My new host brother

I might have mentioned it before but I have a new host brother! Imagine my shck when I came home after the English camp and found a 20something year old boy living in my house (and imagine his when I came home). He's been in Algeria at his first year of school (studying civil engineering) and is home only for vacation before starting his second year in October (I think).
Lamin (that's his name) is quickly becoming awesome in my mind. He's absolutely what I imagine Senegalese university students to be. During the day he always wears a Lakers jersey and Puma athletic shorts. At night he wears a button up shirt (which is usually only has 3 buttons buttoned - tonight he didn't even bother buttoning any) and either black jeans or stylishly ripped jeans - not to mention a silver chain. He has a really high tech phone (compared to my Nokia) and a laptop. I don't think he's a player though because he seems really quiet (apparently engineers world wide are almost always nerdy).
Today the mason came to fix my ant hole/wall and Lamin and Youssou played the role of protective brothers. Lamin actually direct the mason and made him fi parts he had done shoddily while Youssou pointed at things in my room and asked me about them.
I also found out, as we were breaking fast, that Lamin gave Youssou 100cfa with which he bought a mayonnaise sandwich. Not that I'm counting (my host mom is) but Youssou broke fast with: 6 inches of bread slathered in butter, 6 inches of bread slathered in mayonnaise, and a giant cup of coffee that had at least half a cup of sugar in it. He is obviously my favorite host brother but it's fun to have another too.

Happy Ramadan everyone!
KO

New kids on the block... and ants

I spent the weekend at the training center helping with the PST for the newest group of trainees. It's bizarre to be the one with the answers to questions and to be the "expert" on things that were completely new to me just a year ago. I helped with a few sessions on Senegalese culture and then answered a million questions on everything else. I would spend all day if I could answering questions because I had a ton last year and I remember what it's like to be completely clueless. On Sunday we gave tours of Thies and showed the trainees where to buy fabric and presents for their homestay language families. Afterwards Jackie, Alyssa, and I went to a nice dinner to celebrate our one year in country. Today I answered any last minute questions and wished everyone luck as they left for the village the first time for a week of language training. I'm back at site now and enjoying a quiet evening (without all of the mosquitoes the training center has).

I got back to Bambey around 5pm and found my room in pretty normal shape - no flooding, not too many paint chips on the ground, that sort of thing. I had finished showering when I noticed there were about 5 large ants (about half an inch each) near one of my windows. I stepped on them and kept unpacking. Then I realized that there were a few more ants coming out of the 4 inch crack in my wall so I sprayed some bug spray on the wall and went back to straightening things. A minute or so later I noticed that the ants weren't really dying but stumbling around like they were drunk I decided to attack them with bug spray (which has GOT to be highly toxic and not ok for use in the US). I sprayed the wall a little then started spraying the 4 inch crack.... which opened the flood gates. Ants started POURING out of the crack and I sprayed for probably a minute straight. By the time the ants stopped coming I had killed at least a couple hundred. I swept them up and duct taped the hole but I'll be patching it with cement tomorrow (my walls are cement).

The fumes have aired out of my room and the duct tapes seems to be holding up for now so I feel comfortable going to bed and not waking up with giant ants all over.

Ba suba,
KO