaking fast, but we’ll see how it goes. I still need to work on my language a lot too, so maybe I’ll just focus on that if I can’t get responsive fasters. Many volunteers fast with their families as an integrative measure. I think I’ll try it but I imagine it’s pretty horrible. Everyone wakes up before the sun comes up to eat breakfast. Afterwards they go back to bed and get up a few hours later. Then they can’t eat again until the sun goes down. They don’t drink water either. I’m not too worried about the eating part because the crap they serve for lunch is less than appetizing anyway. But not drinking water will suck and I hear that by the end of the day you feel like you’re high… on “dope.” We’ll see how it goes. Not being Muslim and all, there’s no obligation for me to do this. However, if I’m successful, my family will think I’m a total badass!
After Thies, I went to Dakar for the night with a few of my friends. Dakar is so huge! It’s the polar opposite from village life. It’s nice, in a way, to be in a big city but I can’t decide if I would ever like to live there. Because there are so many westerners that live there, you don’t have everyone starring at you because you’re white and kids don’t yell “toubab” as much. That part is great! But it’s an overpopulated city with tons of traffic and trash and things are considerably more expensive. When I was in Dakar in 2007 we ate at this rooftop Ethiopian restaurant a lot. It was the first time I had Ethiopian food and I fell in love with it! Since then I always seek out an Ethiopian restaurant every time I’m in a big city. It’s hands-down my favorite type of food! Anyway, I took 3 of my friends to the same rooftop place. It was so nostalgic to be there. It’s at the end of the block from where I stayed in 07, so it was crazy to be back in that neighborhood. I fell in love with Senegal back then and would always wonder if I would ever make it back at some point in my life. It was nice to be there, having made it back in such a short time. Plus back then I thought that neighborhood wasn’t all that nice because I had nothing in which to compare. But now that I’ve seen other parts of Senegal and villages, that neighborhood is SO nice! Andrew and I left Dakar the next day, getting to Tamba 8 hours later. Those sept place rides are so long, hot and uncomfortable. When we got to Tamba all we wanted to do was shower the day’s worth of sweat off of us, but this didn’t happen because the water wasn’t working and they had already used the reserve water. Ugh! To try to go to sleep feeling that disgusting is quite the task. Gross! But it made the shower the next morning that much better.
We celebrated my birthday last night because today 30-40 volunteers are coming in to stay at the Tamba house for an Ag Summit. It worked out that many of my favorites were able to be here for the celebration. Some of the Tamba girls made chocolate chip cookies! The Kolda lovelies had matching dresses made for us! They were so pretty! The theme for the party was graffiti meaning everyone wears a white shirt and we decorate each other’s. It doesn’t take much to entertain us these days. We made French bread pizza (sauce and pepperoni courtesy of Mom, Mac and Donnie!) and Austin made his always-delicious potato salad. It was quite the birthday celebration and I’m fortunate to have such cool people in which to share it. I think this is only the third time that I haven’t been in Greenville for my birthday. I miss the fam…
So now I go back to village. Hopefully my family is the one family that doesn’t get temperamental during Ramadan. Ha! I don’t even care if they are; I just need to get work done so hopefully they are receptive to my data collecting. Heard Amy Winehouse died. Damn shame. Hope y’all are swell! xoxo
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