Running for the Girls

Guess what guess what guess what??? My appropriate projects grant is fully funded! Thank you to everyone who contributed, you are all wonderful and are making a huge difference. As I am sitting here in the regional house catching up on some emails and whatever else is on my to-do list, my lovely work partner Assane is heading up the project back in the village, hopefully breaking ground on the first 12 latrines. It turns out that I overbudgeted a little bit, and I will be able to install a few more than originally anticipated in the compounds that complete their latrines in the timeliest manner.

I am also out of site because I am returning from the Tambacounda “marathon” during which I ran a 10k to encourage girl’s education throughout the country. Thanks to those of you who contributed to that as well! The event went relatively smoothly, considering we were running long distances in the hottest region of the country at the beginning of the hot season. One of Senegal’s best marathoners traveled out to participate and run the half marathon, the longest event of the day, and finished WAY ahead of everyone else in a blistering 1:14 without breaking a sweat. This is one of the guys that gets of out Africa every once in a while to go see the sights and, you know, run the New York Marathon every so often. As you can imagine, it was great to have his support.

I did pretty well for myself, considering I’ve been training by myself in the village early in the mornings on the sand bush paths, so I was happy with my 4-minute-and-change 10k. I actually passed and beat a couple of the Senegalese Army men participating, who were joking to each other that they were beaten by a girl (Senegalese women rarely compete in sports competitively, especially in distance running, so there wasn’t much in the way of local competition). A few of them approached me after the race and started joking that I must have cheated because I have two hearts, and he was going to take me to the hospital to get it checked out. At any rate, it was a great day of hanging out with people and cross country nostalgia.

So now it’s back to village, getting some photo documentation of those latrines for your benefit and beginning the daunting task of making my farmers fill something like 3000 tree sacks over the next few weeks. I also have yet to finish painting my world map mural, and I should have some lovely volunteers come to visit me and paint all day! Finally, my parents are coming to visit me in a few weeks! I’m sure they will love giving input into what it is like to come to my village directly from America, because at this point it seems strangely normal to me to pull water from a well and take showers from buckets, and I’m probably not as interesting as I used to be. So stay tuned, there will be fun updates ahead!

~E