So Much, Too Much

Soooo sorry, I guess my promised update about life never showed up...things have been interesting, that's for sure.  I'm in the process of a few different posts, but here's a quick update on some random things since my last post.

• I've met almost all of the 8 English teachers I'm supposed to be working with (8 teachers, 12 hours...interesting!) and only met about half of the students due to tests, teacher strikes, a quick US trip, and a week of student strikes.  The teachers (and everyone else in town) are very nice, though I must admit that I'm at a loss for what to do with the students.  I've got some ideas, but still have no clue what their levels are.
• My apartment is freezing cold.  On nice days like today, is noticeably colder inside than outside.  W e are trying to figure out what to do because our tiny space heaters suck electricity and the school refuses to turn on the radiator.  I will be drinking a lot of tea and eating a lot of soup this winter.  Pictures of the apartment coming soon, hopefully (see below).
• I spent a quick 4 days out of France to be the Maid of Honor in Brian and Emily Derlunas' wedding in Gettysburg, PA.  It was a beautiful wedding and everything went swimmingly, though there was a serious possibility that I would not be allowed back in France after because I'm still in the process of getting my visa validated.  I spent two weeks contacting everyone under the sun, in France and the US, in order to obtain a return visa or find someone who could tell me I would be allowed back (people here were telling me just to "forget it" and not be "too disappointed," which was not a possibility).  In the end, as usually happens, the border police did not even glimpse at my visa, just looked at my picture and stamped a random page.  Worrying about this issue occupied about two full weeks of my life and thus nothing else got taken care of.  Oh, and due to national train and metro strikes, I barely got to Paris for the flight and barely made it back to my town.  Too close for comfort.
• I spent an awesome Saturday afternoon picking grapes in a small vineyard an hour away and then picking squash in some gardens.  Incredible.  There are lots of pictures and hopefully a post coming about that.
• There's neither gym nor Zumba in Semur, so I'm trying to develop an exercise routine.  The Maison Pour Tous (kind of like a community rec center) has a Thursday night step aerobics class which my German roommate, Monika, and I tried.  Though I extremely dislike step aerobics, it was good to sweat and do something physical, plus it's not too expensive if I sign up for the whole year.  The biggest problem?  The instructor has the workout "choreographed" to music from 1999 and worst of all, can't hear the beat or cues in the music so instructs people to move against the beat.  For this lifelong dancer, it's obvious and obnoxious.  But it's something to do, so I might just keep up with it.
• Last week the students were on strike and now we are on Toussaints Holiday (a 10-day holiday for All Saints' Day) until November 4.  I spent the past few days in Dijon with some other assistants, exploring, hiking, and drinking tea.  If I lived there, it would be dangerous financially :)   I wanted to travel somewhere on my travel list (it's pretty long...), but we are still awaiting our first pay check and after my quick US trip, didn't think it would be smart to leave again.
• I miss Senegal a lot, but the more time I spend here and experience certain aspects of France, the more I understand about Senegal.  That's definitely a blog post.  I also found a HUGE population of Senegalese selling at the 3x/week market in Dijon and was super creepy listening to their conversations in Wolof.  Also, it's not as fun to just talk random nonsense with Senegalese in France as it is with Senegalese in Senegal.
• NO ONE can pronounce my name here, sauf a few English profs.  Most people who ask my name just stare at me blankly, then look with confusion at whoever introduced us thinking it's a joke, and it's uncomfortably awkward until I tell them that my name is "BeTTani" instead.  [I kind of expected this to happen, but it's a little worse in France than it was in Brussels, Paris, or Senegal.]  A few have resorted to calling me Bettina (a la my Belgian host mom Adriana), which just may be easier.
• I'm constantly exploring Semur and life as a Semuroise.  There's not a lot to do in town, so I walk around a lot and try and stop by any market or festival going on.  Last weekend was the "Journee de la Pomme" which was basically a gymnasium full of tables of various types of ancient apples and some things for sale, but I wound up sharing lunch with a sweet older French lady after I bought some cidre from her.  She was friendly and chatty, confused about my crazy accent (America meets Senegal, Brussels, Paris, Burgundy, etc), and had somethings to share about her opinion of the Sarkozy and the strikes.  I also ran into one of the English teachers who has offered me use of her bike when I need it and showed me the giant house she is in the middle of renovating.  There's a movie theatre and a regular one, both of which I've attended on two separate occassions each.  I'm trying to be more spontaneous and let little Semur surprises guide my days.

