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.