We're now less than three months from my proposed COS (Close of Service) date. As in, I've been in this country for nearly two years (minus a couple weeks). More on that to come. But for now, I just wanna show you a few photo's from the last couple days. After an exhausting stretch of Dakar/Med, Peer Support Conference, Close of Service Conference, and All Volunteer Conference, I got back to St. Louis, my second home. I seriously needed a day of alone time before heading back to site, but ended up "stuck" here for four days (24 hours alone time, three meetings and some paper-work/emails). Finally going back tomorrow.

In Peace Corps med sessions they tell you to be vigilant in your self-care activities, and that you may find you have to essentially double them to deal with the stress of this life. Well, ... I love this life, but they weren't joking. And I would proudly say that this experience has actually improved my ability to create and care for positive self-care techniques. So, here's a couple I've engaged in in the last few days:

Cooking myself an excellent meal with market-fresh ingredients:

This is a tomatoe based vegetable and fish curry with fry bread. Soooo good.

Today when I realized I wasn't getting home today because my meeting went past 5:00, I decided to take the long way home. As I've mentioned before, sometimes just going for a walk through this city changes my whole perspective. I wandered through the market, and somehow got myself in a conversation with a henna artist. For the next ten minutes I was drawn on, surrounded by a crowd, being a celebrity. Sometimes it really hits the spot. Everyone wants to see the toubab that speaks Wolof...
So,First I agreed to 500 CFA. But that was for the Chinese hair dye that tears my skin apart. He said 1000 for the Indian henna. Although I never agreed, I knew I was caught. But he only did my indext finger and half of the work on my hand. So when he asked for his money I told him if I was gonna give him 1000, he better add to it. So I got the other three fingers and the side fill in. In the end he tried to get me to give him more, and although I refused, he still added the fingernails. ::shrug::



I moved along with my original plan: to buy some cheap solid-color cotton to do some bleach dying. AAfter going into six shops I finally found the perfect color. I bought it, walked home down the long, beautiful corniche... it was a bright and extremely windy day, and the cold-season migratory birds were bobbing on the choppy waters. Then I did this:

I left about a third of it un-dyed. It's 5 yards total. The plan is to take it all to a tailor and have them do something fabulous with it. :) I'll put pictures of that up in a bit.

Love, Senegal.

Gamou

I recently posted to facebook the following: “Gamou-ed. In Tivaoune. Now I know I can survive anything.” And ya know, it was certainly trying at times. Overwhelming and at times extremely uncomfortable to say the least. But considering the fact that I spent all day yesterday smiling about it, it must not have been that bad. In fact, it was pretty crazy awesome. Perhaps at least in part for the fact that I pushed through all those challenges without giving up or even searching for respite by calling the volunteer that some crazy admin process placed in that city. Of course, when it isn’t Gamou it’s probably pretty much like any other medium sized city. So Gamou, what is that, and where is Tivaoune?

                Tivaoune is a city just outside of Thies on the way to St. Louis, right at the point on the national highway where you would turn to go to by training homestay site of Mboro. It is the religious center of the Tidian brotherhood (one of two major Islam groups here), and the home of their Serigne (big leader dude) and graves of lots of past Serignes. It’s a mid-size city with several mosques, one of which is still under construction. Gamou is a holiday of pilgrimage.  In other words, if you can, you’re supposed to go to Tivaoune and visit the Serignes. What exactly the date signifies is unclear to me. Something about Mohammad and the awesome creation of the world by Allah, or perhaps the bringing of Mohammad into it. When religious things are explained to me I get thrown off by the amount of Arabic mixed in, though I think probably most of it consists of things like special additions to the names Mohammad and Allah to mark their sanctity.

