Saturday, October 17, 2009
Feedback
I seem to have reached a point where I am mostly just describing what I have done in my blogs and I suppose that's not always the most interesting thing. If there is anything you are curious about or want me to write about post it in a comment and I'll be happy to do it.
Vacation
So now that training is over, what am I going to do? Go on vacation of course! Mom and Dave had bought plane tickets to come see me before they shut down the Peace Corps Mauritania and the timing worked out perfectly with the end of training so they kept them. They will be here in three days and I am EXTREMELY excited, its been over a year since I have seen any of my family. I can't even really picture what its going to be like to see them again. They'll be here for a month and we are going to do a tour of Senegal and I'll take them out to the Dogon too. They'll get to meet my family from training here, from my village in Mauritania, and they will spend my first week out at Segou with me. I am excited about how refreshing it will be to see West Africa through their eyes and I think it is going to be a lot of fun to play guide. Which reminds me, now that I am in a country that is actually a tourist destination, I want to invite you all to come visit. PCVs make excellent guides because we are sort of like tourists that just never leave and stay to help people instead. Also, cultural exchange are 2/3rds of my job here and the other 3rd is eco tourism so you would actually be helping me do my job by coming. ;) Round trip tickets are about $1,500 and budgeting 100 a day can be plenty.
Estage gasi
Hip-hip-hooray I am done with training again! It was a bit rough going through two months of training all over again, but my Pulaar really profited from it. I feel like I didn't really learn any more Pulaar over this past year that what I knew from training in Mauritania. I was much more interested in learning and using French. However, my new village is much smaller and there are a lot of folks that don't speak French, so I will probably end up using Pulaar more.
I am really looking forward to going out to my village, getting established there, and beginning to do something productive again. Its been three months since I had any work to do and I am itching for it. Although having spent those three months with Americans, its going to be a real adjustment to go back to village life, which is sort of funny because all of the other adjustments that I have had to make here in Senegal were getting used to things being nicer. Absolutely everything would be an example of that, and I am sure that the new Senegalese PCVs are tired of hearing it, but I'll just give one example. For our official swear in here in Senegal we had a Police escort to take us into Dakar so we didn't have to get stuck in traffic (I thought that this was a bit awkward since we weren't really doing anything that important and it seemed unfair to do just because we had the money for it, but I suppose it was more about not keeping the Ambassador waiting than us being a big deal). The swear in was held at the Ambassador's residence and it was attended by other Ambassadors and Senegalese government representatives. After there were fancy hors d'œuvres and we went to a bar with a pool. By contrast, for our swear in in Mauritania, we had to do it in one of the dorm rooms at our training center because there was sewage seeping through the floor of the room we would were supposed to have it in. No Mauritanian government representatives were there because the coup d'etat had just happened and the US hadn't decided how they were going to handle relations with the new government. After we had a party out behind a hotel outside of town because it was far enough away that we could drink without anyone seeing us and we danced like we had ants in our pants because the whole compound was infested with them. Things here are definitely nicer. Some one asked me the other day if anything was better in Mauritania, besides the people I knew there the only thing I could come up with was that the family I ate with cooked better a better lunch (rice and fish with a bunch of veggies and an amazing leaf sauce paste.)
I am really looking forward to going out to my village, getting established there, and beginning to do something productive again. Its been three months since I had any work to do and I am itching for it. Although having spent those three months with Americans, its going to be a real adjustment to go back to village life, which is sort of funny because all of the other adjustments that I have had to make here in Senegal were getting used to things being nicer. Absolutely everything would be an example of that, and I am sure that the new Senegalese PCVs are tired of hearing it, but I'll just give one example. For our official swear in here in Senegal we had a Police escort to take us into Dakar so we didn't have to get stuck in traffic (I thought that this was a bit awkward since we weren't really doing anything that important and it seemed unfair to do just because we had the money for it, but I suppose it was more about not keeping the Ambassador waiting than us being a big deal). The swear in was held at the Ambassador's residence and it was attended by other Ambassadors and Senegalese government representatives. After there were fancy hors d'œuvres and we went to a bar with a pool. By contrast, for our swear in in Mauritania, we had to do it in one of the dorm rooms at our training center because there was sewage seeping through the floor of the room we would were supposed to have it in. No Mauritanian government representatives were there because the coup d'etat had just happened and the US hadn't decided how they were going to handle relations with the new government. After we had a party out behind a hotel outside of town because it was far enough away that we could drink without anyone seeing us and we danced like we had ants in our pants because the whole compound was infested with them. Things here are definitely nicer. Some one asked me the other day if anything was better in Mauritania, besides the people I knew there the only thing I could come up with was that the family I ate with cooked better a better lunch (rice and fish with a bunch of veggies and an amazing leaf sauce paste.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