Ok, that's all for now friends.  I'll try and write some decent posts sooner rather than later.  As I mentioned, I'm having issues with picasa and updating photos, which is also tied to this blog.  Knowing that I need to deal with that technology has kept me from putting anything substantial on here.  Sorry!

The other side of Semur

New Country, New Look to the Blog

Yep, so I'm no in France, in a tiny town called Semur-en-Auxois, and I decided it was finally time to change up my blog.  Nostalgia for Senegal has (and still is) kept me from updating the look for now, but it seemed time.  It will probably change a few more times in the next few weeks as I figure out what I like and try to connect this blog with a different email address (so I can upload more pictures since my current FREE Picasa account is full).  I didn't want to start a completely new blog because I firmly believe that my experiences here, in Senegal, and wherever else life takes me, while distinct, are very much connected.  I'm sure I will make references to Senegal in my posts this year, if not outright entries just about Senegal.  I still have so many stories to tell and hopefully my down time here will allow me to tell them.

More about France soon.  Don't worry I'm not homeless and while I've gotten some strange looks when accidently slipping Serere or Wolof into my French, I have yet to be spit at, so that's something, right?  :)

A bientot.

Readjustment and Such

So I recently had someone request that I write a little about the culture shock and readjustment issues I've been dealing with over the past two, almost three, months since I returned from Senegal. In all honesty, I've been delaying writing anything on here or really processing my experience because I'm still kind of in denial about being back. I miss Senegal and life as a PCV insanely and finding this period of transition before I head off on my next adventure to be more than a little challenging. It's getting easier however, and it's taken about a month just to write this entry, but I hope it's interesting.

Pulling water from the well at the school garden

A lot of the things that I expected to be surprised about (bell peppers the size of my face while grocery shopping, meat in every single meal, etc), were not necessarily the things that amazed/shocked me in the end. Some random tidbits follow:



~Language: Something that I'm finding a little more difficult than expected (and yet kind of love that this is an issue) has been transitioning from speaking multiple languages on a daily basis (I could have conversations with locals and fellow PCVs that incorporated French, English, Serere, Wolof, and Arabic) to speaking English rekk (only). Realizing even basic catch phrases PCVs use constantly mean absolutely nothing to the people around me has been strange. At work, a coworker might ask a question about something that's happening or needs to be done, and I want to add an Arabic "Inchallah" (God willing) or "Alhumdouliliah" after something good happens. A few times I've let it slip and just get a strange look from whoever is around me, so mostly wind up whispering French, Serere, or Arabic phrases under my breath (weird, huh?). America is very much a one-language country (or at least Crystal Lake is), and I have always wanted to be bilingual, so having to drop my second, third, and fourth languages is a mental challenge. I'd consider myself almost fluent in French (well, West African French) and Serere, and somewhat competent in Wolof, and really don't want to lose my language skills. I need to actively keep up my French before heading abroad again, but it's hard without a conversation buddy. As for Serere, how do you keep from forgetting a dying language? Yea, trying to work on that... Hopefully I will be able to do a little Serere translating and help update the dictionary from over here.



~Gender Roles: One of the things that has outraged me the most since coming back have been the advertisements. Unfortunately, I've already wasted more time than I care to admit in front of the TV, watching terrible shows on the Travel and Disney channels, and thus have been forced to watch even more horrible commercials. In Senegal, all PCVs do a lot of what we call "GAD" (Gender and Development) work, consciously or unconsciously, talking about shared tasks and gender equality and all that jazz in America. I spent a lot of time in my village talking about how my (American) dad cooks all of the time, does the laundry, etc, and how important it is for men and women to share the tasks at home, which mostly got laughs from the Senegalese. My host sisters eventually understood enough that when a visitor asked about my marital status, besides just explaining how I don't like polygamy, they also volunteered how my husband and I will share work in the home (that we will BOTH cook, clean, do laundry, etc). This usually got an uncomfortable laugh from the guest about the crazy white chic, but whatever, people got the idea and I hoped it challenged some of their ideas of gender roles. Then I came back and watched TV and realized modern American culture is not quite as gender equal as I had envisioned. The commercials for sales at stores like Kohl's or Macy's all feature only shopping-obsessed women. Household cleaning ads and laundry detergent all feature ALL female casts. A good 75+% of the advertisements seemed focused on female shoppers/cleaners/cooks/etc. Why is this? Maybe this is a subject for a completely non-Senegal related blog post for someone other than this middle-of-the-road feminist, but still. Also surprising to me was how annoyed all of these commercials have made me. I also think that seeing the differences between Senegalese and American male-female friendships and relationships since returning has also surprised me, though I don't quite have enough words to describe my thoughts and views for the public yet.


