Working for Peanuts...literally.

I recall as a child my father vehemently opposing us talking to him from any other room then the one he was in.  Oh, how I loathed it.  I’d be in the living room, not more than ten paces (child paces that is) from the kitchen and he would refuse to listen to anything I said until I got up and walked those ten child paces into the kitchen.  Now, like most things that were incomprehensible to me as a child, I understand all too well.  I’ll be walking to the garden from my house and I’ll hear a faint noise from an unknown direction.  Could be a bird or just the wind, regardless, that barely audible sound couldn’t be meant for my ears.  Then, someone who is closer to me will tell me to answer to this indistinguishable sound.  If I ever do find the source of this far off utterance, I will have no idea who it is coming from as they are far out of normal eyesight range.  I’m not talking ten or even twenty child paces away.  If we were in my childhood, they would not only not be in my kitchen; they wouldn’t be in the kitchen next door either.  They’d be in the kitchen down the block and around the corner.  Now upon first arriving here, I would try to respond to these marathon-distance shout-outs, but being that I wasn’t born with supersonic hearing (like all Gambians as far as I can tell), I quickly tired of even trying.  

In addition to not being able to hold a normal conversation a mile away from my fellow conversant, I also never know who is trying to converse with me.  Turns out you can spot a “toubab” (white person) from a mile away and being that I’m the only toubab in at least a ten mile radius, it’s a pretty safe bet as to who I am.  My job in interpreting which villager is yelling at me about how hot it is from the next village over is considerably more difficult.  I now have a new rule that if the person is more than ten adult paces away from me, rooms or no rooms, they will not receive a response until they walk into my “kitchen”.

I’m actually constantly amazed at the lengths one will go, or not go for that matter, to avoid moving here.  This is something I can understand given that even while lying completely naked and motionless on my floor, I’ll be sweating buckets.  But, people here can take it to the extreme.  The aforementioned long-distance shouting is one example. Another would be how nearly every day after lunch any of my three moms while sitting literally within easy reaching distance of the bucket of drinking water will shout for any of her children to bring her water.  Sometimes it will take a solid ten minutes of shouting at the top of her lungs to even get the child’s attention.  Then another five minutes for the child to run the half-mile back to the house.

Speaking of child labor… I’m really thinking of adopting it as a practice when I have children of my own.  I’ll only have to wait for about two years or so until they start walking and then I’ll have myself some full-time, round-the-clock employees.  If I deprive then of all forms of entertainment, the work will even seem like a fun little game they play with all the other little slave-laborers.  “How many pieces of wood can you chop with this axe whose blade is barely connected to the handle, little four-year old Mohammed?”  “I don’t know, but I bet I can beat you three year old Mohammed!”  “Ha, ha, ha.  YAY!  Let’s do some more work!  Where’s the machete?”

As a thanks for all this fun, free labor my mom will shout encouraging words like, “If I find you there not working, I’m going to beat you!” And “Today is the day you die.”  Ah, to be a young African child.  If this experience has taught me nothing else, I now know how bland my childhood was, what with all the playgrounds and swings, birthday parties and ice cream cake, cold water!?!  Man, oh man, did I miss out.  Luckily, I’ve now been here long enough that they think of me as one of their children as well.  I might be the weird, fair-skinned one that likes to stare at pieces of paper with scribbles all over it for hours on end, but I’m their weird, fair-skinned child.  Now, if my moms see me sitting and doing nothing (always), they shove a bucket full of peanuts to shell in my face.  They don’t trust me with anything like chopping-wood; I’m not nearly as skilled as all the little Mohammeds.  Finally, the childhood I never had. 