                So I got invited to go by Modou, and couldn’t pass up the chance for a number of reasons. Though I’m fairly sure that if anyone else had invited me the doubts and concerns I had about accessible privacy and comfortable sleeping quarters would have overwhelmed my anthropological curiosity. Anyway, the time came, and after a bit of stress and confusion, there I was on a normal little beat up bus like I always take from St. Louis to Fass, on my way to Gamou. See whatshouldpcvscallme.tumblr.com for gifs that might explain some of my thoughts, particularly “I immediately regret this decision” and “That is a crazy thing to do.” But I was sitting next to a good friend, Modou was directly in front of me, and so we went. When we got off in Tivaoune it was already after 11PM, and the streets were absolutely packed. This was the night before the actually day of Gamou, so everyone was still arriving. On a normal two lane road, at least one edge was lined with Buses and “cars”, both sides were snaked with lines of people, charettes were rolling by with shocking frequency while two directions of traffic still tried to pass through. At about midnight we got to a house. Turns out it was the house for my host sister (who lives far away and I hardly know)’s husbands family. Large compound, lots of room, and about 100 people sleeping on mats in the sand under plastic tarps. I knew Modou’s father’s family had a house somewhere else, so I hesitantly thought “surely this is not where I’m sleeping.” … Wrong. Of course, if I’d know I would have brought a blanket, but… I didn’t and a packed in a hurry. The under-the-tarp space was full so me and a girl from my family who came with us to see her boyfriend got a mat and a sheet right at the edge of the puddle of bodies fully moured in sheets. When the two men left to go find their sleeping quarters I was too exhausted to do anything but lay down. I tried to mimic those around me hoping that magically I wouldn’t be too cold to sleep. Surely it was about 62 degrees, but for me… that’s really freaking cold. I had on full length exercise leggings, my shin-length yoga pants, a light cotton wrap skirt, a tank-top, a t-shirt, and a thin sweater. I wrapped in the sheet, even pulling it over my face hoping my breath would warm me. Not enough. I got out both skirts I’d packed, parts of my absolute nicest outfits, to use as extra sheets. I used the cape I’m crocheting for my mom as a pillow (in a zip-lock bag) but couldn’t chance ruining or soiling it by using it as a blanket. Last I looked at my phone it was 2:40, and I dozed. Only to be woken by RAIN.  … RAIN!!!... Like I said, there wasn’t room left under the tarp. Fortunately it was only a sprinkle, and since there was LITERALLY nothing I could do but wait it out, that’s what I did. After the sun rose and I heard the mosque call the morning prayer I actually slept a bit. Of course, then I woke up at about 9 to lots of people asking “Who’s the toubab? Who’s guest is she?” And no one actually knew the answer. So—Thank GOD I managed to not be completely wrecked with grouchiness—I told them who I was and what connection I had to the house that I would be staying there. Thanks to my experience here thus far I knew the best place for me was with the women who were cooking breakfast. First, they had a fire. Second, if I was with them, I’d get the first taste of coffee. I had survived the night, and new that things could only get better from there. And if it came to it, I could always leave before nightfall.

                Modou called pretty soon thereafter to explain that he’d left me there because he wasn’t sure of having a better place for me that late. He slept in the back of a friend’s car. He was going to check out his dad’s family’s place and come get me in a bit. Good, cool. Warm, coffee. Mind you, I’m still in this house with a hundred strangers, and this one woman just decides she’s going to sort-of sponsor me. Thank God for her. I got breakfast, got a shower, laid down for about 30 minutes to meditate. Then we went out to walk around a bit, and when we got back Modou was already there. We sat and talked on a mat, I met his cousin, and then we all went over to his Dad’s house.

                As soon as we got there, I was instructed to get in the back of a truck and sit and talk to people… okay, Senegal. The people there were great and this became my home base for the rest of Gamou. Turns out his Uncle and his wife drive this truck down for Gamou every year so they can have their own room to sleep in and sit in all day drinking attaya and soda and eating yummy stuff. I don’t remember them calling me a toubab once in that truck, and we just talked and talked for several comfortable hours. After meeting one of his sisters, she took me into the house and I met a few other people, but there were, again, about a hundred people there. So, man, Thank God for that truck, and Thank God for those wonderful people. We ate stupid amounts of meat in onion sauce with friend potatoes, only later did I learn that I was eating camel… We drank stupid amounts of attaya, of which I was given (Every Time) the first cup, despite my protests. And in the evening we went back to the other house where I had left my clothes and such so I could put on my second nice outfit, only to sit in the truck for dinner and tea and then go to sleep. But, it was just so much Fun! The guys left at about midnight to go Siarra ji (walk around through the mosques praying and “gnaning” (asking for…) Allah) and go to jangs (those loud things in tents where griots eat the microphones and people in boubous sit around swaying and clapping). So, it was just me and the older folks in the truck, and we joked and laughed a bit before lying down to go to sleep.

