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26 November 2011

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving this year, I went to Linguere to celebrate with my Linguere “family”. This Thanksgiving was much better than last year (last year, I had the flu), and I am so grateful that I was able to spend that time with some amazing people.

I headed into Linguere on Wednesday to do laundry at the missionaries’ house and help watch their youngest child while they prepped for our Thanksgiving gathering. Afterwards, I made it back to the Linguere house just in time to watch the slaughtering of our Thanksgiving turkey, which by far, was one of the most entertaining events I have seen while in Senegal. For one, the turkey was rather large. We had found some Senegalese women who were willing to de-feather it and clean it, but refused to kill it since men are usually the one’s responsible for slaughtering animals. So Justin agreed to kill the turkey, and Kim and Abby held it down. Side note: none of us have ever killed a turkey before. The first swipe to cut off the head didn’t do anything, so then Justin had to slowly cut the fat around the neck until he was able to cut the entire head off. Once that happened, both Kim and Abby ran away as the turkey started to flop around and spray blood everywhere. Justin held on to the turkey though until it stopped moving, getting sprayed with blood in the meantime. All of the Senegalese women that were watching thought it was hysterical and we probably provided them with their entertainment for the week.



On Thanksgiving, I headed over to the missionaries’ house to help finish cooking the food and entertain their youngest child again. By 2:30, everyone else had shown up and Thanksgiving lunch was ready to eat! We had so much food, and everything was amazing! After everyone had eaten their fill, we took a break before digging into dessert. After some more lounging, I finally went back to the Linguere office where we watched “Love Actually” and I had the opportunity to talk to my mom and Bob before going to sleep. I could not have asked for a better Thanksgiving here in Senegal :)

mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cream-style corn, chicken goodness, beet salad

 
bread, tzaziki, green bean casserole, turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes





















my plate -- first round :)


Now, I can focus on Christmas and the fact that I will be state-side in less than 3 weeks! Time to listen to Christmas music and watch some of my favorite movies!

08 November 2011

transition period...

        So I am in a transitional period of my service. As you can tell from the last blog post, life and work had been pretty busy. All of those projects are finished now and I am slowly trying to figure out the rest of my service. Peace Corps Senegal is restructuring their small enterprise development (SED) program – which is a good thing – and I am trying to make sure that any future projects fall into the new framework. If you’ve been keeping up with my blog, you’ve read about my multiple agriculture projects and one SED related project. SED is a very difficult project sector here; since most people just want you to give them money, not actually teach them new skills or how to manage that money. Also, you hardly ever see immediate results, thus people think that whatever you have taught them isn’t actually working. During the past year though, I have discovered four different groups that have potential. I have worked with them on small scale projects and feel like I can help them out. Three of the groups are not “legal” in the sense that they have not formally registered as a group, so I am going to help them get their paperwork together and set up some bank accounts. The fourth group is already registered and has a bank account, so now we just need to find a feasible and sustainable project for them to do. I have also talked with the supervisor at the local high school and will start teaching some computer classes once solar panels have been installed. I am looking forward to the rest of my service and focusing on these projects; however, due to some upcoming trainings and my vacation to the States (woo-hoo!), I can only plan at the moment, and then hopefully start working on them once I return in January.



       In other news, these past few weeks have been fun and a nice break from work. I had an exchange student who is studying in Dakar come out and stay with me for a week. It was nice to have someone to speak English with and to show how I live. Meredith was really cool and we had a lot of stuff to talk about. She seemed to enjoy her stay as well. We also got to travel to two new volunteer sites to meet with the families and make sure that everything was in order for their new volunteer.
     
Balla teaching Meredith how to make tea


        After that, I headed down to Tamba for a few days to visit my friend Jamie and to celebrate Halloween. Halloween was so much fun, and it was great to spend time with Jamie.

Team Linguere


       












cranberry crayon






















After that, I returned to site in time for Tabaski, the biggest Muslim holiday celebrated in Senegal. Tabaski commemorates Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac (according to Islam, it was Ishmeal), and therefore they slaughter a ram to celebrate the holiday. My family slaughtered five rams this year…I have not seen that much meat in a while! My family spent the entire morning killing and preparing the sheep, and then spent the rest of the day cooking and eating. My host mom was awesome once again, by preparing a chicken just for me. As with all holidays here, that means you have to get a new outfit or two. For the morning, several of the women in my family had their outfits made out of the same fabric, and asked me to join in. For my evening outfit, my counterpart’s mother had given my fabric. When I visited my counterpart’s family, his mom also gave me some vegetables and a couple of pomegranates! Overall, a wonderful holiday well spent with my Senegalese family.


Twins! Same outfit, same birthday!

Me and my host mom


my evening outfit