Its all Ups and Downs, Fuck the Downs and Bad Days

So Recently ive been busy with work running around the region of Kédougou trying to plant trees and keep my sanity in ridiculous heat. Had a little break last weekend when a Guinean musician came to Kédougou for a concert which was a great time minus the lost phone bit, but fun none the less. Something about the music here is just fun, makes you want to get up and dance around a bit. So much so i had to go both nights of the concert. The second night was cool as a friend of mine who speaks pullar like a native was called up and asked some questions in front of the audience in pullar and had the crowd rolling on the floor laughing. Too funny, everyone was blown away that he knew pullar that well. So that was a fun couple evenings. Before the concert we were hanging out at the hotel that has a pool here in Kédougou as there was a hand full of study abroad kids visiting and we were trying to keep them entertained. While kicking it there we actually got to meet Momadou yati golle( it means Momadou who doesnt work or something along those lines). Great time got my pic with him too. My host family loved that and now im called Momadou yati golle when they want to bust my chops.

So yea the part where i start to want to come home starts then. So this happens to corespond with easter as well. Im really not a big fan of easter, not since freshman year in college anyway, something i dont really participate in and dont get. Anyway, like i said i lost my phone, reason being i was ended up drinking way too much. Didnt realize that i was without phone till the four of us got back to the peace corps house. Being as inebriated as i was, i was talked into walking the like 1/2 hour back to the concert venue with one of the study abroad kids, little weird and awkward as i dont know this chick and find out she'd stepped on glass at the concert and still wanted to walk all the way back there, whatever. And of course i dont find my phone there and walk back rather let down. great times, to top that, i end up locking myself out of my hut when i eventually get home at like 430 in the morning. fuck that night. Even with that it was fun, it was just building up to my having a mild freak out and wanting to ditch it all and go home yesterday.

Adding to this is my host dad pulling me aside and having a little talk with me about looking after my things as he heard i lost my phone. I had told my family here about my little experience in Dakar after the soccer game but i guess they didnt quite understand the entirety of the situstion and seemed to believe that it was me being careless that led to me having all my stuff stolen. So my dad was lecturing me on why i should better look after my things here. Appreciated, sweet even, but unneeded and litte demeaning. i then had to explain that i had my locked bag, me being one of the few that didnt have anything stolen at the game, ripped off my back after we flee a car thats just hit 2 people. He wasnt expecting that and was a little taken aback by the full extent of that. Always fun reliving that fun experience. but whatever just knocks my head about a bit all this nonsense.

So yea concert was fun and the day after easter im immediately back out biking around kédougou doing pepiniere formations and demo sites which is great keeps your mind off things and content. Went out to a village where they want to put a new ag/fo volunteer about 17k out of kedougou and did a formation there all day with plans for a check up tomorrow. that was fun, my pullar is def way behind the other two guys who came with me and they did most of the talking, i guess i was just the technician or something(not that pepiniereing is that hard). It was good though got to swim in the river Gambia there, very nice and cool as it is getting really hot here. So the formation itself was a little ify, we basically had to sit around all day waiting for the chef de village to get people motivated to come and attend this. Very Senegalese and very annoying, adding to my kinda built up frustration. In the end everyone shows up and is very interested and has good questions. We leave planning on coming back like i said and matt and I head back for Kédougou. Still really hot out, even in the afternoon in the cooler part of the day.

So when we get back to Kédougou i find out that my friend kevin out in kafori hasnt left yet for site and decide to head out with him the following morning to help him with his pepinieres out there. Good times, hes got a really cool family, and kafori is a great site. We get two pepinieres seeded out there as kevin had already spoken to the farmers there and had them prepare the pepinieres as in fill the tree sacs and water them for a week so weeds will grow. It was good, good experience and very nice to get out of kédougou for a day. Unfortunately i think the bike ride back at the end of the morning kinda zapped me a little bit. In fact i think that might have something to do with my recent down turn in moods. Dehydration kinda sneaks up on you even when youre drinking shit tons of water. 110 is really fucken hot, and its really hard to stay hydrated in that. I kinda learned that in PST a little but i think this is another learning experience. Its not just water that your body needs, i found that out after of course.

So i get back from kafori and rack out for a bit, get up on time to watch man u vs fc porto, great goal by c. ronaldo by the way. good times feeling pretty good after that game have more work planned as i ran into andy when i got back and was planning on going out to laminia in the morning with him as its on the way to his site. I needed to check up on a some folk who i had given tree sacs to at a site of a old volunteer and trade some of them out for larger tree sacs. So basically day # 4 id be hoping on my bike and heading out to do something work related. Great as its again keeping me occupied and and happy. On the way out of town we stopped and meet with the commandant of eaux et forret here in Kédougou which was important as were supposed to be working with them in our tree work. Seemed like a nice guy, said he was game to work with us, we'll see how that works out. Anyway make it out to Laminia and drop off the sacs as the guy hadnt even began to start his pepiniere yet. Great, switch the sacs out and head on back to the Gou. I manage to get some more accomplished back at the regional house as well as we needed to organize the seed bank that we have there as well as take stock of all the tree sacs that we have there. Done and Done.

