Wish You Were Here

Recently there was a 3 day training event that was dubbed "The Man's Retreat". It was a chance for guys to talk about guys issues in PCTG and for us to teach each other about our manly interests. The whole thing was rather positive. I noticed that now my style of participation is focused on sharing my experiences and point of view rather than taking notes because this close to the end, I am not really starting anything new.

I have started gardening with my host family. It gets me some needed exercise and I really feel the bond growing. It will help supplement their diet and their income. It's the first time in my life I have ever really grown anything. It is something that I want to do when we get home, the experience is gratifying.

I'm in town right now doing some preparation for one of the things I hope to leave PCTG a cook book. I offered to help train the new PCT's on a topic that is near and dear to my heart, cooking in the Peace Corps. I'm going to go to the training villages shop for food make something that will supplement their diets. I'm stoked.

Kristy is on all these committees and has meetings all weekend. She always does important stuff like that.

I'm presently uploading a crap ton of pictures, I have 2 more albums up now and will be working on more if I find time while the interweb is moving along at decent speeds. Here is a link to my Picasa Album in case you forgot it.

I edited the care package page on the Google group. It's sad for me to say this but if you have stuff to send us do it soon soon soon. If you put it off past the middle of June there are chances that we won't get the package. So, don't send us care packages past mid June, this even includes stuff for my birthday. What you can do instead is, take care of us when we get back. We will need a lot of help.

Strange Days

This last few weeks have been a whirl wind of busy. The COS conference was intimidating but informative, there are some pictures that I fully plan on hijacking from another pcv blog
There are more that Ousman posted but, interweb being what it is, I'm gonna leave out the people you don't know.

We successfully held our Study At Home Quiz Bowl. It was a great time, some people won and some people lost. I think the message was heard by the participants and I tried to send it home to the spectators too, but I can't really measure that.

My library project is at a new challenge. We have too many books, and most of them aren't good. One of the problems with charity donations is: when your average Joe doesn't want that dieting book, illiterate and semi-literate kids don't want them either. So if your going to send books, send stuff you would want if you only had 5 books. Back to my story, (sorry for the side rant) We have too many books, I contacted / had others contact about a dozen schools and libraries and hundreds of books will reach thousands of kids through redistribution. I am gonna have find alternative uses for some outdated and unwanted books though. It will be a sad day for books.

I was finally used to do my job as a Teacher Trainer for my high school!!!!!!! This was one of my high points here. I actually was invited to hold a workshop after months of being ignored. I got to about 50% of the staff and hopefully they took away some good info.

That's all for now, see you sooner and sooner every day.

Thousand Mile Wish

We will be staying in a hotel this weekend! I hope it's super nice and they take good care of us. This weekend has a huge focus, going home. It's not as if this isn't often on my mind but this is the time where we officially begin to prepare for our fated departure to the land of the free. We shall be discussing all those scary professional things that exist in the world out there like resumes, job experience, continuing education, and how we can apply the last two years of our lives to all that oh-so-real and serious stuff. PC has some systems in place to quell our fears, most notably the network of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCV's). I hope we have some good things planned and we will prolly be busy 90% of the time.

We just requested to be able to participate in the mail run for August, we will be making a 5(ish) day journey through the whole country visiting all the PCV's dropping off the things their friends and family's send them.

Every quarter the North Bank Region, the one we live in, tries to do a large group project. This quarter we are focusing on trying to encourage kids to study at home. We are accomplishing this by having a quiz bowl at our individual schools and giving the kids homework. Inshalla, they will want to perform well that day and will study to not look foolish in front of the whole school, and win prizes. Our day is the 17th wish the kids luck.

It's coming down to the end of our window for being able to receive mail, too much past early June and we may not get what is sent.

Bent

I'm sick, it's a recent development and shall fade soon enough.

Two weeks ago there was a camp for young girls 7th and 8th and their teacher. I was able to help train the teachers in lesson plans that use alternative techniques to pull out creative thinking and use multiple intelligences. The camp was great fun, it was covered by GRTS the Gambian television station and it was obvious that each of us were part of something much larger. Some of those girls left their village for the first time. They learned about AIDS, life choices, leadership, teamwork, drugs, alcohol, and pregnancy. I am proud that I was a part of it.

We just attended a conference that included little to nothing that will effect Kristy or I. It was still exciting to see the beginnings of now policies to make PCTG a well oiled machine.

We covered a recent happening dubbed "The Philip Incident" that is making some of our new policies necessary. There are some unspoken pieces here and if I told you, I'd have to kill you, or you'd be bored outta your skulls and wish I would have omitted it. Regardless, I'm not saying anything about it until I firmly home and jobless.

Now that it's over we will be returning to site until the Close of Service (COS) Conference that will take place early next month. This is going to be just like our conference last year but without all that lovely evacuation confusion. We are going to get to learn how not to be the people we are now and how to be close to the people we were when we got here. We are broken Americans, and there is gonna be some things that we will do to embarrass those around us, more then we would normally have in America. You'll see and I will bring this up again, inshalla.

