Baseball Comes to Africa

So we had another crayon party before lunch. I still don’t get why they all feel the need to fight over crayons and paper – there is plenty for everyone. In the course of one of these fights, the first crayon got broken. I’m actually surprised it took this long!

So after the crayon party I was explaining to Drissa that I am going to Senegal next month to play in a softball tournament (WAIST). He had no idea what I was talking about. Then it occurred to me that among the things that were sent to me from Guinea, I had two baseball gloves and two baseballs! So I busted out the gloves and a ball and after spending five minutes trying to teach Drissa how to put the glove on, we played catch! The kids thought this was really weird. I think Drissa might have thought that catch was baseball. He said he has never seen it before, not even on TV. But he was having fun. Every time one of us would drop the ball there was a mad fighting scramble amongst the children to recover the ball and throw it back to us. I would let them play with the ball and gloves when we are not using them, but the ball is hard and somebody would definitely get hurt. And they’d probably find a way to destroy the gloves.

Like they destroyed my cards. Word to the wise: bring at least 2 decks of cards with you to Africa. One you can lend out to the kids, because they will ask you EVERY DAY. The other you keep for yourself to play solitaire or to play with adults – DON’T LEND THIS DECK OUT! You will regret it.

We had to stop playing catch when a ball I threw hit the screen on my door and separated it from the doorframe, leaving a hole that tomorrow I will try to patch with duct tape.

It was really windy today and the dust was coming into my house like WHOA, so I put up the door curtain and one window curtain that I had had made in Guinea (also made it here and I didn’t even ask for them!). I had never gotten around to putting them up in Guinea because what I wanted them for was to keep petites from looking in my door and windows at me all the time but Yogi proved to be way better than any curtain because with Yogi around they never even dared come past the gate. Problem solved.

The puppy is always wanting to come in my house now. Only two things I don’t like about it: he pees on the floor and he is always trying to eat out of the cat box. Just a fact of life: dogs like to eat poo. Also since his leg is messed up I can’t give him a bath. As soon as his leg is healthy or at least not hurting him I am giving him a bath. With the doggie shampoo my grandma sent me. Speaking of his leg, it is getting better. It used to be that if you touched it at all or if he sat on it he would yelp but now it has to be bent in a certain direction for it to hurt. Of course just as I write this I hear him screaming from out in the courtyard. Somebody must have hit him. In the leg. I don’t really want him to make my house his home but at the same time I’d rather let him stay here until he is healed so they can’t hurt him so easy. Poor little guy. He just tried to crawl through the hole I made in my door screen today. Dude really wants to live here.