Work work work

Book: “Catch 22”
Song: “Love” John Lennon I am also on a Muddy Waters kick. Smokestack lightning’ has inspired me…. Artistically that is

10 Ways my life has changed since summer time in Senegal

1: It rains every week or two weeks, where I am.
2: I have seen grass now for the first time in 10 months. It is beautiful
3: More siblings have moved back home from University
4: No school so kids have time to bang on my shutters 24/7
5: Neighborhood kids have increased their skills in Football American
6: Moths, Beetles, Roaches, and Grasshoppers
7: Melons are back in season. Woooohooooooooooooooooooooooo
8: Ramadan is around the corner so I get to stair at a wall for long periods of time while everyone sleeps the day away.
9: The River has turned brown
10: I now consider myself a professional fisherman. I have a homemade poll. It is made with recycled materials. (Wine corks, rocks, stick, fishing line, hook, and rusty metal wire.

Any who, I have had quite a few changes in my life as of late. To start off I will be taking a vacation to America December 11th to January 7. I will be in Washington DC area from the 11th to the 19th. Then I will be in Ann Arbor from the 19th to the 5th. So when I am DC, I expect to see all my friends in the east. You know who you are! I am very excited to take a vacation and see my new nephew and spend some time with the fam. It will be good for the soul and sanity. As far as work goes, it has been a real rollercoaster. To start, I went to the health center and they told me that they didn’t currently need help. So I went to a second smaller health post, only to discover that it is a faith healer. That was slightly awkward. But I made a quick recovery and went to another health post and spoke to the head nurse and offered my services. She said I should come back on Monday and then I could start to volunteer. I came back Monday and she said ”Yeah, about helping here, yeah, can you come back next week?” That was the first disappointment. Then I met up with my Artisan that I found an order in Dakar for. He comes up to me and asks me for more time and if I could give him money to buy supplies. That was a little disappointing since he made so much money during the tourist season. I went to his house 5 days later to check to see if he was able to get the materials, and I noticed on his roof three new satellites. Really, there goes the money to buy new supplies. Not only that, he had to close his shop down, because he couldn’t pay the rent. Teaching how to budget is part of my work, but in my defense, when I asked him where he got the shop, he said, “Oh it’s been in the family for years.” Then I asked “Well why have you been selling your art out of your house?” He just looked at me. It makes sense now because he didn’t have it in the family he rented it and was paying rent. People lie about weird stuff. But what can you do. That was a blow to my work load. The last thing that kind of was a disappointment, was my classes with the Handicapped association. As of now the president of the group is very unmotivated and it has started to cause problems in the planning of the classes. He wants to still have the classes, but he doesn’t want to help me translate from French to Wolof. So, I can do the class in French and bad Wolof, but No one would get anything out of it, except for a cool Peace Corps diploma at the end. All of this happened to me in the last two weeks. All of my projects for the last 7 months have fallen through within a two week period. Don’t feel to bad for me, because, as quickly as my luck went downhill it turned around in my favor. This past week I showed up to the health post again. The nurse was very shocked to see me show back up. She grabbed me a chair, put it next to her desk, and now I am spending 8 hours a week at the health post. As of now, I really don’t do to much. I mostly fill out some of the paperwork. I am going to start doing temperature and baby weighing soon. I also will start to do blood pressure, in a few days. Also I just started walking into random Talibe houses and talking to the Marabous. I now am associated with two houses and spend time talking to the kids and drinking tea. I really want to get to know these kids, cause as it is, no one gives them attention, and they really have nothing. I also went to the SDEP’s, which is the center for youth organizations in the region of St. Louis. There is a new director who is very laid back. I just walked in, greeted him and he gave me a list of every youth group in Dagana. The old director, refused to give me the list. He wanted me to come back and talk to him a bunch to make sure that I was serious. So I got the list and took down the name of three different groups. The first group I meet with is the Reseau D’Action Pour L’Enviorment et La Sante. They go by their acronym, which is Rapes. I thought it was funny that a youth group is called that, but no one else understood what I was explaining to them. So I meet with the president, and the first thing he says, is “I have been waiting for you.” Apparently he has worked with every volunteer that has come through Dagana. The three volunteers before me have all done formations with him. He wants me to teach English to a group with the tourism ministry. I am excited to do it, because, I can speak English. No problem! In exchange, he is going to help me find funding for my program, lend me 5 people or so for a formation. My grand idea is to have a youth group go to Talibe houses and teach basic health, like hand washing and nutrition. The talibe don’t necessarily have the ability to control what they eat and washing their hands, but there are no programs as of yet in Dagana or in the peace corps that works with the Talibe. Also giving the youth in the community an opportunity to teach classes to the Talibe is a valuable experience. The Talibe could also use some more attention and have a day for dedicated to them. So as you can see my luck was down for a little, but it is starting to turn around and things are looking a lot better. I will keep you guys updated on how my projects go. Talk to ya soon
Josh