Throw Your Hands in the A-yer if You's a True Player!!!

So.... how long has it been since my last post?

Since I got back from America, internet access has been spotty and I feel like I've been running full speed, even though I'm sure at very many moments since then I've been banging my head on the wall in frustration over the slowness of things. Such is life.

After I last wrote, I and three other volunteers biked our way to a mysterious mystery location (mentioned previously, circa July, September? of last year) where we consumed unnecessary portions of frozen dairy foodstuffs amid the company of other volunteers: Peace Corps, Tostan, and VOS, which is like PC in Britain. Tons of fun and highly successful. I plan to do it again soon. Following that was the second EE club meeting: moderate success. The kids liked the walk, loved the notebooks, and I think learned some stuff. I also learned a little and so I think we're all better off. Huzzah.

The next week I did cool stuff like video my health hut ASC talking about malaria and work with the first graders (CP students) on an art/culture exchange with a Girl Scout troop in San Antonio. I also have now been into every hut and seen every bed in my village and the two nearest. Hopefully that will translate into mosquito nets arriving at the cusp of the rainy season... one for every bed/sleeping place, thereby saving hundreds of people from malaria. Looks like my work here is done.

The third EE club meeting took place and was, well, not as successful as I'd like it to have been, but at the end of the meeting Moussa (a favorite) said that it was a really good meeting, we had done lots of stuff, and he had a lot of fun. So I'll score that one under cultural success if nothing else. I'm sure the concept of plant needs and the importance of planning your garden danced daintly around their little heads, but I'm not convinced that they took home much more than the "In My Garden" game was lots of fun. I guess my gift for games will (inchallah) never fail me. And I thought I'd never find a use for my med-kit whistle. Also some kid ended up bleeding in the classroom and I'm not really sure how that happened, or why he was there in the first place. His older sister took him home to get cleaned up... safety fourth, I always say.

Last week I left my site to go to Dakar for the annual West Africa Invitational Softball Tournament. WAIST is a lot of fun, two days of softball and somehow many more nights of parties and for some (ok, most volunteers... especially the Mauritanians) lots of opportunity to get "WAISTed". Bah dom chhhh. But I really think the highlight is seeing all the people from the different parts of the country that I never get to see and being gifted with the loads of time to be social that I miss. Ever the indecisive girl that I am, I was faced with the daunting decision of which region's team to play for. I am a Kolda volunteer. I am closer to, and have many friends in Tambagou (a combination of Tamba and Kedougou). I made the best choice ever... I chose not to decide, and played for both teams. I knew it. I AM a true player!

I dressed the part for Peace Corporate Tambagou and had a ball (the drums and cymbal again) playing with the all-fun all-the-time, never serious but most spirited team from the Southeast. And then I made like Clark Kent and swiftly donned my 80's hair band outfit. I made a skirt that really held its own in the tournament, and I don't mind bragging about it just a little. I'm pretty pleased with it and will be looking for any and every opportunity to wear it again. Oh yeah, and really it was shorts... game shorts, no less. I mean business after all. I play to win.

So it was fun softball in the daytime and fun parties with fun dresses at night. The Kolda kids all bought the same heinous fabric: blue with orange hands and severed fingers (I'm not even lying). And we won a game, which is great, because some of the teams were out for blood. After that was the All-Volunteer conference where we talked about strategy for development practices and how some really neat projects have come about and can be redone. It was a pretty good week, but very exhausting.

And tomorrow morning I'll go back to site to go through some English withdrawl and hopefully get school gardening stuff off the ground... only oh, 4 months behind optimal starting time. Eh. And there you have it... my last 3 weeks in brief.

I'd like to ask my praying friends to pray for a friend of mine here. There's tough family stuff going on that isn't my place to be specific about, but she could really use a prayer or two. I'd rather not disclose her name, for the sake of people on this continent that might read this, but luckily, God's got that part covered, so if you could jump in on the rest, that'd be awesome.

Hope you're well and enjoying the end of winter. It's the beginning of hot season here and this morning I woke up sweating (on account of heat, not dreams) for the first time in months. Miss you. Love you. Mom, call your daughter. Peace. Corps.

PS. sorry the picture is so lame. It was the best I could steal off of facebook. That's the skirt in the bottom left. Trust me. Sweet as.