Life as of Late

So things have been kind of a whirlwind lately! Well, they haven't been too crazy actually, but my internet has been incredibly spotty. I have a few different places around town that I default to in internet emergencies... my office, this randomly fancy hotel by my house (which strangely smells like cinnamon rolls and I need to go back there to discover why), the training center, and the restaurants downtown. It shouldn't be hard for me to find internet. But so often in the past month, it's like the perfect storm has conspired to remove wifi from all of those places whenever I want it. Or maybe the perfect storm is just Senegalese telecommunication company politics happening right under my nose.

In any case, I have internet right now! Yeah!

So the last few weeks have included the aforementioned girls camp and killing a grasshopper in my room, but I've also done exciting things like train 30 Senegalese teachers for my Life Skills curriculum! Boom! I mean, I didn't do it, but I organized it, which is really all an American girl in a faraway country using her third language can hope to do. The trainings went really well. I got to see a whole bunch of Senegalese people become confident teachers in condom demonstrations, not to mention be treated to numerous pieces of theatre starring disorderly, drunk characters in an effort to curb teen drinking. Really, I live for this shit.

I also started branching out of my little corner of Thies. It is my home, and I love my family, and I love that the baby has literally become so obsessed with me that he screams until he is allowed to crawl across the floor and jump into my arms like a puppy. I love my little sister and her penchant for slurring the words "I Whip My Hair Back and Forth" into something that sounds like 'Iupma AIRRR bata forth i upma AIRRRR bata forth,' and I love my family's new inexplicable love for serving spaghetti with shrimp for dinner. But sometimes it is nice to get out and explore the rest of the country, or at least the region, a little bit. So over the past few weeks, I've visited other volunteers near me to observe and occasionally join in on some work projects.

I had the chance to see an open field day with our Master Farmer project, which trains local farmers in more sustainable agriculture methods and then encourages them to teach other farmers in their area. All of the local farmers seemed super into the project, and when I looked around at all of them, I couldn't help but feel the pride that I know John Mellencamp and Willie Nelson felt when they started Farm Aid. I'm serious. Feed the world.

I also went to Mbour to help with a gardening project at an orphanage. I didn't realize this at the time, but this place isn't just your average orphanage: it's also a place where French families send their delinquent kids. Like Outward Bound, except they send their kids out of the country, to orphanages in Senegal and are all like KIDS GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER. It was pretty interesting to see the French delinquents frolicking among the orphans, and I mean that in the best way, like it was beautiful. My job was to supervise children painting tires. I did an okay job, but I think I'm too domineering to be a proper art teacher. The project as a whole was great though, and as a group, we finished some composting and planting for the garden. Then we went to the ocean, where I had a transcendental experience using a floatie in the ocean. It was seriously fantastic. In the words of one of my friends when she was using the floatie, "I will never go back to normal swimming." Nor will I.

I've been trying to reach out to some places around Thies, specifically keep up my relationship with the local middle school and start one with the local cultural center. My love for the school only grew when the other day I stopped by to say hi, and THEY GAVE ME A SENEGALESE OUTFIT. And it is beautiful... pink tie-dye! Our time together has been brief but I feel like they already understand me as a person. I'm stoked to continue helping with English classes there, and wear my new outfit on the biggest Senegalese holiday of all, Tabaski, in a few weeks. I went to the Cultural Center the other day for a film screening. I was pretty impressed to walk into a packed room, not to mention impressed with the discussion that followed the movie. The movie was about the Joola, a ferry that sunk off the coast of Senegal a few years ago between Ziguinchor and Dakar. I couldn't understand a lot of it, but what I did understand is that the Senegalese are pissed at the government.

I've also joined a softball team in Dakar! There was a time in my life where I would play softball in the summer, and I have memories of myself hitting the occasional double. But that is not my reality. I don't know if I have repressed my actual softball skills, or maybe time has simply wasted away my body. Whatever the case, I am not a strong addition to the team, but I've really been enjoying the chance to go eat hot dogs and heckle 13 year old children (our ex-pat competition) every couple weeks.

