A lot has happened I'm going to try my hardest to give you guys the updates you deserve.
I saw camels on my charrette ride to Medina (my road town - meaning the bigger town with electricity that I can buy stuff at) this was incredibly exciting, and everyone on the charrette thought I was crazy because of my child like squeal.
Actually, I think a lot of people in my village think I'm a lil off because of my adventurous side. I want to try to do everything everyone else is doing, if the children are playing soccer I'm jumpin' in, if the women are dancing I'm right there with them. Our morning greeting is Jam waali, so you have to do the long a sound.... I greet people the same way Eva says wall-e on the movie Wall-E. Nobody!! within 3 hours of my village would even know about that, or nobody in the Futa would know about the movie Wall-E. So the children make fun of me thinkin' I can't pronounce jam waali, and I get to reference a Disney movie at 7am.
There's a wolof phrase some pulaar people say as well, but it's mainly big city pulaar people who know it because of the influence of wolof. It's "Ada heewi banken yanken", it means you're tempermental--or materialisitic. I kind of made up my own meaning for this phrase; I learned it because my sister in my CBT site told me to tell it to my brother because he was mean to me. Now I say it to anyone who pisses me off/people who repetitively ask me for money. I said it to my sister in law in my new village because she's sassy and at times a bully to me, after I said it I was a little nervous I had offended her but they didn't know what it meant and the only way I could explain it was, "she's got a lot of problems" they thought it was hilarious, everyone who came over heard the story. Now everyone in my village says this phrase and only one woman actually knows what it means because she's Wolof; the great thing is no one can pronounce it right so I have people come up and say ada heewi bankdan dandan, and it's my responsibility to make sure they pronounce it correctly because my ada heewi banken yanken revolution must be executed properly.
Um, I just got done having my language class it was bout 3 days long in Podor where Paul and Maddy live, they housed us for the language class it was amazing seeing other volunteers! The best part was sharing stories of everything we've all been through and what projects we've started. The projects we've all started are like baby projects because we can't apply for grants yet.
So far I've started my pepinere, I have to do 500 tree sacks before IST which is in July and I've accomplished half so far. I started seeding one of them a few weeks ago so hopefully my niece actually watered the pep; she's been a brat lately and just keeps askin' me for things so I yelled at her, she knows better she needs to stop. Actually my whole family keeps askin' me for things and I talked to my dad before I left that they need to stop and he seemed pretty respective to my speech; but I don't know how much he understood. I'm a little nervous about my family situation; I think they don't want another volunteer living there because they've already had 2. We're really close and their amazing but it's not what I would consider a "family." But I've won the hearts of a lot of the people in my village including my family members- so my whole village will be my family.
Except I yelled at a teacher the day before I left to Podor...I dunno if I can post details about this online, but let's just say I stick up for what I believe in and my word is everything to me. My ultimate goal here is to make something sustainable. If I've noticed something didn't work out with the other volunteers I'm not repeating that project, for example my family has always had a huge garden and they cook with the veggies and they sell 'em in Medina to make money. The first volunteer had a large one once she went home it died. Second volunteer had a large one and it died as well. They asked me to do one and I asked someone once I go home if it'll die and they said yes because I wont be there to take care of it....hm, why would I do it then? If it's going to crumble and fall once I leave I can't do it. I can't justify the project in my head because of this reason. Instead we're doing a woman's garden because they'll be generating such a profit they'll be purchasing their own seeds and it's their way of business. SOLD! Once I can start writing grants we're going to figure out what we need to do to get this done.
This blog post is incredibly jumpy and scattered I apologize but I don't have much time to write it all out because I need to leave to my village today so I wont have internet in a long time unless I can track down a cyber cafe in Medina.
For the 4th of July I'm traveling down to Kedegou for their 4th of July party, which will be amazing but Ked is the Southern most part of Senegal and I'm in the North; tiring! After 4th of July I return to my village and a few weeks later I've got IST. After IST the big projects will be starting hopefully! Right now everything seems like it's really slow but I don't have the language skills or the hang of the village just yet.
Gotta go,
Loves!
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