New address

Ok, here is my address for the next two years, Inshallah:

Anne Schier, PCV
Corps de la Paix
B.P. 320
Tambacounda, Senegal
West Africa

As for things I would love to receive - anything. Really. Seriously, getting a letter or a package here is extremely exciting for everyone involved. Howeverrr, if you need some suggestions, I would be happy to provide.

-Pictures of you, to put on my wall and/or show off how hot my friends are
-A good book/magazines
-Pita chips
-Candy
-Protein bars/powder.
-Those boyfriend Ts from Target, you know, the ones that have a little pocket on the chest and are 5-8 bucks... whatever colors, M or L. I should have brought 10.
-Nail polish/remover
-TEA! good English breakfast tea.
-Northern California weather, if they've figured out how to package that up yet
-Pre-addressed envelopes/stamps!

If you do send something, let me know so I can keep my eyes open for it. I think you have to check at the post office to see if you've received anything. Thank you thank you thank you!

Big long post, then off to Tamba

Hey guys. Big things are happening. As of yesterday, I’m done with PST. Tomorrow, we’re swearing in  at the American ambassador’s house in Dakar, dressed in our Senegalese finest. From now on, we're PCVs, not PCTs. Woo! On Saturday, many of us ship out to our new regions. On Sunday, the rest of us do, including me. This Wednesday at exactly noon, I will be installed in my site, presumably to much fanfare on the part of the village since I’m their first ever Volunteer (but we’ll see).

I thought I would do a slightly more detailed post on my life in Mbour, my training village, since I had just left for good. Then I had the crazy idea to write in the third person just for fun. So I did. Then I read back through it and thought writing in the third person was kind of stupid. Here it is anyway.

It was a dark and noisy morning.

Well, dark because it was only 4:30 a.m., and noisy because noise is what you get when you live in Senegal.  Anne groaned. She had just been dreaming about something nice for a change, couldn’t quite remember what, but it had a distinctly comfortable American feel to it. But no use fighting the inevitable - it was time for the second or third wake-up call of the night. The mosques were yelling about Allah knows what. There were cats fighting outside her window, and a donkey was screaming somewhere in close proximity.  Anne fumbled around for the iPod that she had misplaced somewhere in her sheets, ignoring the mosquitoes that buzzed threateningly just outside her mosquito net (hope they don’t find the holes) and searched for loud yet relaxing music. Three more hours, she told herself as she settled back, let’s try to make the most of it.

Every day in Mbour starts pretty much the same. In fact, as she’ll bemoan quite frequently, every day is alarmingly similar. Shortly before 8, after changing into something more appropriate (knees are generally frowned upon in Muslim countries) she tiptoes out of her room and around her host sister, who is mopping the floor. This always makes her feel a bit guilty because A) this sister has been cleaning the house for an hour already, and B) walking through the just-mopped area is unavoidable, and everyone knows how annoying that is to the mopper. Some things transcend cultures.

“Fatumata,” says her sister, looking up. It’s a statement. Oh, Anne is not Anne here, she is Fatumata, and she is still not sure how she feels about that name. She rattles off the basic morning greetings that have been drilled into her since day 1: “I saaxoma. Heera sita. I siinoxota kende? Heera doron.” Sometimes, when she’s really just not in the mood for obscure African languages (you know how it goes) she’ll greet her confused family with a defiantly American “Heyyyyy, good moooorning!”  Breakfast consists of enough bread to drown a duck, and enough sugar to send even the most mild-mannered child into a fit. Anne/Fatumata watches as her host mother spreads watery chocolate (Nutella’s ugly cousin) on half a baguette and dumps sugar cubes into her tea/coffee/sweet powdered milk combination, and worries that this no longer seems abnormal.

Anne and Nicky (Nandin), living closest to the training garden, have been elected to water it every morning, which neither of them really minds since it gets them out of the house a little earlier. Plus, pulling water is one of the easiest forms of exercise to be found, and can be done even in a pagne (long wrap skirt). On the way out of the schoolyard, they converse briefly with a middle-aged man, dressed in a suit. Encounters like this are familiar, and the conversing is, familiarly, heavily one-sided. “Hello, you speak-a de English? I love you. Are you married?” Anne and Nicky continue walking. Honestly, no creativity. Marriage propositions are becoming positively tedious these days, even when aimed towards two girls at once.

