Holidays, etc.

Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year! I guess it really has been that long since I’ve updated the ol’ blog… but I have some good excuses, which I will now present to you. First up:

This year, instead of doing an American Thanksgiving with my friends at Tamba house, I decided to do “Village Thanksgiving” – which, I’ll be honest, was mostly motivated by “village guilt,” an affliction suffered by most (if not all) Volunteers at some point. I’d been spending a lot of time out of village, working on grants and perfecting my crouton-onion-egg-MSG soup (a delicious invention). So, in order to make myself feel better and also to bring a bit more American culture to Bira (PC Goal #2!), I bought 5 kilos of onions, a kilo of carrots, 3 kilos of potatoes, 3 kilos of rice, and 3 kilos of vermicelli. Back in village, I bought 3 chickens – figured they equaled one turkey – plopped the whole mess in front of my family and said, “Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. It’s like American Tabaski. Please cook all this food.” I even tried to explain the meaning of Thanksgiving – but in Jaxanke, it ended up being something like “So you say ‘thank you’ to Allah for…things…that you like.” “Like vermicelli?” “Uh, yes.”

 The preparation took five hours and was really fun. The whole family was out in the yard, talking, joking, butchering chickens with dull knives, and laughing at me as I tried to dice onions sans cutting board. And it was delicious. True understanding of Thanksgiving aside, my family certainly appreciated the feast, whose likes are seen in village only twice yearly.  You can be sure that they’ve marked “Fete Amerik – when Fanta brings us food” on their mental calendars for next year.

Christmas was spent in Benin, visiting my friend Eric. Since this was my second visit, we decided to dispense with the touristy agenda and just chill – we spent almost the whole time in Parakou, where Eric is now PCVL – Peace Corps Volunteer Leader. Parakou was easy to hang out in for long periods of time. Here’s why: food. Mind-blowing food choices. Also, the Parakou regional house (or work station, in Benin speak) is amazing, and so is Eric’s house.  Needless to say, ten days passed quickly and we bussed down to Cotonou for Christmas day, where we spent the afternoon eating turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, side dishes which were less important to me than turkey, gravy, and mashed potatoes, and dessert at the house of the PC Benin Training Director, who is American. I’ll ignore the food I was able to procure in Benin for long enough to say that it was also very interesting, after nine months of service in Senegal, to compare the two countries – their culture as well as the PC programs. But I’m too lazy to make a list right now. Later, I promise. I left Benin on the 27^th, arriving back in Dakar only one day before…

Becky! Yes, my best friend from America decided that 22 years of friendship means that if one of you lives in a distant, weird country, the other one is morally obligated to visit – or, really, she was just being awesome, as usual, and bought the ticket. We spent a couple days in Dakar in a nice hotel, a Christmas gift from my parents. It was amazing - beautiful construction and rooms, with a rooftop restaurant and bar overlooking the ocean. Traditionally, our New Year’s Eves are pretty low-key, and this one was no exception. We had a picnic in bed while watching some zany French NYE comedy special, then went up to the roof to watch fireworks at midnight. Let me tell you, it was unlike any fireworks show I’ve seen, but it may be my favorite. Since fireworks were being sold everywhere in the street, everyone and their blind old grandmother was snatching them up and setting them off with a passion.  For days, poppers that sounded like gunshots echoed through the city every couple seconds. The second the sun set on the 31^st, the real fireworks started going off sporadically. As we stood on the roof at midnight, we had a 360 degree view of the city, and the amateur but extremely enthusiastic fireworks displays being fired off from every neighborhood, seemingly every street, some of them directly over our heads (and worryingly low). It was a magical cacophony of noise – fireworks exploding city-wide, kids yelling, adults cheering, taxis honking, and every Dakarois dog with a voice barking manically in the streets. Very, very cool.

By now, Becky has seen Dakar, Tamba, and my village. She has survived taxi rides, charette rides, sept place rides, alhum rides, and bike rides. She has survived strange food and pit toilets. She’s a trooper. We’re heading up North again tomorrow with a couple other Volunteers (and one visiting sister) to camp in the little desert of Lampoul and ride camels before Becky heads back home. I’ve made her promise to do a guest blog post about her trip. I think it will be interesting to hear about Senegal from someone with a fresh perspective… as I once had (cue long-suffering sigh) (cue your eye-roll). 

In other news: In the beginning of December I volunteered at an eye clinic run by “Right to Sight and Health,” an organization that sends American eye doctors and nurses to third world countries to do free eye surgeries and train host country doctors at the same time. This one was located in Bakel, in the northern-ish part of the country, and focused on cataract surgeries. I worked for a week in the OR, loved it, and started researching careers in the medical field as soon as I got back to Tamba. My parents have been telling me to look into it for years, but I was never really interested – funny how one week can change your mind.

Also, check out my Appropriate Projects grant! (slight changes have been made since):  http://appropriateprojects.com/node/920

And also the video some of Team Tamba made about the marathon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia8xgXyXBo4

‘Til next time – and Happy New Year!