Let’s talk about today…*

Today was one of those days where I really needed Cake’s song “Sheep Go To Heaven” to help make me feel better. If you don’t know it I recommend you find it and listen to at least the opening lines. If you choose to go through the rest of the song (and why wouldn’t you?) keep in mind that I live with both sheep and goats (along with other farm animals, and yes Zach, I realize it’s an allegory).

To get the full story I guess we need to start with last night… well, I guess for that one we need to know a little about yesterday afternoon. I’ll start there:

Even though it is Ramadan I still get to eat during the day for a couple reasons (1) My light complexion apparently means I can not possibly survive a day of fasting, and (2) Most of my host family is not fasting due to age, work schedules, or pregnancies so food still gets made anyway. All the same, I still like to eat my lunches secretly in my hut so I don’t go rubbing it in for anyone who is fasting. Also, it’s kind of fun because I get my very own bowl since the ones I normally eat with are off farming, that means no need to build rice walls between my part of the bowl and that of the dirty, dirty child squatting next to me - the dirtiest one just doesn’t get it though and keep taking from my section, and it’s food I’ve already mixed to the consistency I like. I’ll let him know what’s up soon enough. After my lunch I read/nap, it’s a great system I’ve got going for me.

I’ve gotten off track. So I was heading to my hut from a morning of Malinké acquisition to hold up in my hut for “secret lunch’ (with super secret hot sauce!). Upon entering the compound I hear the distinctive “Iburahiiiimaaa…” of my host sister (actually a host aunt) to which I have started responding to by mimicking the call with her name (Kouta) as opposed to the traditional response of ‘Naamu” (A Mandinkified verstion of Arabic for “Yes” if I haven’t been lied to). She seems to get a kick out of it, and I’m happy to have an inside something of my very own with someone in the family. With greetings taken care of she dives right in to her point - I can’t leave for Saraya or Kedougou as I had planned. I need to stay in Khossanto for Korité (The party at the end of Ramadan). I really wanted to do that anyway so that was all the push I needed, “Awa, after Lunch I need to go for a bike to get cell phone reception and call my neighbor to tell him that I’m not going to Saraya to do the radio show tomorrow.” It’s the first Peace Corps radio show out of Saraya and I really wanted to be there, but there will be a bunch more of those and only one more Korité. Plus they said I’d get to eat cow, a bull in fact, and I need an excuse to wear my fancy Senegalese clothes.

So after secret lunch I did just that. The plan is - Thursday: No Radio/Saraya, Friday: Korité/Pray/Food, Saturday - Go to Kedougou and buy a bunch of phone credit to sing my mom Happy Birthday, Sunday: New volunteers head down to Kedougou for demyst (and hopefully Leah too).

Fast forward to after dinner when I decided to sit with my host dad who tells me that Korité is going to be Saturday. HOLD UP… after cross referencing with Kouta we decided that the celebration will be Saturday. This means I can go to Saraya for the radio show tomorrow (today as I’m writing)! Sweet. I’d better go to bed quick and rest up for the ride in the morning.

Now we’ll get today started, and why I need some Cake. I’m all kinds of excited so waking up at 7 is pretty easy to do. I’m trying to take it slow and make sure I don’t get rained on the whole way like last time when my host dad comes to my door to tell my that Korité will actually be on Friday… so, I’d miss it if I went to Saraya. If’ you’ve been keeping track I believe we just crossed off Plan C; luckily though it just reverts to Plan B - and I don’t have to tell anyone about any changes in plans!

No I’m bound and determined to make this day a productive one. First thing on the list, go to the Health Post and ask the ASC about Khossanto. Well, he’s gone for Korité and not coming back before I have to leave for Kedougou. Oh well, whatever, I’ll just find Moussa (my adult host brother)and get that tree he want’s planted in the compound taken care of. Well, I can’t find him so I’ll just hang out with the neighbor boy for a while… Actually, he showed me a GREAT potential gardening spot that I want to use for the school. That was a good thing in the morning.