Language class starts at 9. Anne has learned enough Jaxanke to satisfy Peace Corps’ training requirements, but somehow still leaves each class feeling a bit dumb. Along with her LCF (Language and Culture Facilitator) and three other Trainees/would-be Jaxanke talents, she learns vocab, structure, unnecessarily long greeting sequences, and how to say things like “I don’t eat mystery meat.” Recently, one of the sample phrases in class was “He talks to me every day about beating children.” Some things don’t transcend cultures.

After class, the Trainees part ways, and head back to their respective compounds for lunch. Imagine a streetlight, and the swarms of insects drawn to it at night. In Senegal, foreigners are that streetlight, and the insects are children. Night AND day. This makes walking anywhere a process. One must greet all the adults on the street, and deal with the insects, I mean kids. Common greetings from the children include simply screaming TOUBAB! over and over,  “give me a present,” or most often asking your name repeatedly in bad French. Before Anne became jaded, which didn’t really take all that long, she would usually try to explain to the kids that no, she was not TOUBAB!, her name was Fatumata Cissokho and she in fact lived here, and no, she didn’t have presents for them. After, she resorted to mental health survival mode, which means either ignoring them or telling them outright lies for the sake of entertainment (“My name is Michelle Obama/Britney Spears/ Your Worst Nightmare”) Granted, there are cute and polite kids on the streets (these receive smiles and handshakes), but many of the rest run in unsupervised packs, creating chaos wherever they go. As Anne rounds the corner, nearly to the safety of her host family, a boy wearing a pink sequined “Playboy in da House” t-shirt runs up to her and sticks out his hand. She shakes it. He then pokes her in the crotch and scampers towards the rest of his pack, laughing madly. Anne sighs. She wouldn’t hit him, but he doesn’t know that, right? She reaches up and breaks a small branch off the nearest tree, making sure to look like she means it. The pack scatters. Success!

Lunch is the most important meal of the day. Like nearly all Senegalese dishes, rice or millet is the main component, with a sauce or meat or fish and veggies over it. It’s usually very enjoyable, except when it’s intestine or when the fish bones are so small or numerous that half the meal is spent ensuring that none of them wind up in one’s throat, but the trainees joke that even then one can just attribute it to the “conditions of hardship” Peace Corps warns about. What doesn’t kill me (or lead to severe discomfort) makes me stronger, Anne reflects as the lid is lifted off the communal bowl. Sweet! Ceeb u jen, my fave! I love this family. Early on in training, Anne started taking long naps after lunch. Now, if she doesn’t immediately head towards her room, she gets questions like “You will not sleep?” or statements like “You will sleep now.” Fo naato, later, she says today. Instead, hanging out with her family seems like the better option. A mat is laid down in the shade in front of the house, and a couple chairs dragged over. Everyone lounges – mom, sisters, a couple brothers, whoever happens to be visiting at that time. While her host mom begins to prepare a type of porridge for the next morning – sifting flour with her hands in a well-worn calabash, tossing in water a bit at a time as the flour forms into balls – Anne amuses herself by chatting with one of her host brothers, age 21. He tells her that she’s old, and should get married immediately upon her return to the US. Waiting any longer is just inviting disaster. Anne tells him that it’s not uncommon for women in America to get married later than age twenty-five, and slyly suggests that maybe she’ll wait until she’s thirty, or forty. Who knows, maybe even later! He looks scandalized. “No, no, nonono! You can’t do that, it’s not possible! You will get married at twenty-five, no later. Who will marry you if you’re old? How will you have many kids otherwise?” “I only want two kids. Three at most.” His jaw drops and he emits a shrill, disbelieving noise. Cross-cultural education: shock and awe, Anne decides, as her host sisters laugh.

The afternoons in Mbour seem to drag on forever, broken up only by brief forays to the garden with the rest of the Jaxanke/Mandinka trainees to water, work on outside assignments, or simply hang out and exchange stories of strange encounters or awkward conversations. Back at home, Anne’s evening consists of watching horribly yet hilariously scripted Indian soap operas with the family, or, if the power is out, sitting and talking. Or not. Lots of sitting happens here, for hours on end, and Anne appreciates that the speaking is optional. The Senegalese are comfortable with silence (although nobody has informed the Senegalese animals) and it’s enough to just sit outside and enjoy the company of other people. Being a sporadically shy person herself, Anne is ok with this arrangement. Also, her Jaxanke is still at the level of a three-year-old, and the serenity of the evening is easily shattered by an embarrassing mix-up between “kanoo” and “kaano” (love and hot pepper)