In slightly sadder news, I recently found out that my Ugandan host mother, Hajati Sarah, passed away last weekend. Obviously, since I'm in Africa, she'd already been on my mind a lot... she and the rest of the people I met in Uganda were just so fantastic, and certainly a huge factor in making me want to do the Peace Corps. It sounds like a cliche, but she really was an amazing woman: she took in orphans and paid their school fees, she took in older homeless Ugandans and gave them a place to live, and she took in crazy American study abroad students like me. She ran a circus yo. We didn't really speak the same language, but we danced a lot, and we understood each other. So here's to Hajati!

But on the upside, one of my host sisters is pregnant! My amoebas are dead! This is the circle of life!

I will leave you all with a story:

In Senegal, people always assume I'm French. I get it. Most Westerners, and especially white people, that roll through here are French. What I don't get is the second guesses I'm given: I'll tell people I'm not French, and they will immediately launch into a barraging list of nationalities to deduce exactly WHAT I am.

This is how it usually goes:

Spanish? Greek? Chinese? English? Portuguese? Brazillian? Israeli? One time someone asked if I was from Mali. MALI.

But my favorite moment happened the other day when I told someone, straight up, that I was American. "American! Etats-Unis! Ahhh!" he cried. "Hola? Como estas? Gracias!"

Yes. Some people in Senegal think that the national language of the United States is Spanish. Somewhere, the mayor of a small town in Pennsylvania and a Tea Party member are sitting together and crying.

That's all. Hope all is well! Thinking of all of you, and much love! Beware of the wild animals loose in Ohio!

P.S. Big shout out to my dad for the glorious package I received yesterday! The face paint is just in time for me to do something weird on Halloween, and I've already started making beaded bracelets for my sisters. Also the cookies are already half gone. <3 !

Wet Hot Senegalese Summer

Work! So a while back, I wrote about my building anticipation for our region’s girls camp. Ladies and gentlemen, girls camp has come and gone. And as predicted, I slayed the children in various competitive sporting capacities. Also as predicted, I had a really good time.

The girls we invited to the camp were all top students in their middle school classes, nominated by their teachers and schools based on academic achievement, leadership, and financial need. Consequently, they were a smart, sassy bunch of ladies. After spending so many months seeing girls only in their home modes – aka cooking, sweeping, running out on errands, trying to study in the small window of time between cleaning up from dinner and falling asleep from exhaustion, and usually just sitting quietly, it was incredibly refreshing to see girls just being girls, laughing, dancing, and getting riled up. Our camp had a different theme each day, covering topics like health, environment, money, creativity, and the future. We, the Peace Corps volunteers, organized sessions and activities, but for the most part, Senegalese counterparts and campers from last year took control in leading and executing most of the plans. It was pretty cool to see: a project made possible by Peace Corps volunteers organizing logistics and funding carried out in a huge way by the local population.

Personally, I had many favorite moments from camp. As a health volunteer, I was ecstatic to see how the girls responded to a question and answer session with the local nurse. True, some questions were kind of weird, like “Why do some girls smell like garbage?”, but many of their questions were just heartbreakeningly simple, at least by American standards. Watching a group of girls finally hear their burning questions answered, such as “What if I DON’T GET MY PERIOD BY THE TIME I AM 12 WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME????” is just really great. Knowledge is power! Many girls said this was their favorite session.

I also really loved one of the gender activities we did. We read blanket statements, like “Men are better at managing money than women” or “A man should be allowed to hit his wife,” and told the girls to stand on either side of the room, depending on whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement. For many questions, the girls were evenly split, but I was more impressed by the spirited debates that followed. They’d argue points and counterpoints and girls would be running back and forth, changing their minds and reevaluating how they understood gender roles. It was like seeing a visual representation of a confused 13 year old girl’s brain. I LOVED IT.

And of course, we did fun things like throw water balloons at them and send them on scavenger hunts. The wildnerness scavenger hunt included a direction to “find something living!”. We imagined the girls would bring back things like, I don’t know, leaves. Maybe a cricket. Our girls were so dang creative that they captured things like one-eyed toads and baby birds. Yes for thinking outside the box, children! Yes! Another awesome part of my week happened when I rode a donkey charrette for the first time. Pretty much everywhere in Senegal, except for big cities, people move around on rickety wooden carts pulled by donkeys and horses. Until camp, this opportunity had been denied me,. But camp finally gave me that common Peace Corps experience of holding 30lbs of leaky fish on my lap as I slowly felt like I was sliding off a wooden cart to be trampled by domesticated animals on African bush paths. Now, I have lived!

