Camp de Jeunesse

Some time ago, not nearly as long ago as I should have, I put out a plea to a lot of people I know to donate to the Kédougou Youth Camp (Camp de Jeunesse). I asked for a TON of money and wound up getting a lot more than I expected so I just want to through out a thank you to everyone who donated or helped to spread the word (I still haven’t gotten to see a list of donators who said I could know who they are, so a more formal thank you to you all will be coming).

Here’s the spiel.

About a month and a half ago I found myself needing to move into Kédougou full time to help make sure this camp would be a success. I had been doing a lot of running around and coming back and fourth from site to take care of things last minute or do some damage control. I was stressing out far to much and feeling guilty about not being at site enough (site guilt) so I made the call to headquarters to get permission to turn my focus on the huge project that is camp. They said it was okay and I had successfully gotten rid of the stress of getting the panicked “do it now” phone calls because I’ve been at site. I have every confidence that it was a very worthwhile move.

Once in Kédougou full time I was able to work on my computer to get everything organized thanks to having a relatively steady power source. The house also had wireless internet, emails with attachments are glorious… that is until the router gets struck by lightning. All of the house electronics are dead now thanks to rainy season storms, I think they are actually going to pay to get the electric in the house grounded properly now that EVERYTHING got fried.

I digress (surprise?)

What was all that time in the big village spent doing? One thing I tried really had to do was get some kind of lesson plans put together for the different activities we would be doing then getting minions to translate them to French. I’m not going to lie, I didn’t do all that much work putting together the actual plans, just coordinated their creation then collected them onto my computer. My end goal here is to put together two binders, one in French and one in English so that we can be on the same page with the Senegalese group we work with to put on the camp (The Association for the Sustainable Development of Kédougou or ADDK). I was explaining this plan to one of the counselors during the camp and he got all excited and said that he’d send me information on the activities they do so I can just have everything in one place. I hope he follows through with that, Magic Painting is pretty awesome but I really want those songs written down. There were also countless planning meetings, discussions about what to do with our lacking funds, contacting all the applicants we accepted (we wound up with 76 campers and contacted a lot more people for confirmation.

I wound up working with Baba Touré a lot in the weeks leading up to camp. He’s a great kid, he had been a camper the past 3 years and stepped up to play a pretty major role in the planning of camp this year. In fact he invited me over to his place for Korité, the big holiday that marks the end of Ramadan. I wanted to go back to Khossanto to spend the holiday with my host family, but that would have meant not being around for the few days leading up to camp, not really an option. Very glad I decided to head to his house during the day, it was great to be surrounded by Malinké again instead of Pulaar, the majority in Kédougou, or French which I’m still not horribly comfortable in.

A few days after Korité the students started showing up from all over the region and staying with family or friends in Kédougou. This is when it all started to get real for me… summer camp is actually going to happen! We were all pretty much set, except one big problem, we never really finished the schedule. I had Peace Corps’ activities scheduled for some time, but I’d been trying to meet with the ADDK guy in charge of programming for days but our schedules never lined up. So the night before everyone got on the bus to Dindefello I stayed up and quick filled in the blanks with items from the random list of activities I was told ADDK could do. This wound up not getting set until the second day of camp, and thanks to not having the foresight and buying their materials ahead of time the first day of camp had to get changed around a lot. Peace Corps volunteers were the only ones prepared for their activities the morning of the first day, so the group of 9 volunteers helping out at the start of camp were kind of put through the ringer right off the bat. Once the schedule was finished and approved things settled down a lot, but you have to appreciate the flexibility of everyone involved.