Now the day after this, i think is where i start to run my self down, but it is jsut kinda things building up. I end up going over to the Regional house to start a pepiniere there, good times, get 50 r so sacs filled and realize its like 1230 and i should stop as its fucken hot out. id been working without a shirt, bad idea, back got burned. Also means my body was cooking a little bit. I was only out in the sun for like a hour or two but it kicked my ass. I head home for lunch as it was getting towards that time of the day and chill out for the afternoon till it got cooler out. Thats kinda how most days are here. anyway by 430 i kinda start asking around to see if we can use the families charet, 'donkey cart' to go buy some wicker fencing for my douch/bathroom. Turns out that the charet has a flat and they need to take it to the garage to get it fixed. well my brother and i head into the market to get a cell phone cover for my new phone. get that after just giving my brother 1mil to go get it for me as the first couple boutiques we went to saw toubab and thought rip off. any way end up going to the garage after that to meet up with my host dad and the charet to see about getting some of that fencing so as to finally 6 months on have a finished complete hut. long and short is we got the crentin and head back and put it up. Done and dusted. Thinking that that day was one of the best ive had! Obviously not the case as the next day proved.

Next day matt the head volunteer here comes over to check it out and see about using the families charet and asks why the cement pad is covered by dirt? I dont know but say ill get it off. So I go down to the river with matt to collect smooth rocks for the douche and swim a bit, it is nice living next to a river. come back and chill a bit., then start removing the dirt thats on top of the cement pad. Oh but its like 1230 when i start ie really fucken hot. End up working in the heat for like the next two hours only to find that the cement pad is bowing and water pools on it. Not good, bubble burst. No finished douche. THe new stage is going to be installed and ill still not have a complete site. bubble well and truly burst. Not that its a huge deal, it was more of this should have been done 6 months ago kinda thing. My family of course comes and tells me to stop digging in the heat of the day and my stubborn ass declines as im almost done. So ive come to the conclusion that when i get dehydrated im ubber irritable and always in a pissy mood. so fast forward to the evening when matt comes over again to check out what i found to say that yes some more work needs to be done on it and that prob wont happen for the foreseeable future as im so fucken busy. the never ending project continues and im pissed. Also didnt finish the pepiniere i wanted to at the regional house or my houe that day either. So tag all this onto me having to sit in my back yard brooding listening to one of my little brothers get the shit kicked out of him for some unknown reason by my dad (not literally kicked but beaten). At that point i said fuck it what the hell am i doing here i could be sitting in a nice well conditioned room where its fairly illegal to do that kinda of thing to kids and people actually do good work. So yea i was feeling liek a big empty hole opened up in my chest, really shitty feeling and most everyone was back in site so i couldnt really go kick it and relax.

So after sitting there for a good 20min feeling this way i kinda phsyc myself up to go eat with my brother, oh yea to make me feel even better i basically eat by myself. I think ive already mentioned my dislike of that s i started out eating with the fam. And now heres where my science power of deduction comes into play. Im eating with my bro, lachery and maffay hako, pounded corn and leaf sauce, and i start to feel a little better. My brother doesnt like maffay hako so he always eats a little and then get cossan, sour milk to mix into the lachery. very tasty with the sugar you add in, ah ha a clue Sherlock! After dinner im feeling better and after the surgery cossan im feeling like a million bucks. Id run myself into the ground and basically all the underlying thins that are going on in my life surface and make me feel like shit. sugar and water. awa gassi! sugar water and dinner, im recharged and ready to run up a mt again. lesson of this particular sequence of events, the sun is hot. Fucken do like the locals do and dont do anything in the heat of the day without lots of sugar and water. So yea i wanted to go home yesterday, im sure everyone has that go on, and some of the underlying problems that surfaced havent gone away and wont for the foreseeable future cause im just a awkward son of a bitch whos got way too much going on at the moment.

Anyway today was productive and some work stuff has been semi sorted out. Checked up on the two pilot villages im working in with my counterpart and even got to check out the site where we're going ot try to do some erosion control (youd like that one dad), thats actually a decent orchard. Still need a bunch of sacs but was pleased to see that people had actually started to make their pepinieres and they didnt look that awful. Some even looked down right good. Also in the second site, we got orders for tree sacs from people who have worked with peace corps in the past. they basically know how to pepiniere and we just need to get them the supplies. so that was very encouraging. Up and Down, that just how these days go. what can you do? day to day week to week, and month to month. The new stage is here next week and were not the newbies anymore. Craziness. Well i think i can deal with situations liek that if they so arise again int he future, heres hoping they dont! it helps to vent to some folk here if they are around, and if not hop on the bike and ride till im tired. it generally works.

So work work work, thats basically whats on the agenda for this week. going to Tabakari for a follow up tom on their pepinieres, then wed help hassana and andy with a grant proposal for wulla naffa and then the Kédougou Regional Strategy from the 24-26 and the install dinner the 27th. lots going on. keep in touch ill try to as well if i dont go lose my mind to the heat first.