Dinner is at 9, and as usual, is much more simple than lunch – tonight it’s rice and a single chunk of dried fish lurking in the middle of the bowl, origins uncertain. Anne claims fullness a bit earlier than usual, and retreats to the couch, where a brother is taking out his ADD on the remote: bad Senegalese music videos, bad soap operas, talk shows in Wolof, and footage of Libya flash across the TV screen. She excuses herself at 10:30 and heads to her room, where she can change into comparatively skimpy pajamas without fear of moral reprehension. Collapsing into bed, she doesn’t know yet that she will in fact wake up four times during the night for various annoying reasons. 

But given past experience, she has a pretty good idea.

News and a new name

Hello. Kor tanante!  

I got my permanent site! The name of the village is Missirah Bira. It has 1500 residents, not counting the ones with four legs. It’s about 50 kilometers south of Tambacounda, halfway between Dialokoto and Missirah, if you’re looking at a very detailed map. It has no electricity, running water, or cell phone reception (noooo!) It is off the main road, 5 or 20 kilometers down a dirt path, depending on how far you’ve already biked, how hot the sun is, how much water you remembered to bring, and if your bike is working properly. Since my first visit to my site was after a (25 kilometer, very very hot, not enough, back wheel shaky) ride, I was kind of in a daze while meeting and greeting my future coworkers/friends/nemeses. More on that later.

I have an allergy to mango skin! Yes, it figures that I have escaped the common curse of stomach ailments and viral fevers that have plagued my staging group so far, only to be struck down by a fruit. My lips started swelling last Saturday, and it slowly got worse. When I woke up at the training center Monday morning, I didn’t even recognize myself in the mirror. When I showed my roommates, I got horrified “OH MY GOD!”s. It was truly disfiguring, not to mention embarrassing. I hid in my room that morning, and called the PCMO (Peace Corps Medical Officer). She told me to “stop hiding immediately and find a car to Dakar!” It was a miserable ride, even though I was in an air-conditioned Peace Corps vehicle. The Senegalese guard that was driving me kept glancing back and asking “Tu es malade?” NO, I just look like plastic surgery gone horribly wrong ALL THE TIME.  Watch the road, you nearly hit that goat, you jerk.

Anyway, the medical staff in Dakar was on it, and they got me an appointment with a dermatologist that very afternoon. It took two seconds for the guy to look at my lips and diagnose it as a contact dermatitis, or allergy, or whatever. Turns out those four mangoes my family gave me a couple days before were the culprit. The good news is that I can still eat mangoes – just as long as I don’t touch the skin, and put the fruit directly into my mouth without touching my lips. Alrighty. The other good news is that the “health hut” is more like “health heaven” – air conditioned, clean, big rooms, western toilet and shower, full library, amazing kitchen, and a western-style grocery store just 10 minutes away.  “This,” one of the PCMOs told me, “is not Africa. “ The second day, I spent half an hour wandering the aisles in stupefied amazement before finally selecting French bread and cheese as my lunch. It was possibly worth the temporary disfigurement. There were a couple other Volunteers there as well, and they took me around the neighborhood, ending with a beer on a hotel balcony overlooking the Atlantic and the Ile de Ngor. Pas mal.

Because of this whole deal, I arrived in Tamba for my volunteer visit a day late. I stayed with an older Volunteer who is mid-service, about 30k away from my future site. The entire four or five days that I was living with him, I oscillated between thoughts of “Oh my god, what have I gotten myself into?” and excitement. I have faith that the latter will win out in the end. Spence, aka Babanding Tangian (or something like that…) is an Jaxanke-spitting, hard working, hilarious guy and lives in a village of 700 people and approximately a million goats, sheep, donkeys, cows, chickens, and horses. All these animals just go wherever they like in the village, even sometimes into houses, prompting the owner of the hut to jump up from his seat under the nearest tree and shoo them out. The cows especially are in the habit of plodding sedately around, glaring balefully at you as you swerve on your bike to avoid them and their enormous horns (these aren’t your sissy American cows, these are AFROcows) after they step into your path.

We spend a lot of time watering his garden, greeting people, avoiding farm animals, biking, and laying on the floor of his hut during the hottest part of the day.