Unless you change direction, you’re apt to end up where you’re headed. –Chinese Proverb

              Now that the final countdown has begun (finally), I suppose it’s about time I update my blog.  It’s only been one year, since my last entry.  There’s an expression in Wollof, “Ndanka, ndanka mooy jaapa doomi golo”, “slowly, slowly, you catch the baby monkey.”  Also known as, patience is a virtue.  Many Gambians would call this a proverb and I suppose with this particular one I can get on board.  However, they also have many expressions that are not proverbs by any stretch of the imagination.  A proverb by definition is “a saying that effectively expresses some commonplace truth or useful thought” (Merriam Webster).  The key phrase in that definition is “effectively expresses”.  I was effectively expressing how ineffective many Gambian “proverbs” were at expressing their meaning to my friend Bala, when he expressed this little proverb to me as an example of how effectively expressive Gambian proverbs are; “ If a squirrel knows the secrets of the crocodile, who told him?”  Now because effective proverbs require no further information beyond what is given in the proverb to express a commonplace truth or useful thought, you probably don’t need any more information about what this one means.  However, if you could not quickly arrive at the meaning of this little gem, I’ll fill you in.  Obviously, it was the monitor lizard who told the squirrel the secrets of the crocodile because he can live in the water and on land AND what’s more, the moral of this proverb is “don’t gossip (or back bite, as the Brits would say) because gossiping is bad”.  Wow, I know.  Feel free to share that wise and ancient Gambian proverb at dinner parties and any other appropriate occasions.  I personally think it is more of a riddle than a proverb, but all Gambians would strongly disagree.

                After being away for 585 days and then traveling for 4 days, I finally made it back to the land of the free and the home of the brave.  Despite leaving The Gambia on a Wednesday and arriving in Tucson on a Saturday, the travel was still one million times better than traveling around in West Africa, better than mangoes even.  Since I’ve now finally reached my half way point, I decided I wanted to post my book list, but I feel like I should talk about some of the work I’ve done first.  I don’t just read all day, I swear (well at least not all day EVERY day).  Shortly before I left, BeeCause (an adorably named organization to help promote beekeeping) came out to my village for the second of three beekeeping trainings.  We now have six beekeepers in my village, one of whom is a woman!  (YAY, GAD moment!)  Five of our six catcher boxes had bees and we have now built full size boxes in order to transfer the bees.  Upon my return, we will harvest whatever honey we have and then wait until the rains are finished to harvest again.  We might not have any bread or vegetables in my village, but we’re about to have liquid gold.  My counterpart and I have also begun working on a medium scale poultry project.  Because raising laying hens is simply not profitable in my area, we will be sentencing all of our little chicks to death.  I am still a vegetarian, but I think I’m going to have to give chicken slaughtering a go. YOLO! (You Only Live Once, for those of you who, like me,  do not ride the acronym train.)  Here are some other side projects I have going on:

•  Care Group: I teach basic health concepts to 7 women, those women then re-teach that information to the rest of the village.

•   Solar-Water Tap: After about a year, Changai finally has a solar-water tap.  Well, we at least have the money and almost all the materials.  At the time of my trip to the US we were just waiting for the contractor to come hook everything up.  Hopefully there will be running water upon!

•      Reading club: I read with the kids at the school every Friday, just to help them practice.  I’m not very good at it, but I have the books.

•          Tree-guard training: I had one of my favorite people in my village, Mahmoud Khan, help me host a training to teach villagers how to make tree-guards for when they out plant seedlings to protect them from the multitudes of livestock that ruin everything they can.  As it turns out no one wants to learn how to do that, but I now know how to make them, so I consider it a success!

So you see, I do do some work.  And now for my full time job, I read and here are all the books I’ve read in chronological order for the last year and a half:

-          Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly

-          Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

-          Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

-          Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

-          The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

-          Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

-          Are you there Vodka? It’s me Chelsea by Chelsea Handler

-          What is the What by Dave Eggers

-          The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls

-          The Race for Timbuktu by Frank T. Kryza

-          Film School by Steve Bowman

-          The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

-          Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig

-          The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

-          The Perks of Being a Wall Flower by Stephen Chbosky

-          Clash of Kings by George R.R. Martin

-          The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

-          My Horizontal Life by Chelsea Handler

-          Room by Emma Donoghue

-          Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

-          Little Bee by Chris Cleave

-          Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell (Reread)

-          Watership Down by Richard Adams (Reread)

-          Imperial Ambitions by Noam Chomsky

-          Turn Right at Machu Picchu by Mark Adams

-          Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver (Reread)

-          Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver

-          The Wild Girl by Jim Fergus

-          A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin

-          The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen

-          God’s Middle Finger by Richard Grant

-          Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

-          The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okamura

-          Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn

That’s all folks!  I’d like to thank my brother for coming to visit me.  My hut might be made for one, but the two of us made it work just fine for three straight weeks.  I was impressed.  The school now has a beautiful world map.  Thanks Omar Khan.  I was also very lucky to have my mom and my two aunts come out for a visit.  I know that it is no short distance and that it isn’t exactly a destination vacation, so I really appreciate it.  I hope the people of Changai showed them a wonderful time.  They certainly will never forget meeting you guys.  I have just 330 days left and I’m hoping it will be my most productive year yet.  I’ll leave you with a short list of the illnesses I’ve suffered to date; hopefully the list will not get much longer:

-          Giardia: Anywhere from 3 to 6 times, or rather basically constantly for a year and a half.

