A month in.

Well it's been a month since i have moved into my village, and as of now i find life moving along here quite swimingly! I spent 5 days in town for thanksgiving and found myself eager to get bck to my village for a 10 day stay. I hadn't spent more than five days there and wanted to give it a try.

The first thing I learned when going back to my village is that if you 'move out' of your hut for more than a night or two, it is certain that several things will 'move in.' I had returned home after pedaling weakly for over two hours in blistering heat, and arrived home ready to crash but when i opened my door i found my room to be trashed by a mousr that was standing above my wall staring at me right in the face. I screamed at that little devil and grabbed a shoe and chased it full cirlce around my room until he climbed up to the top of my hutt roof and disappeared out the top. He had used my bed as a toilet and a kitchen table, taking peanuts from the opposite side of my room and carrying them all the way to my wonderfully clean bed to crack them open. Poo and pee everywhere! Dallanda, my sis calmed me down and kinda chuckled at me. She felt bad and washed my sheets for me as i went and pulled water to shower with. She also helped me sweep all the poo and dirt and chewed up stuff off the floor. AAHH! That night as i was sleeping i heard squeeking in my ceiling so i turned on my headlamp and there it was. A big fat well fed male mouse scampering after a petit female mouse, trying to mate with her right above my head! All the ruckus was loostening straw and dirt from my ceiling and it was dropping right in my face. My family loved my histerical outbursts. Apparently they are the only ones i vented to because everywhere i go now people ask me if I still have a mouse problem. When wednesday came i went to the market and bought some poison. I was ready to be liberated from my pesky housemates. Long story short, it took a few days but three mice have been found dead. Well, i guess i could say two and a half. Two were found outside of my room and i found the third dead one right besides my bed, only it was half there. There was no head and all its guts were spilling out on the floor. I found out by waiting over it with my flashlight that a shrew had been eating it. Low and behold now i have shrews. Two night later i was waken by squeeking again and this time i turned my light on to see a big plump male shrew chasing a petit female shrew around the floor of my room. It was the squeaking that woke me and i must say it was earpiercing. I got out of bed and chased them out of my room trying to smash them with yet another shoe. ... I have yet to make peace with the rodents in my room.
I am, however, at relative peace with the bugs. Probably cuz they dont poo ans pee everywhere. There are probably thousands of spiders living in my room, some as big as oh i dunno, the round part of a soda can. i find crickets up my pants and in my bra, things fly into my face all the time... I just brush it off. Oh and dont even get me stqrted on the millions of mosquitos breeding in my douche. I refuse to use it at sunrise or sunset because i get insane amounts of mosquito bites in the most unpleasant places.... i need to do solething about that..

Ok, enough about pests. I love my village and have had a wonderful 10 days there. I spent a couple of days picking peanuts in the field with my neene. Its mindless busy work, just her and i sitting inder a tree picking peanuts from their plants and putting them in a bucket. neene and i talk some but because of my limited pular its hard to talk the whole time. I brought mu ipod though and we listened to some amazing american music and she just loved it.
I also spent a lot of time helping my sis do the cooking and cleaning. That gal works her butt off from sunrise to sunset without much of a rest and without a whole lot of acknowledgement. Sometimes i get frustrated with this part of the culture but i dont know what to do about it so i just help my sis as much as i can. It is a great way to learn the culture by learning about everythins that the women to because here they do so many things that, if you didnt see them do it you wouldnt even know it was done. So much effort goes into making one meal it is almost scary. if i were to write down all the steps it took to make lacciri hakko bantera, a common dish, it would amaze anyone. The food in my village is all made completely from scratch. Considerin the lack of variety of ingrediants, the things they come up with are amazing. The ingrediants used in lost everything is peanuts, corn or rice, yucka, and tomatoes. Then there qre several types of leves, like baobab leaves, bantara leaves, squash leaves, and nebadie leaves. To season there is garlic, salt, and some sort of seasoned salt called jumbo. The things they do with all of these ingredients fascinate me. the first time I ate lacciri hakko bantera i thought it was bland and strange. After cooking it for 5 hours step by step from scratch with my sis, now i appreciate every texture and flavor of it and.. well... love it.

Hmmm... what else did I do. I talked to a lot of people. I visited a neighboring village and met a lot of new people. I am working on getting/making my own map of neighboring village and their resources. We are starting a garden at my household, which will be a great start for me in learning local growing techniques. Oh, haha, and i find one of my favorite 'downtime' passtimes to be watching the animals niteract with each other. Mostly the chickens and dogs. There was a whole soap opera going on with our chicken and her 2 lovers and 5 suitors. I got in on the drama and now my chicken comes and hides behind me whenever she is being estered by a rooster she doesnt like because she knows i will chase him away. My favorite rooster, the only one ive never thrown something at, was killed for tabaski. I was sad. I asked my host brother if they were going to eat out chicken (we have only one chicken who is sitting on 6 eggs now) and he said yes, they would eventually. I told him I liked her and wanted her to live without really expecting much of a reply and he said 'ok, we wont kill her.' I was surprised at that, but im happy because she is kinda my buddy.

Hmm. Well i am still kinda new to Africa so i guess it is normal that i still see so many things through American eyes. I still see almost everything as if it were a postcard. I went to a meeting given by my health clinic for women on the health of their babies. It was the during tabaski and everyone was dressed in their best in my tiny village where they usually dress like villagers and not african beauty queens. I sat in the meeting area and all lined up on the outskirts were 20 women in a line, all with beautiful colorful ourfits and gawdy gold jewlery; each one holding an infant to their breast. The image was powerful to me. I think a lot about the role of women in my village but when i do that is makes me sad and often confused so i try to see it more from their view than an American view.

Tree planting. That wont happen for a few months still. Right now I am in my village as a new and naive volunteer who knows nothing of the language and culture. The Peace Corps gives us an adjustment period in which the first few lonths of life in our village is simply to become comfortable with the culture and learn the language. How can you initiate change and help people if you cant collunicate with them and work with them in a way that gives them the confidence they need to continue the work? By that i mean work with them within their own culture. I cant work with people or even talk to them unless i learn myself, and that is indeed what i am doing. I am speaking as much Pular as I can, talking to as many people as i can while also participating in as many things as possible. A day in the fields, a day learning to cook, a day circling the village and greeting everyone, a day making aataya with the men and chatting about why i dont want to marry a senagalese man. I am getting Pular lessons several times a week and am filling several pages a day with new phrases, words and expressions. The people in my village say that they see improvement. This is good i think. Of course I also have days and moments when i find myself craving the comforts of my own culture and friends at home but that eveltually passes. It passes here in my village because i have acquired quite a good support system. My family has experience with volunteers and they seem to recognize when i need to be left alone and when i need to be invited to circle the village with them.

Thats all for now, my hour is almost up.

Oh man, if anyone out there wants to mail me something, im needing to start a collection of quick prep american food for when i visit the city so i dont have to eat the same thing all the time and purchase meals three times a day. So... campiong type food, just add hot water things, instant things of all kinds would be appreciated. And candy! Not that im expecting this.. but if anyone is feeling generous, it would make a huge difference for me here.

Hope all is well with everyone in the states!