Then it was time for Secret Lunch, after which I decided to shorten my siesta by a bit to ensure getting some work done. I headed back over to the neighbors’ compound to ask about getting my hands on a wheelbarrow to get soil for my personal tree nursery and gardens. I’ve been asking, trying to get this to happen for at least a month now and I’ll be darned if it’s not going to happen today! He had told me he knew where dirt was last week, so when I asked for a wheelbarrow he was very suspicious of where I was going to get this soil from. So I took him to take a look at the stuff I had picked out, it was rocky, but everything is rocky around here and the soil was nice and dark. He instantly said it was no good, I asked if it was because of the rocks and he informs me that it is because I would have to sift it… I’m a little impatient due to a lack of sleep, and he might be a little irritated because his stomach apparently hurts (unless he was lying to get out of work) so I probably shouldn’t have said out loud, “Right, we have to sift it because of the rocks.” I’m thinking he picked up on my attitude and spit back with a little ‘Chekho (My ancien) did it this way,’ which I think he’s realizing irritates me even more. But, no biggie, I just need to find someone with a screen to sift it with, shouldn’t be too bad. Oh, but wait, he has a place with good soil for me.

He led me to the other side of the village where we poked at a pile of rocks with a mostly clay/loam soil that was the color of sand. Not nearly as good of a soil as the other pile. Then we moved on to a decent soil with just as many rocks as the first pile, but a spot he had found so that was better (even though the first one was closer to home). Finally he takes me to the pen where his family keeps their cows at night where we both agree this is good (Basically it was a pile of manure that I really wanted to mix with the soil already in my yard to make pure awesomeness, but I needed to keep my cool). “We’ll do it at 4,” he tells me after I have to remind him that it has to happen today.

At 4 he actually came back and we grabbed my shovel and pick and made our way to the pile of manure, broke it up a bit, and confirmed it was good stuff. Then he informed me that the sun was too hot and we would come back later with the charette (a cart made to be pulled my a donkey or horse) to pick it up. I laughed a little because I didn’t believe him, but what am I going to do, I really need to use his charette so I agreed. He started to pick up the tools so I told him to just leave them since we would be coming back later in the day to pick everything up, now we have collateral involved and I am bound and determined to make this happen today.

Now it’s nap time because I realize I’m unreasonably cranky… no nap, but a tea break, kind of the same thing… but opposite. While waiting for the tea I came to terms with the fact that my white skin means I’m going to have to be assertive with certain people to allow me to actually do any physical labor. Also, the default assumption is that I don’t know how to do any physical labor and need to be taught, and finally that I am probably going to have to work using this same level of determination and slight trickery in order to make things happen on a schedule I can agree with. I’ve gotten the word ‘after’ said to me a lot and need to start reminding more often or butting my foot down with more people to keep myself from getting too angry.

In a personal triumph the neighbor boy returned later with the charette and we got the stuff into my back yard. So, knowing that Korité’s date is unclear to say the least I got to work trying to get my soil mixed and where I want it… then it started to rain.My initial calculations were a little off and the sprinkle was more of a downpour for the rest of the evening. I sat the storm out in my hut working with some bamboo pieces for the garden and almost laughed myself into tears with how all of my plans for the day had somehow fallen through.

When the rain broke I went back to work with the soil (not mud thanks to a woven mat that I threw over it). Long story short I might have caused some structural damage to my shade structure and I won’t be surprised if it isn’t standing when I get back from Summer Camp. I’m a little worried about it lasting the night to be honest with you.

Night time bucket bath.
Dinner.

Both unremarkable, but they happened. I went to remind Kouta about the radio show tonight and she made me come in, sit, and eat some tasty leaves mixed with dried fish. Tasty until you hit a big pocket of the fish. Anyway, she got the radio set up and reminded me about my fancy clothes.