-          Blister Beetle: It’s gross, google it if you want.

-          Ring Worm: Don’t play with kids.

-          Kidney Infection: Throwing up in a pit latrine is not fun.

-          Cutaneous Larvae Migrans: Look it up on Wikipedia, that’s what the doctor did.

-          Entamoeba Histolytica: It’s gross, I don’t suggest getting it.

Wish me luck.  See you all in year.  If any of the five of you who read this have google glasses by the time I come back, you can just go ahead and remove yourself from my life.  Bye, bye!

Hey Boss Lady!

New country, new language, new village, new name.  I am now Mariama Sarr (essentially the Jane Doe of names), I speak Wollof (sort of), and I live in Changai, The Gambia.  I would never want to generalize and lump all the people of West Africa together, but seeing as the people here think all toubabs (white-people) are the same, I’m going to.  The major difference I have noticed between my village here and my village in Mali is that the men gather firewood, not the women.  And that’s pretty much the only difference.  The jokes are the same, the clothes are the same, the food is the same, blah, blah, blah.  It might sound crazy considering there are so many different tribes, but somehow they’ve all managed to morph into one culture.  I would feel a lot worse for making these blanket statements about West Africans if every time I left my site everyone didn’t get me confused with my site-mate FatSo ( I kid you not this is her Gambian name) who is a fairly tall, fairly fair, red-head who speaks a completely different language than I do.  If we’re all the same (and I mean ALL of us, every white-person in the entire world), then they too must all be the same.

Let me revisit the name thing.  Just like in Mali there are very few names for a large number of people.  Fatoumata, Mamadou, Mariama… I’ve pretty much exhausted the list right there.  However, The Gambia does have a few special differences.  The real Jane Doe of names here is Fatoumata Sowe, a.k.a FatSo when abbreviated, a.k.a Stephanie, my nearest volunteer.  Another very common last name is Fatty, as in Mamadou Fatty.  You get pretty accustomed to hearing the same first names and surnames and then you meet someone named Ibraima Garcia and you’re like wtf?!?  There are a handful of Gambians with Hispanic surnames, evidence of Spanish missionaries and all the amazing work they did here.  Well that’s globalization for you all wrapped up into an Arabic first name and Hispanic surname. 

Another amazing thing about The Gambia is the diversity of languages and the ability of local people to speak them.  There are a ton of languages in Mali as well, but they seemed to be a bit more geographically separated.  I think that due to Gambia’s size, all these languages coexist within one small area.  For example, I have two volunteers relatively close to me: FatSo is about 12 km away and Aminata is about 15.  Neither of them speaks Wollof, nor does either of them speak the same language as each other.  In my first few days at site, I went to a pseudo parent/teacher meeting at the school that was being given in Mandinka and translated into Pulaar, neither of which are languages that I’ve learned.  There are also only about 600 people in my village.  The average Gambian must speak at least 3 languages.  I feel like this would be a linguist’s Disneyland…or Target.

Here are a few Gambian-life highlights from my first few weeks:

• Dancing to club music in a Muslim community is every bit as awkward as it sounds.  The only freak dancing that goes on is between people of the same sex, usually young men.  If you’re still having trouble visualizing this situation, just imagine me getting down to Akon’s “Smack that Ass” with a group of 7-9 year old girls, all of whom are significantly better dancers than me.
• Went to a cashew training and had to sit through almost a week of trying to keep my composure while various Gambians were saying things like this:

            -“Farmers shouldn’t wash their nuts to get the sticky stuff off.”

            -“I hate it when kids play with my nuts.           

            -“Farmers should inspect their nuts, maybe by hand.”