~On the shopping note, women's fashion: ew, gross. It all looks like large trash bags with spandex pant leggings. No shape and flattering on very few body types, plus way overpriced. Not a fan. I have, however, found a little bit of success replenishing my closet with strategic sale shopping (70% off at Loft, thank you very much!) and wearing through old clothing staples (so that I can donate or trash them at the end of the summer). A few RPCVs and I were having a conversation about how terrible women's fashion is right now, because it's bad--but sorry to those who are enjoying it! [And I hope that I didn't prove the justification of all of the only female Kohl's and Macy's ads all over television.]


~More comical: the LACK of bugs and creepy crawly things around. The walls in my room are white with a few old nails and hooks still sticking out and still, almost everytime I see one of those hooks out of the corner of my eye, I do a double-take, thinking I see a cockroach, millipede, or scorpion, just like I'm still in my hut. I see shadows and think they are giant spiders. I've woken up in the middle of the night, or even the afternoon, thinking I hear the scratches of a mouse or shrew. One of my biggest fears going into the Peace Corps was, seriously, the bugs. Yes, I saw some pretty big creepers, but eventually I got "used to" (didn't like, but didn't freak out upon seeing them either) most of them, except that 2 week period in February when cockroaches took over my hut and latrine. Sometimes I think that I hear or feel mosquitoes or Senegalese ear wigs on me (gross!). It's almost like I have creepy crawly post-traumatic stress disorder. Fortunately, it's tolerable and I live in a pretty clean house (good job Mom and Dad!).


~I miss Senegal like crazy. For most of my second year of PC service, I thought about and was asked to extend for a third year. The options were many: extend in Dakar and support the Health and EE programs, extend in Thies and keep working with PST, extend in Kaolack and support the Kaolack Region PCVs, or even extend in Djilor/Kaolack and focus on the Serere dictionary (this was an idea that hit me in my last few weeks, when I felt like it was almost a little too late, tho I know it wasn't). It was a hard decision, though a lot of my reasons for not extending were made during a time when I was feeling somewhat bitter and jaded about things and didn't think it would be good for my emotional health. I thought about extending for a short term, but basically wanted to be back for some weddings this summer. While important and great experiences, I still frequently find myself wishing that I had extended instead to work on the dictionary or PST. I think about my village friends and family as well as my PCV friends and the adventure and monotony of daily life as a PCV, on an almost daily basis. There's definitely things I don't really miss (like arguing for bags while taking public transport, certain interactions in the Kaolack market, or the never ending heat), but in general I had a great experience and of course think only about the good aspects of life there. While there were definitely aspects of PCV social life that I did not enjoy, I really miss the support network and my Djilor neighbors. I also (kind of surprisingly) miss the food: bean sandwiches, millet couscous with leaf sauce and chicken, yassa poulet, millet with raw milk, fresh mangoes and cashew apples, mmm! Those are things you just can't get here. Overall, however, it's the people I miss the most. Yes, I can call my village and do, or other PCVs, but phone calls and occasional emails just aren't the same as sitting underneath a shade tree in Ndiomdy and talking or taking a sketchy public transportation ride in order to meet up with a bunch of other Americans. It's the personal interactions with everyone that I miss so much.


~What my Peace Corps Service could have been: I LOVE reading blogs and looking at pictures from other PCVs who are still over in Senegal, or just beginning their services. I enjoy reading about their work projects, hut improvements, PCV adventures, and cross-culture sharing activities, but it's hard not to compare my Service with their's. I had a full and fulfilling service, but there was always a list of more things I wanted to do: for my village, to share my culture, to share about Senegal with America, or parts of Senegal to see, but never had a chance to. Or I was too scared and nervous. There are beautiful pictures with important people that I wanted to, but never took. Or started taking too late and missed hundreds or amazing shots early in my Service. It's hard not to compare and get down about the things I did NOT do, but when I look back on my experience, I need to focus on what I DID do and the experiences I had. Each Peace Corps Service is different. Mine was mine and their's are their's and I need to be comfortable with that.


