Rolling, rolling, rolling...

As you can see from the previous two posts, things are really moving along quite quickly. You'll have to excuse the lack of regular updates since the funding was received. It's just that there has been so much work to do and it's actually happening! On top of that we just had the social event of the year in Peace Corps Senegal: WAIST (the West African Invitational Softball Tournament). Not to mention that I'm starting to mentally feel like I'm really getting close to leaving (992 days in West Africa down, 117 more to go!). The mix of all of those things together has me feeling much more jazzed up than usual. It's a good feeling, sort of like a return to normalcy in some ways. Since work is happening of it's own accord and since I'm nearing the end, I've been relaxing the pressure I put on myself to stay busy and it feels great. Staying busy was the way I worked through most of my frustrations here, but it came at a cost of being much less relaxed than your average PCV, who are, let's face it, pretty damn relaxed. In my mind, I came over here primarily to do a job, not to travel or have a cultural experience and that has affected my general mental state. Given how hard it is to get anything accomplished over here, it's nice to not be so worried about it anymore. I regret that I haven't connected with people as much as I would have liked to and I'm getting the chance to make up for that now. It's funny how these pivotal moments in life can change your perspective in unexpected ways. You change a few priorities here and there and all the sudden you see that they have been blocking something really important.

The next few weeks will be full of supervising construction and keeping my counterparts a head of the masons. However, I really do think that we could be done with major construction by the end of April. That leaves just details left to take care of and fortunately, the details are going to be really fun. Mostly I'll work on tricking out the ecolodge to really bring it up to a professional level. This means bank accounts, accounting systems, a five year vision plan, packaging local goods for sale, putting the finishing touches on the huts and restaurant, and creating a monitoring and evaluation system that will allow me as an individual and the Peace Corps as an organization to stay involved in the ecolodge project for years to come. As each of these relatively quick tasks get accomplished, I'll pull the corresponding note off my hut wall:

I expect I'll make it down to the chalky white paint at a pace that will allow me to fully appreciate my last few months here and the people that I live and serve with. I couldn't ask for anything more than that.