Hello Friends,
Many apologies once again for my completely failed attempts with my blog specifically and communications in general over the last few months. I have feeble excuses but won't bore you with them so lets get on to some of the fall/winter highlights.
The biggest project of my fall and one of the most time consuming and yet uplifting and inspiring experiences of my service was the lleadership camp I organized and ran along with several other PCVs in early October. We spent 7 days in the Village of Dindafello, a beautiful site just at the base of the Guinea plateau and only a few kilometers from the border. With about 20 kids, 4 Senegalese counselors and a number of enthusiastic Peace Corps volunteers the camp was an enormous success. As a number of you know from emails and previous blogs on top of a variety of sports and initiative games the kids completed a project designed both to teach them conservation techniques along with entrepreneurial skills; essentially learning that your reforestation efforts can also be a source of income and provide helpful health services. They began by learning to both create and outplant a tree nursery, they then proceeded to take leaves of the same species of tree (neem) make mosquito detering lotion and then, after learning some basic marketing practices, they sold the lotion in the weekly market. It really was amazing how incredibly excited the kids were with each step of the process, and wonderful that they were able to actually leave with modest profits and the knowledge to recreate this process in their home villages. Plans are already in the works to expand both the length of the camp and to increase the number of students for next year. Honestly it was just completely awesome, and a wonderful balance of technical skills teaching, leadership and team building, and just good camp fun. If you're at all familiar with Aim High, NAL, Mountain Camp II you would have seen aspects of all of them firmly integrated into our first year of camp. For those of you who helped us out by making donations to our Peace Corps Partnership fund I can't thank you enough. At risk of sounding too cheesey this really meant the world the the kids who participated and I really believe it had and continues to have a dramatic impact on their lives.
Anyway so that took up a lot of my August and most of my september and early october planning, programming, buying materials, working through applications, etc.
The second half of october I spent in the beautiful island nation of Cape Verde with my girlfriend Leigh, and despite being robbed at gun point in the capital early in our trip, it was one of greatest vacations ever. The place is unbelievably beautiful, sheer mountains rising right out of the ocean, covered in moss and vines, fairly Jurassic Parkesque, the perfect break. We ate delicious seafood, hiked all over the place, drank lots of Ponche (grogue, the national drink essentially sugar cane alcohol, super foul, but when cut with honey and sometimes tamarind delicious). It was a great trip.
Flew back to shouts of "Obama!" in every city and town in senegal. People here are mighty excited about our new president. November we welcomed a new set of PCVs to the kedougou region, teachers trickled back into Khossanto and we barely had time to get classes going before Tabaski. The holiday was wonderful, full of eating sheep and oil mostly, colorful clothing and good cheer. Shortly thereafter I came to Dakar to spend a few days with Leigh and her mom who was visiting out here and then to meet my folks who just today, after 1 cancelled flight should be on their way to madrid and back home.
So the Adams' did Senegal in fine form, traversing the country twice, spending some good time in khossanto and checking out a few other spots both in Kedougou and Dakar. It was so great to see my parents, and to have them see and experience a little bit of what my life is like here. I think they had a total blast and also are leaving a little exhausted, the traveling here especially wears on you.
So now I'm heading back to khossanto in the next couple days and honestly won't have more than three months to finish things up and head back across the ocean.. a surreal thought for me to say the least. As of now I should be showing up in SF sometime mid-late april but its a little up in the air, I'll keep you all posted. Great times overall and I'm looking forward to finishing up here in style.
Thanks again to you all for all you love and support and I really will try to be in touch soon,
much love
willie