~A lack of independence: going from a totally open schedule with a lot of responsibility and very little need to inform anyone (except Etienne) of my whereabouts or activities (until they were complete, of course) to living with my parents and working at an over-caffeinated suburban coffeehouse with super strict rules has been a challenge, which many RPCVs go through (or so I hear). Being back in the town I grew up brings back old memories and emotions which I don't always want to think about, especially after living in DC and then my life-changing time in Senegal. Though it was difficult at first, I grew to really like making my own daily schedule and being in charge of myself and my whereabouts (even while walking or being tortured on public transportation) and now I'm back to being trapped by a somewhat spontaneous and poorly planned work schedule, dependence on a shared vehicle, and an alarm clock (Quelle horreur!). Ew.


~There's so much more I could write about, including my annoyances at American ignorance (a typical RPCV complaint), laziness, obsession with technology (iPhone 4, ew), ideas about minivans, people constantly referring to Africa as a country and not a continent (especially while directly referencing something about my time in Senegal), and the fact that I will never truly be able to share my experiences with people around here. No one I see or talk to on a regular basis was able to visit Senegal and thus no one can truly understand what I went through or the reintegration I'm going through, which can be tough (more so on some days than others). That's why it's so important to stay in contact with RPCVs, because we are able to share our experiences of reintegration and memories of our time in Senegal together.

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There have of course been some good things about being back: including being around to help some good friends (and a cousin) celebrate their weddings, spending time with some old friends who have known me for a lot longer than 27 months, seeing family members (including one of my cousins who lived at our house for the summer), Zumba and other classes at Healthbridge to keep me active, and being employed in a job that allows for a little bit of social stimulation (though with all of the weddings and such, I have yet to break even or make a profit).



Ok, I will try and post again soon-ish. I'm working on figuring out the next phase of life, with paperwork and tickets for France (plus contacting my school), getting rid of old junk in my room, and hopefully starting to scrapbook my PC Service. There's still sooooo much I want to share about Senegal with anyone willing to listen (err, read). Thanks for checking out this long, random, and not very well written post. :)

Leaving the village

So I was writing a belated (and final) update email about Senegal and as I was babbling (can you do that in written form?) about leaving the village, I realized that the email was becoming way too long and to just post about it here instead.

My last afternoon in the village, waiting for people to show up for the dance party. (Holding my father James and his mother Seynabou is sitting next to us, wearing a dress I had just given her.)

Anyway...

I left the village on April 22, in a terribly emotional day. The day before, that Wednesday, my supervisor Mamadou came to visit in what was my most chaotic day at site ever. Tuesday night, I had been up until 12:30am with my sisters and Seynabou, while she put a beautiful henna design on my feet (which like an idiot, knew I should take pictures of, and just never did). I woke up at 6:30 so she could take off the henna mixture and re-wrap my feet with an ash-mixture that would turn the henna from orange/red to black on my feet. I had to sit in my hut for an hour while the blackening mixture set, and then I ran over to the school as fast as I possibly could, as class was starting at 8am.

-

Along with the students, the teachers and I were supposed to seed the tree nursery as part of a class lesson, but Mamadou showed up an hour earlier than expected, just as we were getting ready. He wanted to chat about my work and thoughts, take a tour of the two gardens I helped set up, and enjoy a few rounds of tea. When he left two hours later, the students were in math class and I was told to come back in another hour, and they would plant right after the morning break. I showed up during break, armed with possessions I was gifting to the teachers, only to have them JUST then realize that it was my LAST day. Evelyn, one of my good friends, said as I gave her a candle "no Khady, you have to save this for your last day..." "But it is," I said. Uhoh.

Really? Where had they been the past month that the whole village (and the school director) knew I was leaving the next day, but not the rest of the teachers? Even my good friend Evelyn (she and I connected on being the only Catholics in Ndiomdy)? Ridiculous. The students knew, their parents knew, but the teachers somehow missed it, even in spite of all of my insisting that we had to plant the tree seeds in early April since I was leaving (but they still kept rescheduling, grr). They started protesting, talking about how they had wanted the students to do some type of special performance or ceremony to thank me, and how they wanted to make me a nice meal, etc. I was too annoyed and in shock that they hadn't realized it, all the while just wanting to get the tree nursery seeded so I could get on with my day.

