It's Raining America!

And now, a brief retrospective about how I celebrated our nation's 235th birthday:

FOURTH OF JULY 2011!

Let me preface this entry by saying that I have had many great 4th of Julys. In fact, I've fallen into the habit here in Senegal of thinking about what I've done on every time marker for my entire life. So on the 4th of July, I found myself thinking about last year's 4th of July... the Cubs lost but we saw fireworks on the lake! The year before... I played Apples to Apples on Laura's porch. The year before... I witnessed homemade fireworks made with explosives from the Chinese match factory in Uganda! And so it goes, on and on, until I can't remember certain years. My favorite 4th of July probably remains the one when I wrote a commemorative play about America's independence at age 8, and somehow mixed in phrases like "The British are coming!" and "The Indians are attacking!" and "Betsy Ross, WE NEED A FLAG!" Anyway, 4th of July 2011 in Senegal was also great! Here is what happened:

Most of the PCVs in Senegal made a mass pilgrimage down to the far southwest corner of the country, Kedougou. Kedougou is known as a magical place full of waterfalls and lions, though I saw neither. I did see a monkey and a warthog though. I was also attacked by an animal during the trip. Yes. A cat attacked me in the night as I slept in one of transit houses and IT WAS TERRIFYING. Have you ever been attacked by cat that somehow broke into your mosquito net and then couldn't escape? No? Then you cannot tell me what fear is.

But once our caravan arrived in Kedougou, I met up with two of my friends, Nicky and Cibyl, and we embarked on a journey to find the town's only working pool. After an hour of aimless wandering around the unfamiliar town, we found the hotel! It was lovely to be reunited with all of my friends, listen to a little Bruce Springsteen, and catch up. It was disgusting to watch the pool fade from a pristine chlorine color to a foggy, musky yellow-ish brown, undoubtedly because ALL OF US WERE COVERED IN KEDOUGOU DIRT from our extensive car trips. But it was still fun!

And the 4th of July itself was a true testament to America. The volunteers in Kedougou prepared quite a feast, complete with GUACAMOLE (ahh! ahh!), spinach/moringa dip, potato salad, popcorn, Dutch beer (I mean, they are free like America so it's cool), and numerous types of hog. It should be noted that my quest to eat 4 different types of meat in one hour was kind of fulfilled... we didn't have four types of meat, but I'm prettyyyy sure we had four different types of hog, and I sampled them all, so WIN! Win for America!

Every outfit in attendance was also a win for America. Much of this was due to Nicky's mom, to whom I AM FOREVER GRATEFUL for her lovely donations of special festive pinwheels, shiny headbands, and GLOW STICKS (so American! Yeah that's right Europe, I am stealing glowsticks from you.) So much Obama spandex. So many strangely beautiful red, white, and blue combinations. So many handlebar mustaches reminiscent of our forefathers. So many throwbacks to Daytona beach. So much body paint celebrating our heritage.

Plus, our celebratory location was the Kedougou hippie compound, so it was only appropriate that it started raining partway through our celebration and the party simply continued. Dancing in the rain! And of course, as is typical with 4th of July celebrations that I attend on the African continent, dangerous fireworks nearly killed someone at the end of the night, but everyone survived and the show was beautiful because AMERICA!

(this is me trying to capture "the scene". this is "the scene.")

So, as you can see, you can take the volunteers out of America, but you can't take the America out of the volunteers. Because the America will manifest itself in a scene of thrift store clothes and John Mellencamp and America will never die.

Village Vacation

Hello everyone! It’s been awhile. I’ve been traveling and moving around a lot, which has been exciting but also stressful, hence the lack of updates. And the excitement isn’t over yet – I still have one week of In-Service Training left! But I’ll still try to take a moment to tell y’all the latest from SENEGAL!

At the end of June, I had a language seminar in the faraway region of Tambacounda. Tamba is traditionally known as being the hot region. For instance, my counterpart told me that when you’re making coffee in Tamba, you don’t even need to boil the water. You just take the water straight out of the faucet because Tamba is so hot! Initially, the seminar was scheduled for Thies, aka my home, aka where I have been for the past 4 months. But I told the Peace Corps administration, “I NEED TO EXPERIENCE OTHER PARTS OF SENEGAL, NOT JUST THE RICH ONES!” and they agreed and changed my group’s session to Tamba. I was stoked!

Getting to Cady’s village, Kouthia Ba, was quite an adventure, especially because my travel buddy had take a medical leave after hurting her back the day before our trip. This meant I had to navigate the Senegalese garage system for the first time…. and do it by myself. The garage system is how Senegal does transport. It basically encompasses a million old station wagons that sit around and wait for 7 people who want to go to the same place. If you’re going somewhere that typically, no one wants to go (aka Tambacounda… sorry Tamba), you can sit around and wait alllllll daaayyy for seven people to fill up your car. I was the third person in the car, so I had a long wait. But on the plus side, being early meant I got to choose a breezy window seat and not be thrown into what is basically the trunk of the station wagon, so that was good. When our car finally hit the road, I kind of felt like I was on a family road trip. You know, me, the three kids stuffed into two seats next to me, the college students in the back, and the random, 7 foot tall Mauritanian man. Long story short, I made it to the village of Kouthia Ba!

It was cool to see how the village people live (opposed to The Village People, who live lavish lives financed by royalties to ‘In the Navy’ and ‘Macho Man’). The days were long but it was fun just chatting with some of her neighbors and family. We even got to witness a monumental soccer match one day: Cady’s village versus the kids from the giant road town. On paper, this match-up frightened me. This matchup also frightened me when the road town team showed up: they were each literally twice the size of each of our kids, due to age difference or nutrition, I don’t really know. BUT! Our kids were amazing! They were like quick and sprightly and just played like such a well-oiled machine! At the end of regulation time, the score was 2-2. SHOOTOUT! And wouldn’t you know, Cady’s village came out on top on the very last kick… it doesn’t get more dramatic than that. And of course, the entire village was in attendance to watch and they went WILD! They really did go wild, not just me. I tried to capture it in a picture and failed.

As for village accommodations, Cady has a sweet hut setup that includes a giant outdoor bed, which is great when it’s stiflingly hot inside. But in addition to her outdoor bed, she also has, literally, a PACK of giant rats, numerous other small rodents, and some white-tailed mongeese that party it up between 1am and 5am every night. As a city girl, I was not used to the noises I was hearing. I was terrified. We also ate rice and peanuts every day for dinner. That was hard for me. Luckily Cady had some ketchup, which kind of made our dinner taste like a Big Mac if we ate it in the dark.

But it was fun to be in a village! As we drove away, stuffed into a bush taxi, rolling down a dirty road, breaking down numerous times, I couldn’t help but vow to visit as many villages as I can in Senegal. AND I WILL!

Hopefully I’ll have some entries about the 4^th of July and the other stuff I’ve been doing up soon! Until then, love from Senegal :)