Routine

It is difficult to imagine a day here that I could call: Voila! Une journee routiniere!

Each day has broken from set out being a routine, or a day-as-planned - the changes triggored mostly by forces out of my control: flat tires, tips-demanding traffic control police (the gendarmerie), sickness, electricity and water cuts, unexpected- but always well-received passing visits...

Still, I can give a general desciption of a week day and a weekend day with my family in Kaolack and working at the office of 10,000 Filles.

I set my alarm for 6:30. It is unecessarily early since I aim to be a the office sometime around 9:00 and it is a 15 minutes walk, but I like to say goodbye to Mme Sanokho and her daughter, Maman; they set off for work just after 7:00. By that time they will have eaten their baguette and chocolate/beans/fried eggs and onions/ finally chopped corned beef sandwhich (one of these versions at a time!):-)  and drunk their sweet, spicey (ginger, cloves and cardomon (I think)) coffee. They will have used individully packed packets of NIDO (powered milk) for their coffees mixed by pouring the coffee from cup to cup several times).  I will have had my Nescafe and powered milk sweet coffee as well.

I will also have taken my shower in a bathroom very basic with ceramic floors and a toilet with no toilet see and no flush. I fill a bucket to 'flush' it. There is incence but in a mixing bowel sized metal pot but it is ususlly lit on the weekend - and this helps to dilute the smell of urine sometimes present in the bathroom. The floors are washed every day but sand from the streets of sand automatically seeps in.  I find a place to hang my clothes and my toilettery case and I pearch my soap dish on the side of the sink. Usually there is running water - the mineral content is high and so feeling a bit guilty I am give the ends a final rinse with my bottled Karin water  as my hair is feeling denser and courser. I could easily go rasta here. :-)

I will have taken up my mosquito net and tucked the ends in behind the headboard.

I now drink my 'juice'. Very mitigated enthusiasm.

The sun is hot and the air is humid and I am sweating already before I leave the house. It is sure I will change my clothes and take at least one more  shower - usually before our late supper (8 to 9 pm).. many people eat as late as 11:00 pm.

At work, the the volunteers gravitate towards the computers that have been reconstituted and although often work to send emails home, to post on blogs and to check in a Facebook.

'Work may or may not start at 10:00. Today there was no power and one volunteer with the data we needed was sick - we heard in the hospital - so no work was done ... A couple of us set out to visit her at the hospital or clinic which was somewhere dowtown. Just as we were about to head off in one of the mustard yellow and black taxis (each one pays a 'fare' and gets off where he or she wants) so in fact these taxis are more like buses, our colleague shows up. She was indeed in the hospital and has malaria and some sort of intestinal problem ..She got the medicine she needs to get her up and moving so she can get to Dakar tonight and she plans to spend the night in the hospital and then she is off to her current home in The Netherlands.

Christine and I  walk with Nora to her home to get the documents, stop off a my home to get my USB key, and find my host M Sanakho home and sick with malaria. He had set off this morning and had and to come home..  A longish visit at Norah's and we come back. It is now about 12:00. Lunch is at 13h00! YIkes I had better go. I am late and they have made a vegetable broth for me which I will beat into an egg.... Gotta run.

Dinner will be inside and is called breakfast (dejeuner - ~n) ; often a wonderfully hot peppered joll of rice dish served on a large metal tray on the floor. Carrots and cabbage and  a few large pieces of fresh fish or meat will be in the center in a read sauce.  Peanut butter oil is used generously).

Strong , green tea sweetened and served in 3 small tea cups will be passed and refilled and repassed until everyone has been served and then it will be time to walk back to the office at 3:00.

The afternoons the first week  we worked arranging the 2000 some books in the bookmobile.  This week we are working between power outages, sicknesses, leavings, computer gliches  and so one :-) on cataloging the books. A very rudimentary system since many of the village children and adults do not have we have learned a 'library culture'.  For them a book is given not loaned. So there is that that the bookmobile worker and the reading room  leader ( probabably Peace Corps workers) will be working on . We have little way thien of knowing if our work will have the results we would like. : do what we see to do and leave the results to Allah ( a quote in the Alchemist).

By the time I ususal arrive home whachinga ??   the flies will have ceeded the mosquitoes  ..I find neither onslaught has been horrible ... although as I watched d three little  boys who came begging  (boys from the quoranic schools who are expectted to beg ) sitting around a bowl of sow (soured milk avidly dipping their share of a baquette in the milk oblivious to the 30 or more flies on each of their heads and around their food, I got up and fanned them with my newly aquired makde in Senegal fan).


So then in the evening we sit  in constantly different patterns as plastic  chairs are shared with new quests  who pass by to say hello, or to visit awhile. The TV is out int he couryar and we passs from French to Wolof channels- news, sitcomes, , comedies, movies.  Some people lie on the large 10 by 10 foot (?) mat on their stomaches or on their backs0- the object is to relax in company.


The meal will be like dinner but usally lighter.  Tea again.

More lounging


I call it quit at 11:00. I am always the first.


:-)