Monday, June 8, 2009

Yup, I'm still alive

Yeah yeah yeah, I know, it's been a really long time since I've posted. I have several excellent excuses ready:

1) I was finishing up my first year of teaching, which included holding review sessions 4 days in a row for my kids and then giving and grading 150 or so exams
2) John and I made a last-minute, sanity-saving decision to go to St. Louis (Senegal) with a bunch of other volunteers for Jazz Fest, so we were out of the country for a bit
3) Our bureau has been without power for a good 3 weeks or so now because the cord that needs constant duct tape repair by the electric company guy stretches from our room into the room next door, and the man with the only key to that room left for Nouakchott for several weeks. Fun. Which brings me to...
4) My lovely home of Selibaby was without power in almost the whole town for 15 days straight, and then it came on for about 10 hours before going out again for another 12, then on for 10, then just off. Grand.

Now I'm in Kaedi with John and have no excuse, so here I am. We left Selibaby yesterday afternoon (inside a truck, fancy fancy!) and spent the night in M'Bout. That trip wasn't too bad, especially when we got traided about half way there to another truck which only had a cow tied in the back with a net, so we went pretty fast (poor cow). We left M'Bout this morning in the back of an almost empty truck, which is actually much worse than sitting on a huge pile of stuff because you feel the bumps a lot more sitting on just a spare tire (which was so worn that little bits of metal were sticking out all over it...yeah that hurt) than on a big pile of bags. The driver was also going way too fast, so we got jostled around a lot. I spent a good portion of the trip clinging to the side of the car with my boubou poofing out behind me like a cape (faster than a cow-laiden truck, stronger than a scary old woman's handshake grip! it's a donkey! it's a goat! it's super toubab!). We made it with the usual scrapes and bruises but in one piece, and went straight to the post office to pick up John's mail (thanks to Allison for sending candy and to my mom for the cheese box--it made it!). We got to the house to see our very excited Maggie dog, who has gotten so big!! She magically remembered all of her training once we had cheese and bagel chips in our hands (sorry pupper, I love you, but this is cheese....).

I'll be in Kaedi for about a week or so, then heading down to Rosso to meet the new trainees. That's so unreal. I can't believe that all of a sudden I'm the person who's supposed to know stuff (sorry in advance to anyone coming to Mauritania on the 18th! Ha). We're closing in on our 1 year Mauritanian anniversary, with 71 of the original 77 still here. And we've got the heat rash, dripping sweat and layers of dirt coating our skin to show for it!

All of this also means that our 2nd year volunteers are heading out soon, most in the next month and all by August 6th, which will certainly be a transition. In the Guidimakha, we're losing 4 of the 9 volunteers in the region, so that will be strange. They'll certainly be missed (like crazy).

OK, that's about all the news for now. I'll try to be better about blogging (big Inshallah for power and the like). I hope everyone's having a great start to the summer back at home!!

3 comments:

Allison said...

Thanks for letting me know the packages have arrived! Did you get the girl scout cookies?

So glad you and John are having fun travelig about. The travel itself sounds a bit harried, but you sure have had some adventures!

Take care and give John a hug from us. Glad you are with him to share in the goodies.
Allison

Anonymous said...

Great to hear from you - finally :) so glad the cheese made it okay! You shall never go cheeseless again

and what's with the "old woman's handshake" thing? not sure I appreciated that comment!

Can't believe it's almost one full year. Wow - your mama misses you....


xoxo
mom

Judy said...

Hmm. Now, you see, I took no offense at the scary old woman's handshake comment because I felt it certainly had NO relation to me. Carol, are you being paranoid or am I delusional :-)? And no need to apologize for the gap in postings, Em, because we all know that now that stage has been delayed and you have absolutely nothing to do, you'll probably be posting daily. Yea. Hope you and John enjoy your time off. See you in August!
Much love,
Didi