A brand new update direct from the Hut!

Its around 8:30pm and things are winding down for the day here in Patar Lia. The evening call to prayer is coming in a few minutes and we'll be having dinner (birdseed with a sauce of weeds and peanuts!) before everyone falls asleep outside. Its too hot to sleep inside, or do pretty much anything after 10 am...which means a lot of time to sit under trees, sip tea and talk about life. Today the conversations ranged from gossiping about a lover's tryst during the latest health worker training, music star style, and infant nutrition – you can guess which topic I introduced! The rainy season brings mosquitoes, farming, and the end of the school year. With the schools closed and the kids out in the fields along with their parents I haven't got a whole lot of environmental educating to do. Luckily I'm well prepared this year to fill the time and we're off to a GREAT start with the Sokone girls leadership camp and my most recent adventure, a 233km bike trip through the biggest national park in Senegal from Tamba to Kedegou for the annual PC 4th of July party!

Just as the school are winding down several volunteers came together with a 27 especially academically gifted, motivated and financially challenged middle school girls for a week of fun, leadership training, and mutual education in Sokone. These girls were all participants in the Michelle Sylvester Scholarship program run by SeneGAD and came from a few different towns in the region. The camp was years in the making, but will hopefully turn into an annual event. This was a huge deal for everyone involved, girls without much experience outside their family compounds and volunteers who've never worked with each other, or more importantly with a gregarious group of 27 middle school girls! The whole group of girls, volunteers and teachers invaded a small community campground set in the middle of the mangroves outside of Sokone. There were swimming lessons and a tug-o-war but also sessions on career goals and women's health and sexuality. There was collage making and honey facials followed by aerobics and nutrition lessons with lots of donut samples! We also visited to a sea-shell island of sacred baobabs, where I got wandered off, got lost, and was forced to swim around to where everyone was waited with the boats! The whole experience has really opened my eyes to the great work that can be done in big groups, and how much more fun it is to do big projects in a beautiful area with all your friends and a place to go swimming!

After the camp I was back at site for only a few days before heading out again for an EPIC bike trip! It was an incredible experience, a combination of super outdoorsy working out, great friends, breathtaking scenery and even some animal sightings! I'm so proud that we made it the whole way and the fun we had along the way only added to the AMAZING feeling of rolling into the peace corps house in Kedegou at dusk the night before the party...and letting everyone know exactly where'd we been coming from!

The trip started out with my friend April meeting me at the Kaolack regional house to plan and and prepare for our trek. Mom's amazing care package of under armor gear, letters of encouragement and s'more supplies couldn't been better timed and we left early the next morning for Tamba. The 5 hour car ride to Tamba used to be the worst in the country but apparently the entire infrastructure budget went to repaving that stretch of road this year and we arrived at the next peace corps regional house early and in great spirits. We met up with three other volunteers from Kolda, Amanda, Ana, and Maya and headed down to the market to pick up last minute supplies. Plastic sheeting since the rains had started a little early, lots of bottled water and most importantly 5 matching fake flowers to decorate our beautiful PC issue bikes! We made it back to the house for a pasta party a la CBW girls soccer and tried to make it an early night. The exciting world cup game and thunderstorms didn't exactly fit into our plan, but at 7 am we were on the road!

We rode straight through beautiful countryside and farmlands greeting everyone with the traditional Pulaar “Adjarama” or thank you. In this part of the country the majority ethnic group is the Pulaars and they greet by literally thanking you for your work or presence. We stopped after a few hours to have breakfast in a small town called Mako where I sat down next to a PCV from the most recent training group and didn't even notice I was so excited for my bean sandwich! He and his nearest neighbor had met up at their weekly market and we were lucky enough to get insider information on the area and advice for the next leg of our trip. Their advice was basically one word - Wassadou – a eco-tourism project a few hours further up the road. Set on a beautiful curving bend of the Gambia River this rustic hotel offered us hammocks, showers and free clean drinking water for the entire afternoon and all we did was buy a few drinks! They were so welcoming and so excited to have guests, since the rainy season means even fewer tourists making the trip all the way down south, especially guests that speak local languages! We waited out the hottest part of the day sipping beers in hammocks at Wassadou and snacking on imported (thanks to the diplomatic pouch!) beef jerky, dried fruit and granola!

As it started to cool down, you know only a 100 or so, we left Wassadou behind and continued along to the entrance of the park at Dar-a-Salaam. We stopped by the first guard post to be our charming selves for the military men in charge before entering the only camp in town. Lucky for us the community run eco-hotel was perfectly suited for our needs and budget, or lack thereof! The no nonsense pulaar mama who was in charge had just finished bartering for our confusing room demands (with 3 beds for 5 people?!) and even more ridiculous dinner request (you want pasta, with vegetables, delivered to your room, with utensils?! No birdseed? Are you sure?!) when the skies opened up an it downpoured! We were sort of prepared with tents and tarps but the room service spaghetti and dry mattresses made the slumber party a lot more fun, and the spirits the next morning a million times higher.