I had given her my swearing-in outfit to get washed - I’m sorry Aziz, Lamine, and the Senegalese Fashion Police, they weren’t even clean when I got them and I trust her to do it right. Which she did, and spent the first half hour or so of the show ironing my clothes and getting all the creases in the right places.

Now the radio, as much as I wish I could have been there for the first show I think I’m more happy that I got to experience it with part of my host family. Now, when I actually go in to help out I have a good idea of how they’ll be reacting. I have experience with both sides of the show now, and I can’t wait to greet them from more than 40 km away!

With that said, they were really excited to know the people who were talking on the radio since they have met all the Malinké volunteers, they laughed at the jokes and danced to the American Music (looking to me to make sure they were doing it right). They were probably more excited than I was to hear my name mentioned on the radio, once as a recording of me, and another shout out from the volunteers who made it to the show.

I really do think this radio show is the start of something really cool for Saraya, if nothing else a lot more people with get an idea of what the Peace Corps is and what we are here to do.

That’s how it is, a day of small disasters topped off with an optimistic peak into the future. Donding donding.

Rains*

I didn’t realize it until today, but it had started two weeks ago when I biked to Saraya and spent the first 3 hours of that trip in the rain… I knew the rain was coming. I had come to a realization that morning that I didn’t just want to go to Saraya for a movie night with other PCVs in the area but that I needed to go for my own sanity. It was actually not a bad ride and just what I needed; ever since then though whenever I get on my bike it will rain. Granted, it is rainy season, the name is telling you what to expect; it seems to wait just long enough for me to get to a point that turning back makes no sense whatsoever. Also, if I didn’t do things because it looked like it was going to rain I would wind up never doing anything.

The past couple weeks have been the rainy season I expected before I came here and people told me what to expect from rainy season. I was told to expect a storm of some kind nearly every day to blow through and the sun would come out and make everything hot and muggy, but things would dry. In Khossanto though, we have been getting long soaking rains with all day mists. Nothing ever dries. When I started writing this it was sunny - that 10 minutes of sun was long enough, now the mists and winds have moved in and I’ve moved into my hut. It’s not what I was told to expect, but no one here seems to think it’s weird.

Me, I wish there were more storms. Sitting out or “sleeping through” a big storm in my hut is unbelievably fun. Its mud-brick construction and thatched roof keep out enoug of the rain in predictable areas that I don’t need to worry about myself o my things getting wet. What I do get though is all the sounds of the storm as though I weren’t in a building at all (without all those nasty getting sick side effects). I’ve been woken up in the middle of the night by more than one clap of thunder that you would swear hit in my back yard, or by my door being slammed shut in the wind. I get angry about being woken up for a bit, but then I just get happy and enjoy the music of the storm (in the case of the door slamming I was angry for a bit longer because I needed to get up, make sure the door wasn’t in fact broken, fix it, then secure it and go back to bed). Just be sure that all flashlights,radios, and electronics are off because they will get struck my lightning according to most Senegalese, including my host father.

A few days ago I set out to meet my neighbor at his field conveniently located some distance out of town along the road to Bambarayaa. I, having only been there once, took the road to the fields of one of the many Cissokhos (Family name) in Khossanto by mistake. It was a beautiful ride along the hills it turns out you can see in the distance from the fields I was trying to get to. When I reached the dead end in this family’s corn field and temporary hut that made me know for a fact I was in the wrong spot (nothing has been familiar since IST when the rains made the forest a jungle) I greeted “I nin tiling?” to make sure no one was in the hut. Thankfully nobody was so I wasn’t going to need to admit to getting lost and I turned to correct my mistake. This is where the adventure became a little serendipitous when I came across a patch of bamboo. Only a few hours earlier had I decided that I wanted to try planting bamboo along the back of my yard for a little more privacy (as I shower I can look into the entire neighboring compound, and they often say hi). So I took a few pieces of a couple shoots and continued back to Khossanto. When I found myself in the middle of a herd of cows with a sizable storm obviously coming I decided to suck it up and go back to the hut to sit out the storm.