-

As the morning break was ending, an ENORMOUS dust storm picked up and wouldn't quit. The students were eventually sent home since the teachers couldn't hold class in the storm (try teaching in stick classrooms or rooms with tin roofs in the middle of a dust storm, it sucks), which meant no seeding...so I dragged all four teachers out to the garden in the storm for a lesson on seed planting. [Note: in March, I sat down with the teachers and planned out when we would fill tree sacks with dirt and then seed them because I was leaving in mid-April. Then when the schedule kept being pushed back, I kept reminding them that we had a tight schedule because I was leaving soon. As my departure came closer and closer, I had a sinking feeling that I would NOT be around to watch them seed the tree nursery and I was correct. Failure. Hopefully, something that they seeded grew and will be successfully outplanted, but I'm not holding my breath.]

-

After the busted lesson at the school, I hurried back across my village for the 6th time, absolutely exhausted emotionally and physically, all before 12 noon.

The entire afternoon was spent frantically packing up and giving away everything left in my hut (though Mamadou had already taken all of the stuff I was keeping into Kaolack and up to Dakar). As I was standing in the chaos that remained quickly getting overwhelmed, my host dad or other family members would come by and sit with me (mostly in silence or with me making awkward and stressed conversation), until I had formed a small crowd, I would give them various possessions and clear out my hut for another 5 minutes until the crowd would form again. Yes, it was stressful to have people just sitting there and staring at me while I was trying to pack, but I also really appreciated it because I wanted to spend the day enjoying time with my village and was not able to otherwise. I used many of the children from my compound as messangers, sending them into the village with trunks, buckets, clothes, and other things to give to specific people. Dear village friends and family members would show up with bowls full of peanuts and other presents, and sit for awhile as well. I had hoped to spend the day visiting everyone, saying goodbye, and enjoying quality village time. It was the opposite.

Dancing with Ami Diouf

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In the evening, I dressed up in my finest Senegalese complete from last Tabaski, the women of and the village honored me by holding a special drumming (called a mbud na in Serere or a sabaar in Wolof) right outside my hut. After watering in the garden, most of the women (and kids) in the village showed up and the dancing was INCROYABLE! The women sang songs about me, shared blessings and prayers for my journey back to America (and my family and especially that I would find a good husband upon my return). I danced with any woman who danced my way and really just tried to absorb as much love and appreciation as I could (and took lots of pictures and videos, thanks to Mary). I recorded some of the songs they sang and now have to figure out how to get them off of my voice recorder and onto a digital computer file I can put online. The songs were sweet and all about me and the work I did, especially the women's garden. They women presented me with over $50 in presents (a big deal there), including TONS of cashews, roasted peanuts, and raw peanuts to bring back to America. Three times they tried to end the drumming and dancing, only for the celebration to continue and eventually the dancing and drumming wound up in my crowded and cluttered hut.





As the celebration with the women was ending, my phone kept ringing and it was Evelyn demanding I come for dinner. They also sent my sister, Ndeye, who is also their cook, to fetch me and bring me to their house. The teachers (well, Ndeye) cooked a fancy dinner and demanded I come (which sadly took me away from my last dinner of millet in the village), where they also formally thanked me for my work with the school (and demanded/requested that I not "forget" about them, ie that I find them "a partner school" to work with them), expressed their disappointment that I was leaving so soon, and make arrangements to send me a gift in Dakar before I flew out (they said that they wanted to do something with the students for me, but because they didn't know...). After dinner, I rushed back home, spent a few hours with my family, having them record messages and greetings for my American family, chatting about Senegalese cooking as well as my departure ("what?! Peace Corps won't come and pick you up? You have to take a bus into Kaolack?!!") and then stayed up late finishing packing my 20+ kg (over 40lbs!) of peanut products and organizing the last few gifts for my family (bracelets for my sisters, buckets, prenatal vitamins, etc).

The crowd the morning I left...not happy people (just look at Seynabou's pouty face)

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I woke up early, passed out the last presents in silence, and as my family gathered outside of my hut on benches still left from the night before, was forced to say goodbye. A lot of people from the village had said they would be there to officially say goodbye, but in typical Senegal fashion since Senegalese hate saying goodbye, very few actually came by, which I understood. I burst into tears as I was given/gave the left hand (an insult in Senegalese society, normally given to insure that your guest returns to "repay" the insult) to my entire family, many of them started crying, and I got on the charett for my last ride out of the village. They kept telling me not to cry, but that only made it worse, for all of us.

