happy 23.5 bday to me!

Today is 23 years and 6 months exactly from my birth. During those past 23.5 years I have now spent 16 years out side of my country of citizenship… not too shabby. Still have spent more time in the US than any other country… but only by a year and a half. Wonder if another country will ever take over the top spot?

Life is good. I feel like I’ve gotten into my groove and its such a nice place to be. I feel like I am actually getting productive work done, my language is finally getting better (both Wolof and French), I’ve gotten to see a bit of the other parts of Senegal, I get to see my family in 8.5 weeks in the U.K., the weather isn’t too hot and the evenings and mornings are still cool and I am very content to just be where I am at the moment. Hopefully I can keep away the itchy-feet feeling for awhile!

Oh we had our first little rain shower! It was so exciting. It was a week ago and it rained for 10 minutes right after dusk. It was lovely to hear it on my tin roof. I really miss rain and weather. I need rain and gloom to help discharge my bad mood times. For me weather keeps me even keel. I love rain so much. I really miss it! Hopefully we get a lot of it this year. There is something very enchanting about listening to rain on a tin roof.

Mango season is in full force. My body doesn’t really like me eating a ton of them so I’m eating them in moderation. But I can buy a dozen for $1. I’m working with a group at the moment to hopefully start drying them. Mangos are so messy to eat but if you dry them they become so much better for travel and snacking. They taste so nice too. We already have one dryer and are going to apply for funding to get more and make it a proper business opportunity. We did one test run this week on some and they were delicious. We ate our test run very quickly!

Two weeks ago I went down to the Southeast corner of Senegal, to Kedougou. We were supposed to go down for the Bassari Initiation ceremonies but we got all the way out to the area they were to be held and found out they were actually not happening this year in the village we’d gone to and the neighboring village was having them the weekend after! It was a beautiful area so well worth the time and money spent getting down there. It’s a really hilly area which was a nice change after the flat of the rest of Senegal. I’m glad I got to see it. It was interesting seeing the town of Kedougou too because it’s the same size as Sokone but looks very different. Kedougou is a frontier town and Sokone is an old-colonial town. The compounds and business in Sokone are built very close together compared to Kedougou. They have the Gambia River running through it whereas we have the mangroves of the Siné-Saloum Delta. Quite a few people in the town speak French which was nice because I could communicate just fine. It’s a Pulaar speaking area (one of the other tribal languages which has dialects spoken in 28 African countries) and not very many people speak Wolof though some do.

So that is a basic update on me. Keeping busy and loving life!