Turkey Day!

Today is the American Holiday dedicated to eating, football, shopping (well, the day after), and of course being thankful. Thanksgiving has had an interesting history in my life. When I was growing up, Thanksgiving dinner was going to our favorite Chinese restaurant at the time. In college, I worked for the basketball team and season was just beginning when Thanksgiving rolled around, which meant that I didn't go home for Thanksgiving. As a result, freshman year, my roommates and I made Thanksgiving dinner in our apartment and the day of, I went over to my friend's house. Although my roommates changed, the tradition didn't. I would bake up a bunch of pumpkin pies and we would celebrate Thanksgiving. There was one year when the team had a tournament in the Bahamas over Thanksgiving, so we had dinner on a grass lawn overlooking the ocean.

I didn't have a "normal" Thanksgiving at home until last year. Junior year of college, my sisters decided that they wanted to start making Thanksgiving Dinner at home. I was working, so I didn't experience it until last Thanksgiving, in between graduating and leaving for Peace Corps. It was fantastic! It was mostly the experience of planning the dinner and then cooking with my sisters. With me going to LA for school, I didn't spend a lot of time with my sisters for four years. After graduation, when I returned home preparing to leave for Peace Corps, I had the opportunity to spend time with them again. My oldest sister makes a delicious crab dip that we started eating before the cooking got underway. As the day progressed, we opened a bottle of wine and started cooking. It was marvelous and in the end we had a delicious meal.

This year, I am having two Thanksgiving dinners. We had a pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving dinner a couple nights ago and Thanksgiving Dinner tonight. Currently, we have a live Turkey tied up at the regional house. Our menu includes green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, and pies! I wish I could be at home with my family, but I'm happy that I'm celebrating Thanksgiving with a great group of people.

So, now I'm going to be corny and talk about what I'm thankful for. I'm thankful for my family and all their support. The text messages and care packages mean so much to me. I'm grateful that they allowed me to undergo this journey and are behind me every step of the way. Being in Peace Corps is difficult and I couldn't do it if I didn't have a strong support system back home. I'm thankful for my friends at home. The facebook messages, emails, and skype dates make me smile. I know that they are so busy in the states, but when they take a moment to say, I'm thinking of you, it makes me appreciate their friendship so much. The surprise packages that I don't expect make me giddy at the post office (which makes the post office man look at me like I have two heads). Being so far away makes staying in people's lives difficult, but I know that once I get back, we'll pick up right where we left off.

I'm thankful for all my new Peace Corps friends. As much as I LOVE my friends and family, I don't think they can fully grasp what my life is like here. My friends here are going through the exact same thing I am and they can understand the ups & downs. I've made many good friends in the 8 short months that I've been in country and I probably would've ETed (Early termination...of service) without their support. They let me rant and rave about work and about people I encounter. I believe that they will continue to be close friends after my Peace Corps experience.

I'm thankful that I am where I am now. Not that long ago, I was contemplating going to Medical school (I even took the MCATs) and I realize that I couldn't have gone straight to medical school after undergrad. I'm glad that I had a change of mind that brought me here to Senegal. Everything I'm learning is going to help me in my future course of work, be it medical school or something else. I am in an amazing village with people who are really excited that I'm here in this country. When I have a bad day or a miserable alhum (bus-kinda) ride out to village, I get there, look out into the farro dotted by palm trees and think about how lucky I am to be here.

I'm thankful for good food. I'm also thankful for a million other things. I will no longer take the little things for granted and I appreciate so much more. Being here in Senegal, I am more grateful about things in my life.

Thank You for reading my blog. I'm thankful that people take the time to read my random thoughts.

Happy Thanksgiving!

November Ramblings

I realize that I don't blog about the work I do. I promise that there will be a post dedicated to the work I'm doing in the near future (inshallah). It's just that I haven't worked on any large projects and I don't feel like I'm doing much. However, as I mentioned in a previous post, I am more invested in the small scale personal interactions. This was reinforced when Peace Corps met with my village to make sure that we were all on the same page work wise. The meeting plan flushed out my action plan for my remaining 18 months in village (OMG, I've been in village for 6 months). I will go into more detail at a later date.

It's been an eventful two weeks back in village. I had baptisms, guests, and Tabaski! Busy, busy, busy.

Babies!!!

There have been so many births since I've installed in village. In this culture, a child is not given a name until a week after it's born. You would think with all the births that I've encountered that I would be a veteran at baptisms, but alas, I've somehow managed to miss ALL of them, until now. Baptisms in this country are much like every other event here- the men sit around drinking tea and the women hang out and dance. The baptism is a two part event. In the morning, we went to the compound hosting the baptism and had second breakfast. Then, the women make a dessert like food called corbal (pronounced chore-ball). It's steamed millet and sugar (delicious!). At that point, we all went home and promised to come back later.

That day at lunch, we got a surprise bowl of cheeb- oily rice (well, I was surprised because I had never participated in a baptism). After showering and putting on my Chiquita banana outfit, we went back to the party. It was time for dancing (and more sitting around). The women in my village LOVE to call me out to dance. For the longest time (2 months), I was so shy about it because I couldn't do the Pulaar, fast-paced, butt shaking dance. Now, I know I look foolish either way, so I jump into the circle and entertain the women. The baptism was a good cultural experience, but was anti-climatic. I felt so guilty about missing so many of them, but not anymore. It's just another day in village, only with a reason to dance and eat cheeb. The next week was another baptism, which I happened to miss again because I was hosting study abroad students.