The charette I rode out of town. I made them stop so I could take a picture of the termite mounds along the side of the road, then I took a picture of them. (My bro Coli is driving the charette and wiping his tears with his tshirt, cute)

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After waiting in Djilor with my brother Coli and counterpart Ibou, saying goodbye to my other counterpart Farba and numerous other people (the Pulaar bread&chocolate guy, the hardware store owner, etc), the Alhum (bus) was finally full and ready to go. I burst into tears again as the driver made me get on the bus, as did both Coli and Ibou. [Actually, I was kind of proud of the fact that both of those guys cared so much about me that they were crying in the middle of Djilor--a big deal for Senegalese men!] The women on the bus saw me crying and started talking amongst themselves, all kind of uncomfortable about my tears.

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Woman 1: "Why's she crying?"

Woman 2: "I think she's traveling, but she's sure crying a lot for a little trip."

Woman 3 (who somehow knew Coli and had been talking with him a little): "No, I think she's leaving leaving."

Woman 1: (very somber) "Oh." (to which I turned around and nodded and then they all started sharing prayers about a safe journey back, etc." Very sweet.)

-

Most of the trip into Kaolack was uneventful as I tried to stop crying and texted a few people. Getting into Kaolack though, was a little chaotic as there was a huge religious ceremony happening just outside of town, so traffic was INSANE and cabs were hard to find. One of the bus driver's apprentices helped me get my stuff (a backpack, a bucket full of peanuts, a GIANT plastic bag full of peanuts, and a pillow case full of peanuts) and helped me drag it around on our epic search for a cab to take me to the Kaolack House. It took like 20 minutes to find an empty car and get a reasonable price, but the driver wound up being a pretty nice guy who spoke Serere (and I relatively easily dodged his requests for a date, lol).

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As soon as I got into the Kaolack House, I was greeted by some kids from the fall stage who shared homemade French Toast with me. I spent the rest of the morning repacking my bags and organizing my peanuts to give away to other people, so that I could send my huge hiking backpack up to Dakar as Mamadou came through from visiting other PCV sites. With the encouragement of the other Volunteers in the house, I spent the ENTIRE rest of the day watching Glee on the projector at the Kaolack House in an attempt to emotionally recover from the morning and gear up for my trip to Mali via bus the next day. [More about Mali in a future blog post next week or the week after, Inchallah.]

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Whoo! And that was my last 36 or so hours in Ndiomdy! Sorry if that was a long, repetitive, and emotional posting, but oh well. I thought you guys should hear a little about what it's like to leave the village the last day. I didn't really write about my last few weeks or even month, as it really was a long process of leaving. Instead, I wrote about the chaos that always seems to follow me whenever I have to pack up and leave some place for a very long time.

Not over yet...

So to those of you out there who still check this blog on occassion though I have been back in Amerik almost two weeks, a new post is coming hopefully in the next few days. I was busy with wedding celebrations for two dear friends, unpacking, and just adjusting to life in North America again, plus dealing with denial over the fact that I'm no longer in Senegal. Man, it was rough, but I still have so much that I want to share with all you readers (ok, the like 5 people who read this) about life in West Africa and Peace Corps Service, plus my fabulous trip to Mali right after leaving my village. I also misplaced my camera card reader and my USB stick during my last week in Dakar, so I haven't been able to update with pictures or anything either. Oxe garaa ndiiki (it's coming "soon") inchallah.

In the mean time, here's a picture from the wedding. For once, I'm actually the TAN one (and notice my hot tank top tan lines). More soon.

Genatiim Ndiomdy

I left the village for the last time this morning. It was terrible. I cried, women cried, men cried, the sky cried. (Seriously, it was drizzling)

Last night the women held a special drumming ceremony for me with dancing and singing, and I was sent off with about 20+kg (over 40lbs) worth of peanut and cashew products and blessings for health, a good life, a good husband ("handsome and with money" they prayed), greetings for my family, and a life of peace until I called them. I will write more about it as soon as I can get my computer to connect to the wireless in Kaolack, or save it for Dakar in a few weeks. I head to Mali tomorrow evening.

Leaving was so much harder than arriving, or leaving America for Senegal. I'll be honest and lay it out right now, it's going to be tough for me to come back...have patience, know that I love you all. I head to France in the fall for my next international adventure.

The Beginning of the End

Pictures have once again been added and updated on my Picasa website. I ran out of space, so had to do some deleting of old photos, but here's the most recent stuff from March. Yay Camels!

I'm off with some friends to where the beach meets the delta for Easter...back to site on Monday, but not for long. So sad :(