NEVERMIND...

...about heading back to village today. This morning, a little after 8:00 am, I biked over to the Kédougou garage (a big dirt parking lot hemmed by tin-roofed boutique warehouses and lunch shacks) and bought a ticket for the next car to Salémata. I settled in with my books for what would turn out to be a futile eight-ish hour wait.

During those hours I ate the Spiced Pumpkin Pie Clif Bar that Santa left in my stocking (which was delicious), rode my bike back to the regional house for snacks and to use the latrine, and made a big impression on a gaggle of older Pular men who grew increasingly impressed as they watched me read three books, one after another.  Those books were Daughter of Fortune, which I really liked, Take the Cannoli [Stories from the New World], which was great even though I'd already heard almost all the stories on This American Life, and Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea, which turned out to be pretty much the perfect thing to read after sitting on a narrow bench in a crowded dusty lot all day long.

Around lunchtime I got up and very sweetly told the guy who's in charge of selling tickets that if the car didn't fill up by 4:00 pm I'd need to leave, because after that it would be possible that I'd be arriving in Salémata after dark and my boss at Corps de la Paix forbids me from travelling at night. (That's a real rule, though Safety & Security does make occasional exceptions) As it turns out, I'm really glad I had that little chat, and that I was very polite.  

Eventually 4:00 pm rolled around, and much to the ornery driver's irritation (other passengers were grumbling about refunds and so far had been refused) I quietly got my money back from the ticket guy and rode off to buy a ticket from the Niokolo Transport office, which has a truck that reliably goes out to Salémata on Monday and Friday mornings at 8:00 am. So, sometimes being a toubab means I have to put up with extra hassles, but sometimes being foreign (and invoking Peace Corps rules) seems to make it easier to duck out of unpleasant situations.  Sticking out like a bespectacled DayGlo thumb is a mixed bag.  

Anyway. The water's on for the moment so I think I'll take an outdoor shower, download some podcasts, heat up some soup, make the most of an extra night at the Regional House. And then tomorrow morning I'll actually head back to village. Inchallah.

Back to Salémata

I'm off to village and am planning to spend New Year's Eve in Ethiolo with my friend and her Bassari host family. The Bassari around here are mostly Catholicized animists, so they care a little more about the Gregorian calendar's new year than most people in our area. 

Also, thanks to GoogleMaps I can show you around Popenguine, Salémata and our little corner of Kédougou. 

Happy New Year! 

Fête Noël

I spent Christmas in Popenguine, a little beach town just south of Dakar, it was wonderful, and here are a few of the highlights. 

MERRY HAPPY!

Chrishaunakwanstice, Fancy Baking Day, Christmas Adam, White Elephant Night...  I love the holidays. And Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwaanza, and Tamharit, New Years' Eve, those are nice, too. 

This year I'll be spending Christmas in  Popenguine with some Peace Corps friends (including Emma and her family visiting from Amerik) and I'm sure that Christmas on the beach will be fantastic, but I know that part of me will be thinking of another West Coast. 

Family time, gingerbread houses and a Cheeseboard cheese platters... winter in California is generally pretty lovely, and last year was no exception. And now I'm feeling all nostalgic.

Merry Happy, Everyone! 

Business Lunch

These photos are from awhile ago, but better late than never. The youth camp in Dindéfélo  that I helped out with in September was partially sponsored by several mining companies, including a Canadian company called Teranga Gold, and one of their representatives came to Kédougou and took some of the PCVs, a couple local officials, and a few interpreters out for a fancy lunch at the Bedik hotel. 

They wanted to hear bout what we do out in our villages, and it was interesting to hear about the (vastly different) lifestyles of other foreigners living and working in Senegal. Also, lunch was really delicious. 

Work Etc

When I moved into a little mud hut fifty miles down a dirt road in the middle of Nowhere, West Africa,  I was expecting many things. Pulling water from wells. Keeping my knees covered. Extreme heat. I wasn't really expecting that there would be so many Excel charts involved. Volunteer Reporting Forms, surveys, spreadsheets, reports, project planning, funding paperwork... sometimes living en brousse is a lot like living in D.C., just without roll-y chairs or electricity during the day.

This is my hut. And also my office. 

This is my floor. And also my desk. 

If you're interested in what I do at the office, you're welcome to take a look at the Action Plan (English), the Plan d'Action (français), and the Salémata Baseline Assessment that I submitted after my observation period and baseline survey and all that.  Between other project opportunities coming up and all the interruptions that we're expecting around election time, it's hard to figure out what will actually happen when,  but it's nice to start with a plan. 

Peanut Butter

People in my region eat a lot of peanut sauce (my family has some sort of peanut sauce with rice for lunch every day) and that means that people make a lot of peanut butter (called tiga diga) which is a key ingredient. To make peanut butter they dry, shell, and roast the peanuts over the fire, and then pound and roll them into a paste. 

My family has a grinder (it looks like something you'd use to make sausage) but it's been broken for awhile now. 

The days of grinding peanuts into butter

Since the grinder's out of commission they take the roasted peanuts, pound them with a pestle in a big wooden mortar, and then they get glass bottle and a very flat rock or a thin slab of smooth tile and roll the pounded nuts into a very smooth butter. 

Mariama Gaulo making tiga diga

It's good, if you like unsweetened, unsalted peanut butter, which I do. My family only uses peanut butter to make sauce, and so when they found out that I like to put it on bread for breakfast (which is fantastic with bananas when I can find them) they balked a little. I figure they feel about my peanut butter sandwiches the same way that I feel about their straight-up mayonnaise sandwiches -- bismillah, to each their own, but I will stick with what I've got, thanks.