Re-boot

Where do I even start? I managed to leave my blog in hopeless abandon during the flurry of work I've been swept up in over the last several months. Here's to a blog re-boot.

The last 6 months have been a fabulous, albeit exhausting adventure. Linguere is finally finished with mosquito net distribution, and Mac and I with our USAID-funded partnership with the program. I wrote an article about the work for Peace Corps' Stomp Out Malaria initiative, which is posted here:
http://stompoutmalaria.org/linguere-universal-coverage-campaign/

The latest excitement here has been Tabaski, a celebration marking the end of the annual Muslim pilgrimmage to Mecca, and marked by an incredible amount of meat. I was in Doundodji for the party, and spent the day helping with the processing and cooking of the 3 sheep the men in my family killed. It was a good day, topped of by an old guys vs. youngins soccer match in my neighborhood. The old guys won, and surprised everyone...

Of course I can't forget the election. The endlessly wonderful missionaries in Linguere, Dirk (who had to be out of town during the election) and Sarah invited all of us PCVs over for an all-night CNN-watching party. Most of us crashed before the final hours, but Andrew and Sarah made it all the way through to Obama's speech around 6:30AM. Despite our sleepiness, it was exciting, and refreshing taste of the (comparatively) organized, informed, technologically literate life in America... which is peeking right over the horizon.