Looking Up

So today I stared Giardia in the face and said, “BRING IT!!” Giardia has yet to respond. What I mean by this is that I went to the Sous Prefet’s house and was served a big plate of tomatoes and onions in a mayonnaise sauce (seriously, it was tasty. Don’t like mayonnaise? Come to West Africa. You’ll love it in a matter of weeks.) eaten with French bread, shared with the Sous Prefet and Nene (I like the whole eating ensemble thing they do here, it makes you really feel like a family). The point is, when we eat fresh vegetables we are supposed to soak them in bleach water for like 15-30 min before we eat them. There’s no way those tomatoes were washed in even drinkable water, let alone bleach. MAYBE they were dry before she cut them up which would reduce the risk of whatever was in the well water being now in my system but the point is…BRING IT ON GASTROINTESTINAL ISSUE! It was worth it!! I am almost optimistic though because I don’t feel anything at all yet and it’s like 9pm and I ate it at maybe 1ish. So maybe…

Today I felt like things were going better at my site. This morning Hoodia came over first thing and got me three bidons (20L each) of water. It was freaking awesome. I gave her a bon-bon and 1 mil for each bidon she brought. She tried to refuse the money but I said it was necessary because it is very hard work (and 1 mil a bidon is probably the going rate for people who hire it out). She is now supposed to get me a bidon every other day, which is awesome.

I fought off petites all day. It was market day so there was a CONSTANT flow of petites on my porch all wanting my attention. In the morning I put one of them to work and gave her 500 francs and told her to go buy me some onions, which she did and I gave her a toffee. There’s one thing petites are good for. That and once they realized I liked onions gave me two more throughout the day. And they gave me a bunch of oranges and a banana and a cashew fruit. It was actually kind of strange.

After noon and finishing my book, I went to the market and was followed by a loyal group of petites and stopped by all the crazy people and only bought tomatoes and then some sardines for the dog from Conte, a dude who is a friend of Ian’s at his site. I also gave him a note to give to Ian, which only occurred to me this morning. That is a great way for us to pass notes because it’s through someone we both know that I see once a week and he sees nearly every day.

After the marche I went by the Sous Prefet’s office and we talked for a little bit about the three goals of Peace Corps. He also said my wardrobe is currently being made which is great because Yogi is getting big enough to pull my clothes off of the thing I put them on and that will NOT do. He also dispatched some guy to help me find a language tutor, which when found will be AWESOME (PS having the Pular-French dictionary has already been awesome so a big THANK YOU to my Fouta folks for buying and sending that to me). I still need to ask for a couple of dudes to come help me change the position of my bed so I can open and close my screen/window.

After that was when I had the tomato salad (which as I said before, was really tasty). After that I went out back and watched Nene and Madame Bangoura make a sauce I had not had before (which included lots of eggplant and pile-d beef…hmm). It’s fun to watch people cook here because you get a better idea of what goes into what you’re eating and if it’s something you like, you can learn how to make it! I still want to learn to make peanut sauce. I dunno if Madame Bangoura makes peanut sauce or not but if she does maybe she will teach me. The experience was good because both of them really seemed to enjoy that I was there, and I felt like I was integrating. Afterwards I ate some of the sauce with rice and it was good!

Figured out where the well is when Nene and Mamadou went to fill bidons (I’ll really never have a reason to get water there but it’s nice to know where it is) and there is a garden down there that looks like it might be completely manioc. Just before that I met with the DPS (who is in charge of the schools) and asked if I could come and introduce myself to all of the students and he said, “Of course! Come tomorrow at nine!” So that’s my first order of business for tomorrow. Second order of business might be hiking to reseau to call Traian about my ankle.

When I finally left the Sous Prefet’s house about 4:30 they sent me off with a bunch of oranges and a big slice of watermelon. This is in addition to the huge banana and oranges I ate when I was there. I had a well-balanced diet today.

On the way back to my house this woman who I see a lot who only speaks Pular but I guess was very good friends with the last volunteer called me over and gave me 3 eggs as a cadeau. I was like thanks!! They are small and sort of white. I had seen these eggs before but I thought they were duck eggs but according to Nene they are chicken eggs. Not that it should matter, I bet duck eggs and chicken eggs taste almost the same. I had them for dinner. One of them was fertilized and had a beating heart in it and veins. I had to fish all that out of the cup before I cooked them. That was a little bit gross.

Oh AND this morning the forgeron came by with my dabas (hoes) so I can now start my garden! And my counterpart came by for a little while and got a real kick out of the Pular dictionary and said he would call Kristine when he gets back to ::the bigger city where he lives:: since he missed her yesterday.

Basically I feel a lot better about my position in the community today and hope to “officially” start my etude de milieu tomorrow by asking the education questions to the DPS and maybe the principals, a couple of teachers and a couple of the older students.

Chuggin along.