Look Who The Cat Dragged In!

So I guess I should start with an apology. I was slightly mistaken about when my next computer access would be. I had no internet access during my time in training. It was mostly spent in a small village where the only electricity was from personal generators. I of course did not have one. It wasn’t on the packing list from the peace corp so I didn’t bring one. After 9 weeks of language and technical training we were back in the capital for a few more training sessions, our swearing in as official volunteers and then shipped out to site. That week was a crazy whirlwind and I had so much trouble writing a blog entry. I didn’t know how to sum up those 10 weeks of training. How could I tell you about it all: the frustrations, the fun, and all the cross cultural mistakes I was making? It was all just too much too write. It was so daunting that I ended up writing nothing. I thought it would be alright that I wasn’t able to write as I thought that my site mates had said that internet was accessible at my site. It pretty much isn’t.

So now I have the same dilemma as last time I was in Kombo. I just finished my 3 month challenge. That’s what they call the first 3 months at site. (What do they call the rest of our time, the 21 month challenge?) They tell you to not leave site for 3 months and observe the village and get to know the people and language. So I have mostly done that, I only left site for 2 days to visit someone. So now I’m back and have 3 months to write about. I want to tell you about everything that I’ve been going through and know that I can’t write it all here. So I guess I’ll just write a little about my site and what I hope to do while I’m here.

My town is called Bwiam. You can find it on Google Earth. It is pretty large with about 10,000 people. There is a small hospital, elementary, Jr High, and Sr High schools as well as a few nursery schools. There are a number of small shops (batiks) where I can buy most things that I want and a small vegetable market were I can buy some fruits and veggies, what ever happens to be in season. There are no restaurants only a canteen at the hospital. That’s one thing I miss a lot from home. I miss being able to run out and get something to eat whenever I’m hungry. I have to plan ahead for that now. I am a Health and Community Development volunteer. I’ve been spending time at the hospital in the lab and also at child vaccination clinics. I spend a few days at the Family Planning Center, where I hope to get involved in education about HIV/AIDS other STDs and reproductive health. I am also going to be involved with the village chief and Village Development Committee. I want to help with getting clean water for the community and there were a few other smaller things they spoke to me about. It will take some time before it’s clear what I’ll be doing with them.

Over all I’m pretty happy with my site. My host family is good though there have been many frustrating nights of miscommunication. I am learning to like it here. Well that’s all I have for now. I am keeping an off-line blog. I guess the less technically savvy would call it journal. I hope that I’ll keep up with it and be able to publish it when I return to the US. For now though, I’ll make more effort to post when I make it back to civilization. At least you’ll all know I’m not dead yet.

Africa Ill!!

As many of you may have guessed I’m in THE GAMBIA now. I have to be honest it was really anticlimactic. It was a really tearful good bye to all my friends at church, work and my family. So I get on the plane to DC and things went well there. We bonded well as a group. There are 21 of us that all came over together. So we get all our shots together, get to the airport, get on the plane and about 20million hours later we are in Africa. No trumpets, no dropping of confetti or letting loose 1000 doves. Just walk off the plane and get on the bus to the terminal. We were met at the airport by lots of Peace Corps people who helped with our bags and got us all loaded into the van and off to our training site. It’s at a catholic retreat center that’s on the edge of town. The beach is 20 min. walk away. Coke is plentiful, though not nearly as good as it was in India. It’s like I’m on vacation still. Except for the 3 hours of language class a day. Then the rest of the day is filled with discussions about how to treat and prevent diarrhea and malaria. And then at meals we talk about our mefloquine induced dreams. That’s right, as a US government employee I get to take the malaria drug that makes you go crazy. So it’s actually been a bit of a let down so far.

Tomorrow, though, should change all that. The reason that we have been getting pounded with language is that we go to our training villages tomorrow. (I think they all have little wheels on them.) We travel into the bush to start living with our host families. This is where we will learn our language. I’m learning Pular, spoken by the Fula people. There are 2 other trainees going to this village so there will be 4 people total that speak English in our village, us and our language trainer. I’m actually rather excited about that. The part I’m not so excited about is the pit latrine. I’m not sure I’m down with the whole no running water thing. I guess I should have thought about that before I signed up. I’m sure that I’ll have some great pit latrine stories for you all though. I guess I’ll start to come up when people search for S#@$ smearing on google too, Tiffany! How exciting!! Anyhow, it will be 2 weeks without internet/electricity. So I will miss you all for 2 weeks. But when I get back, I’m sure I’ll have plenty of things that are making me bitter that I can rant about.

Ceace Porps.

This post will come in 2 parts. The first to my friends and family and the second to the idiots out there.

