Happy One Year Africaversary!

A year ago today I landed in Senegal! It feels crazy to think that it's been a year - on one hand PST feels like it was 10 years ago but, on the other, I feel like I got to Bambey a month ago. I wish I had more to say about my first year but it seems to have gone by so fast. I can't believe that a year ago I was a complete stranger to everything Senegalese and today I actually helped lead a session on Senegalese culture to the new volunteers. I remember what it was like meeting new volunteers and asking them questions when I first got to country and it's odd to think that I'm now the one with the answers (or at least trying to come up with answers). Maybe at my one year at site (which will come in October) I'll have more thoughts on this first year.

In other news Ramadan started yesterday and the day before that we got 65 new SED and Ag volunteers! For those of you not familiar with Ramadan here's the basic run down (at least how we do it in the Fall household): everyone (but me because I'm not fasting) gets up at 5:45 for morning prayer and then eats a small meal (bread, butter, coffee, maybe water). From sunrise to sunset during Ramadan, no one eats, drinks anything, or smokes (in the Koran it's refereed to as "drinking smoke"). Everyone does the normal household chores in the morning which is the only time of the day anyone is willing to work or even discuss work with me. Around lunch, I sneak up to my room and make lunch for myself as well as chug water (during Ramadan it's REALLY rude to drink or eat in public so I confine my eating and drinking to my room). In the afternoon everyone just lays around and naps. Around 6pm Awa starts cooking dinner (because cooking takes a few hours here) and at 7pm my hostmom and Youssou put out our break fast table. Around 7:20pm Youssou takes off running to the mosque because they have, supposedly, good break fast food there. At 7:30pm everyone prays and we all break fast (eventually Youssou comes back in a breaks fast a second time - which everyone makes fun of him for). We each drink spiced coffee (Youssou and Awa drink mostly milk with a hint of coffee), eat bread with either tuna or butter, and some dates (the Koran says Muhammad ate them when he was fasting). After break fast I've been heading back upstairs and skipping dinner even though my host family can't believe I'm not hungry because I didn't fast. Because Miss is pregnant, thus not fasting, she's not living with us now (she's with her family who, I'm told, lives across town). Ramadan will continue for the next 27 or 28 days - until the new moon is seen. I'm sure I'll get annoyed withe everyone's crankiness and lack of wanting to work but for now it's nice to cook my own lunches and break fast/dinner is pretty delicious too.

KO