The storm, once it came, was obviously going to be a soaker and the kids just kept laughing at me and saying that I don’t understand Malinké. So when a break came I headed out, at which point the hardest of the storm came and I got soaked in about 3 seconds. At that point it was not worth turning back anymore… guess I’ll keep going. It was kind of fun to be cold, but I did feel really bad for my bike each time I had to go through the muddy streams that were now crossing the paths.

At that point I came to the small river I was worrying about for the whole ride (Flashbacks of the Ozarks for those who get the reference) until I heard the shouts of joy coming from that direction. The shouts were a group of women who had been out in the area digging for gold, they had stopped there to play in the water and to bathe. Since it was a group of only women they were, as a whole, a lot less reserved in their manners than they are within the village. It was refreshing for me to know that the women of the village CAN in fact have fun and be loud and have that outlet from all that work they do all day every day. Even in this case though, they had been digging for gold in the hills. I feel that I don’t need to work very hard to let you know how hard this work is. It goes to show the personality of the people here, always finding the happy.

I’m glad I went the wrong way.
I’m glad that it rained.
I’m glad I was able to see that the women of Khossanto can have a good time just playing in the rains.

Lengoxoto*

Today encapsulated a lot of the past few weeks for me in ups and downs. Luckily, today used that saying in reverse. I spent most of the morning in my hut, at first I had the excuse of the rain, but that really didn’t last all that long. So I laid there getting angry at myself for not taking enough action and wasting everyone’s time. Ultimately I was just dwelling on the downs of the past week or so. After lunch however, I forced myself to get out to the Health post and ask them some questions I had worked on translating from English a few days ago. No one was there. I figured this was going to happen because I got the motivation at a weird time of day, I had a back up plan prepared.

This back up plan was really more of a personal dare because it was to go to the place in village where all the old men sit on this huge bench under this AWESOME tree. I’d been there a couple times and never really felt welcome. They would always just mumble something I couldn’t manage to make into words, say “He doesn’t understand Malinké” a lot, and eventually someone would throw in something like “White Guy doesn’t speak French either.” Then we’d all laugh and I’d get out of there feeling rather dejected. Last time I was there, the two men who happened to be there I’m pretty sure actually hated me. However, I know that if I really want the good Malinké I need to talk to the older generation who haven’t been quite as tainted with French in their language.

So I made my way back to the spot, Donding donding (little by little), when I turned the corner and saw the nine men sitting there on that gigantic bench made of whole trees, I lost all my courage to approach them. So I took the path that would keep me walking through the area instead of up to the men. I greeting them all, they greeted back and I was home free. Then one said, “Iburahima (me), come here.” My plan had been foiled, and I knew that for my own good I needed to go to them. We chatted for a bit, they invited me to sit, so I did, I felt the need to write a few things down in my notebook. I turned them into teachers and they loved it. I did stumble through a few things and got the chorus of, “He doesn’t understand Malinké,” but I was able to throw in a few gems forcing them to admit that I was understanding, donding donding. In the end they basically told me to come back every day if I wanted to learn the language really well. The part that struck me the most was that they barely even mentioned my ancien volunteer - I am the third volunteer in Khossanto, first was Famara (my double ancien), then came Shekho (my ancien), now Iburahima is there. I’m not going to lie, these guys would not shut up about Famara who’s been gone for more than a year and a half now, but we weren’t being compared. They just were remembering him fondly and I could tell that they were hoping to be able to build that kind of relationship with me too. When they talked about Shekho they did so only to say that he was there, I seemed to have found a pocket of the village that he did not spend a lot of time in. It’s what I’ve been looking for, usually when he comes up it’s a direct comparison because he’s a lot more recent in everyone’s memories. When that happens and I get the feeling that they wish he were still there or that they think he was better than me. At that point I usually turn off and stop listening.

