Little Things

The date carved into the lid of a completed latrine in my counterpart's compound.


Solar cooking last week; there was an impromptu dance party inspired by this fish sauce.


My host sister coaxing a kite up into the air.


There are some weeks that pass so quickly, and others that merely drag. It's the slow season here now for me. Not much is happening that I can properly consider "work". So what am I up to? Every week or two, I'll buy ingredients for solar cooking, though I can't do that too often so as not to make people jealous. It's the windy season, so the kites left here by visiting students last year have made a popular appearance. When they get up to the end of their string, the entire village can see the kite way up in the air, high above the thatched roofs and mud-brick walls. It's a swooping, bright spot of rainbow color in an otherwise featureless blue sky. And I can't help humming the song from Mary Poppins, under my breath, when I wind the string and get ready to send it up. Once a week, I do the mini-library thing with the school, lending books to kids from a trunk of Viola Vaughn's Bookmobile books. Twice a week, the computer class with the Nioro students. We're learning to do Google searches now. Next month, hopefully, I can start my pepiniere, and the plan is to organize the women's group (or some other organization in the village) to dissipate that knowledge. Maybe even be a little money-maker for someone. But progress, as usual, is ndank ndank. And, I am annoyed because I want to start work on this year's Michelle Sylvester Scholarship, the one for middle-school girls, but because of this ridiculously long spring break, it will have to wait until mid-April. Baaxul!!!
Probably the biggest news in the village is the latrines, which are being completed super-quickly. Since taking the money out of the bank to buy the materials, I haven't done anything at all, which is precisely the idea of a Peace Corps Partnership. My counterpart has supervised all the cement and iron distribution, keeping careful track of it in a notebook, and people have dug their holes, molded their bricks, paid the masons to line the pits and put the lids on. Really, it's all happened incredibly fast, and people still rave about how pleased they are to finally have enough latrines for a healthy village. All thanks to you wonderful donors! The thirty-seven latrines will be completed by the rainy season, which is awesome, awesome news.
The other day there were two weddings in neighboring compounds, so I (along with everybody else) was running back and forth between them all day, escorting the brides with the parade of women (the brides with their faces and heads completely covered by an opaque white shawl), sitting while the wedding was blessed by the men elders, and enjoying the greasy rice lunch, the boombox music (Akon, of course) brought in from town, and admiring the brides, their faces lavishly made-up, their hairdos towering, with 1,000cfa bills pinned into their thick curls. I briefly considered taking photos, but considering the mayhem that's caused (especially among the children) when I bring out my camera, I chose to try and describe it with words instead.
And my chickens have become more friendly, too. Gertrude and Lucy now run to me when I stand on my back step and cluck, because they know I have handfuls of grain for them. Luckiest chickens in the whole of Senegal, maybe.