Biking in to Town

Today my sitemate Little Jess and I biked from Salémata to the Regional House in Kédougou , about 80 kilometers/50 miles on a fairly terrible laterite road. My pants caught on my bike and ripped all the way across my upper upper thigh, Jess fell in a huge mud puddle and had to fish around in it for her flip flops, by noon it felt like we were on the sunny side of Mercury, and all we ate was Biskrem and bananas. 

Obviously, it was pretty fantastic, we're going to do it again soon. 

Yesterday was Tabaski (more on that when the photos upload) and we came in to Kédougou today for the day, to check mail, enjoy the Install Dinner for the new Agriculture/Forestry volunteers. We (Meera, really) cooked up a giant vat of delicious, delicious chili, it's going to be great.

Village/Other People's Blogs

It's been a busy week or so, and now I''m headed back to village for a few days.

I'll be back next week to help welcome the new Agriculture PCVs when they arrive for Installs, but in the meantime if you want to read more I've added more links to my list of blogs written by PCVs in Senegal. 

Tamba-ween!

We all went to Tambacounda for Halloween, and the Tamba PCVs did an excellent job of decoarting and cooking for a crowd - there were impressive decorations and lots of treats, from chili, hummus, and cucumber salads to squash bread, cookies, and gissap. And of course, there were costumes:

After Halloween was over it was time to head back, so everyone going to Kédougou all piled clown-car style into a mini-bus and hit the road. In the Niokolo-Koba National Park we stopped for a minute to stretch our legs (one of the biggest mefloquine side effects is that your limbs fall asleep all the time) and were warned by the police to watch our bags because there monkeys that hang out and snatch things that people unattended. 

Mbour!

After Dakar we all headed south, stopping along the way to spend a night in Mbour, a little beach town a little ways down the coast from Dakar. (These are the sorts of photos that I post to show people exactly why they should come visit.)

Mural on the campement balcony

View from the balcony

View from the beach

After the beach we celebrated Wilma's birthday by went tasting at Les Liqueurs de Warang, a Hangar One-styleSenegalese distillery started by Belgian family, where they make flavors like ginger-bissap, chocolate-banana cream, baobab, and cashew-fruit.

Wilma, the birthday girl, and Leah

Les Dakarois

After the  Health/EE Summit my friend Leah and I went up to Dakar and had a wonderful time visiting Rachel & Emily at their completely lovely home, which, coming from village, pretty much seemed like Hearst Castle to us.

(Rachel is going to make the best baby blankets.)

I took some photos out the window of our sept-place (the hearse-looking station wagons that have seven seats) to capture the stunning scenic beauty of the Dakar freeways. 

It was mostly partly finished houses and rubble piles and the occasional baobab, but also a surprising number of these bizarre billboards encouraging everyone to "Be clever like Leuk!" and get bank loans to buy Christmas/a fridge. Leuk is apparently the father of a family of rabbits with human bodies? 

Thiès!

Last week there was a Health/EE Summit at the Thiès Training Center, which meant that all the Health and Environmental Education volunteers in Senegal came in to talk about projects, do presentations on Best Practices for things that went well (which is helpful) and Lessons Learned for things that were fiascoes  (which is far more entertaining) and grant-writing and whatnot. 

Also, there are some very savvy artisan ladies who came and set up shop in the Training Center courtyard, so Emma and Ivy and I did a little necklace-and bracelet shopping during breaktime.

Jewelry shopping with Emma at the Training center 

Then we went for a walk downtown and saw this huge, green, spiky, neat-looking caterpillar. Good times.

Ivy and the caterpillar