Back At Site

Well, it is awesome to be back at my house. Except that I feel like my room is hotter than even Kate’s or John’s! In fact, last night at John’s I actually got COLD in the middle of the night and had to take my towel from being my pillow and try to curl up under it.

Both John and Kate apparently hated taking care of Yogi because he is super energetic and not house trained (especially in a place where he doesn’t have an open-door policy which he can’t have at John’s or Kate’s due to the size of their cities). Here, he can go in and out as he pleases and he did not go to the bathroom inside even once today. But this is partly due to the training Kate had been giving him which I am going to try to continue but feel I am already sucking at.

So there have been some changes at John’s site and the Prefet moved the gares into one gare that is freaking far. And I had a ridiculous amount of chose with me and poor John hauled not only my backpack but also a big bag stuffed with books and packages sent from the States (more on this later) all the way there (and this is after leaving a bunch of stuff at his house). And then the gare was really confusing. I told like 4 people where I was going and they kept telling me to wait, as if there weren’t a car there that were going my way yet and then one of them moved me and all my stuff down to the rice bars so I had no idea what was going on. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise because one of the dudes at the rice bar, who I thought was just going to go in the same car as me, turned out to be a fonctionnaire with his own patron-mobile (SUV with a driver) and gave me a free ride right to my doorstep!! It was awesome! He was actually driving all the way up my road to check on the progress of the road repairs (and I think the road is actually looking better!) and he had a GPS unit and two digital cameras! I was like WHOA! We stopped twice to talk to some of the workers doing the repairs but even with that it only took an hour to get here so all in all a good ride.

I felt kind of bad though because as I was sitting at the rice bar, my Sous Prefet drove up on his moto with his wife and Alpha (youngest kid) and stopped to talk to someone and I was like “Hey I know you!” and went over to talk to him and told him I was waiting for a taxi. And he went over to the gare and arranged it with the driver going my way and came back to tell me the driver would pick me up there when the car was ready to go (because apparently the four other people I told where I was going did not get through). And then I briefly thought that the car I was getting into WAS the taxi (sometimes you get super lucky and get an SUV taxi, but this one was decidedly nicer than any SUV taxi) and didn’t realize I was getting a patron ride until we already were leaving, so I didn’t get a chance to go tell the taxi that I had another ride. So I feel bad.

Anyway. Packages rock. Before I left for Dakar there was one from my mom and when I got back there was one from my grandparents and one from JAKE’s mom (moms love me – thanks Mrs. Figas!). And then when I got to John’s the mail run had dropped off one from Megan (woot first friend package, Megan has all the gold stars!!) and one from my Aunt Sue. All in all, pretty freaking awesome and what was sent all made it (even the huge chocolate bars Megan sent made it with apparently no melting, though granted I have not actually opened one yet, but the point is that they are hard. The fun size Milky Ways and 3 Musketeers got a little bit squished but are not liquid and are freaking delicious!). My American food trunk is overflowing. Which is good for Nene because it means if she does something for me (like today she washed my clothes), she gets her pick of a bunch of different things as payment (today she took a Nature Valley granola bar). Tomorrow she is going to come wash my floors.

Also Megan sent some dog toys and Yogi has actually been playing with the “Tennis Bone” she sent, so thank you!!

Also I got some mail just before I left Conakry the other day and I had a letter! No it wasn’t from one of my friends or someone in my family (f-ing slackers!!!), but from a dude named Allister who reads my blog. DO YOU HEAR THAT FRIENDS?? A dude who doesn’t even know me sent me a letter and YOU are still sitting around! He sent an awesome sticker with it, too, that says “Genius At Work” and I am totally putting it on my front door. Thanks Allister!! It was a treat to get a letter, even from someone I don’t know. Good luck in your application process, I hope they do send you to Africa and having no French seems to be no problem as long as you studied a romance language of some kind in school. To briefly answer some of your questions: If I packed again, I would bring half the clothes, toiletries and food I originally brought (you don’t want to wash that many clothes anyway, people send you toiletries and food in packages and you’d be surprised how long a tube of toothpaste and a bottle of shampoo really last you). The best things I brought were this AlphaSmart I am writing on right now (it is what allows me to post so many detailed blogs – I’m doing it at site and just downloading the text files when I get to internet), my digital camera, iPod, iPod speaker, solar charger (I have the IceTech, it charges my iPod and cell phone) and my own pillow (the pillows here suck and the ones you can buy at Leb stores are expensive). Oh and a headlamp is absolutely indispensable (I have never used my flashlight). I wish I had brought my teddy bear. And another pair of smaller jeans since I’ve lost a lot of weight and you probably will, too. I also wish I had brought a smaller laptop. I have a huge PowerBook (17”) and it is basically prohibitively large to be carting around everywhere. Wish I had sold it and brought a 12” iBook instead. When thinking of bringing a laptop, the smaller the better.

My house was a complete wreck when I got here. There were about 50 wasp maggot nests on the porch (I had been keeping on top of them and breaking them with a hammer whenever one of the HUGE wasps that like my porch would be trying to build one). There were also cigarette butts, a big rock and a broken set of prayer beads. Meaning people had been hanging out on my porch while I was gone. But luckily no break-ins! So I spent awhile cleaning. There was A LOT of mouse poop and spoiled fruit and vegetables, some of which the mouse had eaten. And some unidentifiable moldy mess in the bottom of one of my buckets. And lots of spiders had moved in, though all pretty small. I swept them all out. Oddly, none had moved into my bedroom, just the living room and hallway.

I went to the changol with Nene, Mamadou and the other Nene who stays with Nene when the Sous Prefet is away to do laundry. I was intending to do my own laundry but then Nene insisted on doing mine, which was fine with me because it meant I could get rid of a bon-bon! So I hung out down there with the women for a couple of hours and every bush taxi that went by honked at the blanc on the side of the road and every woman who came to do her washing smiled in delight when I greeted them in Pular.

There’s more to say but I’m tired. G’night!