Privy Party!

Back in August my amazing grandmother (with lots of support from my equally amazing mother and family) decided to celebrate her birthday by hosting a lovely tea party to benefit the latrine-building project I’d proposed. She called it a Privy Party and it was a resounding success. She raised so much money that I was able to expand the project, increasing the number of latrines that we’ll be able to build.

I can only hope that the latrines
will turn out as well as the tea party did ~ 

My community here is very excited about this project, and I’m eager to start building, but there are still a few weeks left until the rainy season is definitively over and building can begin. I’ll be doing my best to make the most of this time to increase awareness of the importance of latrines and of how to go about getting involved with the project - each participating family will provide a contribution, learn about disease prevention and latrine use and maintenance, and assist with the construction of their latrine. It’s not a hard sell; people around here are generally really enthusiastic about latrine use. Some compounds already have latrines, but they’re often used by a large number of people, leading to the latrine prematurely filling up and breaking down.  Many other houses have no latrine at all, and so people resort to practicing outdoor defecation (a fancy way to say pooping off in the bushes or out in the fields) or settle for using a neighbor’s latrine when they can, which is fine but tends to exacerbate the overuse problem.

I really can’t do enough to thank all the people who contributed to this project – especially my family – but I will do my best to post updates as the project progresses and to (eventually!) send out thank-you cards. It’s been really moving to see how engaged and motivated people are to help other people improve their communities.

Happy Ramadan everyone!

It's Ramadan again! I wrote about Ramadan last year and about the things that people eat during Ramadan, so I won't go over the basics again. Last year, as a show of solidarity and out of curiosity, I fasted for one day, and I may do that again at some point. My host family understands that I'm not Muslim and wouldn't want me to actually do the day-long food-and-water fast for the entire month, both because it's not my religion and because they are (rightly, I think) convinced that I would probably get really sick if I swore off drinking water and eating during the day for four weeks. So, that means that, once again, I'll be stuck at the little-kid bowl at lunch time, or be given a bowl of ñankatonk (steamed rice mixed with dried okra, ground peanuts, bullion and hot pepper) to eat alone in my hut.

Really what's been on my mind, other than the terrible muddy state of our road, is my left big toe. Last December I injured it while biking in flip-flops (I know, I know) and a piece of the right half of the nail. It was doing a marvelous job of growing back in, right up until about a week ago, when it started to feel like the top right corner of the nail was in a knife fight with the top right corner of my toe. The Peace Corps doctor asked me to send her photos (see below) and then basically told me to soak it in warm water, keep an eye out for infections, be stoic, and just let it finish growing out. If I don't mess with it, it will sort itself out and I won't need to go up to Dakar to have them fix it. That's our hope, anyway.

My 4th of July polish is hanging in there. 

In any case, it's sunny and clear now, so the road is drying out. Tomorrow morning I'm going to head over to the garage and see if there are any cars going back to village. Until then I'll be hanging out on the Regional House porch, soaking my foot and trying to catch up on e-mail.