WAIST 2011

I have so much to say about WAIST so I'll try and get it all in. For those of you that don't know WAIST aka West African Invitational Softball Tournament is an annual softball tournament that the US Embassy puts on. For the USO team, Senegalese teams, high school team, and almost everyone else - WAIST is both fun and competitive.... for Peace Corps volunteers costumes are the most important part. Let's be honest - I still don't know who won but I know who had my favorite costumes (well, who had the second best costumes to our lederhosen).

The festivities kicked off Friday night with a Peace Corps talent show that was great but WAY more importantly, that my sub-region and I rocked these shirts:

We live in the "Thies Region" of Senegal - pronounced like "chess" so, as an entire region of girls (with Oliver and Thomas as honorary members) we got shirts - pretty clever, no?

After seeing our talented friends sing, dance, juggle, act out a puppet show, and more - we headed to a Peace Corps standard bar. No first night of WAIST is complete without 100 volunteers packing a club and that's how we ended the night.

Our first game was bright and early Saturday so we got up, dressed in lederhosen, and met our team mates (for WAIST we all play in regional teams, so I played with Dakar because Thies is my sub-region). Our first game was against Tambagou (a combination team of the Kedougou and Tamba regions) who were cops and robbers (including several ladies in jump suits, a couple of guys in SHORT shorts and cut off shirts, and the hamburgerler). Tambagou is notorious for forfeiting every game and that's what they did. Instead of playing real softball there was a little of this:

Followed by some of this (leap frog between 1st and 2nd and more awesome batting):

Not to mention, the robbers kept charging the field to steal the bases - yes actually pick them up off the ground - while the cops chased them down.

Our second game followed immediately and was a little bit of a buzz kill as we played the Mali team that was more about softball and less about costumes. It was still fun and we put up a really good showing (in our defense, we make an effort to let everyone play not just our people who will hit home runs).

That ended softball for day one. Everyone hung around the American club (where there's a pool) for a bit until going home to nap, ice sun burn, and (in the case of my homestay) make AWESOME bacon mac and cheese. The second night of WAIST is a date auction (raising money for Gender and Development projects) but I decided to take an easy night so I could be ready for the last full day of WAIST.

Sunday started with a game against CapeGerLi aka Cape Verde, Mali, and Niger volunteers (the Cape Verde volunteers were on vacation, the Mali team was mostly visiting Dakar so only a few people played, and the Niger volunteers had just transfered to Senegal after their program got shut down). Our second and final game was against Kaolack - our closest neighboring PCSenegal region who was dress like ballerinas. Though we started serious at the beginning (and I got a base hit and eventually scored a run) we started playing 3-ball softball which like if 2 softballs had a kickball for a child. That game ended, somewhat surprisingly, without injury, and everyone headed back to the pool. Sunday afternoon was for swimming, volleyball, and admiring everyone's costumes. In case you were wondering:
The North was Jersey Shore
Dakar was Lederhosen

Linguere was Cows and Cowboys
Kaolack was Ballerinas
Tambagou was Cops and Robbers

Kolda was Star Corps (like Star Wars - and they had some impressive storm trooper and Princess Leia costumes)

Sunday night two of the Cape Verde volunteers came over for a pasta dinner and we all headed to the defining WAIST party. During the day Oceanuim is a hotel/scuba school and by night can be rented for open air parties. The third year volunteers did an amazing job of planning, bar-tending, and generally supervising the party (while wearing matching white suits) while everyone else danced the night away. I can't think of a perfect way to describe the Oceanuim party other than to say imagine having all of your friends and their friends over (about 200 of them) and dancing until 5am. One of the great things about PCVs is that, in a situation like that, we've all had WAY more embarrassing things happen to us (getting sick, being peed on by a sheep, you name it) so no one cares about how they look when dancing - we just enjoy ourselves.

Unfortunately Alyssa got really sick pretty much the second we got to the party, so she went home early. I was the second person home and went to use the bathroom then to hang out with Alyssa. My first question was about how she was feeling and then my second question was whether or not she had seen the dead scorpion on the stairs next to the bathroom. She pretty much called me crazy until we went to look. I tried to prove it was dead by throwing a shoe at it and was proven HORRIBLY wrong when the 3-inch scorpion started skittering all over. We beat the crap out of it and quickly flushed it. My feet had been danced on all night (the nail polish on my toes chipped off and they were coated in dirt) so I couldn't really feel them. After doing significant Google research and being reassured by Alyssa and I would have felt a scorpion sting, I finally went to bed.

Monday was all about recovering, sleeping, and doing laundry. Monday evening we went back to the American club for one last hurrah. Like last year, the party started a little slowly. It was supposed to be a pool party but most people were either dancing or sitting and talking. While I was sitting by the pool with my legs dangling in I noticed 2 people from my training group looking suspicious and I heard one of them say, "I think she heard us, we can't do it now!" I moved away from the pool but took my phone out of my jean pocket instead. As a joke I then offered another volunteer $1 to throw Oliver - the volunteer who had planned the entire party and made a HUGE deal about it being a pool party - in. Like a good business volunteer, Oliver upped the offer to $4 to throw me in... eventually we ended up agreeing to jump in together (after taking our shoes off). We quickly became a pool gang: we would pick a target, then the guys would jump out and throw that person into the pool. Sure it sounds a little childish and maybe a little reckless but we all knew we would be returning to site the next day and back to our normal American-less lives of work. After finding some dry clothes I played some volleyball and joined the dance party.

Today, with WAIST actually over, I ran some errands and headed to Thies for an Artisan training. It ends tomorrow afternoon and I'll be back at site by dinner.

Summing up WAIST is fairly difficult (hence the long post) and I'll have more pictures in an album over the next few days. Overall, I had an amazing, amazing time - it was an awesome WAIST to be my last (then again I think WAIST is always great).

KO