Rainy season and the 4th of July

First of all, I apologize for that very rushed and very nonsensical previous entry about the rain. That is apparently what happens when you see a weather event that you have not experienced in the last 9 months of your life and decide to blog about it on limited battery life. The AC converter is currently not functioning in Ousman's house because they are too lazy to maintain the batteries that the solar panels charge, so I am currently without an ability to charge at site. Kaolack house it is.

Happy belated 4th of July everyone! If you are a facebook stalker of mine, you already know that we ate BBQ chicken, a lovely menu of various side dishes and desserts, chocolate rice-crispy treats notwithstanding. So now you understand what makes a PCV happy. I have to admit though, after eating small amounts of rice and millet and secretly snacking on a granola bar occasionally in my room for the last 2 weeks, it's a bit difficult to stomach an entire Thanksgiving-style feast, and needless to say it was an early night for me.

In other news, the rainy season has really commenced, emphasized now by the return of the giant lake in the middle of Pape's field and the muddy disgusting streets that Kaolack is famous for. Gratefully, they are paving the road in front of the regional house which will help prevent the giant puddle that prevents all ease of movement to or from the house we lovingly dubbed "Lake Kaolack."

The arrival of the rains signals a change in my general schedule, since now my goal for the next couple of months focuses almost entirely around outplanting all those pepinieres I so lovingly nurtured since April. This is the part of my job that feels like you are actually helping the earth, since now I am actually taking baby trees and putting them into the ground. It was especially rewarding the other day planting a grafted ziziphus tree that I bought up in Thies a few weeks ago during the agfo summit. Assuming this tree takes off well, it will provide me with copious amounts of scions to graft onto other baby ziziphus trees and ultimately allow the village to make a profit off of selling little jujubee fruits. Now if I can just figure out how to go about actually grafting them successfully, that would be useful.

The other piece of exciting news is that Garrison will be helping to install a rope pump onto one of our village wells within the next couple of weeks, and it will likely improve the quality of life of many women in the village by speeding up the time it takes to pull water. It's not exactly the same as having running water in your compound, but it's a change nonetheless, and it's something that the village can get excited about. Stay tuned for updates on that!

One other quick thing- if people have questions about any aspect of my life that you think I should post about, feel free to shoot me a note or a comment. I realize my blogs are getting less frequent since nothing seems quite as new and amazing to me anymore, but my life is probably still pretty foreign to many of you states-bound readers, so ask away. It's good to hear feedback.

Until next time,

~E