So even though girls camp was only a week long, and even though it required a ton of stress and organization and logistics, I have no doubt in my mind that the camp was well worth it. It’s strange to me: sometimes I really have to stop and remember where I am, because sure, I’m surrounded by health tragedies and economic injustice and poverty, but at the end of the day, the lack of creativity and fun and learning is what I continually notice. It sounds cheesy, but to me, I guess that’s what the life of life has always been about. And consequently, having a week full of those things made girls camp one of my favorite weeks in Senegal so far. So much thanks to everyone who supported our girls camp this year… it was a good thing.

Strangers in the Night

I think it is time for me to give everyone an accurate portrayal of my evenings. Sure, I spend the early twilight hours sitting outside with my family, watching the baby roll around on a mat, repeatedly failing to catch a rolling tin cup. But inevitably, there comes a time when I retire for the night into the darkness of my apartment. The good nights happen when we have electricity. The bad nights happen when we do not.

I never expected myself to be so terrified of the darkness here. Scratch that: I fully expected to be terrified of the darkness here, but I expected that time and experience would wear me down, eventually revealing a courage built up over surviving things like snake attacks to my face or cockroach parties in my pillow. My plan has not worked because my apartment has remained largely insect, animal, and creepy sound free. This is great, except that it means my imagination continues to live in fear every night.

So every night, I walk into my room, just to see the lizard sprinting across the wall and back behind my bookcase, just like you always imagine the monsters under your bed. Hiding, at the most convenient time, before you can prove their presence. I take my vitamins or the malaria drugs that give me nightmares, then I go brush off the beetles, or what I imagine as baby cockroaches dancing around cockroach eggs, from my toothbrush and use it. An important part of my bathroom routine includes turning on my non-working faucet so that I can fill a tub with water at 4am when the water turns on for one hour.

When it comes time to get into my bed, I do a spot check for crickets or dead bugs that have accumulated on my mattress during the day and brush them off. Then I pull down my mosquito net from the contraption made of dental floss on my ceiling. If we have electricity, I turn my fan on: this is essential to combat the heat, the baby termites that sometimes break into my net in the morning, and the creepy noises I hear at night. Since the incident where I awoke to three crickets taking revenge on me, I tuck my net in extra carefully, but inevitably, there is always a fly hiding somewhere in my net and I spend a good 15 minutes trying to destroy its life. Flies are really the worst here. When they’re in my net, they just act like drunken fools. Flies might be the new crickets in my life: I just want them all dead. What are they contributing to this world? If there is answer to that question, I encourage you to pass it along to me before I do something catastrophic.

I always wake up at 4am, sometimes because the water has turned on, sometimes because I’m just having a nightmare that the water turned on. My body has gotten so used to turn off the water at 4:30am that now I have to pee at that same time every night. At that point in the night, all of Senegal is finally sleeping, and that is when the noises really keep me awake. I don’t know why I’m always so scared at this point of the night. Sometimes I hear noises in the room, sometimes I hear creepy religious chanting that eventually turns out to be frogs in the road. Even if animals live in my room, I doubt they want to bother with me, and plus, I have trapped myself in a chemical net fortress far from the ground. But I just always imagine mice in mutiny and stuff.

One noise in particular nearly drove me to the edge. I would hear a rustling every night. I was convinced I had a mouse, or a mole, or a cockroach army – but in the morning, I would look for evidence and find none. No plastic bags rustled through, all garbage untouched. But night after night, I would lie in my bed and just listen, terrified. I eventually deduced that rats were living in my wall, then I deduced that they were slowly breaking through my wall, Shawshank style, and rustling my Beatles poster, because Ringo always looked like he was moving. One morning, I finally worked up the courage to peel back the poster and reveal whatever was there: a muskrat hanging out of a hole, a cockroach nest, a sheep, an alien baby. I slowly peeled back the poster and… A GRASSHOPPER-CRICKET was trapped in the duct tape behind my poster, WHERE IT HAD BEEN LIVING AND RUSTLING FOR TWO WEEKS. And that is literally how the story ends. I spent two weeks crying under my mosquito net because I thought a grasshopper was trying to kill me.

