My Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!! I hope that everyone had a great day and shared it with good people. As for what we did here, well we tried to recreate Thanksgiving as best we could. Everyone in the region came to the regional house to help celebrate. We couldn’t get a hold of any turkey so we bought 10 chickens and 5 ducks. Luckily we had more than enough people willing to kill the animals (frustrations with work and people run high!) so I was spared that task. On Thanksgiving Day we were told to pick a bird and season it, so I head to the cooler and pick out a nice juicy chicken. I took it out of the bag and noticed that one of the guys was nice enough to clean out the insides but to my surprise they did not remove the head nor the feet. So what is a girl to do but grab a meat cleaver and behead the bird herself!! After a few whacks my dinner was no longer starring me in the face. I then proceeded to season the bird and let it marinate. Throughout the day it felt like a real Thanksgiving because there was a lot of food preparation and delicious smells coming from the kitchen. At about 3 pm the guys started throwing the birds on the grill as our final food prep. Around 5 pm everything was done and we had a LOT of meat, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes and gravy (I can say that I had a hand in the gravy, but it was just adding hot water to McCormick gravy mix), sweet potatoes, stuffing, biscuits, pumpkin pie, apple pie, and chocolate pie. Now, everything sounds really authentic but I can tell you that all these dishes had a bit of a twist on them, but we did the best we could with what we could find here. After stuffing ourselves silly we did what any other family would do and napped!! Then we played a fun game called Pit which was explained to us as a commodities exchange game with a bell!! I know it sounds like “What the???” but it was actually a lot of fun. After hanging out some more it was time to call it a night and head off home. All in all it was a fun day and we all got a little taste of home.

Starting the preparations for Thanksgiving dinner. Please not the beheaded duck with it's feet off too, that's what I did to my chicken!!

The chickens marinating, some people were inventive and came up with Thai peanut marinade!!

If you think making Thanksgiving dinner in the States is hard, try doing it with no running water and three burners working on the stove. Here some of the girls are helping out by washing dishes so we can continue cooking!

Everyone chilling while things cook and bake.

Here I can contributing my culinary skills by making the gravy :)

The boys grilling up the chickens!

Yummy looking chickens!!

We're about ready to start feasting!!

Everyone sitting down at the dinner table with their plated piled high. Mine's the blue one with everything swimming in gravy. I LOVE gravy!!!

And here is a great picture of one of the volunteers in an after eating food coma, we invited our cleaning lady with her son to come and I guess he picked up the after food coma tradition too!!!

My week in village

So this past week I had a language seminar (where we do 4 intense days of language classes) in Togue. It was quite an interesting time. Togue is a village of about 100 people with nothing to do but pick peanuts. I arrived on Monday morning via Peace Corps car, I am not in good enough shape to bike 40+ km (25 miles) to get there via bike, and was warmly greeted by CJ (one of my fellow Sangalkam people) and his family. Once Jess (another girl from Sangalkam)got there we started to settle in. We took a tour of the village, which took about 10 mins, and then we just hung around CJ’s hut. This was my first experience without running water or electricity. So when night came I pulled out my trusty headlamp (thanks Savario, it’s super bright!!!) and we settled down to have a delicious dinner. CJ’s family decided to kill a chicken that day so we had chicken and rice, which was cooked in the chicken broth, delicious!! My first night was interesting, CJ stayed at his brother’s place where the bed was made out of rice sacks and Jess and I stayed in CJ’s hut. Jess was nice enough to give me his bed while she slept on a mattress on the floor. It wasn’t bad until right before dawn when I was awoken by some creature either flying or scurrying around the hut. I will admit I was too afraid of what it might be to turn on the light and find out what it was so I just plugged me ears and hoped it wouldn’t attack me. Finally down came and I was relieved to see that I was still in one piece. For breakfast every morning, we had some type grain that had the consistency of couscous with spoiled milk and sugar on it, I would eat about 2 bites and then say I’m full. On the second day we had language classes that went all day. For dinner they made some type of sauce that if you add chicken to it would taste exactly like sweet and sour chicken!!!!
On the third day we decided to venture to the nearest shop, which was a 15 min bike ride. Now seeing as how I didn’t bring a bike I had to hop on the back of CJ’s while he tried to maneuver over hills and rocks. Once getting to the “shop” we sat down with the people there and enjoyed a lollipop. It wasn’t much of a shop because it was a shack on the side of the road that sold candy, powdered coffee and milk, and a few other things. On our way back we decided to stop at a stream and dip our feet in and enjoy the surrounding beauty (CJ lives at the base of a mountain). It was nice and peaceful but after about a half an hour we decided to head back. Seeing as how there was no way I was going to be able to sit on the back of CJ’s bike we decided to walk back, that helped us kill about 45 mins of the day. The reason that I couldn’t hop on the back of his bike again is because I had to sit on his luggage rack with my legs bent up so they wouldn’t drag on the ground, not the most comfortable thing and by the time we got to the shop my thighs were on fire!! Once getting back we just rested for the rest of the day. That night though at around 4am (I’m guesstimating) something ran into Jess’s face while she was sleeping on the floor. I woke to her yelling. From that point on I couldn’t really sleep. Luckily it was our last day and I got to come back to the city that afternoon. Also, our toilet/shower situation was less than ideal because CJ has a fence around the area but it goes up to about mid-torso, which it’s fine for a guy to stand in and take a shower but not really a woman, so I had the pleasure of having to squat while throwing water on myself and trying to lather up!! So all in all it was a very interesting experience, but I am very glad in my decision of telling the Peace Corps that I wanted an urban site.