Backtracking a bit, I mentioned there was a bus ride to take everyone from Kédougou to the campement in Dindefello where we were having the camp. Thankfully after last rainy season the laterite road to Dindefello was regraded, meaning the parts of the road that last year were absolutely terrifying to watch cars of kids go over were now just really bad sections. However, most of the kids and volunteers were loaded into an old charter bus. Being on the bus with all those excited campers singing songs I recognized from last year was amazing, you could literally feel their energy. In my opinion it was the perfect way to drop all the other volunteers into the camp spirit, if not force it on them. We almost made it, and then in a pretty good-looking section of road we got stuck. What happened is that when the put the new laterite down they didn’t really do anything to what was under it, and in this particular place in the road what was under it amounted to pudding. It was just waiting for something heavy enough to come along and hit it in just the right place and we were that lucky. Everyone sat and waited for a while, the girls were released first, after about an hour, to hike the remaining couple kilometers to Dindefello. The boys were kept behind to help with the excavation to get the bus out. After another couple hours all hope was lost and the boys were sent to hike those last couple K as well. All baggage was left behind and we contacted another car to pick that up and bring it to us later that day - an auspicious start to camp.

During camp we had the Challenge Course run by Patrick this year (I did it last year) and it was the same situation were he needed a translator to help him with the French, which most of the time was Little Jess. Patrick has had a lot of experience running camp and did an amazing job, unluckily for him though challenge course was scheduled for nearly every activity period. Art was headed up by our resident artist Sully, he did camp two years ago but had to miss it last year, thanks to his hard work the kids were ready to go when it came to creative thinking. Plus we had some beautiful artwork hung all around the campement, just heartwarming. LaRocha saved the day with neem lotion and nutritional porridges for the first and second year campers respectively. Their wares were then sold at the weekly market thanks to marketing lessons from Tatiana and Little Jess. First aid sessions were once again run by Eric who seemed to have a lot better luck getting his message across – tourniquets are not the first thing to do when someone is bleeding. Rachel, Meaghan, and Big Jess did a bunch of work with gardening and tree nurseries with our favorite Trees For the Future guy Karumba. Mike and Frank were the sports masters, who knew ultimate Frisbee would go over so well and that they’d get the rules so quickly? Ian took the Creative Writing lesson plan Hannah wrote up and did a great job on that with limited materials. Spanish tourists were in and out of Dindefello throughout the camp to see the waterfall, one group in particular sat and listened to a bunch of their creative writings and were a great audience for them. I’m sure I’ve forgotten someone or something – a highlight of the second week, for me anyway, was the Sexual Health talks Meera led – I never got a chance to sit in on a full one and did want to do too much popping in and out because of the sensitive nature of the topic but I heard great things and the kids got a lot out of it, including ONE wristbands which were in high demand. I’ve listed certain people doing certain activities but it should be known that everyone kind of did everything (teamwork makes the dream work).

ADDK’s counselors lead a bunch of activities as well as all kinds of song and dances. The last day of camp wrapped up with the Olympics, all of camp broke up into 4 groups and the games began. ADDK took care of all of the planning and running of that so it was nice for me and the other volunteers still around to get the day to kind of relax, be with the campers, and act as crowd control. With that camp was done, we held an awkward middle school dance party at the campement, people were lifted into the air, I was gifted a new shirt that my head can barely fit through, everyone was happy, girls cried to be leaving their new friends, and no cars got stuck. It’s kind of hard to believe it’s all over.

PS: Happy Birthday Mom and Seamus & Happy Wedding Lisa and Dereck

PPS: Here's a link to one of the ADDK Counselor's blog.  He has a few posts about camp with some videos, lots of pictures, but words are in French.  Kédougou Avenir

For more pictures check out the Facebook Album

Crème Cassia*

I could waste a bunch of time explaining why I haven’t updated in a while and apologizing and all that… M buŋ, I refuse. I was busy / lazy / who cares. Here’s a fun thing that happened recently.

Mandinkas go patriotic

The 4th of July means party times in Kédougou. Lots of good food (said first because I and a new volunteer were in charge of it), a “4k” run with the community and volunteers, friends coming down from all over the country, and of course Fireworks (thanks to volunteers around Dakar). The fireworks this year included something akin to the “Saturn Missile” and on the bigger end, for those in the know, more on par with the Fisk fireworks of my childhood.