So that is what happens at night in my life in Senegal. The end.

*Note: I wrote this before the intense, life-altering insect experience of our Girls Camp during the past week. EVERYTHING HAS NOW CHANGED. I have been to the edge of bug hell and survived! But I’ll write about camp and the living conditions that challenged me as a functional human being later. Camp was fun though!

Korite!

So yesterday was Korite, which marks the end of the month of Ramadan. “Wait!” you’re probably thinking to yourself. “I am a savvy and up-to-date person who has access to things like the news! I thought Korite was two days ago, on Tuesday? Why does Lisa lie about things on her blog?” If you are thinking this, you are probably correct! But so am I. Why? Because Senegal has their own Korite. This fact was explained to me the other day by a local teacher (who went on to ask me if Jesus was my best friend and personal savior, which, in Senegal, is quite difficult for me to answer). Most Muslims around the world follow Mecca and celebrate Korite when Mecca sees the sliver of the moon in the sky, signifying the end of the month of Ramadan. But Senegal? Senegal does it on her own terms. She has councils of people watching the sky every night, searching for the moon. If they see it, they call Dakar and everybody parties! If no one does, they ignore Mecca and wait. It was cloudy Monday night, I guess, so our Ramadan came a later than the rest of the world, at least from what I hear.

I’m glad Korite came when it did, because my world was starting to go crazy. Namely:

- my family’s fast had gotten to the point where they were spending the hour before breakfast meticulously laying out their food, buttering their bread, and preparing their tea. I literally witnessed my host mom holding a date in one hand, positioned two inches from her mouth, and coffee in the other for FIFTEEN MINUTES as she waited for the call to prayer. And boom! The first note she heard from the muezzin, and all of that food was gone. No one had qualms about complaining about the fast by the end, mostly good naturedly, but still desperately.

- Then again, they were also extra hungry because they kept sleeping through xedde, the meal they eat in the darkness of the early morning before the sun comes up. One morning, they got a real kick when they found out I had actually been awake at 4:30am – the only one awake, the only one who would spend all day eating anyway. I wasn’t having my xedde though. Just turning off my robinet, you know, like I have to do every morning at 4:30am, but that’s another story.

- The local teacher told me that the children would stop coming to school days before Korite “to get their hair braided,” according to the local teacher. And he was right. Class plummeted from 40 to like 7 students. And the salons were POPPIN. My host sister went through a six hour process to get her snazzy Korite hairstyle. It ended up being a ponytail, which made me feel vaguely guilty about the 30 seconds it takes to throw my own hair up into one. But I mean, hers looked great. I actually tried to replicate it. Her six hour hairstyle clearly won:

My little sister Bigue’s hairstyle was described as “three pom-poms.” Which is exactly what you would imagine:

- My laments about never having any ways or activities for making friends met its match: every passing acquaintaince in Senegal invited me over for Korite. It was like they finally had a reason! Unfortunately, I was already spoken for, with my family.

- People asking for money were out in full force. One evening, someone knocked on the door and my host mom ran and hid in her bedroom. After the person left, my host mom and sisters emerged to discuss the events with disgust and defiance. Apparently, around Korite, people wander through compounds, asking generic questions to kids like, “Where’s your mom?” Then, when the lady of the house comes out, people demand money, and in Senegal, at this point, you can’t just say no. My host mother indignantly told me that this is ridiculous because she already donates to charity. She tells the kids to ask the beggars what her name is… if they don’t know, they don’t get to come inside. I found this hilariously like hiding from door-to-door salespeople in America. A lot of African countries have this image of perfect communities! Everyone helps each other! People live in a utopia where money is given freely! No. My host mom hid in her room.