The Tamba region is very hot. It must have been 115 or 120 every day, and was 105 degrees inside his hut until at least 10 at night, which made sleeping difficult. At around 4 in the morning it cools down to a more comfortable temperature, and starts heating up again as soon as the sun rises. Luckily, this is hot season. Rainy season is cooler, although mosquitoes and various skin infections thrive, and apparently during December and January it’s very nice. I hear that people adapt to the hot weather well and take lots of midday naps. The weather in Senegal in general, except coastal regions, is pretty rough, so I shouldn’t complain. Although I might in future posts. Just a warning.

Anyway – my site visit was nice, even if I was on the edge of heat exhaustion during. My hut is still under construction, but I’m already planning color schemes and murals, and trying to decide if I can fit a full size bed inside. (Don’t tell my amazingly artistic mother yet, but I’m planning on roping her into helping me design some decorative and/or educational murals for my village). My host family gave me a name within two minutes of meeting me: Fanta Savane, incidentally naming me both after one of my favorite delicious African escapes AND after the wife of my LCF. Strangely fitting, and awkward. So now I have two full Senegalese names to keep track of. I like Fanta better than Fatumata, personally. I saw the school and health post, both areas in which I will be working, and met the directors of both. My counterpart is very understanding about how difficult it is to learn a new language and integrate into a new community, which will help, especially since I am starting out in a brand-new, never-had-a-Volunteer-before site (many Volunteers replace other Volunteers, so their villages are accustomed to a white person living among them)

Ok, this is long. Sorry. Today was kind of cool – we had a presentation by a woman who works with the US Global Health Initiative and reports directly to Hillary Clinton, and some of her supporting staff. Tomorrow is “Dakar Day,” our first foray into the capital (except I’ve already been, ha ha suckas!)

One more thing – if you haven’t sent me a letter or package yet, or won’t in the next couple days, don’t send it to the address I previously posted. I’ll be moving into the bush soon, and will have a different address. I’ll get that one ASAP. 

Last but not least, I miss you all. I really do. I miss America. I miss driving and coffee shops and brunch and temperate weather and my dog. But I’m also in a good mood going forward, excited to rock the last month of training and develop ideas for projects once I get settled in my village. Life here so far is a series of ups and downs, but so far, the ups have definitely won out, and I think the ratio will continue to shift in my favor in the coming months.

There's a gecko in my mosquito net.

If you are a naturally timid person, Peace Corps will either make you want to jump into a well, or it will bitch slap the shyness right out of you.

After three weeks in my homestay, I have reached a certain level of comfort with my family and in my community. I greet people in the street (aka dirty sandbox between houses), give the “death stare” to any person over the age of 13 who calls me “toubab,” and joke with my host siblings. While eating, I’ll give them a taste of their own medicine: “You need to eat more. Eat! Eat! Eat!” They get a kick out of it. The other day, my 6-year old host brother and I played a quick but furious game of hot potato with a piece of cow intestine. He would throw it into my section of the bowl; I would throw it back. This continued until he threw it at my host mom, who ate it with gusto. However, I still hear two things at the end of every day: “You didn’t eat today” (not true), and “You like to sleep a lot” (very true).

I still feel extremely lucky in my living situation. Many friends have disturbing stories of their own homestays, a few of which are simply too disgusting to put on here.

We're all back at the Training Center for a couple days, which is a relief. Also a relief: I just finished my first oral exam in Jaxanke. (Fun fact: I couldn't even find this language on Wikipedia. Try googling it) It's a little intimidating speaking with the microphone on the recorder staring you in the face, and I'm pretty sure I now have five new facial expressions that mean "???" because I don't yet know how to say "I don't know what you're saying; can you please repeat that?" BUT - it's over. 

Next on everyone's mind is site assignments. Yes, in 24 hours we will learn where we will be spending the next two years. Exciting times. The plan is to blindfold all 46 of us, position us on a huge Senegal map that they've got on the ground somewhere in the compound, then have us all take off our blindfolds at the same moment. The person you are nose-to-nose with will be your closest neighbor. If you are five feet from everyone else, it means hours of travel to see another American face. I'll try to do another quick update before we go back to village with my site name, which is hopefully google-able. What I do know: I will be in the southeast somewhere, and it will be hot. Very hot. Good news: I am unlikely to be stationed in the region where, apparently, "things go to die." (The volunteers there have made a shirt that says as much)

Wish me luck.