If all that wasn’t enough of a scene most people also dressed up to a certain extent. Kédougou region volunteers tried to stick to a trailer park theme since the hotel of choice in Gou was closed for repairs. The goal was mesh tank tops and jean shorts, the market was tricky to work with, but we managed. My favorites though had to be the Kolda girls as the patriotic Disney princesses. It’s amazing what you can get a Senegalese tailor to do.

Once the festivities were over I found myself helping out with a Neem Lotion Tourney, which did not allow me time to head back to my village first. I wound up spending a couple extra days in Kédougou (It has come to my attention that I might not have provided pronunciation: Kay-Do-Gu) working on things for Summer Camp. In fact it was a surprise camp meeting the day I planed to leave that sent me into a state of confusion that caused me to stay an extra night in Gou (short for Kédougou). The next morning, after a farewell smoothly, I caught a car to Saraya (Sar-ee-uh / Sa-rye-ah depending on who you want to make fun of, I tend to stick with the former). The change in departure for me wound up convincing another volunteer, Kate, to join in on the tourney; which, by the way, was headed by Leah (the one and only, part of the Mandinka Trio of yore). After lunch at Kate’s place we hopped on out bikes and met up with Leah and Ian at his village, Missira Dantila, for a neem lotion (Crème Cassia) demonstration:

“Do you all know the Palu?" (Malaria is Paludisme in French)
“Yeah! You get all hot, and your body gets all sore. You get very sick, it’s not good.”
“Can you do any work?”
“No!”
“So your men can’t farm, women can’t cook, and your children can’t go to school. It’s not good.”
“It’s not good a lot.”
“So how do you get it?”
“When the rains come, and the mosquitoes come and one with malaria bites you.”
“Right, so how can you prevent it?”
“Sleep under a mosquito net!” (Mosquito nets have been drilled into people for years as THE way to end Malaria).
“But what about before you go to bed? During dinner and while you are sitting and chatting, do mosquitoes bite you then?”
“Yeah! It’s not good, we can still get Malaria… in fact that kid has it right now.” (For now the government provides free malaria meds; I wouldn’t worry about her, she was getting treatment and didn't look bad enough to be worried.)
“Well here’s how you can make your very own mosquito medicine:”

One of these girls has Malaria...
it's the one in the middle.

1. Boil two handfuls of neem tree leaves until the water turns green.
2. Cut one big bar of soap into the smallest pieces you can into a tub.
3. Strain the leaves out of the green water and add the hot water to the tub of soap pieces.
4. Stir it really really hard until all the soap is gone.
5. Add 100cfa (about a shot glass / tea glass) of oil and stir.
6. Once cooled, apply to skin as a lotion.

The mob moves in on the fence

This is when we hand out samples of the lotion we just demonstrated, which can get tricky, we kind of started a riot in Missira Dantila… Elbows were thrown, free samples stolen, mothers covered in green foam… My personal favorite though was the woman who stole the bucket with about half of the sample in it and proceded to run through a hut and climb over a fence to get away from the mob. Once there she tried to vend the samples to other women from the opposite side of the fence. Her plan worked well until some of the other women realized they also could climb the fence and get to the bucket directly.  This wound up being a good opportunity to discuss the marketability of Neem Lotion in the village... once all the lotion was gone and we came out of hiding.

After Missira we spent the next few days doing the demo in other villages. I helped out with Samecouta, Nafadji, Baitilai, Faraba, and Kondokho. There was a plan to do it in my village, Khossanto, as well; God did not agree and after waiting all afternoon for a car to take us there we headed back to Kédougou. I had wanted to just bike the remainder of the way back to Khossanto by myself, but once again camp issues came up and I found myself needing to return to Gou.

On a more permanent scale, in each village we did a demo we also left our tag - A spray paint stencil of how to make Neem lotion in 6 easy steps (see picture from earlier with Malaria girl). Four colors to each step, it’s pretty ingenious in my opinion… idea by Kellen, execution by Sully, fun for all ages.

Because it's been a while... Baby in a tux!

Pen-Pals Anyone?

