1 month to go and a trip to Ethiolo

Well today marks 1 month until my COS date (Close of Service), that’s April 20^th, when I’ll officially become an ex-Peace Corps volunteer, or as we’re called Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV).  And on the 20^th I’m flying to Sierra Leone with some fellow COSers to celebrate the end of our service with cheap lobster on the beautiful beaches! But like I said before, more on that when we get to it.

Over the weekend I traveled out to Salemata (about 80km west of Kedougou) to meet up with Meera and Tatiana and to make a visit to Tatiana’s village, Ethiolo (pronounced etch-o-lo). We met up in the district capital Salemata, had lunch there and then toured the local medieval castle….yeah that’s right there’s a medieval castle in Salemata. A few years ago Bob, a French pedophile who lives in Salemata, started constructing a castle. I’ve heard about it for the last two years and now I finally got to take the grand tour, didn’t meet Bob though, luckily. It’s supposed to serve as a Dance Club / Meeting Hall, whatever it might be it’s certainly out-of-place but amazing nonetheless.

Bob's Castle in Salemata, not sure if those are traditional Medieval colors...

We biked the 10km further out to Tatiana’s village.  Ethiolo is a Bassari village, so they are predominantly Animist and Christian, which also means they have a lot of fun culture.  We made this trip because there was supposed to be a party starting Saturday night through Sunday.  In fact the party didn’t start until Sunday, so Saturday night we just bought some locally made Honey Wine and went to bed early.  The next morning I decided to drink the honey wine all day long as we toured the village.  This was great because it’s delicious, and only got me a little tipsy, that is until we bought a different batch that afternoon.  Before lunch we met with Joseph, a local artisan who makes Bassari masks, I’ve bought 2 through Tatiana in the past and I wanted to buy some more, I got 3 this time…drunk shopping is the best!

Me and Joseph the Bassari Mask artisan of Ethiolo, and the 3 masks I bought  in between us

Just before dinner and after a failed sexual health discussion we were hoping to conduct at the town’s middle school, we bought a second batch of honey wine, this stuff a bit stronger.  Actually it was a lot stronger, I passed out before I could eat dinner, and I wound up missing the party Sunday night (the girls said it was kind of low-key and boring and they left early anyway), Tatiana’s family thought me sleeping next to the dinner bowl was the funniest thing.  Now I know this may sound slightly pathetic, or that I was being dumb and irresponsible, but drinking honey wine like that earned me a ton of respect with her family, oh how cultures work.  Either way the next morning we packed up, me and my 3 masks and my hangover and biked back out to Salemata, where Meera and I waited 9 hours for a ride back to Kedougou.  If my little drinking problem the day before earned me any bad karma, it was definitely served out during that boring 9 hour wait.

Meera, Balingo (Tatiana's hilarious village father) and I. check out those bags under my eyes, those honey wine hangovers will get you! even though I was still a little drunk when we took this photo the next morning...

Latrine Project is Finished!

Well congrats the hard working mason Thierno from Kukuji, all those who dug their holes, and my village father Alpha Mamadou who carted the sand and gravel to each site; We completed the 15 latrines that I got the grant for a month ago.That’s 15 families who will now be able to stop pooping in the bush, which means less diarrhea for everyone! Too bad I didn’t have more time and money to get some more done.

Thierno starting work on one of the cement covers

one of the 15 finished vented latrines in Pelel

I was actually really surprised how quickly this project went. As soon as I got the money from Appropriate Projects, we informed the people of Pelel to start digging their holes, bought the cement, rebar, PVC pipe and wire and it was all said and done in about 3 weeks! I thought I’d maybe be cutting it close before my last days at site in Pelel, but everyone was really enthusiastic about getting this project done, so bravo to us! Especially to Thierno, that man is a beast of a mason, he can knock out 2 or 3 per day (thanks to my ancienne volunteer Kay who got him trained so well during her latrine project back before I got to Senegal). Check out the photos below (more to come on Picasa) and thanks to my friend Lucy in the UK who helped fund the project along with other donors through Appropriate Projects (a great organization if I haven’t mentioned that enough already, consider donating to another clean water project through them if you’d like).

Moussa Yero, who lives in Pelu (a quartier of Pelel), with his newly finished latrine! he's one happy customer, now he just needs to build a little fence for some privacy...

2 Year Anniversary and Full Moon Midnight Bike Ride

Today is my 2 year anniversary here in Senegal. Two years, wow they went so fast! And now there’s just about a month left in Pelel and then some administrative stuff in Dakar, a COS trip to Sierra Leone (more about that in a future post) and then I fly home on May 1^st.

I’d love to reminisce about the last two years here, but it would be a terrible rambling tangent train with no end in sight, and then I’d definitely lose the last couple of loyal readers that I still have; so I won’t… But looking back, I’m proud and happy about my service, it’s been truly amazing and I wouldn’t have traded this experience for anything else.

Enough of that, I still have some time left here and let me tell you, it’s a super busy schedule for which I’m really excited and looking forward too, it’s also going to fly by ridiculously fast. As you all know I just got the funding for my latrine project (yes, it’s smaller than I had wanted to do, but it’s the perfect size for this last month). Since the beginning of March I got the budget finalized, found out that we can squeeze out 15 new latrines for the community. We decided to allocate a certain number to each of the quartiers (neighborhoods) of Pelel. Nearly ten families have already dug their holes and paid the 5,000 cfa ($10) contribution, so earlier this week Dabi, my counterpart, and I came into Kedougou to buy the cement and other materials. It should have been a 1 morning trip but due to the 40+ year old transport that we had contracted, it actually took three days we included me having to walk about 7km at night to get home while we waited for the mechanic to come out to Dindefelo.

our 40+ year old car rapide transport, spent 2.5hours pushing it up and down hills with the others to get it started...

Either way the materials finally made it out to Pelel and the work should be getting started extremely soon, if it hasn’t already started.

To celebrate the full moon on Thursday night we decided to do a midnight bike ride from Saraya to Kedougou, which is 60km. We started around 10pm and it was awesome because the moon was so bright, and the air was nice and cool, it was like biking in a dream-world.

Meera and the kilometer marker in Saraya the afternoon before the big ride

the group on the road, this was after we had "Shirts-off-o'clock" somewhere around the 45km mark. Me, Frank, Ian, Meera, Leah, Ben, CJ, and Marielle (Jess took the photo and kept her shirt on because it was cold...)

Oh and in other good news, remember how the back wall of Pelel’s health hut fell down during the last rainy season? Well Dabi finally got it fixed! So March is already shaping up to be a pretty awesome month and I think it’ll be a nice close to my service.

The new wall on the back of the health hut, much better construction this time around, I have no idea why they didn't build the walls this way last time, but this is Senegal and that's how planning works here...