• Sex-tourism is a huge here, can’t wait for my mom to come visit, she’s exactly the right demographic is she we’re 15 years older and 100 pounds heavier.  The bumsters (young, attractive Gambian “tour guides”) will likely try to woo her with phrases like “Hey boss lady, what is your sweet, sweet name?”

• Aside from sex-tourism, the only other tourist-y action The Gambia gets are bird-watchers. It is quite likely that there is no other country in the entire world that gets less attractive tourists: Bumster chasers (fat, elderly British women) and bird-watchers (fat-elderly British men).  Awesome.

• Found a snake in my laundry basket this week and discovered that there are in fact hyenas in my hood, so if this is my last blog post, it’s probably no real great loss, but I hope the 5 of you that read this enjoyed it anyway.

Coup Runnings

COS Prom 2012

Well, I did it!  I am officially a returned Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (or RPCV in PC speak, where one, eats, sleeps, and breathes acronyms) from Mali.  To those of you who saw me off in the states, you’re probably thinking, wow that two years went really, really fast.  You would be wrong.  My first attempt at PC was a huge failure thanks to an unplanned coup and an increasingly violent and dangerous war in the north of Mali only aided by said coup.  The last few weeks has been pretty wild.  Everyone was consolidated shortly after the coup (except Koulikoro region, my region).  I was left at site to dabble in bi-polarity.  It’s not so bad, who wouldn’t want to feel so emotionally volatile that you want to kick puppies and flip off children, who just will not stop standing at your gate and watching you do nothing more than read for hours at a time?  Every few minutes I was going back and forth on whether or not we were going to be evacuated.  I kept working, but I found that devoting myself to language and/or putting up with the subtly annoying things was nearly impossible.  I was running out of money and sanity, so I crossed the river and went to my site-mates site.  We went and camped by the river with two other of our closest volunteers.  We thought we were being so smart to set up our tents before it got dark, which was smart, but that’s where forethought stopped.  We immediately ran to the riverbank and started cocktail hour to dull the pain of not knowing what our immediate futures held.  It got dark, we were relaxed, and then we realized we had only one headlamp for four people (mistake #1).  As we were single-file searching for our tents, being blindly led by our fearless leader Anderson, he spotted the area where our tents had once stood only to discover that they had of course blown away because it was crazy windy and we did nothing to weight them down (mistake #2).  It was a much-needed break from site that did not go off without a hitch.  About a week after that they finally made the decision to evacuate us, which was bitter sweet to say the least.  I think we were all happy to not be living in limbo anymore, but at least I personally was very sad to not serve out my full two years in Mali.  It’s truly a lovely country with the most welcoming people I’ve ever had the chance to meet.  I sincerely hope Peace Corps makes it back there very soon.

We were evacuated to Ghana not too long after the decision was made.  Peace Corps chartered a flight for us from Bamako to Accra, which was just plain ridiculous.  To say people were drowning their sorrows in the duty free would be an absolute understatement.  We arrived safe enough and man is Accra ever humid.  It felt like swimming on land.  We got to the hotel and were all very surprised to discover our digs for the week.  This hotel was bananas.  It was nicer then almost any hotel I’ve ever been to in the states.  I guess that was our consolation prize.  After being told there was no way, no chance at all for any of us to transfer, they presented us with several options.  I had to decide what I wanted to do for the next two years in the matter of a few hours.  I was very stressed on top of the extreme exhaustion I was feeling from the late nights with nearly 200 confused, happy, and sad volunteers deciding their next steps.  Life is pretty wild, I certainly was not expecting to be uprooted so soon, but here I am.  I chose The Gambia pretty much blindly and for basically no real reason at all.  I probably had never heard of it before last week and now I’m here.  You’ve probably never heard of it either.  It’s maybe one of the strangest countries I’ve ever seen.  Google it if you’re curious.  Several others of my friends transferred to Senegal and being literally completely inside Senegal lends itself to some crass, but hilarious jokes.  I’ll leave you to fill in the rest.  It seems like a lovely place so far.  The transit house is a mere five-minute walk from the beach, so that’s not too shabby.  That’s also something I would have never enjoyed in Mali. It is certainly going to be hard not to compare the two, but I’m going to try and think of this as a fresh start and since I am sort of joining the new training class, it is literally a fresh start.  I feel a lot more tired, a lot less nervous, but also a lot less excited this time around.  I’m going to be the newbie for almost a year!  It’s groundhogs day.  Hopefully I learned a thing or two the first time around.  I made some good friends and now I have plenty of places to stay all throughout West Africa (silver lining).  I might have to learn a new language and get used to all new germs, but when I’m old and grey I’ll be able to say I survived a Coup d’État.  