The English teacher at my Middle School is looking for English speaking pen-pals, and this is my widest reaching outlet.  I explained that our best chance was to pair up with a French class (Keep in mind that French is also a second language for these students) and maybe trade off, or do the letters half and half and it was well received.

The fact of the matter is that the students never get a chance to use English outside of the class so any bit of contact with native speakers is a big deal.  The teacher wrote up a proposal for me to send out, I'm adding it to the end of this post in grey so you can get some more information - PLEASE CONTACT ME IF YOU ARE AT ALL INTERESTED.  Just a contact is not a commitment, we'll have to discuss the logistics of everything.

I really think this is an amazing opportunity for everyone involved. Thanks for your consideration and help it is greatly appreciated.

Kellen and a teacher working on the Bembou World Map

Republic of Senegal
Region of Kedougou
Department of Saraya
Khossanto Secondary School
English Club


Twinning Project of the English Club
1. Description of the context:
Senegal is a country where English is taught as a second language. The government takes much importance to the learning of that language. However the same potentialities are not offered to all students.
Learning English in Khossanto faces a lot of problems, which can be ranged from pedagogical to material ones. The fact is that Khossanto is too much isolated to the rest of the world and students are limited to their world; the only means by which the learn the language is the teacher. We do believe that Khossanto Secondary students can be given a chance. How?


2. Expectations:
This twinning project is an idea of the English Club with the help of David PUHL (Iburahima KONDJIRA) – volunteer of the “Corps de la Paix American” – who in fact, is willing to find penpals for the students.
Learning a language is learning to communicate. If you are interested in this project, if you are willing to help students foster their motivation, if you want to be a penpal with one of the students contact us.


The Headmaster  --  The Teacher Coordinator  --  The Teacher Supervisor
Samba DIALLO        Niamady SAMOURA              Aliou DIOUF
The Student Chairman of the English Club  --  Peace Corps Volunteer
Mamadou DIABY                                                  David PUHL

Long Time Coming*

It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything, and I do have a real reason for that… besides the whole living in Africa excuse. That reason being my belief in the teachings of Thumper’s father, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” I’ll admit it’s an exaggeration that I haven’t had ANYTHING nice to say, but there was a rough patch there for a bit (good job support crew on that by the way). Time for a breakdown.

A major buzzword in Peace Corps is ‘Sustainable’ and if you know me at all you’re probably thinking in the environmental direction and words like ‘Eco’, ‘Renewable’, and ‘Green’ are popping up too. Well you’re wrong; we’re talking about having the projects I work on continuing after I leave Senegal (side note, I do really want those other words associated with my projects too). A well-timed example of trying to make a project sustainable is the Summer Camp from a couple posts ago. The camp started a few years ago as a PC volunteer’s project, over the years it has been transitioning more an more into the hands of ADDK. That is, if Peace Corps had to pull out of Senegal right now a Summer Camp would probably happen (albeit probably only slightly resembling what we would do).

For various reasons ranging from my shy personality to cultural traits that seem specific to my village there was a question as to whether or not any work I might be able to do there would be sustainable. That question quickly led to wondering about the need for a volunteer at that site. That’s kind of a big deal, to switch sites after spending more than half a year making the connections and earning the trust to get work done is… less than desirable. In the end my supervisor (APCD) stepped in and put everything on a new track, now it’s up to me to make it work.

So we’re back to a positive and productive place in my service. Just the baseline (host) daddy issues remain and I’ve gotten pretty good at dealing with that. There’s the additional bonus that all the stress and issues distracted me from the fact that I was missing the Holiday Season with my family in America.

Now I have people to talk to, permissions to get, seeds to collect and purchase, paints to buy as well, and I might need to refresh myself on some soccer drills. The project I want to get started ASAP is the one that is inherently not sustainable, but is the easiest to start and add to my street cred – an English Club. Get together with some middle schoolers every week or so and speak English, easy enough. I’ll probably even be able to sneak in some environmental propaganda as I refuse to give up on an anti-litter campaign. Hopefully this English Club will help me get Environmental Groups going at the primary and middle schools in Khossanto. These are the groups who are going to get the school gardens started up (and hopefully pick up some of that litter).

