Turkeys, Ducks, and Snakes, Oh My!

Thanksgiving was a lot of fun. I left my village Wednesday morning, biked into Velingara, took a car to Tamba, then one to Kedougou, and got to the house around sunset. It was a long trip, but well worth the effort and I’m glad I dccided not to break it up. I spent Thanksgiving Day doing not very Thanksgiving-like things. We got some innertubes from the garage and took them down to the river (Gambia), then floated down to a rope swing that the Kedougou vols had set up earlier. We played a little and then headed down to the Relais (a nice hotel) to exit the river and have a drink. Afterwards, Thanksgiving FEASTING ensued. There were: a turkey, grilled. a duck, also grilled?. three chickens, hand-rotisserie roasted (Daniel…crazy). a bucket of squash, a large bowl of sweet potatoes topped with hand-whipped bissap meringue, greenbean casserole (!!!), cranberry sauce from craisins (and you’d never know the difference), carrots, spinach-esque nebeday, salad, pumpkin-pie, banana custard, apple crisp (my contribution), and of course garlic mashed potatoes and gravy. I’m not sure this is even an exhaustive list. It was magical. And would you believe that they don’t have electricity! I know.

It was a ton of fun to be with good friends and eat all that food, and I ended up staying until Sunday and making it back to my village late that evening. I’m in town today bringing new mosquito nets down from Tamba for the new Kolda volunteers. They were given the nets from the training center to take to site. Lamesville.
Yesterday spent sometime at the health hut being “wowed” by the USAID facilitator showing off his new line graph. It’s quite amazing, you can actually quantify the number of malaria and diarrhea cases in our village over the last year and see the trend. I already knew that the rainy season brings an increase in malaria (duh, there are hardly any mosquitos in the dry season) but he was really impressed with the graph, so naturally, I should be too. Next time he’ll graph the instances of malnutrition… I told him when they’d be the highest (starving season… logical, right?) but we’ll see and be impressed anyway. I’m preparing for my first EE club Friday, but I’m afraid I lost my planning notebook. I hope I didn’t take it to Kedougou, but it definitely didn’t come back with me.

Yesterday a frog forced its way through my slightly cracked back door. I thought , weird, that frog is incredibly persistant trying to get into my room, and then I ushered him back out. Shortly afterward, while my sister was hanging out in my hut she suddenly pointed to my (closed) back door and said, “there’s something over there. move away. it’s a snake.”
I looked. I saw a small black spot move along the floor behind a paint can and thought it looked like a cricket. “No way, it’s not a snake.” I leaned over the paint can to see behind it. She was already at the door calling for my uncle to come from across the compound. I started to say “Look, it’s just a cricket, relax,” but then I saw the coils. “FLA! FLA! FLA!” (a recently acquired phrase from my friend Roxy), I thought. I backed away and instead said “no, you’re right. It is a snake.”
My uncle came in with a 7-foot-long stick. He looked at where the snake was and went out, brought a smaller stick, and began to carefully move away the paint cans and jars collected by the door. Then when he had a clear path, he started wailing on the snake with the (now only 4-foot-long) stick. I, meanwhile, am trying to angle myself away from any kind of escape path the snake might take and still get a good shot with my camera. I’m hoping this is my only opportunity to see someone kill a snake in (or near) my hut. Got a good shot that will make it onto the blog when I get home IN UNDER 3 WEEKS!!!!!! if not sooner. The snake was only about 18 inches long, but it turns out the small black spot was just a ring around it’s neck. My sister thinks it was poisonous. I hope not. Anyway, I’m keeping my backdoor shut tight for the next little while until I feel safe again. Scary stuff. I’m off to the internet to see if I can figure out what kind of snake it was. Eek!