Out and about

It's been a busy few weeks full of lots of traveling, meeting, and adventuring. I headed to Dakar for a meeting with the gender and development group (SeneGAD; http://senegad.pcsenegal.org) with a few other Linguere volunteers. It was conveniently scheduled poolside at the lovely American Club in Dakar. There are lots of really great gender activities going on around the country, and everyone's busy planning for the national GAD meeting, all-volunteer conference, and the West African Invitational Softball Tournament (WAIST) that will happen in January. Us Linguereians went out for a seafood dinner by the ocean; a little too close to the ocean, actually... a few of us were a bit soggy at the end of it. 


After GAD was done, Mac met me in Dakar for a day in the big city; we climbed up to the lighthouse for a wine and cheese picnic with Emma, Emily, and some other new friends, visited the renaissance statue, and soaked in all the luxuries. After Dakar, we went to the beautiful city of St. Louis for a few days of beach vacation, rooftop yoga, city wandering, kayaking, shopping, and delicious food. St. Louis is really different from the rest of the cities I've been to in Senegal- it's very European, and even has a sort of New Orleans feeling. To top off the trip, we went out for out of this world Thai food, then Miss Emma and friends threw an impromptu roof deck dance party complete with little cakes and a rendition of the birthday song by the Beatles to celebrate my 26th. You can't beat that. 

Lighthouse picnic in Dakar

Post-beach, St. Louis

Emma, turning CFA into wishes in the Senegal river

Giving our sun-starved bodies a dose of vitamin D

St. Louis

Crabs on the beach in St. Louis

Mac and her kayak

Paddling across the Senegal River

Post-St. Louis was a trip down to the PC training center in Thies, which had an air of homecoming to it, for a mud stove training followed by a meeting for all the Health and Environmental Ed volunteers in country (Health/EE Summit). The 2 days of stove training were really great- we learned a lot about building stoves, why it's so important, and got in some practice hours making mud, filling molds, and burning cooking things. The highlight of it all? Mixing clay with water and sawdust in giant buckets with our feet. Gotta love that squishy feeling. Summit kicked off the next day with brainstorming, re-evaluating, learning, and fun times with everyone in the sector. Most of team Linguere was there, and they all took me out for a birthday dinner at Massa-Massa in Thies. There aren't words for the food. We ate family style: macaroni and cheese with ham, lasagna, seafood, chicken pot pie, rabbit, and profiteroles with a trick candle (throwback!). The worldly folks from Linguere also managed to sing happy birthday in 6 different languages: English, French, Spanish, Wolof, Pulaar, and Mandarin (Mac made attempts at Hebrew and German too, but they didn't quite make the cut...). Pretty impressive. We finished up the Thies trip with the final day of summit, and all headed out.



In case I didn't get enough traveling in, I ended up in the med hut in Dakar after that with some sort of fever-headache-lung infection combination of fun. I'm on the up and up now, and should be going back to the desert Monday, Inch'Allah. 

Baby Sarah, and the rest is just details...

It's been far too long, and a million things have happened: Ramadan ended, I ate 3 monitor lizards, got my hair braided in a million little braids, made 2 radio show appearances, attended wrestling matches, helped with a fabulous girls camp, gardened, taught about gardening, traveled around the area testing for malnutrition, weighed babies, made lots of neem lotion, taught about malaria prevention, planted trees, surveyed Doundodjians about their lives, helped with discussions about risk factors in pregnancy, harvested beans, ate beans, attended a million baptisms and a wedding, got amoebas, organized a talk by the fabulous Awa Traore about communication, career ambitions, sexual health, and so much more...

While all of that was lots of fun, this was the highlight of September:

Baby Diarra with her big sister Codou and cousin Ndeye

Diarra and Codou

 My sister Mbayen had a baby and named her after me! Unfortunately, the people of Senegal have a hard time with the name Sarah, so she's called Diarra, which is my name here. So far, she just does normal baby stuff - eating, pooping, sleeping, crying, but she's still pretty entertaining and adorable. The family has started calling us white Diarra and black Diarra, just to make things clear...