Now, because I really liked making that last post, a few bullets:

• They are actually really nice (except the one who wants things from me) 
• It’s a great place to go to avoid being compared to Shekho 
• One younger guy there actually wants to work with me specifically on language in excange for English lessons (If he’s actually good I can also pay him in money Peace Corps gives me for a tutor) 
• They are all very patient with my language abilities 
• They’re old and generally speak the real deal Malinké 
• That tree is REALLY cool. 

When I left I had a huge smile and was feeling SUPER re-energized, I will be going back.

With an extra spring in my step I made my way back to the Health Post where I found only the ones who don’t speak Malinké. I was feeling motivated and they were in a good mood too, so we worked with my limited French and their equally limited English to get my questions answered. It was a fun and productive game, plus I noticed that when searching for words in a foreign language my default has changed to Malinké, which is far more effective than the German that has usually been popping into my head.

Then, to wrap up the day I sat on a log outside my family’s compound with a man I think I can start calling a friend, and a few men I don’t know at all, and they told me the name of the place with the old men and the AWESOME tree - Lengoxoto. After a little research into the meaning I came to this, “Under the Lengo tree.”

Quick Pic Post 3

The jungle that was my back yard when I got back from IST

IST, now in Bullets!*

• Awesome Yekini notebook (possibly purple)
• Permaculture!
• “Food Forests”
• Compost… why not?
• Heavy Givers, Heavy Feeders, Light Feeders
• Keyhole Garden
• Hammock Garden!
• Fences are not animal proof, walls are not kid proof
• Pomegranate can grow here
• I need to look more into planting Leucaena and Gmelina
• There are a bunh of books I want to get
• Rocket stoves are pretty sweet, but I think they will be a hard sell in Khossanto
• “Hey there Mr. Spidermite… are you doing any damage? Is there a beetle around that’s going to eat you?”
• Manure has a bunch of seeds in it, compost done right should kill all those seeds
• Small Scale ≠ Small Yield
• AIDs is probably more of an issue in Khossanto that I originally thought with the Mining nearby
• Women in Development --> Gender and Development --> Men as Partners
• EE in Senegal - Look at the GLOBE Project
• Community Content Based Instruction: It will be really tough to do with the lack of flexibility in the school system, but it is important to get a little environmental knowledge out there however possible.
• Community Radio, it’s actually going to be fun… especially since I can edit it on the computer to fix my language mistakes
• Malinke Girls’ Soccer Camp?
• Dinner with Aziz!
• Waste Management - Take it slow, go through the right channels, and give credit where it is due.
• Senegal is NOT eligible for Eco Schools!?
• Chicken Raising (layers vs. Broilers)
• Outplanting = fun times in dirt!
• “The rubber stamp in important”
• SeneGAD
• Bee Keeping!
• Red and Yellow = Bees
• Blue and Green = Butterflys
• White = Bats and Moths
• Needs ≠ Desires
• Hilly Billy Breath is a home-made insecticide
• Chopped Mint, Ash, Garlic and Tobacco, with some soap
• Beer kills slugs and coke might help with Rats

The Bottom Line

I can’t say they didn’t warn us about the fact that things just move slower in Senegal than they do in the US, let alone that for the first few month simply communicating would be difficult. This was all expected, one thing I did not count on contributing to the slow pace was being sick. It really doesn't make "integrating into the community" any easier when you are sick. My previous post provides my first, and rather major, example of that. I am now stuck with something less debilitating, but far less conducive to travel. I will call them ‘Digestive Issues,’ and as a result I have been stuck away from my village for a week now.

I am very anxious to get back, especially since I will need to leave once again for a long while for In Service Training (IST). I’m worried that I’m going to be spending more time away from my village than in it. The issue is getting back. From Kedougou there is one car a day that usually makes it’s way to my village of Khossanto and beyond. Unfortunately, this car is loading up and leaving at a time that does not agree with those digestive issues I mentioned.