Mtoxo mu Fatumata, err, le ti.

Week one of CBT (community based training) is over, and we all survived. Well, except for one girl who already skedaddled back to the USA. It’s been an intense experience. From the moment they booted us out of the minibus into the arms of our new Senegalese families (usually 20 or more arms; families here are biiiiig), we were no longer in the oasis-like comfort of the training center, or “Amerigal.”

I got lucky with my family, I think. It’s relatively small – a mom, two sisters, and four brothers. In comparison, the guy sitting next to me right now has a father, three moms, a brother, and something like ten other sisters in the household. My family is well off, and the older sister (22) was friends with another volunteer at some point, so she knows how strange us toubabs (strangers) can be. They are all very patient with me as well, repeating phrases such as “I need to go to my room to take my anti-malarial medication now” in Jaxanke until I pronounce it correctly. They speak French as well, which means most of the communication from my end falls into the “Fraxanke” category. Oh, and my name here is Fatumata Cissokho. I’m named after the older sister, which is fine by me cause she’s pretty sassy.

I had a slightly traumatic dining experience the very first night. The food was pasta, some sort of sauce, and chunks of meat. Since I was a guest, they were all throwing the good parts (meat) into my section of the bowl. I go for one of the ambiguous chunks, and this is my thought process as the food gets closer to my face: “Hmm, this looks ok, I’ll take it..  uh oh, doesn’t look so good up close…oh no, oh no, it’s too late now, can’t put it back, we’re going innnnnnn…” I spent the next five to ten minutes chewing, trying not to upchuck into the communal bowl/embarrass Peace Corps/Senegal, and trying not to think about which part of which organ of which animal I had in my mouth. I decided on enormous cow, stomach lining. I was on guard after that, but the rest of my meals have been pretty good. Fish bones have been the most unpleasant item I’ve found in my mouth since then. After a couple days of using a spoon, they told me I have to learn to eat with my hands because eeeeveryone in the Jaxanke region eats with their hands. Two nights later, they give me the spoon back and tell me I’ll have to buy one myself when I get to my village. Senegal: 1, Anne: 0. Another aspect of the Senegalese dining experience: they will try to force you to eat, as it brings them honor if their guest gets fat. The dialogue at the end of meals goes something like this:

Family : Eat! Eat! Eat!

Me: I’m full.

Family : You don’t want to get fat? EAT EAT EAT YOU MUST EAT! (shoving food at me)

Me: I’M FULL I’M FULL I’M FULL! (in Jaxanke, Mfaata Mfaata Mfaata!)

In other news, I have my own room with a door that locks, which is a Peace Corps requirement for homestays. I have a mosquito net and a lightbulb that works whenever the electricity isn’t cut off, which happens multiple times per day. Mbour, the town that me and about 6 to 10 other trainees are in, is a tourist town on the coast, but you wouldn’t know it from the quartiers we see daily. Imagine lots and lots of sand, trash, fish guts, goats, sheep, and kids running around with apparently nothing better to do than scream “Toubab!” at you. Cute with the 3-year olds, super annoying with the 15- year olds.

Other things of note…

- Found a goat leg in the middle of the road. Just a single goat leg. How does this even happen?

- Roadkill rats the size of cats

- Horse and donkey carts sharing the roads with decrepit cars and buses

- I realized, 4 days in, that my family has both a roof and a goat family living on it

- Cold soft drinks = something appropriate to get overly excited about on hot days.

- A pelican chilling in a doorway. Lost? A pet? Who knows. It was alive, we checked

- I received three full outfits from my family. I think it means they like me. Two are made of material that resembles outdoor tablecloths, which was convenient when I was attempting to eat with my hands.

- Confusion among PCTs: “I can’t tell if it’s his third wife, or visiting cousin”

- Hand vs. spoon, toilet paper vs. water: pros and cons

- Bucket showers are heaven after a couple hours in the garden

- Getting to said garden requires ten minutes of pushing through groups of elementary school children

- 3 hour long, super intense language courses after which we can’t think straight until we take a nap

Anyway, after our first 6 nights there, we headed back to the training center. The day before, texts were circulating among the trainees, all of which read something like “Sooooo ready for a beer.” Upon arriving in Thies, the general consensus was “drink before shower” which resulted in us buying out them out of every beer they had.