Drunk Goggles and Mad-Hatters

The real beginning has arrived.  We are done with training (pre-service training or PST) and will soon be actually living at our sites.  It’s crazy!  I’m scared and excited and sad to leave all the wonderful people I’ve gotten the chance to get to know little by little over the past two months.  We got sworn in at the US Ambassador’s house.  There were speeches made that I didn’t understand (including one in the language I am now supposed to understand).  I’m thinking the test is rigged because there would probably be very few volunteers here if it weren’t!  We all got dressed to the nines in Malian garb and therefore looked like a Discovery Zone or a Chuck E. Cheese with all our crazy patterns and colors.  We took many a photo and then went to the American Club, which is some pretty incredible irony if you ask me.  We ate pizza and hamburgers, drank beer and went swimming because what else could we possibly do the second after we officially become Peace Corps volunteers in West Africa?  I fell asleep watching Beauty and the Beast in the theater room and had sweet dreams of how different the next two years my life is going to look from that moment forward. 

Saying farewell to the lap of luxury did not end there my friends.  We continued to take full advantage of our new status as PCV’s and go to a swanky hotel (and by swanky I mean, well we’re in one of the poorest countries in the world so you could maybe use your imagination on that one) and then we went out and danced the night away like the crazy American fools we are.  All the groups (or stages as they are called) of volunteers are given a name by their trainers at the end of PST, so we were of course all anxiously awaiting ours.  As it turns out we as a group are a bit bat-shit crazy and incessantly late for very important dates, therefore, naturally, we are now officially the Mad-Hatters.  My name is Fatamata Traoré, I live in Niagadina, Mali and I am a Mad-Hatter.  Thank you very much for tuning in, nice to meet your acquaintance.

I am very fortunate to not have to buy anything for my new site because my precursor left everything I could ever want and more.  The one thing he did not leave is a bed frame.  I thought to myself, I can’t believe this kid slept on the floor for two years especially with all the rats and what not running amok. So now I’m back to putting the puzzle pieces together of this guy’s life.  I start to ponder what would inspire someone to buy a juicer, but not a bed frame.  And then it hits me: fitting modern day furniture and appliances into a round hut is literally like trying to fit a square into a circle.  It’s an absurd waste of space.  Plus, in talking to other volunteers I have discovered that I will be doing a great deal of sleeping outdoors once the unbearable hot season hits and a bed frame will only serve to be an obstacle to moving my mattress outside.  Therefore, I have to purchase not one thing for my new house.  Thanks Josh a.k.a Drissa Traoré, a.k.a my husband according to most everyone in my new village.  Until I return to the Internet and the world of connectivity I bid you farewell.  This is likely going to be the longest 3 months (and by 3 months I mean 2 years) of my life.  

The beautiful rocks in my home-stay village (I know, it looks like AZ right?!?)

Me making tiga dege (peanut butter) with my host family.

My gwa (kind of like a ramada or hangar depending on where you

re from and what language you speak) and one of my 3 papaya trees.

My new home and a beautiful sunrise.  Thanks to the 5 am prayer call, I probably won't miss very many of these.

You and Travel

I just returned from site visit yesterday.  I now know exactly where I will be living/ working for the next two years.  My beautiful new home is in Niagadina about 90k from Bamako.  Now you might be thinking, oh 90k (55 or so miles) that must be like an hour, hour and a half from Bko.  If you are thinking that, you’re wrong.  It took me and my homologue (work partner) 4 and a half hours to get there.  My village is a decent sized village, maybe like 4 or 5,000 people.  We have a once-weekly market, a health center, and a school.  The women’s garden is huge and beautiful.  The previous volunteer set me up; I have everything including 3 papaya trees in my concession.  There is a very weird pot of sand in my kitchen and I have no idea what it could possibly be for.  My curiosity got the better of me so I had to write to the last guy to ask him about it.  I haven’t heard back yet.  I have a pretty gross rat situation so I’m gonna get a cat.  All in all, it’s awesome.  I feel very lucky.

