Segou Trail Building and Work Meeting

Halloween in Tambacounda wound up being a bit of a wash for me. Around 1 o’clock in the afternoon on the 31^st I got really sick with a pretty high fever and some intense GI issues (we’ll leave it at that) that stuck around for the next 36 hours or so. But, judging by the awesome music and all the noise coming from the party below while I tried to sleep on the Tamba house roof, it was a pretty great party…oh well, we’ll try again next year.

After Halloween we caught a free ride down to Kedougou with some new friends we made in Tamba. Nick and Katrine are a really cool Belgium couple who converted a European delivery van into a bit of a camper; they drove down from Europe (ferried over to Tunisia) and are traveling around Western African for the next 9 months. Either way, we had a work party here next to the regional house for Melanie’s new demo garden, and the next day we biked out to Segou to help Zach build a hiking trail to the waterfall to improve the tourism at his site. Camping and trail building at the Segou waterfall was both fun and beautiful, definitely an amazing waterfall, here are some photos.

trail building

Segou Waterfall

Adji, one of the training directors from the Peace Corps, traveled down to Pellel the other day for a work meeting. We met with the Chief of the Village (or Chef de Wilase as they say), the Imam (my dad), the school director and some other random villagers, to go over my Community Action Plan. Basically, it was a meeting to go over what the community wants and needs, and what I plan to work on during the remainder of my service. The good news is the Chief, the Imam, and everyone else was enthusiastic and agreed with my plans. The result is I’ll be working primarily on getting our health hut expanded, stocked, properly staffed, and efficiently running over the next couple months. My secondary work will be local group gardens with the Women’s Group, and with the children at the Pellel school. I’m pretty excited to get started on these gardens over the next couple of weeks, and now that rainy season is over (boo) we can start building and working on the med hut expansion.

In addition to all my boring blabbering about work, I need to thank my awesome cousins, Gina and Michelle, who sent me an amazing and delicious package a couple of weeks ago. I think I’ll definitely be good on bug spray for awhile now, yay 100% DEET. Thanks for the photos and letters girls, especially the letter from Baba, I couldn’t stop laughing. Also thanks to my darling little baby sister, Danielle, who sent me a book (which I’m really excited to read) and some candy. I miss all you guys.


Thanks for reading; I promise I’ll get some new photos on Picasa in the next few weeks, once I get to an area with some decent internet speed.

another one bikes the dust

Ok, that title was lame but I was trying to come up with something funny considering what happened yesterday on my way back into Kedougou. I was actually on my way to Thobakare to visit the new volunteer there and see how he’s been settling in, but just outside of Segou (7k from Dindefelo) my bike chain derailed. I looked back and this is what I saw…
The second major bike problem in just one week, and it's seriously not my fault, I know how to ride and take care of the bike. By some amazing luck, literally 2 minutes after I stopped, snapped this photo, and started to remove my back tire, a 4x4 carrying some Spanish tourists back from Dindefelo stopped. Before I could even finish introducing myself, the Senegalese driver and his buddy were already loading my bike onto the roof. Thank god for Spanish tourists and nice helpful Senegalese drivers. Made it back to the regional house in Kedougou, but since the bike is so badly damaged and we don’t have the part, I have to use a spare bike. Oh well. This weekend I’m off to Tambacounda for Tambaween/Hallowcunda!

Sh*t Happens

Things will never go as planned or as hoped during the Peace Corps. For example, after my last Dakar trip I was expecting to go back to site on Monday the 11^th, then disaster struck my GI system and I got stuck in Kedougou taking anti-amoebas/giarrdia medication (apparently the stuff they give us is banned by the FDA…). Either way, by the time I was feeling better it was only 2 days away from the arrival of our new volunteers, so I decided to just stay (it was a good idea, these medications make you nauseous). I guess the whole getting sick thing worked out ok because I met a group of 3 Polish couch surfers (tourists who sleep on peoples couches, google it, it’s awesome). They met a PCV in Dakar who referred them to stay with us while down here. It was fun meeting and hanging out with them, along with the shots of very tasty polish Wodka they brought for us. The next day they wanted an adventure in Kedougou, but I still wasn’t well enough for a long bike trip, so I took them to Bandafassi, an easy trip just 12k or so down the main road. From there we climbed to the top of the mountain (only a 25 min ascent, but kind of straight up), it was beautiful. Hopefully I can steal some of their photos after they get back to Europe. We spent that afternoon in the pool at the Relais eating warthog sandwiches; I know I work really hard here. It was nice meeting them and now I have travel contacts in Madrid, Milan, and Poland, thanks giardia!

The installation of the new volunteers went well and they’re all very nice. It’s hard to believe I’m a sophomore already. Joe, the PC bike repair guy, came down with the install car to fix all our bikes. He finished fixing my bike the other afternoon, so I finally got to leave yesterday afternoon to go home! The ride was great, until a bit outside of Dindefelo my rear gears started making a lot of noise, skipping, and occasionally derailing. I got into Dindefelo and just before I left to head back to Pellel, I checked my back gears…The new rear-gear assembly that Joe had just put on had sheared off and was wobbling all over the place. I took off the back tire and the assembly fell apart this is what I found.

that's all supposed to be one piece along with what's still on the axel

I wound up spending the night in Dindefelo at Lili’s place; she and some friends who were visiting from Spain had a car leaving the next morning to go back to Kedougou. Luckily I was able to get into that car with my broken bike (along with the PC Kedougou house bike that was lost down the river, but that’s another story for another time). We stopped along the way in Ibel to take a short hike to Iwol, another town along the same ridge that I visited with my Polish friends. Here are some photos of the view.

So that brings me to here and now…stuck back at the regional house in Kedougou. It wasn’t what I expected, or intended to do. I’ve been dying to get home since I’ve been gone so long, but I had a lot of fun because of getting sick and having my bike break…here’s to the bike trip back to site again tomorrow morning.