The next day we were only aiming to make about 60 kilometers but we still started early since we wanted to get to our stopping point before the 'hot' part of the day. We had a lot of fun passing through more small villages and getting stopped at a police check point ( yes, yes, we know its a long way through the park... yes ,yes we'd like to bike...yes, yes, we know its hot.) The Nikolo guard post is about halfway through the park and where we decided to spend the night. Although its not exactly permitted, encouraged, or normal we'd figured it'd be a great way to break up the biking and spend more time in the park! Upon arriving we were met by a few guards who immediately exclaimed over our sweatiness and started to tell us how terribly worried they'd all been! Apparently the guards at the first station had called over to say we were coming and the guys had been concerned about what was taking so long! They were so hospitable and excited to have guests – I'm sure they don't get many being 50 km from the nearest village, especially not 5 foreign girls who ask right off the bat to spend the night!

We were waited on all day military in full uniform (cameo print shorts and a top without sleeves or sides?) but seriously an achievement for gender work here in Senegal. The guys made us lunch and dinner and helped us pull water to shower – things I've never seen a man do here, especially not for a perfectly able woman. Later on we went for a hike around the area and down by the river where we saw baboons, monkeys, warthogs and crocodiles! The monkeys managed to overrun the camp and stole any food that wasn't totally secured. What we lost in bean sandwiches and sour fruits we made up for in pictures! Later that evening we were wandering around an open field trying to get close to the antelopes when our favorite guard, Babacar, comes running over with his gun in hand and yelling for us to come quickly! He says that he just heard a lion and that we've got to get back to camp immediately, either a close call or a clever trick to get us all around the campfire a little earlier than expected! We hung out with the guys until late, trading stories and jokes (Niki limu waxee moom - That's what she said!) and making s'mores! They weren't quite as into them as we were but definitely appreciative all the same, and that meant more for us! We set up our tents in a lean to with the guards and drifted off to the sounds of baboons and birds not at all in the distance.

Before the sun came up we crawled out of bed to go on a lion spotting mission. 5 girls in short shorts and flip flops tip toeing along in the hopes of seeing a man eating lion! Between forest noises, the early morning mist and our own sillyness we managed to freak ourselves out of hunting to hard, but we did see more crocs before packing up our bikes and saying ba beenen to our wonderful hosts. This was definitely the hardest day for biking with lots to go and seriously hilly terrain. We worked our way up and down to the beats of girl talk and lady gaga, making it through even with the gears at 1/1! That first village after the part brought more bean sandwiches and another beautiful eco-tourism project to beat the afternoon heat. We took a dip in the Gambia river, keeping an eye out for hippos, and rested before tackling the last leg of our journey to Kedegou.

That last few hours were some of the best, except for our first and only blown tire. The sunset call to prayer echoed from a dozen different mosques as we entered the city limits and made our way the regional house. Just one cold beer later and we were all fairly inebriated (thanks dehydration/exhastion/elation!) and happy to have arrived. The rest of the time in Kedegou was a blur of pool partying, seeing tons of friends, hiking to gorgeous mountain tops, dancing under the fireworks (again imported via the diplomatic pouch?) and floating down the River Gambia. It was a great way to kick off my own summer vacation and a well deserved break after the end of school year rush and Sokone girls leadership camp.

So this is turning to the longest email I've sent in over a year but I guess I'm just feeling inspired to tell you all about the exciting things happening here in Senegal/having brought my computer to the village means I have an awful lot more time to write things out! Well that is until the battery dies...

Anyways that's about everything exciting up until now but there is SO much good stuff to come! I'm leaving to go up to IST, the second training seminar for the newest group of volunteers, where I'll be talking to them about visual aides and also the recycled paper briquette press I've been working on. When I get back to the village its time to plant a few hundred tree seedlings and then head up to Dakar to pick up Sarah! Both my younger siblings are being a pair of freaking rockstars and making the trip to visit their big sis here in Africa for a few weeks! They'll be spending time separately in the villages with an overlap in the middle during which I expect we'll tear the Dakar party scene to pieces, ride camels and sleep under the stars in the middle of the desert and generally have the most amazing time ever. Sarah will spend a few days in the village with me before we head up to pick up Steven and then after Sarah leaves Steve and I will head down to Patar for a few days of village life. I'm beyond excited and expect the worlds most massive email following the insanity I'm sure will ensue in the next few weeks before the start of Ramadan and the end of food/rain/fun as we know it in the village.

Until next time and lots of love!

And please send me some updates! I know you guys are taking vacations, having delicious BBQs and going to concerts that I would kill to see! Let me know what's going on at home...you're computer isn't attracting every bug in a three kilometer radius and that means you can type me an email too! <3 <3 <3