Village Adventures and Neem Lotion

Last week another volunteer and I hiked out to the Segou Waterfall and probably about 15 minutes before we got to the main falls I saw a 1.5meter long black cobra right in front of me in the middle of the path…yeah that scared the hell out of me. We didn’t spot exactly where it took off, but considering the trail goes through a narrow ravine it had to have been still near the path. After about 30 minutes of debating whether to turn back or not, we continued on to the falls, of course, although we snuck around the other side of the stream. Later the next night when I was in my hut I noticed a tarantula under my bed…seriously, did I just not notice all the cobras and tarantula over the past year, or is it just now that they’ve decided to come and greet me.

my (very) short-term roommate

Last week I biked out to Ninefescha, Meera’s site, to do a Neem Lotion demo and mural painting. We have these cool stencils that another PCV in the region designed that uses spray paint to complete an easy instructions mural. Unfortunately school was randomly out of session that day so there weren’t enough children to do the demo. (Neem lotion is a cream made out of a local leaf, with soap and oil and is a natural mosquito repellant). We’ll be doing more demos in villages all throughout the region over the next 2-3 weeks, hopefully I’ll get some more photos of that.

Meera spray painting the neem lotion instructions mural

me painting the mural (sorry couldn't trust the little kids with cans of spray paint...)

the finished mural

After we did the mural Meera and I decided to go camping for the night at the Ingeli Waterfall (see my older post). The bike trip was nice despite the thorns Meera encountered and the resulting 3 punctures in her tire tubes, but when we got there we realized the trip was a bad idea… Last year this time there was tons of water at Ingeli, I guess it hasn’t rained as much this year. We thought that the 4 straight days of rain and all the rain from Guinea would be enough…but no…no water at all, just the Ingeli -fall, or rocks. It was too late to turn around, so we sucked it up, were resourceful with filtering, boiling, filtering again, and then aquatab-ing some scummy pond water to drink. Luckily Meera had brought along a bottle of Cote-du-Rhone, so that made up for the lack of swimming. It’ll be at least another month before we attempt to go back there…may the rains come soon! Oh and a huge thank you to Meredith and the Ferfolia Family for the amazing care package! The students will enjoy the school supplies and I'll enjoy the M&Ms.

the pool from which we got our drinking water...didn't get sick either!