My other option is to bike out which can easily turn into an all day event, but at the very least will exhaust me while I’m already not exactly in peak form. You might also question biking with digestive issues - Let’s just put it this way, it’s a lot easier to stop a bike in an emergency situation than it is to stop any kind of public transport.

There is my dilemma, between these couple events I feel like I have missed out on prime time to really get to know my village and its people. I’m going to need to be putting a much larger effort into getting to know new people in my village. A neighboring volunteer’s goal is to have dinner in every family compound in his village; I don’t know if I’m willing to set that goal yet, but maybe once a week (heck, that might even cover it over the next two years).

To throw a silver lining onto this as well, I’ve come to notice that these breaks (the one for the infection, and the ones from CBT families during Pre Service Training) have helped me to really notice my own improvements in the local language. Logic would agree with “you don’t use it you lose it,” but this situation for me I think there is something else going on. Here’s how I see it: I’ve been cramming a brand new language into my head, a lot of info in a short period of time, and doing my darnedest to make sense of it all. I think these breaks of not using Malinke have allowed it to settle into my mind in a more organized and logical order. Like in Dr. Mario when he starts throwing the pills too fast and you can’t keep up then eventually lose, but when you start a new game it’s SUPER easy and you kill all those nasty germs in no time.  On a side note, I do consider Dr. Mario superior to Tetris.

The bottom line is, I have two years here. My service is not going to be defined by these first few months here, so I need to continue to do what I need to do in order to stay healthy. No matter how much I want to be in Khossanto right now, I’m not doing any good if I am sick in my hut with a temperature of 102º (not that I’ve done that or anything).  These frustrations will pass in time.

Nin Allah Sonnta

It’s the Malinke version of Inshalla, which means God Willing. The more direct translation is ‘If God Agrees,’ and it is what I told my host family last Tuesday when the asked if I would be back that evening.

God did not agree.

My elbow had been doing this crazy infection thing for a while so I started taking antibiotics on Sunday when I realized it was not getting better after almost a week and hurt to find a position to sleep in. Then when Tuesday rolled around and it was in fact getting worse as the antibiotics should be doing their thing I decided to make the 3ish hour bike to my closest neighbor and see what he though while giving Med a good call. So I put on my dirty clothes and packed up some med supplies, 2 cliff bars, half a loaf of village bread, iPod, sunglasses, Adventure Racing Club baseball hat, and water then took off down the dirt road. It’s a good ride, fairly scenic, a few small villages to pass through keeping everything fun. I, however, am in horrible shape from not doing much of anything since we got in country; that half loaf of bread really did the trick to get me through the last third of the bike. 

Once in Bembou I stuck with my plan of going to the main road and asking someone there where the volunteer (PCV, Kellen) lives. So I biked along the main road for a while, up close to the side street that I thought he lived down, spotted the guy I thought looked most helpful and stopped next to him. I did the generic greetings then before I could ask about the volunteer the man told me that he was at his house. I looked at him for a bit so he asked if I had ever been there before… I hadn’t so he got up and walked me up the street where I saw Kellen getting out of his compound. Turns out the random man I picked up on the side of the street was his host father, so I made the right choice when I picked him out as looking helpful. 

To my luck again Kellen was on his way to second lunch at the school. He’s made this fun habit of eating with the teachers at the school, something I’ve decided to try to do. After second lunch we went to his counterpart’s house and shelled some peanuts while I tried to get a hold of Med to try finding out what is going on with me. It was kind of an ordeal getting a hold of them since I now have 2 phone numbers, but we figured it out. Med wanted me to email some pictures over when I had a chance, and this is about 3 hours closer to internet than I’ve been if a couple weeks so my chance was now. 