                Buuuuttt… Gamou is strangely like a music festival in America. You have your home base, and your place to sleep, but there is never a moment where it’s silent. There is constant music in the distance, constant coming and going of people doing who know’s what. You fall asleep to these sounds and wake to the same.

                The second day we sat around for until lunch ended, and the women told me they were going to Siarra ji, if I wanted to come along. This was the whole point of the holiday, so Yeah, I wanted to go. But, midday, the truck full of people, I had to do a quick change. The night before with only three people in the truck I had pulled on my sleeping pants under my skirt, and changed my shirt while no one was looking. This time though, there were a dozen people milling about. I wrapped my nice skirt over the dingy one I had been wearing all day, then moved to the back corner of the vehicle with my top. After awkwardly trying to get someone to hold up a sheet for me to change my shirt with no luck, I just took my top off. It’s integration, right? When we got back from Siarra-ji-ing, everyone was impatient to leave and the truck was already pulling away. But there was no way I was traveling in my fancy clothes. So, right there on the side of a busy street in Tivaoune, I did a Senegalese change. This time I wrapped my dingy skirt over my nice one and pulled the nice one off, then, again, I just had to take my top off. … Writing it makes it sound like no big deal, but this means that for just a moment I was on a busy street in one of the religious capitals of my host country in a skirt and a bra. But this is Senegal, and no one I was with even flinched. … Integration complete.

                I guess that’s the end of the story. As with all celebrations here, the actual event is enfolded in hours of sitting around talking, drinking tea, and eating meat. There’s the basic fact. But as for the experience, I was amazed how comfortable and NON-displaced I felt. After my first painful night, once I got to that truck, I felt like I was just a part of the family. No one even called me toubab! Well, none of the people I was actually sitting with. There was plenty of that on the streets. Although I had no private space, struggled with the basic comforts of going to the bathroom, brushing my teeth and taking a shower, I felt comfortable and looked-out for. So,… the end. Onward.

Check the pictures.

So, ya know how I mentioned that this is just the place where I live now?? SO much even more so now that cold season is here. There’s a freedom in cold season that comes from the ability to travel whenever you feel like it because you don’t constantly have to think about heat exhaustion, dehydration, or sunburn. In the last week I’ve walked to my road town three times (back twice), and today I took a detour to see the well my boyfriend is having dug in his new onion field. I see a man from my neighborhood who Always greets me with my last name phrase of respect (Points for him!) squatting on the edge of the well. They’re champion squatters (amazing balance and longevity), but it gives me that squiggly feeling in my stomach to see him like that, so despite his being a grown man I say before thinking “you should scoot back…” He chuckles a bit but my comment is otherwise ignored.  One of the workers asks me if I eat peanuts, and why. I laugh and tell him his question is silly. My gorgeous boyfriend shoots me a glowing smile, the kind that dimples the corners of his mouth and sparkles in his eyes. The worker adds, “I knew a guy that said if you eat a handful of peanuts every morning you can stay strong and vital 'til you’re a hundred years old.” “I dunno, you should try it. I mean, they’ve got protein so they build your muscles,” I feebly add… Yeah, I’m the one who’s here to teach about health… Caught up with some women from Fass on the path who had apparently gone to my village to get some bissap and peanuts (?? Something I don’t understand is going on there). When I got to Fass I was on “a mission to civilize” (Newsroom anyone? This is not, actually, a good idea) the rude children who call out “toubab” and then ask me for money. I called a couple of them out, asking if they greet everyone with a request for money. They said they did. So when a Senegalese man passed I encouraged them to ask him for money. They, of course, didn’t. In closing I told them “of course you don’t greet people that way. It’s rude. Don’t do it to me again.” Point of the story? If you’ve seen Newsroom, you probably know the result is you look (and feel) kind-of like a jerk/bully, and nothing changes in the behavior of the other person, but for just a moment you’ve made them feel small (which is, generally, a wretched thing to do to someone). ::sigh:: Well, onward. So, I got in a super cramped clanky windy bus-ish-thing and made it to town. I’m trying to live on the cheap right now, so I decided to get some street food. Got an accara sandwich, which is bean flower fritters with spicy onion sauce on a baguette. YUM! So, laden with my backpack, my Arabic newspaper wrapped sandwich and a large plastic bag of peanuts I’m taking to a friend’s husband’s house for her, I decide to get a coffee before I catch a cab to the apartment. It’s dark by now, but the streets are still bustling and lots of full cabs pass me before I can flag one down. It’s windy and cold, and I’m wearing three shirts, jeans, and finger-less mittens I found in our clothing exchange box (best.find.ever.), but I see Senegalese people in tee-shirts, ashy children in shorts, some wearing coats and scarves and hats… I get in the cab and offer the driver some coffee (sorry Virgos, but its rude not to, even with a complete stranger. And, sidenote, I actually take this very seriously. If someone is drinking coffee in front of me in a place where I cannot procure my own and does NOT offer me a drink… I take serious offence. If you’re going to consume something not easily available to everyone else, do it in private where no one can know about it. You save feelings on both sides.)… okay I offer the driver some coffee, he laughs with delight at my non-toubaby-ness and politely refuses. Friendly greetings and small talk ensue. When he lets me off at the apartment he thanks me. “No, you’re the one who gets thanks,” I reply. “Until next time, God willing,” he says, and I repeat “God willing.” And just as I’m about to close the door he sneaks in a “you’re really pretty.” I chortle and thank him, then go eat my sandwich. It’s really really good. But the cold has given me a serious case of chapped lips (chapped everything, really. Wish I had my camera to show you my feet…) and the kaani burns so bad I have to force myself to keep stuffing down the bean fritter goodness. 300 CFA, belly full.
Alright, well, I dunno. I had some energy to blog, so theres a little snapshot of an evening in the life.