As for the paints and permissions, there are some big blank walls just begging for a good mural, plus I need to get some stuff tagged with the Peace Corps logo in village – there’s a Canadian Flag at the middle school right now (they funded the renovations). I’m planning on at least doing an AIDS prevention mural and a hand washing/ soap use one at the middle school. I like to paint, so hopefully more will happen too.

On a more immediate level I have managed a few small successes in my family. It’s Cold Season right now, I’m talking long sleeves at night and still sweating in my t-shirt at noon, but every morning one of my first thoughts is debating if it is worth it to put on socks or not because the sun is coming out. Cold season is giving people coughs (including me), which brings me to my small successes. COVER YOUR MOUTH! I’ve only had to remind my host father a couple times to not cough directly into the food bowl, and this last time he did it I think was because we had just had a fight and I was eating a lot. Nonetheless, it is a lot better. An even smaller success comes in the form of my little brother Ibu, he has done a lot less coughing directly into my face while we play. He even coughs into his elbow, but I think that’s just making fun of me. Hey, I’m not going to fight it, if it picks up a good habit by making fun of me it’s all good.

The next step is getting him not to cough into the food bowls either, he’s graduating from the women’s bowl and coming the bowl I eat at more often… but he’s small so when he coughs it just goes in his section. Don’t want to rush anything; I’ve got a good thing going here. If you give a mouse a cookie though… now that they are starting to cough into their hands I’m reminded how often they use soap to wash their hands. The answer is only if they use soap to shower with, which is not often, and the women when they do laundry but that’s unintentional anyway.

Donding Donding / Petit à Petit / Little by Little

Summer Camp… Finally*

It’s been almost a month now since camp ended, but I really want to write about it so please accept my tardiness.

For this installment of the Kedougou Leadership Summer Camp in Dindefello (my first, the thrid in total) everything got bigger. More students, more Senegalese staff, more food… more arguments… one of which was was over the fact that there was less bread than last year. Peace Corps volunteers were not as numerous as in the past and tried to take a back seat as much as possible to allow the Senegalese counterparts to take as much control of the camp as possible. It’s all part of the plan to make this be run completely by the ADDK (Association pour le Développement Durable a Kédougou/Association for the Sustainable Development of Kedougou). They could still use some help with ‘the softer side of camp,’ speaking of which, anyone know of a French version of that “Camp is for the Camper” book?

Peace Corps volunteers took on specific programmatic duties. I was in charge of the Challenge Course, Kellen took care of Sports, Eric had First Aid, Hannah was SeneGAD/AIDS, and Meera did Art and translated for me at the Challenge Course. Then there was Thomas, who planned out and ran the camp while it was happening, he also wound up paying for the camp when funds ran out with the last of his CFA before he returned to America (we plan on doing a little more budget training next year). Basically, camp would not have happened without him. The Senegalese counselors this year were working towards what basically amounts to becoming a licensed counselor. As such there were rules that kept us from being able to work with specific counselors and train them on specific areas of camp as well.

Challenge Course – Step 1: find new challenges for second and third year campers. I thought I had that taken care of based on the resources I saw from last year’s camp. I was wrong, they had all done everything I planned and prepared for. Now I’m working on grouping challenges so that there is something new to be done each year as well as the good repeats of things that are always different. Step 2: introduce challenge to campers. Simple… except their first languages are Puular OR Malinké, not both, luckily by middle school everyone can speak French which is what we tried to run the camp in as much as possible. My French, however, is limited to being a customer or responding to yes or no type questions. I can understand quite a bit of what I hear, I just have a lot of trouble producing French on my own. This is why I stole Meera (who has never done a Challenge Course) as my translator, we like to think of it as a Little Mermaid type situation. Step 3: TCCCT. This is where Meera came in even handier and the Little Mermaid of the situation really came out. The discussion after a challenge is completed, or not completed, is really the point of doing a Challenge Course. That’s where everyone learns to work as a team and all the joys I get out of doing a Challenge Course become obvious. Pretty quickly the campers figured out that we were looking for certain key words – Trust, Communication, Cooperation, and Creating Thinking (TCCCT). Once they figured them out they would just say them in the discussion times. This is where it’s good to have some experience with it, you need to ask the right questions at the right times to lead the discussion in the right direction, and to know when to back down if the group is starting to get frustrated. I by no means am an expert, but I have had experience. By the end of the two weeks I loved seeing not only the campers getting what we were talking about, but also the way Meera wound up being able to just run with the discussion on her own. This is why I do what I do.