And of course, my most personally shocking pre-Korite moment:

- I WAS HIT BY A MOTORCYCLE. I mean, seriously Senegal? What was a motorcycle doing on the sidewalk? How did you miss the sight of me, the lone white lady dressed in a bright blue and pink tie-dyed dress?! I was walking down the street, minding out my own business, and then BOOM! A motorcycle was barreling at me. So I made what I’m sure was a really embarrassing yelping sound and kind of simultaneously pushed it away from me and jumped. It clipped my arm and then crashed into a telephone pole. I was fine. The guy was fine. The bike… was not. My host mom blamed this entire incident on Korite, so… so will I.

But the actual day of (SENEGALESE) Korite was quite lovely. Everyone was just in such a great mood. A few long-lost family members stopped by, everyone put on nice clothes, we ate my favorite meal of chicken, onions, and noodles. In the afternoon, we brought extra food to some neighbor’s houses, pot-luck style, and went on some friend visits. Strangely, I actually enjoyed all of this. I don’t know if it’s because my language is better so I was actually participating, or maybe it was just the belly full of chicken. But yeah, Korite was a great time.

So yes, things are going well. My work project is moving along, and one of the students I tutor recently confided that I "am her best friend and the best teacher in the world.” My heart melted faster than Velveeta (which actually isn’t fast at all and a bad comparison). The baby has successfully fallen asleep in my arms, which also made my heart melt. Early tomorrow morning, I’m headed to Dakar for a post-Ramadan vacation/celebration of friend’s birthdays/near-anniversary of 6 months in Senegal for me – quite the smorgasboard of occasions.

Hope all is well! Happy Labor Day to those in America, and happy life to everyone else.

Christmas came early

Yesterday... was a very exciting day! I went to the post office and had two packages! Not only did these two packages brighten my day, but they also brightened the days of the post office workers who had the opportunity to collect some small customs taxes from me! Which was actually good, because now we are better friends. Everybody's happy! So much thanks to International Admissions Counselor at VU, Laura Coleman, and the Mayer-Neff family of Chicago... you all are in the lottery to have my first-born child named after you, someday!

And now for some visuals, because I recently re-discovered the Photo Booth feature on my computer:

Among my new cherished treasures, a copy of the world renowned Lady Gaga documentary "One Sequin at a Time" and a photo of one of my favorite families in Chicago:

Also included among the tidings of love....

CHEETOS!!!!!!

I have had the Cheetos for less than 24 hours. I have been craving Cheetos for almost six months. You do the math.

Cheeto-hands. The mark of a good Cheetos binge. I don't want to tell you how many Cheetos remain as of now.

Okay I think that's all. Bye! Have a great day! Talk to y'all soon! I'll be eating Cheetos dipped in White Chocolate Peanut Butter and writing in my new Justin Bieber notebook, wearing this new outfit and headwrap that has brought much pride to my host family.

Verbal Altercations

Recently, I have had the opportunity to both observe and add my own two cents to a few spirited Senegalese debates. This is exciting for many reasons, not the least the fact that I was finally catching onto conversation enough to jump into a debate. Granted, a few of these angry chitchats were in French... but living in Thies, I've begrudgingly accepted the usefulness of my French, and I've started letting myself use it more. But hey -- communicating with people shouldn't be something that makes me feel guilty! Even if we weren't speaking in Wolof, cultural exchange was happening!

Anyway, one night I was sitting with my host mother, quietly in the backyard, as we do most nights between 8:30 and 9:30. My host father was sitting a little ways away on the porch doing his sudoku, as he does most nights between 8:30 and 9:30, not to mention every other hour of the day. They were just chatting... but then, as it often happens in Senegal, their voices started rising. My host mom eventually started yelling, using her hands a lot, and my host dad even stood up from his chair to make a point. For a family that usually has no qualms firing themselves up about political issues, I took note and tried to listen more closely. Maybe something was happening with President Wade! Maybe there was a big protest or a strike! So I stopped staring off into space (literally... so many stars!) and tried to focus my Wolof.

What I heard was... repeated use of the word for cheese.

I thought I must be wrong. They can't be arguing about cheese. There is no way. Cheese must be a metaphor! The word for cheese must have multiple meanings. I kept listening. Cheese! Body. Cheese! Health. Body! I finally just couldn't take it anymore and asked what they were arguing about.