Shouldn't I blog something retrospectively about Tabaski?
I'll upload pictures. Let me just say, it was awesome. Awesome outfits. Lots of meat and delicious yumminess. Fun dance party (?). Fun photo-shoots. LOTS of attaya.

"I thank the Lord for the people I have found." -Sir Elton John
"Ain't never lived a year better spent in Love." -Mumford and Sons

I'm here for just over five more months. And I've been here long enough that this is finally just the place where I live. There are So still things I don't understand, things that shock and jar me, and much of the Wolof language that I still don't know. But by and large my ex perience is full of the comfortingly normal stuff of daily life. But that daily life is definately different than the one I had in America. I think there is a large amount of stuff that I no longer even notice as different. Like my shower being scooped out of a bucket and the daily routine of tucking in my mosquito net. I get cold enough to need a sweater and scarf at about 73 degrees. So, it has become a bit daunting to blog.

Cold season is back, which is LOVELY. Just unbelievably lovely. All the people in my village are finishing the work of their rainy season crops. The beans have all come in, the men are finishing the last work of the peanuts and the women are finishing the last of the bissap. We just celebrated Tamkharite, which is the Muslim New Year. Night time meal of millet with meat and vegetables. FIBER!!!!!!!!!!! Which means, also, that Tabaski was already about a month ago. Which is just unbelievable. ... ::sigh:: Three lovely days. Photo's on facebook.

And, now I have to run back to village before it gets any later! I'll try to come up with something more to say sometime soon.

Girls Camp!

Camp Geum Sa Bopp (Believe in Yourself) ended yesterday morning. I saw the girls back to village and then came immediately back to St. Louis to recuperate for 24 hours. It was an amazing (but exhausting) experience. We go through most of our lives Not paying attention to the FACT that women are still not given equal rights to men. I almost qualified that statement with “in some parts of the world,” but the fact is that even in America there is clear inequality in some contexts. It’s a difficult thing to face the reality of this inequality and associated hardship, more so when you feel incapable of doing anything about it. So, this past week was an emotionally charged oscillation between kin-tingling optimism and angry depression. But the knowledge that what we were doing must in some way add energy to the slow-changing situation here in Senegal kept us all pushing through the exhaustion.

Why do I say the situation here is already changing? I’ll give you, as an example, my very favorite moment from the week. It took place during one of the harder moments from the week, so let me explain. I was responsible for an activity to encourage the girls to look critically at gender roles. Tragically, critical thinking is not structurally encouraged here in the educational or social spheres. Education follows, pretty exclusively, a memorization and reproduction paradigm, and the culture is highly community focused, and people are expected to accept and conform to community standards without thinking for themselves about what seems right or wrong. This is an oversimplification, and I’m also casting it in a negative light when it has its advantages. However, for the purposes of the activity I led, it made things difficult. We started by doing an activity called “agree/disagree” where we read a series of statements to which the girls respond by taking a place in a line under signs that read “agree,” “somewhat agree,” “somewhat disagree,” and “disagree.” Responses encouraged conversation, at least between a few vocal people, about whether or not men and women had easier or harder lives and were more capable of working in business or not.