To get to Touge you have to cross over the Gambia river. Here is the "raft" that takes us over.

The Peace Corps car on the raft crossing the Gambia river.

No oars needed on the raft, you just get out and help pull the rope to get across!!

The entrance to the village.

A view of the village. Told you it was small!!!

What does one do without electricity at night, why break out your headlamp and read, but remember to use the red light, helps keep the bugs away :)

Setting up Jessica's bed in CJ's hut. We improvised and used dental floss to hang it up!!

Here was my shower situation, fine for a man, not so great for a woman.

A quick update

So after a few weeks in Kedougou I have started to become used to my city. It is small but it has everything that I need. It’s also nice because I don’t really have to deal with the typical things that you have to in bigger Senegalese city, such as garbage EVERY WHERE, traffic, and constant noise. One thing that I have noticed is that the Senegalese have not figured out a good system of waste removal and therefore throw their garbage on the street or where ever they are standing. Without proper waste removal the cities are littered with trash which gets really bad when it’s the rainy season and there is literally a river of garbage in the street. However, since Kedougou is a smaller city and a new one, it doesn’t suffer from this problem as much. Kedougou is also very bike friendly without a lot of cars on the road, so the only thing that I have to worry about hitting is one of the many goats or sheep lying around or one of the numerous potholes that line the streets!

As for what I have been doing, well not much. At first I was worried that I was the only volunteer sitting around not doing too much and feeling overwhelmed by how to even start tackling the problems that I see and help people. Luckily, I spoke with the other volunteers from my stage (that’s what they call a group of trainees that come in together) and found out that I was not the only one feeling like this. That made me feel somewhat better about the amount of work I was not doing. Also, I figured I didn’t really want to start any major projects now because I will be gone all of December. We have an all volunteer conference up in Thies (where I had my training) and then I have 2 weeks of In-Service training there. After that there’s only one more week till Christmas so I decided I would go visit my roommate from Thies at her site. She’s living in St. Louis and I’ve heard it’s a really nice town because it used to be the former capital of French Africa so apparently it looks like a European city. I figured since I was up north any ways I might as well take the opportunity to visit the city and spend Christmas and New Years with her. As for Thanksgiving I plan on spending it at the regional house with the other Kedougou volunteers. They say that they plan a nice dinner and try to get all the fixings for a real Thanksgiving dinner. Apparently you can get a turkey here so I told one of my fellow volunteers who really wants to kill something that he gets the honor of killing it. So I have some good plans for the holidays.

This week I have a language seminar at one of my fellow volunteer’s sites so I get to spend the next 4 days living in a village of 75 people without electricity and running water (well not that I have that right now either, welcome to the dry season!!) and living off of rice and oil, it should definitely be an experience!!! So that’s a quick update as to what I have been doing for the past month and what my plans are. If I don’t blog before Thanksgiving, Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!

My new home!!

Here is what my room looks like. I know it's a mess right now, but I'm hoping with some furniture I should be able to organize everything!!!

Here is my bathroom, complete with running water, some of the time. All I need to do now is paint it!!!

Here is the view from my rooftop. In the distance youcan see the mountains of Guinea!!!