Always an Adventure

I have now been to every regional house in Senegal! A friend of mine is COSing in the next few weeks and he had also never been to Kolda, (where Senegal is sandwiched between the Gambia and Guinea Bissau) so we decided to go for 2 nights. A group of people from the Dakar region went down there in October and had just about every breakdown in the book, taking them 12 hours. Pete and I lucked out, since it only took us 7! The next day, we woke up early and went to visit a friend’s site. She lives about 65k from Kolda, so we took transport for 50k and rode our bikes the remaining 15k. Honestly, the ride was very enjoyable! She is a health volunteer and lives in a Mandinka village so Pete and I tried our best to get at least one or two greetings down by the end of the day, but Wolof sounds so normal now and I just couldn’t make sense of Mandinka! Kirstin’s villagers make necklaces and bracelets out of big, red seeds that are plentiful in the region. We wanted to meet with some of the women to talk about the artisan network but they were out of town for a funeral. It was still great getting to the village, seeing such a different version of a Peace Corps service.

The way out of the village went well on our bikes, hot but a nice cool breeze, but then our bus got a flat tire after running out of gas, causing us to get back to Kolda after dark. The next morning I was outta there, and even that wasn’t as easy as the way there. PC has some weird agreement with the border patrol in the Gambia. Since we are volunteers, and residents of Senegal, we shouldn’t need to pay the 1,000cfa visa fee for passing through. All we need to show them is our PC identity and we should be fine. Well, I was kinda harassed by one guy, telling me that if anything happens to me in their country, and I didn’t have my passport signed, they wouldn’t know I was there. I wanted to just tell him, dude, you’re country is 40k wide, ease up. But they get rather defensive about that. Honestly, I had my idea checked 5 times! It sure is interesting though. This skinny little country, where instead of French, they speak English. It was fun. After that fiasco, we got a flat tire that took about an hour and then our driver stopped to help another car with a flat. What a great citizen right? Well, not exactly what we were thinking…

I got to Kaolack at 4 (8 hours of travel), tried to go to the bank but the ATM was Out of Order. So I went back to the house to spend the night but upon arriving I found out that the water was out. Happens more often that you would think! So since I was dirty and had nothing really I could do in Kaolack but wait for money (that probably won’t be available ‘til Monday), I decided to head for home. Not the most fun, but I made it by 8 or 8:30. Now I just need to stretch 3,000cfa through Monday.

I have some great ideas for the rest of my service and am trying real hard not to get discouraged. What if all that I have started in 2 years fails?!!!?! I found that my compost collection didn’t happen at all when I was gone, reason being that Djebaye’s religious leader is on his death bed and he can’t work until after the funeral. But my women’s group pres and I had a good chat and we made a plan of what we can do in the next few weeks. I will also be starting my tree nursery and planning 2 artisan meetings in March. My accounting meeting with Matar is today so we will see how he did the month of February and maybe even teach an English class about the Stimulus in America. These next few months are going to be an adventure for sure!