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

Blow-Up

no, not the movie (which is a good movie), my computer. Yes, that is why I haven't posted because I haven't had a stinkin' computer. Yes so I get back to Tamba... happy me... Get back to Tamba and three days later we get our last big rainstorm during the day (which is a sign that it's one of the last rains of the season). So we get the daily rainstorm and it's great beause I love rain.. yadda yadda and then all of a sudden a huge CLAP! thundercrack. In our house. A lightening bolt came into the house, surged our power, blew out my surge protector and my computer.
yay. So I confirmed that my AC/DC cord was completely burnt out too as well as my modem.
So the trick of course was seeing how to get an adapter to Tamba. That is the real question, isn't it? Is it as easy as it sounds you ask? Oh yes. It's a piece of cake!!!

so I call Toshiba. They can send me the cable but it's $100 and $50 to send fed-ex. Then to Fed-ex to Dakar where my friend will pick it up and have my public transport driver stop by and pick it up and take it to Tamba the next time he comes, will be $172. Otherwise the Toshiba person suggests that I go to the nearest Toshiba authorized dealer. Do you want to see if I have one in your town, he asks me?

No. I say. I can guarantee that you dont even have one in my country. The agent is not convinced. Oh let me check. You are where??? I said, Senegal, West Africa. "Africa, Africa... yes, well we have an agent in Kenya..." I'm like, Okay there are like 20 countries between here and Kenya. I said, do you have any other countries that are closer...? "South Africa dot dot dot" (obviously doo-dad is not near a map). I said anything in WEST Africa. Finally at the end of his list he mentions Ghana (only 4-5 countres away) and Morocco (only 2 countries away)

Okay that was helpful. I go back to option 1 about getting the cord from the states. But I also don't want to bankrupt myself doing so. I decide to double-prong my approach and actually contact Morocco (figure 2 countries away is better than 5) to see if by some miracle they can mail me a cord soon. So I call and they say that somebody is traveling to Senegal next week. I ask when... they can't say. Next week they insist. Doesn't sound sure to me. I say, Okay do you ahve the right cord. They say, well write me an email. so i write an email. I get an answer back the next day saying what the guy said on the phone... Someone is travelign to Senegal next week and can bring one then. So I write back again asking a price, when they are coming and if it is compatible with my computer. Pesky American.

I don't hear anythign. i am about to break down and break my bank and do the Toshiba to mother to my Dakar friend to Omar Sy (the driver) to Tamba route. I figure at least I know all the players. But I call Morocco a day later just to confim. Oh, says Moroccan dude. I will mail the cord tomorrow. Hmm. that is interesting. Okay. so I bag sure but expensive US route and decide to follow Moroccan route. So lo and behold I find out that the cord was delivered to Dakr and should be there. I call my friend in Dakar to see if he can go pick it up. Then I call Omar to see when he is coming to Tamba. I coordinate with him to go meet up with my friend, get the cord from Morocco but delivered to dakar to bring to me. I get this to happen. Saturday, the cord arrives!

Good news is that it fits. Bad news is that it wasn't the entire cord. Only the top adapter part an not the part that plugs into the wall. I'm not sure why. But that is the way it is. But good news is that I managed to use Brook's old laptop plug to fit into the top part of the cord. We have lift-off. But I have realized that my USB ports are totally burnt out.

This was after, entretemps, I had to go to Sonatel with my burnt out modem to get a new one. You know.. i will spare you the modem part of the story. Long story short is that I managed to get a modem and get it installed and everythign is fine. Although i can't hook up to dsl through this computer... only through network which I am accessing in Dakar. See. It's complicated.

But all in all I think it explains why I haven't been online. But see what a juicy and informative story you get for having waited for it? yeah... alright don't comment on that

Photos from today's 1st Annual Ramadan All You Can Eat Spaghetti and Beer Party

I cooked over 5 big packages of spaghetti and made 4 batches of various sauces. Plus we had banana splits for dessert. I can always count on Peace Corps to chow down

Kunaba mails a Letter-Part Three

Well whoever voted that Kunaba would actually mail the letter, won. I got home to Tamba and called (because I was curious) the guy in Kayes who was supposed to have received the letter mailed from Kunaba. Lo and behold, the guy said he had received the letter (my double whammy approach of talking to the head of the household must have worked!) and sent it on to Tamba.

Of course I still don't have the letter. I'm trying to track down its location somewhere in Tamba. Supposedly it was given to my Malian friend (who is out of the country again) and I've made three phone calls to various people trying to track it down. I'm sure my Malian friend is not carrying around a letter that does not belong to her around... so I know it's somewhere. I've got one person who is house-watching her house looking around to see if he can lay his hands on it. No luck in the past 2 days, but it is still young. There is a slight chance they won't find the letter but it's gotta be around. I stand corrected. I really thought there were too many variables to fall into place to actually get the letter---although in some way I am counting my chickens before they hatch because I still don't have the letter in hand. Still, this post is for those of you out there who believe miracles are indeed possible.