Here’s how it worked, towards the end of the challenge I would give Meera (in English) a few questions to ask and points I thought they should get out of the discussion. She would start the discussion with all that in mind and I would just listen to what the campers were saying, most of which I was able to understand or at least get the gist of. If there was something I wanted to ask, or a point I thought they should discuss more I would just say it when I normally would, in English, to Meera, who would then say it in French. I imagine this was confusing for anyone watching since I wasn’t having anyone translate to me, but still able to guide the discussion. It’s also a matter of being able to keep the right pacing of the discussion otherwise you loose momentum fast and Meera was really helpful for that. My French comes out a lot slower – at one point when I was guiding a sub-group of campers on my own I blanked on the word for hand. After a long pause I held up my own hand, started at it, and said, “Ça c’est quoi?” (What is this?). I don’t imagine I had much credibility on my own after that.

Creative Thinking proved to be the most challenging concept for the campers throughout camp. It makes sense since (haha) in many cases it was literally beaten out of them in school. The Senegalese school system is heaving on the memorization of things, in order to be successful in school you need to know things verbatim. In this case creative thinking is almost a disadvantage. It was really interesting to see how readily the second and third years got into it and to compare that to how much the first years struggled when we did not provide a single correct answer. Again, at the end of the two weeks the change was apparent in all of the campers.

Aside: Dear Campy Friends, I have a challenge for you over the next year. I need activities that encourage/teach Sportsmanship. Tons of cheating along with sore losers and winners. We stopped things quite often to explain that it is a whole lot more fun for everyone if you follow the rules, and in the case of the challenge course when you start cheating you lose the whole point of doing it. It’s the challenges that you build off of and learn from. I’m talking really basic stuff here; the concept of sportsmanship just really isn’t there. GO! Bonus points if it’s in French and English.

So a quick wrap up on camp as a whole. I would say this year was filled with growing pains, next year it should have settled into it’s new scale and run a lot smoother. Plus, with all the certified counselors we won’t have to have the outside influence that wound up instigating a lot of the tension. The wonderful bureaucracy of it all should be simplified (see flowchart pictured here).

Unfortunately I have to end on a low note. About two weeks after camp ended, leadership camp, one of the male counselors and a couple of his friends took a moto ride out to a village. There they went to the house of one of the female campers so he could ask her parents for her hand in marriage. Reminder, these are middle school students. Also keep in mind that this isn’t as a whole culturally unacceptable; the younger generations and the more educated seem to prefer waiting until the girl is out of school until she gets married off.

Just to twist that knife in there a little more it is worth noting that this particular counselor is also a teacher. Meaning he works with kids this age all the time, and once she pops out a kid he’s allowed to take a second wife. Now, the parents do need to approve in order for this to happen. We need to be honest here; she’s a village girl being proposed to by a teacher from the city. This is a huge get for the family, not only does she get out of the village and into the city, but she also has a husband with a steady job. It’s unlikely that they will deny this union. Come to leadership camp… expand your horizons, open yourself up to new possibilities… yeah.

Jurassic Park - or - The Monkey Stole My Things*

Since September 15th I’ve been helping out with a leadership summer camp for the region of Kedougou. It will be ending on the 30th, and I’ll save most of the details for after that - for now I want to talk a little about Movie Night and living arrangements.

For the first of the two scheduled movie nights we chose Jurassic Park (The plan for the second one is Finding Nemo, but there is little respect for the Chrono so who knows if that will happen). We decided an action movie translates best across language barriers, we showed the French dub but French is still at best a second language for everyone. We also wanted to blow their minds with a movie about dinosaurs. Minds weren’t blown in quite the way we all hoped for but it was still a lot of fun to watch the movie.