My host mom's face lit up. "Ah-HAAA!" (this is her trademark exclamation) "Mame Diowma will prove me right! Is Vache Qui Rit (Laughing Cow Cream Cheese) good for the body?"

I didn't know whose side my answer was going to help so I treaded carefully. But I mean, the answer was obvious.

"No. It's not good for your body. I mean, it's good -- it tastes delicious! And it's good in moderation, I guess. But it's not healthy... um. Yeah. So, no. It's not good for the body."

My host mom let out a victorious shriek! My host dad pushed his glasses up on his nose and silently sat back down on his chair, returning to his sudoku! The judge had spoken and there was only one winner!

I've also fallen into numerous arguments about the health of fasting. As I mentioned before, this is something I feel strongly about... I just find the health detriments of fasting unobjectionable. I'm not against people doing it, and I think it can be a great spiritual practice. But no, at the end of the day, it is not good for your body. It is hard for your body. It is insanely hard on your body. Numerous people in Senegal have enjoyed picking fights with me over this point... including people who run HEALTH departments at national-level non-profits. They tell me that fasting cleanses the body. Another person told me,

"Think of your body like a machine! You use a machine every day, every hour. But then, for one month each year, you give the machine a break! The machine needs to rest. It will last longer if you rest it!"

To which I responded:

"Fasting is not giving the machine a rest... your body is still living during Ramadan! The machine never stops! All you are doing is turning off the electricity and still trying to make it work for most of the day!"

But you know, you can't win the fasting argument. You just really can't.

Luckily, you can win the Vache Qui Rit argument. So while I don't seem to be making much progress teaching people about how nutrition/the body works, I at least seem to be making a dent in the segment of Senegalese population that believes Vache Qui Rit is a health food. Here's to behavior change!

Teach Me How to Conjugate/Dougie

So the definite highlight of my past couple weeks has been my new relationship with the local middle school. You may remember a few months back, one of the local English teachers totally stiffed me for a tea date. After I had gone out and bought myself a tea pot! The nerve! But it's cool, I got a teapot out of the deal and my pride has slowly mended itself. I recently decided to give the old school another chance, and I think second time is the charm for us! My sisters had been heading over there for summer school, so one day I followed them and was treated to a free French lesson, an invitation to help with English classes, and a crew of really friendly/non-creepy/French and English fluent teachers – yeah!

Initially, I observed a few classes. The great part about summer school is that the classes are only about 20 students -- much different than the overflowing classrooms typical of Senegal during the school year, with one teacher wrangling upwards of 50-60 kids. So seeing a teacher interact with a small group was quite a treat, and the kids all had a chance to contribute, talk, and ask questions. But having only 20 kids didn't change the fact that the boys far outspoke the girls, nor did it change the crazy habit Senegalese schoolchildren have of standing up, snapping their fingers, and yelling "SIR SIR SIR" in a desperate attempt to answer every single question.

Also, I just have to share some of the weird English quirks being taught in the classroom. None of them are super big deals, so I’ve tried to stay quiet and respect the teacher's authority. Besides, if I fought him, he’d just say, “No, we learn BRITISH English here… that’s why you don’t understand.”:

- There is no verb “to have.” The verb is “to have got.” If any student says “I have a T-shirt” the teacher cries, “NO! No! I have GOT a T-shirt!”

- All of the kids are forced to add and subtract the hell out of any time they read. Saying the numbers 8 and 47 to describe 8:47 is unacceptable. “NO! No! It is 13 to 9!” Oh. Life will be hard for you, child who learns this, when you go visit Britain or America.

- An eraser is a rubber. Ha. One day, each kid had to stand up and ask the person “Do you have a rubber?” as a pronunciation exercise. Yeah, I’m aware that I have the humor capabilities of a 13 year old boy. Heh. Heh.

I taught my first lesson this morning– it went as first lessons usually go, which is to say that the children were terrified of me and my English fluency and didn’t know how to react when I started acting out words like “WRESTLING!” and “RHIANNA CONCERT!” I was pretty proud of the activity I'd created -- I'd made little invitations, all with different events (like WRESTLING! or RHIANNA CONCERT!"), dates, and times. I prefaced the activity by talking about how Americans LOVE being on time, so if you're invited somewhere, you better know where you're going and when you need to be there. A little time management never hurt anyone, right? But the kids had been working on days and months, so it seemed appropriate. I'd just go around and ask them "What are you doing? Where is it? When is it?" and they would answer, in English. It seemed simple enough. I knew it probably wouldn't be simple.