So, feeling optimistic, we split into small groups to continue discussing these issues and gender roles in general. Unfortunately, there was a misunderstanding between myself and one of the counterparts that led these discussions to be more school-type question-regurgitation-ish than critical thinking, open conversations. The girls were simply reproducing lists of traditional gender responsibilities and NOT talking about where these standards came from and how they were restrictive or supportive, reasonable or not, etc. In fact, when a friend of mine asked her group “where do these ideas about gender limitations come from?” Someone responded “God,” effectively ending all possible future explorations there. So when we asked two girls from each group to get up and summarize their group conversations, we were all freaking out a little. It seemed that rather than encouraging women’s freedom, we were enforcing traditional gender roles! We didn’t know what to do. We tried to ask them to talk about how they felt about the roles or what they thought about them, but it was like we hit a wall.

When the second group got up to read their list, I told them to skip over anything they had that had already been said, and to only say things that hadn’t already been covered. This group, with a wonderful young woman from my village leading the summary, skipped to question three, which was “Think about your grandmother, your mother, and yourself. How have gender roles changed over time?” What she said still gives me chills. She explained that her grandmother wasn’t allowed to speak in the home and was expected simply to do what she was told by the men of the house. That even her mother wasn’t allowed to make decisions about her own life, that she had to married to the man her family chose, and again had no voice in the home. But, she continued, her generation was the first to have a voice. They were allowed to speak their opinions in the home, to chose who they want to marry and reject those they don’t want. Silent all these years… … Okay, I will not cry in a public café… Saving grace. This activity was immediately followed by a talk with a Human Rights Jurist. She’s a Senegalese woman who has master’s degrees in human rights and international development. And there was nothing compromised in what she said.

Clearly parts of the camp were pretty heavy. And we were regularly reminded that these beautiful young girls, full of so much promise, lived in the same world we all do, where far too many women become victims of abuse. Sometimes it seems to me that innocence is dead. Then I see the smiles on the girls as they sing songs and drum along, when they saw the ocean for the first time, when they were just sitting around talking together, and I know nothing can kill LOVE. And I know that because of this camp, for one week, these girls were given a boost. They were given a chance to lighten their loads, they were given encouragement and knowledge of how to pursue what they want in their lives, they were given a community where it’s normal to be strong and intelligent, they played and laughed and sang and danced.

Meanwhile, we volunteers got to learn some really fun new camp songs and bond both with the girls from our villages and with some amazing Senegalese women,  a couple of whom I’d like to take home with me just to be present in my village. True role models.

It’s a bittersweet ending, as camps always are. You wish you could all stay, but you know you have to go back to your daily lives. You hope the lessons learned and the energy created persist in the campers’ lives, and you just have to trust that it will have some impact.

Finally, I just want to say again, THANK YOU to all our donors. You guys made this possible, and at least for me, this has been the most meaningful thing I've done for the people of Khatete so far. Please know that your support, both financial and in spirit was greatly appreciated, and truly made a difference. THANK YOU! I can't say it enough.

Geming Sama Bopp in preparation for Camp Gem sa Bopp

Arriving at your favorite cafe in Saint Louis directly from village with your pants still wet from getting water from the well.... fabulous.

Okay! Just want to give you guys a little peek into the preparations for Camp Gem Sa Bopp (Camp Believe in Yourself), because I'm frickin' exhausted, but having a great time getting ready.  Joy of joys, this year I will be bringing three bright young women from my village to participate in the camp. And in order to make that possible, I had to test some serious boundaries of trust. First, my counterpart--who has yet to help me with a single project beyond brewing tea while I work--told me that she had to be invited in order for any of the families there to allow their children to go away with me for a week. I can absolutely understand her point, but she's not exactly the ideal camp counselor. See the lack of help working comment. Plus, we already have all the counselors we need, coming from other villages. And the directrice is a Wolof woman as well, so it's not like these girls are going to be with toubabs rekk. But, beautiful silver lining, my good friend's little sister is a college student, and helped me immensely in finding the girls who have now been invited to camp. She wrote me a list of names, then taught me about their grading system.