What it does mean though is that our trip home is planned and we are filling in the fine details. I can for sure say that we will be boarding a cruise that will take at least 2 weeks where will celebrate our anniversary and Kristy's birthday. I'll talk about that more at a later time.

The Fixer

Bloggitty, blog, blog, blog. Things to write about: vacation with the fam, good days, and I am sure I will think of something else, I talk a lot.

Vacation with the fam

It was AWESOME. Shannon, Jeremiah, and Kelly (or Kumba, Yahya, and Maimouna as we dubbed them) showed up early to Dakar by an hour so we were a bit late finding them. I know that I miss home (where ever that may be) and that is a reoccurring theme in my adventure, but seeing them brought it to a sense of reality that was stark and in my face.

We walked and walked and walked through Dakar, the Ile de Goree, the Kombos, and lastly Essau. They were able to show us the beauty and wonder of Senegal and The Gambia that had faded a bit for us. You always get used to your home and it somehow become less astoundingly beautiful. We translated, haggled, laughed, ate, and drank.

There is a lot of wildlife here in Gambia that we had not become familiar with. We seen a billion monkeys, a bush buck antelope, a bunch of crocodiles, amazing birds that I could never remember the names of, hyenas, and even a random snake on the side of the road.

We happened upon a Jewelbrew promotion and entered a competition where we made a great effort, but took a loss to guys who have been practicing for longer than we have been alive.

Before they left they showered us with gifts and we put them on a taxi going to a country where they didn't speak any of the languages :)

Good Days

It's not easy, as they say and I couldn't agree more. I have to force myself to step back and grab hold of the good days. The moments where in my daily life I stand there staring at the horizon filled with mango trees being cooled by a ocean breeze and realise that I am knee deep in a wonderful adventure that has changed me.

I woke up recently to hooting and peeked outside to see owls just outside of our home, this is the second time I have gotten to see wild owls ever (both times here). Owls are becoming more and more rare here, they are believed to be a sign of witchcraft being practiced and are hunted because of the bad omen they bring.

One of the kids in our compound has recently stopped being afraid of me and now lights up when she sees me with a heartfelt "g" which is the name the family calls me. Ironically the letter g does not exist in the Mandinka alphabet.

Forever

Now February is really almost over. We are in Barra making some last min internet searches before we go to Dakar again this weekend. Kristy just bought some garden tools so that the school across the street can start a garden instead of letting it stay the neighborhood dumb.

WAIST, what can I say? It was a bitter-sweet event. Sweet the way that it is always sweet to see PCV's compete in a softball tournament, eat hot dogs, nachos and pulled pork with jalapenos, and the liter sized Gazelles and early morning practice at the club. Bitter in the way that PC RIM was not there, it was quiet and tame (with the same number of people), it was the ghost of WAIST future. We gave it our all made complete fools of ourselves not wearing pants per tradition, played kickball instead of softball one game (it was later won by the Refugees: rock v scissors), and we even kidnapped opposing team members and their mascot. I am proud to say that I was captain of that rowdy bunch of Refugees who's chant was "We're here, we're homeless, get used to us!" It was great to see the old RIM crew and to meet the Guinean PC refugees. We bonded in our mutual experiences and mutual reactions to said experiences. It was good to know that other people feel the same as us.

Shannon, Jeremiah, and Kelly are going to be in Dakar this weekend! My-oh-my! It is almost surreal that they will get to share a bit of our life and see what I write about. There is so much to do and see and so little time to do it in.

We are now in the last quarter of our service, we have to make preparations for our projects to continue without us. Manuals need to be written, to do lists need to be checked off, and that last bit of confidence needs to be given to the counterparts so that they know they can do what we came together for and more after our absence is felt.

Refugee

Days seem to tick by at uneven rates, time truly is relative. Sometimes seconds take lifetimes and sometimes the weeks swiftly pass us by. February has only started and there is no time left. This month will be the one where I work the least during the school year, that is a bitter sweet happening. I want my projects to progress and I have vacation to do too.

I am still organizing the library and working to get the computer teachers to teach a class for the school staff. There is a reluctance to follow through with projects that baffles my work ethic. My librarian really only wants to work when I am present, which saddens me, I have caught her in the storage closet getting her hair braided when she thinks I am not around. My computer teachers complain about not having money but will not host classes which they could earn a supplementary income with. I do have things that go well though, my PTA meetings seems to see self sustaining and held on a monthly basis, we set goals and follow through with what we say.

WAIST is next week, Mauritania and Guinea will combine our displaced forces to create a team dubbed Refugees. Truly to reconnect with our long lost country mates is the major motivation for going to WAIST this year. Gambia PCV's are kinda take it or leave it about the tournament. I know we would be much more pumped had the unfortunate evacuation never happened. I think that it will still be a great time and the hot-dogs with be hot and the beers will be cold.

Also in the works, Shannon, Jeremiah, and Kelly will be coming to visit! Kristy and I are stoked to be able to see a small fraction of our loved ones and to share a bit of our experience here.

I have been lazy and there are some pictures that I need to post, it will happen as soon as it does.