Thanks to Florence, Colorado!

Michelle Sylvester Scholarship is finished for the year, Alhamdullilah! All the paperwork is in and now all we have to do is wait for the committee to pick the winners. Finally, some seeds have arrived - no rice seed yet, but beans, corn, and sorghum, so I can start telling farmers what they will have from me for this rainy season. Last week the annual Gamou was held in Keur Ali Gueye; apparently it happens every year around late May, but last year I missed it. They set up a huge tent next to the half-finished big mosque, and hung it will all sorts of portraits and posters of Baye Niasse. The young girls all bought white pants suits, which they asked me to paint with Baye Niasse's classic three-quarter pose. I see this depiction of the marabout everywhere, on car stickers, on tee-shirts, on keychains, painted on the walls of telecentres and boutiques. He is a very famous religious leader; my whole village is Niassene - followers of Baye Niasse. So I did my best to sketch his face on an ever-increasing pile of snowy boubous. In the end I got pretty good, and could do it in under a minute. Then I made the girls (they asked me, but I refused, so they could take some credit for the work!) paint over the lines in black oil paint, so the image stood out. In the end they looked awesome! The Gamou itself was quite an event. People from several surrounding villages came to listen to the recitations and speeches, and the entire town put on their best clothes. The older folks sat under the tent with their prayer beads. The leader of the village's Koranic school was the host; he killed tree cows for the two meals that day! So we ate delicious greasy rice and rich meat-flavored cere. There was melodic chanting all through the night, though I ended up going to sleep after dinner. It was a nice village experience.

And coming into Kaolack has been great this time around! We're putting the Bookmobile together for the test run this weekend. Hopefully it will go well, unlike the Dakar fiasco. So far everything seems to be good. This time Kaolack had wonderful surprises waiting for me. FOUR packages: two gifts from home (full of delicious food! Now I can pig out!) and two HUGE packages of children's books from my friend in Florence, CO. How wonderful! We put them in the Bookmobile today and they really enrich the collection. I chose three of those for reading aloud to kids this weekend, and I think they'll enjoy the stories. So THANK YOU Florence Public Libraries (and Robin, you especially)! You've definitely made a great contribution to the Bookmobile! Wish us luck on this test drive.
Next, we need to get our hands on an old card-catalog. Anybody got one lying around? :)