Over the course of three days, I went to each family, explained the camp and asked to see the girls' grades. Finally, I found the three candidates. One girl, the youngest of the three, had incredibly high scores, and her father was immediately happy to have his daughter participate. The mothers, however, mentioned briefly that a week was a long time to have one of the household workers absent. I held my ground and argued that the benefits to the entire household of sending a girl to this camp would, in the long run, far outweigh the damage of missing a week of chores. And hey, Papa agreed with me! Awesome.

Fortunately, the girl who helped me also had the highest scores in her class, and her mother and I get along really well. Her father passed away several months ago. It is with great pleasure that I was able to invite her to the camp, both because she's family friends and because of her help and automatic support in the process.

The third girl is the daughter of our village cheif. He is regularly absent from village, working in various other cities. She's the daughter of his first wife, who is a lovely woman and the sister of one of my best friends there. Plus one day she came to a tour with butt padded underwear on, extending her already sizeable bottom to ridiculous proportions. Plus at another tour she taught me to dance. Aaaanyway, we had to call the father to get his permission (sure, mutual parental concent is important, but this was clearly a "man gets the last word situation.) So, here is my best work moment so far in Peace Corps: On the phone for the 2nd time in one day because the first time he said "the problem is she won't be around to work in the feild," and then I ran out of credit. Ready to make the case, so much more so because of the BEAUTY of the barely restrained shaking in the mothers voice as she told me YES she wants her daughter to be able to go so she can have a good life, and here's what I needed to tell her husband to make sure he agrees.  So I spit it out, conscious of my slowed, extra clear articulation to mask MY internal quivering, and he says "It's no problem. When are you guys leaving?" And I turn to the girl as I pass the phone to the mother, and we just smile and laugh, and, man I almost did a happy dance.

Lot's of work left to do. By writing the grant, I agreed to be in charge of all the money, which means reviewing all the budgets and buying things and writing checks and stuff. And then I agreed to be co-in-charge of a day of the camp, which means preparing events, writing a schedule, and then writing my own budget for them. And meanwhile, my program director is coming to my village on thursday to explain to my village that, yeah, she's telling you the truth when she says she's here to work along side you guys, not for you, and she can't write a grant for anything without you guys contributing. ... Long story about how they still don't get that... But man, I love them. And now, I finally feel like I've been able to do something substantial that will (inch'allah) actually help my village.

Camp starts Sunday, so stay tuned for camp stories and pictures! And once again, HUGE thank yous to all of you who donated!!! I can't tell you how excited these girls are and how excited we volunteers are!

Article superlative noun time-marker

I have a feeling this post is going to be rather disjointed. I listened to a pod-cast not long ago by an RPCV (Returned Peace Corps Volunteer) who, aged 50 or something, said she didn’t really begin to feel like she could process her Peace Corps experience for at least five years after finishing. … I can totally see that. So, meanwhile, I’ll offer the disjointed glimpses of thoughts and experiences I have, because, well, my mom keeps asking me to blog.  ( :-P)

I’ve been in Dakar for two weeks. Well, by the time I leave tomorrow, it’ll be one week, six days and about 16 hours. In the past 15 days I’ve been on Ciprofloxin, Zithromax, Ibuprofen, Acetaminophen, Paracetamol, Tramodol, and whatever they inject as a local anaesthetic for dental procedures. But, oh man, after my root canal yesterday, I am pain free and off all medicines!! Yay!!!! I cannot tell you how thrilled I was when they told me the root canal had been scheduled and how expectantly I was counting down the minutes 'til I got those injections…

The evening before the crazy (likely antibiotic and mold interaction induced) night that brought me here, I had one of the most beautiful experiences of my time here. As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been teaching at a center for Talibé in Saint-Louis once a week for a bit now. I can get a car between my road town and Saint-Louis for a dollar, but from there to my village is a three kilometer walk down a sand path. So, that Thursday, after finishing my afternoon class I got a car back to my road town. Just before the car pulled over, I heard a loud clap of what sounded like, but surely couldn’t be, thunder. I’d been dreaming of rain, but hadn’t expected it right then. I turned around and, sure enough, there rushing toward me in the great expanse of Sahelian sky was a solid wall of grey, encircled by a tubular halo of a cloud. I tested the wind (ya know, licked my finger), and it was actually pulling into the storm, which despite this fact was clearly advancing toward me. Three kilometers 'til a dry home, an hour 'til sunset, not a charette in site, I did what any good PC volunteer would do: I put my laptop in a plastic grocery sack and booked it.

