Fire and Rain Daze

I am here when I am online. This is the computer that my brother bought and sent to me. Thanks, Sean. Life savor! That is a nice restaurant across the street. Unfortunately, no goats in the road at this time.

Blog time! Another blog of what seems to me to be a babble of complete randomness. These days I just take a seat in a hammock at the regional house every two or three weeks with my laptop, and write whatever comes into my head about what possibly could have happened since the last blog that I can tell about without really confusing or freaking anybody out. Haha. One example, no, I did not get eaten by hyenas and half the village is not giving me endless shit for being a crazy tubab.

Well lets see. Ive been spending 7-10 days in my village and then going somewhere else for two or three days. I went to the Basari festival for a day and a night, which was cool. We got to be tourists for a little bit. Unfortunately, my camera broke (just stopped working) so ictures are limited now. I ordered a new one but that could take well over a couple months to actually get into my hands. Ohhhhh Africa.

Every time I come into the Kedougou house I am greeted by one or two volunteers that also just got in. After a certain amount of isolation it's always nice to ask, "how are things going at site?" I greeted a volunteer this morning, who was just in his village for about 8 days and asked that question, which really, depending on what mood you are, can be a great or ridiculous question. His answer was:

"Well, lets see, We just got electricity in my village, and there are classes going on for how to build tractors, and now we are working on some new irrigation systems. And u?" And of course I replied, "Well we just finished our last household robinet (a water spicket), so now all houses have running water, and we are working hard on the barbed wire fencing project to enclose each individual farming plot.

Of course we are being sarcastic. Thats what stereotypical development is, right? But really, development just aint all peas and carrots. not when you start with a village that has just about nothing. So, when asked that question, it's hard to say what is really going on in your mind, like "well, nobody is really ever at the school to work on the pepeniere," or"Ive been trying to explain the basics of grafting to people but every word that comes out of my mouth must be Chinese," or, I just feel like people want to talk to me about development because they want to see how good my Pular is, but they never actually do anything."

And it's true. It's not always easy to be a PCV. Some days you will find nothing but failure and do nothing but discover new obstacles. Then you will go into your room for a day or two and wonder what you are doing here, and maybe even shed a tear. Then you will think of Abe Lincoln and how he failed so many times and then became this really famous guy so you think, "ok, failure isn't the end of the world."

Then when you are moping in your yard just starting to drink your powdered milk coffee drink, a man comes and pounds on your door, and (all of this is completely hypothetical, by the way), and asks, angrily, where the heck you've been, that he keeps coming over but you haven't been there and he wants you to look at his mangos and talk about oranges. So you go on over, leaving your coffee behind because you feel bad, and are tired of sitting around anyway, and end up biking out to his field. There you find your purpose. A man who is a step above the rest, who has all his stuff together, has been working his butt off for years on a goal and been through failure after failure and has come to me for help. You see the efforts of his labors in his fields, his dead banana plants, dried up garden lots, young mango trees beautifully spaced, but half died of thirst. Heck, he even planted a live fence. What he needs, you are there for. Who he is, you are there for. It's almost like PC fate! What he seeks to get and what you seek to do are hand in hand! And so with all the failures comes a little light.

Antics. Life. Work. Well, one day I was bored in my village. Imagine that. Just sitting around my compound. My neene (mom), started talking frantically about a fire and something about someones house being on fire. So she yelled at her daughter to get some water and off she went. Me, being bored, decided to tag along. Neene had 10 liters of water on her head and was walking really fast, stopping ever couple of minutes because her flip flop came apart. I would pick it up for her and put it back together and off we would go again. We walked up to the fire with my snapping photos (camera not yet broken). No house was on fire. But someone was burning brush in their field and the wild carried it and it got out of control. That happens all the time here, really. So people were all over, local fire fighters, smacking the fire with leafy branches, and woman after woman arriving with water, handing it over to the men who sprinkled it on the borders of the flames. Low and behold, they put the fire out. It was a fun sight to see. I only really told this story because I have pics :)

Then, after we got home, I invited my mom to go shoe shopping. I bought her some shoes and Nicolas, the shop man said that god will reward me for being so good to my mother.

There is a mountain I climb. It takes about 1 hour to get from my house to the top. Hendu always comes with me. The first time I climbed the mountain I had to carry him halfway because he was so small and didn't have enough energy. Now he is bigger and can make the whole trip. It is because of my nature adventures that the village thinks I'm a crazy tubab. Why would someone wander into the forest with a book instead of a machete? There is no recreation for villagers. Anyway, I do a lot of exploring and find some amazing places, and trees, and rocks. The land here is beautiful! I watched the sunset from my mosquito-net hammock (thanks, Mom) from the top of the mountain, eating cashew chicken curry (thanks, Aunt Debbie), listening to the BBC with Hendu laying under me.

Another day I was sitting on top of the mountain, texting my friend watching a forest fire in a neighboring village consume hundreds of acres of forest. Silly farmer, setting fire in such windy conditions. I drew a baobab and read Barack Obamas book.
Yeah, so the seasons are changing! It's spring in America, a transitional season, and it's the beginning of the rainy season here, and the end of the hot dry season. The first rain came on the 12th of may and it was torrential! I have never ever seen rain like that in real life. What an opening storm to the new season. It started with wind that could knock over a sleeping cow. And did not allow you to keep your eyes open. It ripped straw off of poorly thatched roofs. Then the rain fell, hard. It flowed and pooled in not so good places and all the men came out with their tools to dig drainage paths because houses (outdoor livingrooms) were flooding. Me, I was in my room that day watching. Thunder and lightning everywhere. Hendu was terrified and laid by my open door, curled up in a ball, shivering. Got a pic of this!

So the rain will come slowly. The heat will decline slowly. It hasn't rained like that since, just little storms here and there. It's still hot but now it is humid soout sweat doesn't get evaporated. We all smell reallybad now and sweat 24 hours a day. You can shower and dry off and immedialtely start sweating again. It's pretty gross. But one adjusts...

Farmers are sweeping and burning rubbish in their fields to prepare for planting. I'm looking forward to seeing the most primitive farming around. People hand dig and plant their fields, protect them from animals by spending all day in their fields shoeing them away, and then they harvest the food all by themselves, by hand. How fun.

Oh yeah and here is some pics of the inside of my hut. I had requests for these. You know, my hut is tiny. Im pretty sure there isn't a volunteers with a hut smaller than mine. Yet, everyone who has seen it says that it is lovely. It's funny. I'm known in American to have too much stuff and in turn I become a messy slob with things all over the place. Im not like that here. You go into my hut and think I have nothing. Nothing is really on the floor, and I have no shelves. I have very few clothes hung on a line above head level. Really, this cleanliness was an accident. I hate mice in my room. Every place that everything it has the underlying philosophy of keeping mice out of my room. They have nowhere to hide. :) So, on the floor is a bed, a table, a chair, a trunk and a suitcase. That is all.

And my backyard :)

Thats all for now.