Mango Fun

Well it seems as though a couple of weeks have passed since I have last written. It seems to me, in a way, more like a year. Spending quality time being the only tubab in your village is almost like living in another world. I walked into the PC house in Kedougou today and another volunteer said hello today and I shouted happily, "Oh my God, English! I feel like I've forgotten what it is like!" In the next few hours several ice cream cones entered my mouth while three languages exited. Pular, French, and English. These people here are now probably some of the only people in the world who can understand my melange of languages! It's pretty cool.

Mangos! It's mango season here and that is what people do. Mangos. They take mangos off the tree and eat them. With all the mango trees around and the hundreds and hundreds of mangos on each tree, you would think there would be too much for 900 people. But no, certainly not. if 900 people want to eat about 5 mangos a day, that adds up! It's the starving season here and mangos are quite a treat! There are pretty much no veggies in my village these days, and no other kinds of fruit. Never. No meat really either. It's corn, rice, peanuts and jumbo. Maybe an onion here and there. Oh, and mangos. Lots of mangos. I eat about 4 or 5 a day. Don't ask about my bowel movements. I'm working on that. Oh, and bofore coming here, I think I ate about 3 whole mangos in my life. Mangos are yummy! I look forward to my 5 a day. And to make food more interesting here I have been upping my Vitacafe (a powdered sweeted milk coffee instant drink, yucky in usa but lovely in my village) to about 2 a day. Yes. And my gas has run out so Dalanda, my sister will wake me up in the morning and give me hot water from the water she is heating for breakfast. My sis btw, is still great! She is exhausted every day from being the only one that works. We are working on this issue...

Oh have I mentioned that the starving season is well on it's way. When we are having the corn couscous with sauce, it's been difficult for the locals to find what to put in the sauce. Now a days they are getting leaves off of trees. Yes. Which reminds me,one day about 7 kids climbed up a tree just outside of my compound and picked all the leaves off. They had just recently sprouted (it'sone of those rare trees that have leaves in the dry season). It was quite a speticle, kids throwing leaves down to women waiting and the bottom and running to get the leaves before another woman, or a cow, got there first. Here is a pic :) Notice how high up those kids are! Oh, and the leaves are yummy, btw. Much better than salty onion water without leaves.

My garden is still almost like my child and it is tucked firmly under my wing. The blistering heat, which easily reaches 130 in the sun (it was actually measured 142 in the sun yesterday), is detrimental for the cold loving cabbage that is flourishing in my garden due to my constant surveylance of my make shift shade structure. The sun has managed to fry a couple cabbage plants on the edge of my shade structure, but the others are all beautiful! Unfortunately, I didn't take a pic. I will next time. Who wants to see a bunch of cabbage anyway?

Cabbage is the only vegetable I have in my garden. The others have been toasted or pulled and eaten. Don't get me wrong though, there are other things sprouting: Trees, of course! My pepeniere has begun sprouting and it's perdy. Thats all I have to say about that.

So I've been kicking myself into gear and I had the chief of the village call a town meeting. Nobody showed up. What a damper, eh? Perhaps it's because they called for it to be at 10:00 in the evening and people were eating, sleeping, or drinking tea! Heck, I wanted to get out of there to pull water. Yes, I have been pushed to pull water at night now because of all the issues of people throughout the day. There have been several issues at the forage and I've been having fun with it. On days that I get bored in my hut I will go out and interview villagers about the water problem. It's kinda like I'm in a mystery novel. It's hard to explain this, so I will stop. Needless to say, there is a water problem in my village which makes my job rather difficult. Maybe I can help do something about the water problem?

In the meantime, pulling water at night is great because African women, or people that pull water, are afraid of the dark. There is no one there at night except the occasional man and his bike and bidons. They are all super nice. The night water pulling crew are now buddies.

Oh, and here is just one example of why it's not very fun to pull water during the day. People waiting in line while people are pumping non stop trying to water their cows. It's the Thiabedji equivalent to a Los Angeles rush hour. Very stressful. I've witnessed several physical fights that have come out of this issue. Oh and I finally got a pic of the forage. This is kinda a medium amount of people. There are cows waiting but most aren't in the shot.