Now, I’d like to expand on this 4 and a half hour 55-mile journey.  I had to take a Sotrama, which is basically a very run down van that they fill with people, animals and stuff.  When the bus was at its fullest, there were 28 people in there (not including the babies).  It was bananas.  We stopped every 20 minutes to let MORE people on and for vendors to shove shit through the windows, which surprisingly everybody bought.  I have never seen such huge loaves of bread and I have definitely never seen people buy so much of it.  Seriously, there was SO much bread on that Sotrama.  Keep in mind that this is my first experience on public transportation in country.  PC has been driving us around like the privileged Americans we are in really nice air-conditioned vehicles, so it was a whole new experience.  Also bear in mind that I have been studying this language for just over a month, so I had no freaking idea what was going on.

Here are some other notable things that have happened to me in the past couple weeks:

            -The negen’s (bathrooms (well holes in the ground)) at the PC training facility are pitch black.  You literally cannot see your hand right in front of your face.  So one must take a flashlight with them.  There happens to be a flashlight on the top of my cell phone so I usually just take that.  This one particular night my bestie Carly happened to call me as I was running to the negen, bursting at the seams.  Naturally I answered the phone because I didn’t want to miss her call, but I also really, really had to pee.  So I multi-tasked.  I immediately dropped my phone and thought I had dropped it down the hole, so I was frantically searching for the phone in the pitch black while peeing and as it turns out I didn’t drop it down in the whole, I was just peeing all over it.

            -The money system here is absolutely ridiculous.  When they say the money in Bambara you have to multiply it by 5 to get the CFA amount and then if I wanted to know the American dollar amount I would have to divide it by about 500. 

            -My state of confusion now feels about as permanent as my diarrhea.

            -I was studying Bambara and I was translating some sentences from Bambara back into English and the sentence was “They greet the village people everyday.”  Maybe it’s not actually that funny, but I sure got a kick out of it.

In the Future We Will Study the Past

Well, I’ve been in Africa for 3 weeks now and it honestly doesn’t quite feel like it.  I kind of feel like I’m back in Portland because there are white people everywhere. I’ve been in homestay for 3 weeks as of today, living with an awesome family and learning Bambara.  It’s a crazy language.  Everything sounds the same.  I’ve had some pretty hilarious conversations with my family.  And by conversations I mean fragmented sentences, excessive gesturing and awkward laughter.  On many occasions, I’ve felt as if I’m in a movie or like someone is playing a big joke on me.  After several minutes of attempted communication, I’m just like okay you guys are joking right, someone tell me what’s going on, where are the subtitles?  Unfortunately I’m not in a movie and no one is playing a joke on me, we really just don’t speak the same language.  The second day of homestay was Seliba (in Bambara) or Tabaski (French) or Eid Al-Adah (Engish?), a big Muslim holiday to celebrate/ commemorate when Abraham sacrificed a sheep instead of his son.  So everyone walks around the village and greets each other all day.  They give each other an absurd amount of blessings (that’s all the time really not just on a holiday.  Everyone said that the first day of homestay was going to be the most awkward day of my life, but they lied.  Seliba was.  I had zero language skills, and was a vegetarian on the biggest sheep (or goat if you’re poor) slaughtering day of all.  Here are a few other things (short hand) that have happened in my first few weeks with my family:

            -There’s a dog in my family’s concession.  His name is Polisi and he’s a racist.  My family has got a racist dog.

            -Several babies played in the hole dug in the dirt to collect the slaughtered sheep’s blood.

            -My water filter fell over in the middle of the night and dumped about 12 liters of water all over my sunken floor.  I swept it out with a “broom” which is literally a pile of twigs tied together.  It took about 2 hours.

            -Everyone is so cold here right now.  When it’s under 85°, they bust out the parka’s and the wool hats.

            -We made a dinner for our language trainers to practice cooking over a fire.  The rice was the hottest freaking thing I have ever touched in my life and it stayed hot forever (like all food here).  Our teachers didn’t like it because we mixed the rice and the beans together.

A bana (It’s finished).  The journey continues…