Update

Well it's been longer than I had anticipated since the last post. And even now I don't have any wacky stories for you. Unless continual electricity cuts in 115 degree weather is considered wacky. Probably not.

Latest update:

Miranda (good friend of Brook's mother) and his friends daughter who is in college came to visit Brook and me at the beginning of April. They stayed for about 10 days. Daughter went out to a Peace Corps site and hit the local market and a wedding. The rest of us bought cloth, went to the tailor and went over to Ouli's for a great lunch.

Brook and I took a long weekend off last week (it already feels like forever ago). Let me know via email if I haven't you the link to the photos, and I'll send them right out.

I'm working on a Catholic Relief Services assignment, which is pretty laid back. I'm interviewing partner organizations in Dakar, Tamba and Kolda. I should go down to Kolda next week for that part. Hopefully by the end of the week I can crank out Tamba interviews.

Brook is going to Ziguinchor at the end of next week (which passes through Kolda). He should pick me up in Kolda over the weekend and I'll head down to Ziguinchor with him, finalize up my write-up for CRS.

Brook and I are going to Thailand for about 10 days in June. Going to see one of my best girlfriends and husband and then on the way back to Senegal, we'll stop off in Rome and take in some sites and food!

It's not one of my crazier posts but I figured a good information post is not a bad thing too. Take care and here is a picture of our lovely house guests in April.

Pot-holed Dog

back from long last to tell you that on the way back to the hotel in Dakar, a dog had found itself a nice, deep pothole in the middle of the road to take a nap. The pothole was sized perfectly like a dog basket and was also was deep like a basket. I guess what was missing was a blanket. It was taking a deep nap and if you think about it, the dog was very clever. Because people who are driving don't want to drive in the pothole so they are going to avoid it anyway.

In other news a huge long trailer was trying to turn the corner on a very narrow street today (with cars also parked on either side of the road) and spent 30 minutes trying to do so. What was great that everyone gathered around to give advice to the trailor driver, although no one tried to track down the owner of the car parked blocking the way. I guess it finally got through because an hour later it was gone and so were the opinionated by-standers giving advice.

2.5 liters of water

I had to share the fact that I drank 2.5 liters of water yesterday. It wasn't even that hot. I came down in public transport to Dakar to finalize my current assignment. I suppose there isn't much of a story to that, but I was impressed that I drank that much.

It's cold down here in Dakar. It's at least 75 degrees. That's at least 30 degrees cooler than Tamba. It's amazing for me to note the extreme difference in temperatures within 300 miles of each other. I was freezing my butt off last night--I had two shirts on! and I promise you it really was about 75 degrees, if that low. How pathetic is that?

Probably about as pathetic as this post. I mean it doesn't get worse than talking about the weather and how much water you drink in a day. But here I am, telling you about it anyway.

The Braying Donkey: a very, very short story

Brook said on his way to biking to work that he saw a donkey running down the road. The donkey ran up to a group of donkeys and started braying at the donkeys. I guess they didn't like what he had to say so the other donkeys brayed or something and then the donkey ran down the road to some other donkeys. He brayed at this other group of donkeys, and they chased him off. Finally Brook says that he runs up to a final group of donkeys, braying something adn the other donkeys chase him away too. The end. (I have no idea what this story means but it seemed bizarre enough to share with you.

In other news I've been quiet since I've been working on my final report so my world has been pretty limited. I daresay my commentary about mid-term indicators will most likely not keep your interest. Luckily it's about over and I leave for Dakar on Wednesday.

I have made some olive and onion Bahrain sourdough. Brook wants some more cheese sourdough. That seemed to make a bigger hit than the olive bread.

Happy Birthday Binta!

Au table, ready to dig in! Binta with her birthday gift

Binta and Ouli finish grilling the beef kabobs!

Well our friend Binta hosted a birthday party dinner at her house over the weekend. She had three kinds of meat (chicken, lamb and meat kabobs). My kind of gal. We had some french fries, french bread, a dipping onion sauce and some crudites. Afterwards we had some hibiscus juice (bissap). These affairs are fun but as Brook remarked, we have the same conversations over and over many times. I think that's part of it. Binta loves to tell the story of my mango hunt when we went to her village. It was in the middle of mango season so basically I ate mangos for 3 days. The trick is waiting for the mango to fall and going to get it. I had one chase actually with a cow who was running for the same mango. Those are picky cows down in Casamance. Binta says they won't eat mangos off the ground anymore. They want fresh ones like us. Lucky cow! Except I beat that cow to the mango when I was there. You know I did! Here are some happy snappies from the party. I've been saving the boar sauce for tonight so we'll have boar lasagna tonight. Very exciting indeed!

Boar leg!

You know I've always wished I could have a Blog title called Boar Leg and now I have one. You know why? Because a friend of ours gave us a Boar Leg today!! Oh yes. It's very exciting. Binta the maid is helping me the cut the boar leg and then we're going to put it through my meat grinder to make ground boar leg meat!

I'm going to make a tasty boar lasagna... reminescent of our boar lasagna we had on our honeymoon in Corsica. Those Corsicans sure do appreciate a good boar meal. We had boar lasagna, boar ravioli, boar steaks, boar-you-name-it-we-had it. I think we have enough meat for boar lasagna AND ravioli. Not in the same night though. The beautiful thing about Corsica (and there are many) is that the food is a cross between French and Italian. It doesn't get much better than that. Oh the lovely sausages and wine we had.... there was a reason I gained 10 lbs on my honeymoon and it was worth every pound.

I'm back home for a couple of weeks writing my report. It is a challenge staying well out of the kitchen so I can write my report. I could not stand by and not write about the boar leg though. You had to be the first to know.

Back from the land of sand, cows and heat

Sounds really fun, doesn't it? Well I'm back from the field part of my work as of yesterday. My sorry-ass had to get up so early every day and you know it killed me. But for these things (consultancies) you have to sacrifice and work 14+ hour days with minimum breaks throughout the day. It's something that is doable for a short period of time... 10 days to 14 days but after that, you gotta change things up a bit. Usually most of the field work is done in this amount of time and then you get back and try and make sense of all the information you saw in the field.

These pictures are of the following: two of the landscape so you can really sense the bleak landscape and why these people are generally marginalized; one of me and the Maternity, Child, Health and Nutrition program officer at one of the river crossing with barge in background; and two women managing a warehouse of US-donated commodity for direct feeding.

I'm doing a mid-term project evaluation for a food distribution project in the north of Senegal.

speaking of which, I'm on the clock and need to get back to work but wanted to share some pictures. will check in soon.