I was most looking forward to the big T-Rex scene and seeing their reaction to that. I was expecting a lot more on the fear spectrum of reactions, but they seemed to have a far better grasp of just how pretend the scene was than I had hoped for. Another volunteer / my roommate for the two weeks and I talked about it afterwards and we came up with a couple ideas on why. First, when we first saw Jurassic Park we were younger than these campers are. Second, a lot of these campers have already seen action flicks on TV at some point and have been exposed to CGI so it’s not a new thing.

Everyone was still definitely entertained and on the edge of their seats for the scene. I could feel the tension in the room rise as everyone’s eyes remained glued to the projection. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t the silent type of tension, it was the yell at the characters for doing something stupid type of tension… and as things got more intense the comments became more and more urgent. It was really fun to watch; I mean, I love that scene but I was having so much more fun watching the audience for most of it. It was most clear just how tense everyone was during the actions scenes when they ended. The collective sigh of relief was audible and followed by a discussion of what just happened with your neighbors. Unfortunately there was a lot of whispering at once and in a bunch of languages that it was tough for me to pull out any good comments.

A lot of joy was gleaned from watching people get hurt, and they loved watching the “fat one” do pretty much anything - plus at the end of his arch he gets hurt too, what more could you want? All in all everyone seemed to follow the movie really well, and there was a surprising amount that was relatable to life in Senegal. Raptors eat cows fast, the T-Rex gets a goat (both animals are EVERYWHERE), and all lizards must die. Speaking of which, the scene where Alan Grant and the kids spend the night in the tree and the Brontosaurus comes over to say hi turned into the moment that made me laugh the most thanks to someone’s reaction. There is the line in the movie that compares them to “big cows” which was apparently lost on one of the Senegalese counselors (kind-of counselor, her role really was unclear). She started to scold them quite loudly as soon as they started petting them. She had the full “whatever, fine, don’t listen to me” reaction too and threw up her arms in disgust.

It was really great to people watch the whole time. Now it’s time for the Rocky and Bullwinkle style chang up. During camp the Peace Corps Volunteers involved stayed at a different place than all the campers. I got to share a hut with Kellen, my closest neighbor actually; however, there’s a small debate as to wether or not our hut can actually be considered as suck. It was basically a box made out of bamboo poles with a thatched roof on sticks. The thatch roof was the most weather proof part of the hut and at least bigger animals wouldn’t be able to make it into the hut. We came to the conclusion that a good tent could probably provide better protection from the elements the night of the big storm when the grass mats lining the walls nearly blew down onto us. Kellen may have made a hole on the back porch on the way to take a bucket bath one day, but the beds are REALLY comfortable. Next to our hut there was a monkey leashed to a tree, apparently it’s the more temperamental of the pair of pet monkeys that lived there (the other being left to roam free and apparently live under our hut). Now, I had been leaving my toothpaste out back by the sink so that we could brush out teeth there when it went missing one day. I will admit that I laughed off Kellen’s suggestion that the monkey had taken it for a few days until the tube was found in the Lost and Found with monkey bite marks on it. That was just funny, no harm done, first offense, all the toothpaste was still there, and I was basically inviting it to get taken by leaving it out.

The Second offense however… the cursed little monkey came into our hut and stole out corn! We had the back door open, and a couple ears of corn left on a small table that we were planning on roasting up that night. We were all hanging out having a Coke/Fanta break when Kellen had to get something from our hut. He came back with two empty ears of corn in his hands, “The monkeys ate our corn.” Apparently he caught them and his mouth dropped open, a motion the monkeys decided the mimic as they stood over their prizes. If you can’t tell I have a very specific picture of how this all went down in my head. It was a traumatic experience, I was looking forward to making someone roast that corn for me so I could have a tasty night time snack.

Pure devastation when the evening rolled around and I wanted to have a snack. Stupid Monkey.