One big fat sloppy kiss from Tamba right to me!

All I can say is that it was a good thing that I had my "Africa" hat on. All I had to do... okay wait. You remember the posts about the electric company and the huge rigamarole about the "tension" or voltage issues we had? Well if you don't, that's okay. It was a long, painful process so some things are best forgotten.

Well anyway the time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of reimbursement for the fees I paid the company for the step-up in voltage. All you have to do says electricity technician, is come to the office when you're about to leave Tamba, bring your receipt and we will reimburse you. It was sort of like a deposit for up'ing the amount of electricity we could get into our house. Okay I say.

So since we are leaving at the end of the week, the first thing I do at the beginning of the week is to go to the office and confirm the process for my reimbursement. I wanted to make sure it wasn't a usual switcheroo jobby that they do when they ask you for a copy of your passport or some other piece of paper with the special stamp from the post office (this would not be unusual). So wearing my "Africa" hat, knowing that the process very well may not be as easy as they have portended, I go into the electric company with my receipt.

"What's this???" says a woman rep that I've never seen before. I guess they hadn't even amended their files to read that I had paid for the upgrade in July. Well obviously I paid for it I say, you're holding the receipt. Wait, who is this other person listed on the account? the woman asks. Oh I say, I don't have any idea. I say that since we came here 5 years ago we tried to get the name off the account and put our name on the account but it was a big ole stink and finally after one year of hassling with your company, we decided to let it drop. She's like. well that's not normal! She says we're going to give your reimbursement ($400) to the guy listed on the account because its his account. I practically have a coronary. I say "What??!!!" I say I paid that fee out of my own pocket and we practically wrestled with the company when we first got here to get the account set up properly but it never panned out and we finally gave up. She's like. Well no one can give you your money now because your name isn't in the account.

You can only imagine my reactions. I basically said that that was ridiculous and obviously for the last 5 years the company hasn't had any problem asking us for money and delivering us bills and giving us service as long as we pay for it. As say, a few days before we leave the town you are telling me that there is a problem with the account. I say, No way Jose! (well I didn't say Jose) So she takes me to see the boss.

Luckily. Luckily the boss is the brother of my best friend in Tamba. Cha-ching. We have a happy greeting and the story is explained to him. He unfortunately agrees that it is a problem but that they will call the guy whose name is on the account and have him come in to tell him that the reimbursement is ours, not his. Brother of friend says to come by tomorrow. We leave on Friday I state... Oh... he says. Well we'll try and get it figured out by then.

I call the next day to find out.... the brother has left town to go to Dakar!!! Yay!!! so I talk to the woman I talked to previously who tells me that no one can do anything until the brother comes back since he is handling the file now. She tells me to come back next Monday. I say, You're kidding, right? I told you yesterday several times that we are leaving on Friday. That I was assured that all I needed to do was bring in the receipt and get reimbursed. Silence on the other side of the phone.

So I call my girlfriend who promises to call her brother. He had explained the whole situation to her before he left on his trip. Hopefully he gets back tomorrow. i called the office again today and talked to the woman who obviously does not care in the slightest about the situation or issue. Oh the guy hasn't shown up yet she says. I said, did you send out the letter asking him to stop by? She says yes, normally it should have been sent out. I tried to get his phone number but no one has it apparently. I asked her to confirm that the letter arrived. She didn't seem to enthused to go check.

So. I am calling her back right now to see if there is any progress on things. Then I have to go to the phone company. Luckily I had my Africa hat on for them too. Because supposedly I was told is that all I needed to do was come by 2 days before we leave and pay the rest of the account. I also stop by on Monday to confirm this. Oh no, says someone else. You need to bring in an official letter and this and this and that... THEN you can close out your account. Ha! I knew it. So now with those items in hand, I can try this again.

Wish me luck. Once the phone line goes (today most likely) we'll be offline until we leave Tamba. More stories to come, I'm sure.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

1. A starter of butternut squash soup with leeks and smoked bacon
2. Two Johns on the right, Cece and Brook. Let's eat!
3. I join the picture!
4. The Thanksgiving Turkey Pass (out).

We invited Peace Corps (total of 15) to come over for dessert where we handed out plates of apple & cranberry pie; pumpkin pie, pecan pie, cherry pie, chocolate and lemon tartlettes, orange walnut meringues, chocolate chip cookies and vanilla ice-cream. We even had some leftovers!

Wish you were here!

John and Cece's birthday party

complete with individual molten chocolate cakes and white chocolate ice-cream. Happy Birthday to you both!

Goodbye party with our closest local friends

It was a very touching get-together with our close Senegalese friends. We invited over the people the closest to us and fed them lunch. Afterwards people just started talking about how they knew us and just were talking about reflections over the past 4 1/2 years. It was really nice. My two best friends are Ouli and Binta, the two women sitting next to me. Note my rooster-head dress, which gets many compliments. Brook was in his fish shirt. We will definitely miss our friends here.

Peace Corps Scavenger Hunt and Fried Chicken Party

As Brook's and my last farewell to Peace Corps/Tamba, we hosted a Scavenger Hunt with the following items:
One black plastic bag with any type of white writing on it

One talibe tomato can (used)

One fabric strip showing any type of animal on it

One broken sandal (any type)

One green or pink plastic button

One kids pair or shorts or shirt (used)

One bird feather (no goose feather allowed!)