Yea ive been bad about this recently, but here ya go

So its been a long little while. Lots has happened lots is happening. Brief run down of the events that have transpired... After the eye clinic we had a work day at the regional house and cleaned the whole place up real nice. Also had a meeting about what is going on and what will be going on in the coming months. We ended up talking about the 4th of July, we hold a big party down here for all the volunteers in country.

Also had a meeting about an AIDS garden that i might be working on here in the near future down by the river. Its for people who are living with AIDS and is supposed to help supplement some nutrients that they are not normally getting.

Also went out to Tjibedji to visit Sheila for a day and hike around the hills out there, very fun got some good pics and had a great time. Shes got a new puppy who is rather cute.

The day after we got back we had the ag/fo conference and i was kinda fighting some kinda weird bug or something. Upon further review, consensus says it was dehydration i was fighting as i was running/biking too much without drinking enough. So that was fun for the conference but it was nice to see the rest of the ag/fo folk for a day or two and short of a few awkward exchanges had a good time while actually learning some interesting information for my work. Too bad it was only 2 days, would have liked to spend more time with some folk.

The day after the conference was over, Kevin and I hoped on our bikes and headed out to dindefello for the day to check out the waterfall and all that it had to offer. Dindefello is a very cool place, very pretty and great for hiking and camping if youre into that type of thing. We stayed at a nice campement there for like 4$ and had a great time hanging out. The next day we shoot out to the waterfall and then hop on our bikes to get back to Kédougou for the instal/COS dinner. On the ride back to kédougou we actually run into the Folk who were COSing as they were coming back from a trip to Guinea.

So kevin beats me back to kédougou as he found a short cut and i thought hed blown a tire or something and went back looking for him. i only bring this up as it has endlessly been brought up to me since as me getting soft and slow as kevin beat me back. he loves reminding me of this just to bust my chops.

The dinner was really good we roasted a pig and had a great time. Great food, we really know how to put a good spread out when we put our minds to it down here. So like i said it was a two sided shindig, newbies arriving for the first time and les anciene leaving for the last time. the newbies seem cool, three jahanky speakers. All three of them are over 6ft and all dudes. That makes for a grand total of about 20 people down here and 4 girls, yea what are the odds right! Oh and in contrast to that, tamba our nearest neighbors have 2 guys and the rest girls. So polar opposites basically. these guys seem cool and one of them os a cyclist, well more so then me and im looking forward to seeing how much better he is then me! They dont instal down here till the 28th as this visit was more for checking out their sites and meeting and greeting people.

So basically while they were off up north at their sites i was working down here in kédougou with my counterpart in two places, Sintiou Roudji and Jalaya, both within like 7k of kédougou. My counterpart and I basically handed out some tree sacs to motivated farmers in jalaya and are kinda still assessing the situation in sintiou Roudji but it looks like we'll be doing some interesting work in and around kédougou. Also have started visiting the Kédougou Eaux et Forets pepiniere. Its a sweet location next to the river and just loads of potential for some interesting tree work.

Started up my pullar classes again which i think will be a big help with my language. Although my tutor did kinda bust my chops for forgetting most of the stuff we had learned before i went up to Thies for IST. Ill get it back, im feeling better with the classes now anyway. I feel like the language plays a large role in good days and bad days. My theory is that you have varying degrees of good and bad days here, and the language plays a large role in that process. Well that and how awkward im acting around people, just kidding of course.

So the 4th was Independence day here in Senegal, 49 years of independence and it was kinda neat to see everyone all worked up down here. They had a big parade and everyone watched it. I bailed as the sun is hot, very hot and all this nonsense was going on at like 11-12. Far too hot to be standing around in the sun for really no reason. The day after independence day there was a Omar Pene concert here in Kédougou. he is a big Senegalese singer and it was a big deal he was putting on this free concert here. Long and short of it was that it didn't start till 12:45 and he only did a few songs so i bailed. I guess i didn't miss much.

I had my pullar class on monday and that was productive, djiby is a great tutor, so glad he knows english so well! End up getting invited to tag along with Andy and Hassana to Dindefello to check out his field there. We end up doing that the next day, good times, hes got a great field, lots of potential for some good work there. We'll see how things go.

Also at the moment there are US Department of Defense folk down here checking out projects that they are funding and are thinking about funding. Got to sit down with them with Kevin the other night and have a few beers. Weird hanging out with the full spectrum of Americans after being rather sheltered with the peace corps folk we hang out with here. Nice folk though, bought us some dinner. Its just so interesting seeing folk who are in the military, the couple times weve run into them here they all seem to be cut from the same cloth. Not a bad thing but very different for sure. They sure arent the guys i went to school with ill just say that, although its always nice to meet new types of people.

That pretty much brings us up to today, short of my little run in with a beard trimmer and a pair of scissors making me rather a lot cooler. shockingly short, the first words out of my tutors mouth when he saw me was i didnt realize that you looked like david beckham, not sure how to take that really as most people here think all toubabs look the same. Good times all round though working on a run of good days with only a few marginal ones sprinkled in there to keep things interesting. Ill try to keep on top of this blog thing a little more now that im back in a regular schedule and am feeling like ill have some interesting work shit going on to tell you all about. Stay in touch and ill do my best as well.