Me in my Chiquita Banana complete with the language group

The Other Americans in Senegal

At one point I had EIGHT (8!) Toubabs in village. Why? A bunch of PCVs hosted study abroad students for their "rural visits". At the end of October, I received a text asking if I was willing to host students for a couple days in village. I said yes and was told that I would be hosting two girls in a weeks time. Six students arrived in Kolda on a Monday afternoon and three volunteers whisked them off to experience village life. My family was so excited to have these visitors come and stay with us. Although the students didn't speak any Pulaar, my village still attempted to speak to them in Pulaar and then complimented me on how far my Pulaar has come.

I had the week planned out for my two student. I wanted them to see what life was like and to see the differences between Kolda and every other region. I took them around my village and then to the fields where they helped my little sister pick peanuts. I tell everyone that I live in one of the most beautiful villages in Senegal and I definitely showed it off to my students. The next day, all the volunteers hosting students in the region of Kolda converged on the market town of Diaobe. Diaobe is the largest outdoor weekly market in West Africa (so I am told). It was fun to show them around and to do some fabric shopping.

Talking to the other students, they wanted to see what a small village was like. Two students were in a village of 700 and the other two were in a town of 5,000. I told them my village of 150 would be more than happy to have them come over. Thus, we had eight Toubabs in my village. It was fantastic! We had a mini party essentially and my family made lecceri for lunch. There was dancing, which involved us teaching the macarena and the electric slide. Then we played limbo and hopscotch. My village officially rocks.

Dancing with my little sister!

My older brother limboing!!

That night we headed into Kolda because the students had to go home to Dakar the next day. It was nice to have them in village because they were so excited! I forget how great my village is sometimes and it was good to have a reminder.

Tabaski

The festival of sheep! Tabaski is celebrated by Muslims in remembrance of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son for Allah. Just as Abraham was about to perform the act, Allah intervened and provided a ram for him to kill instead. In my village, we prayed in the morning, then it was time to sacrifice the animals. Each compound killed either a sheep or a goat for Tabaski. My family killed a goat and wanted me to take pictures of it, I snuck off and hid in my room. Much like Korite, we went around and greeted each compound. The scene was the same in every household, the men were cutting up an animal. After they were done with that aspect, they sent pieces of meat to every other household in the village.

We had a snack of goat meat stew (kinda) and bread. Lunch was cheeb and meat. It was a fun day of visiting other compounds, soccer, and eating good food!

Sick in village

I have had a cold for the past TWO weeks. I got sick the day my study abroad students arrived. I tried to keep the cold from coming, much like finals week, where you force your body to not be sick until after exams. It didn't work. I rallied when the students were here, but I went back to village and was miserable! Tabaski was right around the corner, so I wanted to be in village, but it was bad. I hate being sick in general and thats with all the comforts of home. The worst of my cold was gone by Tabaski, but I've been stuck with an annoying cough since. Hopefully I don't get sick that often while i'm here.


Thats it for now! Let me know if you want to know anything about my life. I talked to my friend Kate for her birthday and I realized how routine my life is now and things don't strike me as anything special. I plan on doing a posting about food and transportation, but if there are any other topics, such as "how I take a shower", just ask!

--Peace Out!

Travel Bug!

After Summit in Joal, I headed back to Kolda, but my trip was far from problem free. It's difficult to get from Dakar to Kolda in a day, due to travel curfew in the region of Kolda, but I was hopeful because I had done it before. This trip, timing and luck weren't on my side. In Kolda, the checkpoints close at 6:30pm, so if you don't get past them, you are stuck on the side of the road....no bueno. As a result, all volunteers should leave Tamba by 3pm at the latest to make sure that we safely clear all the checkpoints. As Amanda and I arrive in Tamba at 2pm, we were hopeful about catching a car until we discovered that that last seat was JUST purchased. Just our luck. So, we waited around for a bit, then decided that the car wasn't going to fill up in time and that we should stay at the regional house in Tamba- Merde. First thing the next morning, it was home to Kolda.

Installs!

Installs came quicker than I expected. We took them shopping for items they would need to survive in their villages. We imparted our wisdom of what they should buy and even sat atop a charette stacked with six foam mattresses. We showed them the hot spots of Kolda-namely the Hotel Hobbe (it has a pool! p.s. it's become a PC secondary project to teach me how to swim). Then it was time to take them to village, drop them off, and have them watch the Peace Corps car drive off into the distance. I went to Jake's install, who is one of my closest neighbors, danced and sent him off into his service. Yay!

Jason on the charette!

Tambaland Adventures

I went to Tamba to celebrate Mika's birthday and to visit sites in Tamba. I had only visited sites in Kolda thus far (minus a detour to Sereer land) and wanted to see what other regions had to offer. I visited Amanda and Mika who are in Pulla Futa villages and Spence, who is in a Jaxanke village. It was a lot of fun in the Pulla Futa languages because I was able to understand and communicate with everyone. The Jaxanke village, on the other hand, was more of a challenge. I now know how it is for volunteers who speak minority languages when they leave their villages. The people were really accommodating and a lot of the did speak Pulaar, but I was in a constant state of confusing, asking Spence what they said. After going to their villages, I'm going to try harder to visit other volunteers.

GIANTS WIN THE WORLD SERIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

ENOUGH SAID =) But so sad that I wasn't there to witness it first hand.

Birthday & Halloween

I celebrated my birthday with a group of my friends and ushered me into my 23rd year. The next day was Halloween!! So my Halloween costume was.....QUEEN FROSTINE from Candyland. I was supposed to be part of an ensemble, but only Kelly pulled through and was princess Lolly. All in all, it was a fun night filled with crazy costumes, glitter, and dancing. Happy!

That's it for now! Next post will be study abroad students, reverse volunteer visit, and Tabaski. Miss you...kisses!

--Peace Out