The moment right before the storm hit I was less than half way back, and the sun was just , I dunno, five degrees above the horizon. The wind suddenly changed direction, blowing furiously away from the rain, the sun was cutting into the storm across the landscape, bathing everything in a golden red, accenting the smallest of ridges in the sand in the most beautiful contrast, mirroring that of the sky (gold-red on the west, dark grey in the east). Making the green of the silan leaves (wiry desert bush things) somehow more alive against the abysmal backdrop. And then the moment passed. All I could see was the torrential rain. I was soaked in seconds. It was strangely less dark inside the wall than it looked from a distance. And again, what could I do? Just keep walking. Enjoy the once in a life time experience of walking home through the first storm of rainy season. … Words fail, but it was a beauty I’ve not previously had the chance to experience so closely, accompanied by the energy of a nation’s hopes and expectations for a major cash crop season and that of my own desire for some cooling rain. Once in a lifetime.

So, then **** got weird. And after one of the worst nights of my life, I called the PC doctor and packed a bag to get to Dakar. Within a few days my stomach had healed and my stress levels dropped, enough so that I paid a little more attention to the growing pain in one of my teeth. Four appointments later, the responsible nerve has been slain, leaving me simply exhausted from the constant pain and sleepless nights. I’ll be back in Dakar in 11 days to get the tooth filled and possibly capped. But in the meantime, I’m off to Saint Louis first thing in the morning.

I missed last week of English class, so am hoping to teach tomorrow and Friday before hurrying back to village (I brought my raincoat this time). Still, it’s a really weird feeling being gone this long so unexpectedly. And to have such a horrible memory of that last night in village… Funny how the past has no reality in the present, but it can leave a tangible mark on the body-mind. I literally get some flushes of body anxiety when I think about that last night. Let’s look at this rationally: I’ve lived in Khatete for over a year, almost all of it peaceful. I had one night of extreme body-mind stress, and a part of me actually just wants to never go back. But most of me really does. This afternoon I opened my logic-puzzles book to a page Djibi scribbled all over, and the memory of that sweet little trouble maker was a strong motivator. So, clearly I am going back. And I know that the stress memory will fade, be replaced by new sweet and stressful experiences (such is life.)

There are various aphorisms people use to express the bi-polarity of the Peace Corps experience. It is, after all, “the toughest job you’ll ever love.” A friend of mine says your good days in Peace Corps are like mountain-top amazing, but your bad days in Peace Corps are like lose your faith in humanity devastating. The bottom line is, this experience is just like normal life, full of highs and lows, but cranked by the fact of your near constant isolation and vulnerability. Now, I have to be clear. As you know I have valuable beautiful friendships with people in my village, BUT none of them will ever truly be able to understand the experience I’m having. The vulnerability is an interesting experience… I guess it comes from the inability to get to a doctor quickly, the inability to clearly express needs in crisis situations, the distance from life-long trusted sources of assistance, and the lack of generally “unnecessary” but inevitably comforting infrastructure (AC, refrigeration, running water, reliable electricity and phone service, grocery stores, pharmacies).

So, as a final note, I’d just like to express my gratitude to all the people in American who selflessly support us PCVs. We know that, just like our community members, most of you can’t really understand a lot of what we go through, but you listen patiently anyway. We know that we can be really self-obsessed and think what we’re going through is the hardest thing possible in the world, and that we are therefore the most awesomely hard-core amazing people ever, and you listen patiently anyway. And we know we can be so melodramatic, and weak, and needy (most of us won’t generally admit it, cause this is the hardest thing in the world, right), and you listen patiently anyway. And we talk about poop too much and too casually… Well, I just want to say how incredibly much we all need you. For me, it’s my mom and dad who are always there, always willing to listen, and always supportive. You guys, I think, probably have some idea how much I appreciate you in general, but here's one more specific SUPER THANK YOU!!!! I'm pretty sure you're the best parents ever in the history of the world. Despite my tendency toward susperlatives. Anyone else who actually reads this blog, anyone who’s ever sent me a package, anyone who listened to my stories while I was in America, anyone who has contributed to the girls camp grant, anyone who helped me get into and get ready for this mission, anyone who prays for me or holds me in the stillness, THANK YOU!!!!!!