My dear friends and family, this will be my last post from the US, probably. I leave for DC tomorrow. I’ll be there for a few days and then off to my adventure in The Gambia Africa. It has been really tough to say good-bye to my friends this week. I cried a lot at church today as I said good-bye to my friends and my small group bible study. It was quite possibly good-bye forever to some of them. Many are in Grad. School or Med. school. They will finish before I get to return. They pain of saying good-bye to them was excruciating. But I’m really glad that I had the last 7 months to get to know them. I will miss you guys so much.

Tomorrow I say good-bye to my family and I know that won’t be too much easier. Thankfully my brother and sister-in-law came in from Ohio. It is so good to have them here to help me pack and get ready and then say good-bye. I will miss my family a lot as well.

Now for the Idiots out there. You see I was reading the volunteer handbook. They say in there that if I keep a website that I have to make it clear that my posts are my thoughts. Then don’t reflect the views held by the agency that I’m working for. So I don’t know if I’m going to spell out the complete name of the agency. So for now I’ll just have to call it the Ceace Porps. Thanks to all the idiots out there that would mistake my thoughts for someone elses.

The muscle of the party:
Good-bye, Jean-something

My African Connection:


Bye girls, remember that I'm not that far from Kenshasa!

Happy Next Two Birthdays to Me!

What a beautiful cake,


Baked and decorated by the beauty on the right.


I love you guys and will miss you SOOOO much!

All That and A Bag of Tortilla Chips

I recently had the opportunity to go salsa dancing, twice. Of course, by recently I mean during the last 2 months. It reminds me of the last time I went swing dancing (read about it here on June 14th). That was one of my favorite posts.

The first time was with Renee from my bible study. There was a 1-hour lesson before the dance started. I got there about halfway through the lesson. So I missed how the basic step was supposed to go and also why the guy was counting 1-2-3-5-6-7. What about 4, if there’s a 4, where’s 8?!! I learned how a couple of turns go but without the basic step (or count) down, the turns made little sense. Renee is rather experienced, at salsa, so she was in the advanced group. After the lessons, she was able to teach me how the basic step goes and how the turns all work into it. Though, I never did ask about the counting. We were the only ones from bible study that were there so I only knew her. She was well known by a number of people there. So luckily she had other people to dance with. Lucky because she didn’t have to dance all night with me and also because it gets really boring when all you know how to do is the basic step and one turn. She tried to teach me other stuff, with mixed results.

The next time there were a few more of us in our group. Doug came. Doug’s your typical masters in engineering student. Not as geeky as your typical computer science nerd but not as cool as us bio-geeks. He hadn’t been salsa dancing before but had done some swing and other stuff during the summer. We were able to teach him a little. Chansonette was there too. She’s more free spirited in her dancing that Renee. She doesn’t take leading so well but she also doesn’t wait for you to lead and then say things like “why don’t you throw a girl a turn sometime?” She also didn’t yell at me to keep my hand in the shoulder plain. Probably the most interesting way to be told to get your hand off someone’s butt. Actually it’s the only way I’ve been told that. Too bad for me I guess. I bet Tiffany has lots of good stories about grabbing people’s butts. Our friend Dan was also there. He grew up in South America so he was somewhat better than Doug and I. The band was fun too. They played some Christmas music. It was fun to hear them sing about The Grinch to a salsa beat. I think we all had a good time. Doug and I did and the girls as least pretended that they did. So it was a successful night. I wonder how much I’ll get to practice while I’m in Africa. Maybe I’ll start a salsa club in The Gambia. I bet it would go over really well.

NOG!!!

I told Dave I would drink a glass of eggnog for him. I had other glasses this year. This one was for Dave. Its not a “fun” glass though. Its just eggnog. You can tell its not a fun glass because I’m not smiling in the picture. I used all my brandy at my super cool friend Joy’s super fun Christmas party and sadly I have no rum either. (Too bad Tiffany isn’t around. Then it would be a fun glass!!) Anyway I used all of my brandy making mulled wine for Joy’s party. I made a whole crock-pot full of it. That’s from 2 bottles of wine, 2 cups of brandy, 2 cups of water plus sugar and mulling spices. Though the party was super fun they weren’t a drinking crowd. After the party was over, there was 1.5 wine bottles worth left. I left the half bottle for Joy. I hope she and Kristin enjoyed it. You can tell it was a super fun party because of the antlered creature featured here:

Of course, Kristin looked beautiful with the antlers on, not like me. Unfortunately nobody got a picture of her wearing the antlers. Why were there so many pictures of me with them on?

Anyhow. Cheers, Dave! It was a good glass of eggnog!