Few strands of discarded hair weave

One eaten and discarded corn cob

One empty gunpowder tea box

One mango leaf

One discarded 1,000 phone card

One discarded 2,500 phone card

One discarded 5,000 phone card

One broken or piece of horseshoe

One ‘dankx’

One discarded razor blade

One Madonna sticker

One Tiger-brand discarded battery (any size)
One Soleil paper (dated today)
BONUS: One horn or hoof of animal (any)

There were three teams of 4-5 people a piece and Team #2 (second to the last photo) were the Grand Prize Winners. After the hunt, we sat down to a huge pile of my famous Buttermilk Fried Chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy and bisquits. That and two cases of beer. :)

We held two contests after lunch. One of which was to tell about and/or show the best English-speaking t-shirt they got second hand in Senegal. A "Cub fan, Bud man" T-shirt worn by Mike Wilcox was the winner. After this, people told their favorite 'african' story. The winner was a guy named Greg, whom I affectionately call "Monkey boy" for his winning story about the time he went to the market and bought a monkey head for a friend's birthday.

It was a good day. We're going to hold a Senegalese version of this party this upcoming Saturday for our close Senegalese friends. Without the contests and the beer of course. Will probably be less invigorating but we dont' want to freak anyone out!

John's 61th Birthday (Brook's boss)

Having requested Indian as his birthday cuisine, we piled the table full of Dal, dry-fried potatoes, smoked aubergine, rice with peas, tandori chicken and rajita. For his birthday cake he had an angel food cake with chocolate icing coupled with java chip ice-cream. happy birthday John!

Cricket Season or "Attack of the Crickets"

creepy. as soon as I just titled this entry, I heard a single chirping cricket in the next room. Yeah, so last night was attack of the cricket. We get various seasons here. Mysteriously there will be a flood of grasshoppers that come into our house one month, are in droves outside... and then 2 days later they all go away. Then another month we get flying insects, yesterday was the cricket. I guess we get a minature version of what they got in Egpyt with all those plagues.

I think the latest cricket caper is because we had a rain about a week ago, so I guess crickets are happy about that. Brook was a roll last night with his shoe and although I do not endorse stomping on crickets (they can't help it what they are and what they do), he seemed to feel better at contributing to the reduction of noise pollution in our house.

Now the Tambacounda cricket is much different than your ordinary cricket. These little buggers are loud! And I mean one Tambacounda cricket could easily hold its own to any other cricket in the world. CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP says the Tambacounda cricket. They come in under doors, they hop up the stairs and into our room. One cricket had a particularly cool sound.. it was cricket sound, but it was in stereo. It almost had an echo to it.. .or it sounded like he was in surround sound. We didn't find him.

Yeah so we go to bed and Brook is determined to get every last lingering cricket out of our bedroom... I look up from my book as he says, ... .did you hear that?! where is that one coming from? "I don't know" I say disinterested. He says yeah, you'll be waking me up when that cricket wakes you up with its chirping. I listen to the faint chirping from somewhere in the room. Nah I say. that's not a 'real' Tambacounda cricket. A real Tambacounda cricket would be very silent right now and wait until all the lights were out. Then and only then would the Tambacounda cricket start to chirp really loudly. This faint cricket sound was not impressive.

Brook is pulling all the furniture away from the walls in our room, walking on the bed and taking a stick and tapping the tapestries on our walls to find the stray crickets. I finish another chapter of my book. I can't find them he says exasperated. I become philosphical. Just think I say, soon we won't have a flood of crickets coming into our house in droves... Yeah, well I don't want them here now either he says. He decides to go outside on the balcony and see if that is where the crickets are. He comes back. You won't believe how many crickets there are out there. Oh yeah? I say. He takes our insect repellent and starts spraying and comes back. I tell him that "off" won't kill the bugs. But he says Yeah but they don't like it. I tell him where the bug spray is. He goes down and comes back and outside does a wild cricket spraying campaign. I feel bad for the crickets. But at the same time, it is quiet now. Brook comes back, mission accomplished. We had a hearty and fitful, cricket-free sleep.

How much do you weigh?

Okay I had another banner day in Sandaga Market (read Bandit's Market). Had a duo team try and rob me. They were unsuccessful. I was leaping around like a gazelle and then a group of pretty much yelled at them and they squirted away. It was actually Sandaga market which inspired this blog in the first place. The last wonderful post about Sandaga was about how a crazy man was following me and yelling at me. It was sort of scary. anyway 'almost' being robbed doesn't make a good story. But,

the one reason Sandaga market is interesting is because it's one of the oldest markets in Dakar and you can see really odd stuff. Like there was a scale on the sidewalk with a 10F sign on it. and someone's job was to sit by the scale and if anyone wanted to weigh themselves, they pay the owner 10 Francs (like a penny?) and then I guess you get weighed. If it weren't Sandaga market and I weren't walking as quickly as possible to avoid bandits I might have given it a whirl.

That would be a cool study though. See how much income someone makes from their business and how many clients they have and whether they are regular and if you can charge extra to keep charts for them. Business possibilities are endless! It's too bad this hasn't taken off in other parts of the world