Three Month Challenge

Just arrived at site for my 3 month challenge.  Basically I have 3 months to get to know my village and its people and start thinking about possible projects.  Peace Corps has a list of objectives I'm supposed to complete, and I also have some personal goals:

learn people's names
have my own garden in my backyard
come up with some sort of solar food dehydrator (plenty of mangoes to experiment on!)
improve my Mandinka
joke/socialize with the women
learn to dance
learn the roads/villages of Kiang West
have a mortar and pestle made locally
plant a tree in my yard
start beekeeping
fix my back screen door

At present I am pretty much coming to the office in the mornings to sit in on meetings and read project summaries and proposals and such.  I have also been able to see some of the project's herds.  In the evenings I sometimes join the women in the garden, which is so much fun.  It will make my day when I can finally understand all that they are saying.  I have not ventured to the schools yet as I am not sure if I will have the time to really work with them, though I did run into the headmaster of the lower basic school (equivalent to elementary school in the States) and he seems interested in having me work with them.  I am not sure what I want to do there but I figure I'll stop by there at some point and discuss it further.  He has worked with PCVs in the past, so this could be promising.

There is Internet at my office, so hopefully I can keep some regular updates.  That is all for now, I miss everyone!

TIA moment: There is a lizard living in the office (it scampered across the floor during a meeting) and nobody really has a problem with it.  As long as it's not a snake everyone is happy to let it be.

Swear In!

Swear in day finally arrived!  We had our ceremony at the US Ambassador's residence this morning.  Pretty nice view of the beach, I would totally go into foreign affairs for a view like that.  Pictures will come later.  The ceremony was relatively short and sweet, ending with us trainees attempting to sing.  While the applause was loud, the ambassador later advised us not to go into singing as a career.  Everyone looked lovely in their asobis (matching outfits).  Fortunately mine did not fall apart as the zipper is somewhat unstable. 

The grand group shopping expedition began this afternoon after swearing in and lunch.  All of us crowded into the cars to buy stoves, gas, kitchen supplies and gardening tools.  I thought shopping in the US was a chore, it's even more of a hassle in a foreign country where everyone stares at you like you're a walking ATM.  We will be shopping for next few afternoons, hopefully I can find everything I need without too much trouble. 

What I bought today:
gas can w/ a single burner (the double was waaaaaay too expensive)
shovel
machete
bamboo cutting board
cooking pot
nails

TIA moment: The driver throwing the FULL gas cans off the top of the car onto to the ground.

Site Visit

Iyoo it is hot.  And this isn't even hot by Africa standards.  My heat tolerance needs to go up pronto.

Just got back from site visit.  It went very well, lot of introductions, names and information thrown at me at once that I will unfortunately probably forget most of.  On a positive note it looks like I will have some access to electricity and Internet while at work, which was unexpected.  My new family is very big and quite friendly.  I'm pretty sure my new house is smaller than the one in training village, but I'm not complaining,  It appears to be brand new, LOVELY.  I actually stayed at my work station's grounds since my house doesn't have a bed yet, hopefully one will be ready when I get back.

We are back in Kombo (city area) for ten days, having our final lectures, language and technical tests.  Then we swear in on the 11th, do a crazy amount of shopping in two days, and then head back to site for three months.  During this time all thirty of us trainees will be staying at the transit house - if we weren't tired of each other already we definitely will be after ten days.

TIA (This Is Africa) moment:  There was a bat in my work site room when I first got there and we spent a tiresome 15 minutes shooing it out.  TIA