Heading back to the village on Wednesday, for 13 nights this time. The bar might want to get a bigger fridge in the meanwhile.

Oh, and my mailing address for the next two months, if you so desire:

Anne Schier, PCT

Centre de Formation Corps de la Paix

B.P. 299

Thies, Senegal

West Africa

Remember to send it by air, as land packages/letters have been known to take months, occasionally years. Mail here is a big deal, and I would be excited to receive anything :) If you figure out some way to send me thai food, I'll love you forever.

Training so far

Ok, this post is going to be super quick becuase A) I procrastinate, B) socializing has so far taken precedence over blog writing, and C) I'm leaving for my home-stay village in about twenty minutes! Kind of an exciting time. A couple things about the last five or so days we've been here in the Thies training center...

1) Meals - most are eaten around a huge bowl on the floor, four or five people to a bowl. The food consists of some sort of rice with sauce, with a huge chunk of meat or fish in the middle and usually some veggies. It's delicious. I'm told this are not the kind of thing we'll be eating daily at homestays, but I'll fill you in on that later. There are a bunch of social rules centered around eating, such as in which position you can sit (differs for men and women), what part of the bowl you can eat from, how many ingredients it's acceptable to mix together (none), and what to do with your hands (eat with your right, since doing nearly anything with your left is horribly, inexcusably rude) It's funny to watch my left-handed peers struggling to adapt. Meals are also taken in complete silence, which will both be a relief (since I can't speak the language) and kind of awkward (since I'm American)

2) Technical/Cultural/Medical training - We've had quite a bit of this. No time to go into detail now, but expect them later. I'll just say now that I can prepare some awesome tree sacks.

3) Language - There are about 49 of us PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees) and we are learning 8 languages between us. These include Wolof, Mandinka, Jaxanke/Malinque, Sereer, and three different types of Pulaar. I'm learning Jaxanke/Malinque, which are similar enough that I should be able to switch between them easily. It ain't easy. 4 hours into classes, we've probably covered the equivalent of a couple weeks in high school language classes, and my brain is having a hard time coping. Time to locate some flash cards, stat. Some examples: Mtoxo mu Anne le ti = "My name is Anne" Mman futuu = "I'm not married." We also learned to explain why we aren't married ("I don't know") I'm fairly sure that I'll totally blank when meeting my host family tonight, and it will be an amusing and awkward clash of cultures. Can't wait.

4) The people - All I'll say is that the training staff is amazing, and we all feel like we're in excellent hands. My fellow PCTs are also an awesome bunch. Everyone here is genuinely a hugely adventurous, open-minded, decent person. Advice to the guys out there: join the Peace Corps if you want to meet a girl. There are 10 boys, 38 girls.

Ok, gotta run. More to come later. Wish me luck!

How I actually met Africa

So right now I am chilling in my Peace Corps-subsidized Holiday Inn bed, complete with pillows labeled "soft" or "hard" so I don't have to actually feel them to decide which I want to use. I fully realize how much I should be enjoying this luxury. Tomorrow is staging, which is when all the people in my training group get together, turn in registration forms, have a brief orientation, then get a bunch of vaccinations en masse and fly off to Dakar. BUT - I can't write about staging right now, having not yet experienced it. Instead, a short recap of the last couple weeks, which I spent mostly in Europe and West Africa.

Europe was great. I got to bum around myself for a few days in London and Paris, then I met some good friends for adventures in Germany and Austria. London was rainy and I was jet lagged, which means I slept through most of it. I was so happy to be back in Paris (and it was sunny!) that I found myself grinning stupidly as I walked along my favorite stretches of the Seine, took pictures, and got a panini from that place across from Notre Dame where I once accidentally insulted the lady behind the counter, oops. Munich has always been a city attached to some favorite memories, and this time was no exception. Salzburg was absolutely beautiful - if you want my advice, go in the winter. I don't think it could be any prettier without a blanket of snow.
As for Africa, I visited Eric in Benin. Because I'm lazy, I'm going to link to the guest post I wrote on his blog, which sums up my experiences pretty well. But I will say that the trip was eye-opening and probably the best thing I could have done before heading off to West Africa myself. Instead of stepping off a cliff into the unknown in the next couple days and weeks, I sorta have an idea what to expect at the bottom, and I know I can handle it. I'm even kind of looking forward to going back.

http://newtoninafrica.blogspot.com/2011_02_01_archive.html

Til next time!