17 March, 2006

I’ll leave you with a picture of the beautiful baobab grove next to Wilanene Gui (Gui is the Wolof word for baobab tree; Wilanene means the people Wilane – a very common last name in the village). This grove provides a lot of nutrition and income for the people of my village and surrounding villages. Boys throw sticks to knock down the monkey bread, women make long poles, and a few men climb up into the really high branches and cut down the fruit. I uploaded an entire album on snapfish dedicated to a day spent in the grove if you’re interested in a closer look. I have now uploaded and labeled most of my thousand or so photos on snapfish. I’ll send out a group email invitation, but as always, if you’re not on my email list and want to be, drop me an email. Again, thank you for the packages!!! but please hold off on the chocolate – we’re entering the hot season and there have been several casualties (not saying that I haven’t been above licking chocolate off the interior of those padded envelopes-okay and anything it happens to get on inside the package, but dried fruits, jerky, or seasoning mixes will fair better).

In some ways, I can’t believe I have been in country for nearly 6 months, but some days it feels like I’ve been in Senegal for years. Nothing is terribly surprising anymore. Sometimes I have to chuckle and say to myself, ‘of course I have rats the size of small dogs in my backyard’ or ‘of course it will take all day to travel 80 kilometers because inevitably something will break on the car and we will all sit on the side of the road wondering where the driver walked away to.’ Some days are worse than others. Some days I feel completely depressed and helpless thinking that my efforts are not going to make any lasting improvement. Then, I see someone following a suggestion I made and improving their daily life; or I discover a true friend in the village that will sprint half a km to flag down a donkey charrette for me and I have hope.