They didn't find it very simple. But that's okay! We're learning! I also confiscated a cell phone during my first minute, because that’s how this class is going to roll.

Talking with the teacher after class, he mentioned that I shouldn't be discouraged because two girls in the room had absolutely no English at all -- today was their first day. I asked if he would like me to tutor them, by themselves, and he thought that was a great idea -- so I immediately had my first session with them and it was great! If I know anything, it is the English language. Yes, I am a health volunteer here first and foremost -- but I must admit, I think teaching will really help me feel less crazy and more useful. Half the battle of the Peace Corps is getting over the constantly nagging guilt that you should or could be doing more – integrating more, learning more local language, building a hospital, I don’t know. But teaching two little girls English: yeah, I can go home and say I did something today!

Other recent events:

- Ramadan family bonding time has continued! And when I say family bonding time, I mean judging French spelling bees, playing French scrabble, and doing Michael Jackson routines with my sisters. Also, when I say playing French scrabble, I mean I kind of cheated at French scrabble to save face, but only because my sisters cheated first. TANNER could be a French word, right? When my host sister questioned its meaning, I said, “You know. Like animals.” She accepted it and I am a horrible person.

- Yesterday was the Assumption, a Catholic holiday observed by this country of 95% Muslims. Woo religious freedom and tolerance! My host sister talked all week about a big dance party that happened the night of Assumption, forcing my promised attendance and then insisting I wear jeans. We loaded up the car and headed down to the Place de France... nothing. I guess the party was cancelled because of Ramadan. But it was a fun 10 minute car ride.

- I got a robinet installed in my bathroom! This would be more exciting except for the fact that Thies never has water. Except at 2:00am, for about an hour. My host mother has instructed me to leave the faucet open so as to collect this precious water every night, and I'm complying... for now. But that also involves me waking up every night at 2:30am, terrified at the sound of an impending flood, then crawling out of my mosquito net through the cricket nests to shut off the water. It's almost like I live in the bush! Almost.

- in CRICKET WATCH NEWS: the other night, I couldn't take it anymore, I just went in my bathroom and viciously murdered a family of five. I think parents were copulating because it was SO LOUD, but as I said, THEY AREN'T COPULATING ANY MORE. Nevertheless, I've learned that cricket eggs don't hatch for a year. So I can only imagine what my life will be like in a year. In the meantime, I've been allowing any spider I see in my room to live, after I give a little speech about them pulling their weight and killing crickets and leaving me alone.
Roommates.

- I've been alerted to the existence of two libraries in Thies! I haven't visited them yet, but I'm pretty excited about the prospect of them.

So I feel like I'm on the upswing. I definitely had some rough moments in the last couple of weeks, which I found strangely reflected among basically all of my friends from my stage here in Senegal. Maybe the shared freak-out was part of our adjustment? Or maybe I've just got reeeal crazy friends. Maybe both. I also apologize for anyone who's been on the receiving end of my depressive bouts. I was talking with a friend here, and I basically concluded that I'm generally happy, but when I talk to people not in Senegal and try to set up my daily scene -- I find myself becoming re-aware of little things that I normally just roll with, the little things I deal with every day that are annoying and awful and then I re-think about the problems I'm normally just embedded in, like, you know, poverty and shit, and I just end up getting more and more angry. In other words, it's not me, guys! It's talking to you that makes me angry! Ha, no, but generally, I'm good. In the end, I think what someone said to me once just continues to ring true: we must continuously reframe our reasons for being here. When you feel like we're up against a wall or things don't seem to make sense... well, you better figure out a way to justify yourself... to yourself. Some days, I can do that.

In closing, I’ll leave you all with what my host mom said to me the other day. We were sitting outside in the dark, waiting for everyone to finish their last prayer of the day. “My family, my home, my health. What more could I need? Alhamdulillah, Praise to God.” She threw up her arms and I had to agree with her.