My internet has finally been fixed! I promise I'll blog more now that I don't need to email my postings to my parents and have them post (thanks parents).

Things are moving along in Bambey - nothing too exciting to report. On Saturday the opposition parties (there are several smaller parties) held a rally in Dakar and a few other large cities. There wasn't a rally here but everyone watched the Dakar march on tv. It's just interesting how life still goes on even through something that people were thinking might be huge (Reuters' Article Pre-Rally). Everyone still had to go to the market and do their chores, they just did it with the tv on in the background. So far there hasn't been any follow up.

Yesterday I had a girls' group meeting - we're working on a radio show project. The girls are writing radio scripts and in two weeks another volunteer is coming to record them. The other volunteer, Erin, is arranging a deal with a local radio station for a "Peace Corps Hour" a few times a month. Hopefully my girls' skits and discussions can be on the radio someday! They tried to write a script last week but it was horribly confusing and a little inappropriate. For this week, I started with a basic plot diagram (intro, rising action, climax, concluding action, resolution) which none of them had seen or been taught before (that creative writing isn't taught here shouldn't surprise me at this point). Using that, they were able to put together one skit and are working on the other skit during the week. They have two weeks until Erin comes to record so hopefully everything will be ready.

My classes resume today because, theoretically, the strikes are over.

Also, it's the hot season like whoa. It was cool in Dakar and when I got back here it was hot. I'm talking about almost unbearable hot. The kind of heat that takes your breath away when you walk into the sun. The kind of hot when a gallon of water isn't enough during the day (yeah that's not a joke). This should stay until it starts raining in July, and it's still cooling off at night enough to sleep without a fan so that's a success! Speaking of heat though, I should go fill up my water-bottle! Happy Monday! I hope all of your brackets are doing well!

KO

tutoring: try 2

Wolof tutoring success! I was worried about my Wolof coming along because my first tutoring session was less than helpful (I’m using that phrase literally, I felt like it discouraged me and taught me nothing) but today’s session was great! The first session I brought my Peace Corps Wolof textbook and my tutor pretty much just read it to me and didn’t translate anything. This time I came with questions and scenarios to learn vocab for and it worked really well. I guess tomorrow I’ll see if it really did work because I’ll be giving a self-introduction to the presidents of the women’s group that my tutor helped me write. I’m trying to lower my expectations for tomorrow because they’re really high, but I hope a lot of work partners come out of this meeting.

When I got home from tutoring, I got the typical response from one of my hfcousins, “where were you, it’s hot. Aren’t you hot?” To which I give my standard response, “it’s always hot, I’m always hot,” I mean it both as a joke and to make a point, just because it’s hot (which it is always hot) doesn’t mean you get out of doing work all the time (though I do appreciate the afternoon naps and tea drinking sessions). Usually that comment get shrugged off but today I got a response! “Yeah. That’s why Africans are black. You’re white because you never see the sun.” CLEARLY she was joking, and she was laughing as she said it. It was SO nice to have someone joke with me. I often find what I’m doing to be ridiculous and am the only person laughing (not too different from my life in the US come to think of it). Moral of the story, it was nice to joke around and not with the joke of “oh you can’t speak Wolof.”

Also this morning I tried to meet the Mayor and managed to meet the 1st deputy. I kind of dug myself into a hole when I brought up that I might try to re-start the compost project. Two background notes before I continue: 1. My introduction usually goes like this, “I’m here to work with small businesses, I know that my ancienne started a compost project that I might try to re-start. I also want to work with women’s groups and youth, but! My first three months are for learning Wolof. I have training in January and I’ll start working after that.” I feel like it gives me credibility and shows I have something to offer while, at the same time, insuring they aren’t expecting results tomorrow. 2. My ancienne worked pretty closely with the Mayor’s office on the compost project (they gave her city land to use). That being said when I brought it up the deputy mayor had NO CLUE what I was talking about. After trying to explain the project as well as I could, he made sure to tell me that the mayor’s office is VERY happy to work with me on EVERYTHING. So happy I should stop in every few days and keep them up to date on what I’m doing. I was already planning on keeping them in the loop as much as I can but I’m going to have to go out of my way to make sure I’m doing it a ton now.


Heat: 10 minute walk to Mayor’s office (I stopped to greet people) at 11am and my hair was totally dry. I’m told it’s going to get cold in December…