I hopped back on my bike and made the 45 minute ride to Saraya to meet up with the PCV there (Chris), and the volunteer I helped the baby weighings with (Emily). Chris was nice enough to let me spend the night and Emily has a pretty sweet set up, including internet so we used her computer to send out a couple pictures to Med. Later in the night we had to go to the hospital where Chris does a lot of his work so he could talk to someone about a Basketball event they were hosting the next day. While we were there Emily convinced me to let a nurse look at my elbow, she quickly said that the antibiotic I was on was not the right one at all. That, combined with Chris’s urging to head to Kedougou if things were not getting better the next day helped to make my next decision that much easier. 

I woke up the next morning fairly certain my elbow was getting worse, so instead of heading back to my village in the middle of nowhere I loaded myself and my bike onto a bus heading to the regional capitol of Kedougou. After biking to the Peace Corps regional house I rested for about 3 minutes before calling Med to update them on the status of my elbow. With the news that it was getting worse they suggested I head to Dakar so they could see it. I was able to add my computer to what I have with me at this point since that is all I had left at the regional house, and with help from people who know what their doing I was in a sept-place (a station wagon with room for 7 passengers, public transportation) on my way to Tambacounda for the night. 

Once that 3 hour ride was finished and I had made it to the Tamba regional house I soaked my elbow in hot water in an attempt to draw out some puss. I did this quickly while I was in Kedougou as well, but this attempt was far more successful and I needed to change the water several times. 

I woke up the next morning with my arm swollen up to my wrist, and made my way to the Garage to get on another sept-place to Dakar. This being a 10 hour drive, and my experience in the back seat with my elbow was less than enjoyable I opted to pay a little extra to get the front seat. VERY glad I made that decision when they loaded the sick woman into the back (you might think, rude, you should give up the good seat for the sick person. This was actually probably more desirable because she was able to be surrounded by people who knew her and would support her if needed. It was also clear very early on that she did not want help). The ride itself was fairly uneventful actually. 

A solid 10 hours later I was in Dakar negotiating taxi price to the Peace Corps office. He laughed at me, I laughed at him, and we came to an agreement. I was a little annoyed when he made me pay pat way through the ride because he needed gas, leaving me with no bargaining chip should he start driving me in circles. Luckily he didn’t, and we made it to the office easily, just in time for med to be gone for the night. 

First order of business, shower… once I got clean clothes to change into. dI rummaged through the SeneGAD clothes and picked out the only clothes that a male could possibly wear and headed to the shower. I washed my nasty dirty clothes in the sink before the shower (so they would have as much time as possible to dry in case none of the SeneGAD clothes worked). The real shower felt AMAZING, so good that I decided to try to squeeze as much puss out of my elbow as I could. After the shower I tried on my new clothes, which were fully acceptable, grabbed some dinner, put in a movie and continued soaking my elbow. 

***Graphic details because I know some people who want to know, until the stars come back, don’t read if you don’t want to know:: The puss ranged from your standard yellowish to green, and to start off with there was what I think of as a clog. Meaning that the pus at the openings had kind of coagulated into a plug so when I started squeezing the start of that plug just popped out, needing me to actively pull it out of my arm.*** Graphicness done. 

The next (Friday) morning I went in for med to take a look, with again more swelling in my arm, and was informed that an appointment was already made for me at the clinic/hospital and that they might want to keep me for a few days so I should bring my things. Luckily I did, because of my slight fever and Popeye arm they decided to keep me there for the weekend so they could give me IV antibiotics and make sure it was all working. In reality I probably didn’t need to stay there, but whatever, luckily there was another PCV there and we got to keep each other company! 

The swelling started to go down quickly, and my Sunday afternoon I was off the IV and getting to take oral antibiotics. I am thankful that they did not have to lance it or do anything to drain out the puss beside squeeze a bunch out every morning when they changed the bandage. 

And so, Monday at 10am I was picked up from the hospital with bandages on both arms from where they had drawn blood and where my IV had stopped working right and returned to the office “Health Hut.” Now here I am, more than a week after leaving on my daylong bike trip to Bembou, back in Tamba waiting for a ride to Kedougou, then on to Khossanto.