There is a red chicken that hangs out in my compound that can fly. She flies into my garden and digs up my stuff so she can lay in the damp dirt because it's cool. I have turned that chickens life into a living hell because she killed several of my veggies and completely terminated a eucalyptus germination bed that I have been watering for 2 weeks. Everyone within 1000 feet of me knew I had it in for that chicken. The chicken knew I had it in for the chicken. Every time she saw me she would give me her upset "squawk squawk!" before tucking her tail-feathers and running, even before I started chasing her. Haha, I got many hysterical laughters thrown my way as I circled my compound swinging a huge bamboo stick and chucking rocks with my other stick, shouting curse words in Pular. They would ask me what veggies she destroyed now and I would tell them. After about 4 days of this I stopped seeing the chicken altogether. A couple days later I saw her at a different neighbors house. I saw her from quite a distance away but still when she saw me she freaked out. Hehe. She knows better now!

Hehe, so you guys still think I had a meeting in which nobody showed up. Don't worry! There was another one the next afternoon and lots of people showed up and the meeting lasted over an hour! We discussed trees, trees and trees! Then we discussed douches. I am going to continue with a douche project the the volunteer before me was working on. The village was happy to hear that. After my meeting I had a lot of potential farmers to work with, and a lot of excitement to start making pepenieres! I also visited the best "tree field" in my village. The only bananas and the only successful mango orchard in my village. It was very interesting! Bananas need a lot of water to grow and this man did it! His field just happened to be by a river with a part tucked under for flooding for the rainy season, so voila, water!

Here are the bananas. Actually kinda dry now because there is no water. :P

Water in Pular is Ndiem. Cool huh? Ndiem is very important and very hard to come by. Sorry I'm talking nonsense, I'm kind of sleepy.

The puppy is good. I don't know if I mentioned it but he is the puppy of Aggie, the family's dog that came from a volunteer that lived in my village about 3 years ago. She has about two litters a year. Hendu is now the last puppy around. The last girl was lucky, just as I was handing her over to my brother who was going to go strangle her in the forest (we had no choice, no one wanted her), a man said he would take her. He made me name her, I called her jack because it was the only thing I could think of that he could pronounce. Here is a pick of Jack on her day of reckoning. She is lovely.

Anyway, my pup! He seems to have brains. He is growing. I've been bonding with my kids a lot. I realize that before coming here I had pretty much no experience with kids. In American I went to a kid's 1 year old birthday party and had no idea how to treat a baby. Now I play with my 1 year old sister, Fatu, all the time. We are like best buds! I've become my own self proclaimed professional at getting my 4 year old sister, Dienaba, to stop crying. I like to make faces at my 6 year old brother, Usuman, while we are eating. It makes him laugh.

Here is Aggie, Dienaba, and Fatu. Dienaba was messing with Aggie putting lolly pop sticks between her toes. Aggie is very patient with the kids but when they start poking her or hitting her with sticks she will growl at them and My sis will hear and tell the kids, "Achu bareru!" or "Stop dog!" (stop messing with the dog)

Im getting tired of eating rice and corn and peanuts all the time. I don't tell my family this because it would hurt their feelings. The starving season is only beginning and my family has no money. Yay! I've lost lots of weight. It's cool. I'm helping my family out a lot. They are my family, after all. My brother sent me about one billion drink mix things. Thank you, brother, my sugar is set. Sleping outside is great. My whole fam sleeps outside. There isn't a huge bug problem because it's the dry season and a lot of flying insects die. Oh, here is my sis and 2 of her kids sleeping outside. I opened my door and had to take a pic.

Ok, closing thought! I came back to Kedougou yesterday with the auto Lumo, or the market bus. Every wednesday an african bus thing caled an alhum takes a bunch of supplies to restock the boutiques. It also takes people. Then it drives back the same day. The ride is 2 dollars. So I hitched a ride yesterday, sitting snuggles up with African women all sittingon sacks of corn. I will be spending the next week in Kedougou, and we are going to a nearby small city called Makko for work purposes. A regional strategy meetting/regional getaway. I will take the car back to my village the following wednesday. Im taking the car because it would be hard to carry a 120lb sack of rice, a queen sized foam matress, 50ish oranges, a propane gas thing, and myself back to my village on a bike.

So a picture. Our auto Lumo got a flat tire about halfway home. This is never a big deal, btw, flat tires just haappen. So we all got off while they fixed it and I was bored so I just started taking pics and then made someone take a picture of my andd got several people to be in it with me. So here is the pic. It was taken yesterday, so it's new. yay!