After 3 Months...

I have never written a blog, nor have I ever read a blog for more than a few days.  I am still not quite sure what they are about and my delete key no longer works, so I am going to try my best at blogging.

I supposeyou al want to know about what I am doing here.  I wake up every morning and ask myself that exact question.  What the hell am I doing here? Its hot, there aren’t any girls nearby, and the beer kinda sucks.  But non the less I am staying here for a few years, so I have at least gotten used to the beer sucking.  After all for the “good” beer in a tall bottle its only 1.50$ Amercian, and its bigger than a pint.

Sometimes I have power, sometimes I don’t.  My house has a well, and a water spicket.  I should be filtering my water but I don’t.  It seems pretty clean to me.  I’ve been dirnking out of it for almost two weeks now, and I haven’t gotten dysentery or or amoebas yet.  I did have amoebas when I was filtering my water back in September.  I had diahrrea for 2 weeks straight.  It wasn’t very fun.  I have finally been here more days, healthy than sick, which is actually a big change since 2 weeks ago.

So far my schedule has been something like this:

            Wake up around 8-9, shower and buy an egg sandwich.

            Get to work around 10 and sit there with the other men in the ministry of agriculture.  We eat fresh roasted peanuts and drink tea.  I get bored and around 10:30-11:00 I go to a garden and dig some plots or talk with the ladys that work there. (not ladies I am interested in) these women are middle aged and have been farming their whole lives. 

            I get back to the ministry around 11:30

            Sit for a few more minutes

            Then I go home

            At home I set up my hammock and read a book, right now it’s the hobbit. I also talk with my family as I wait for lunch

Lunch is at like 1:30ish

            After lunch I drink tea with my host family then make my way to the hotel for free wifi and a coke, sometimes a beer.

            I get home before sundown and hang with the family, sometimes ill play guitar until dinner.

That’s my basic schedule as of now.  Sometimes I go to the market, sometimes I eat meat on a stick. It depends on my mood.

Things that are weird in Senegal:

            People are terrified of frogs. Even grown men will run if you hold up a frog.  I have seen this, I have done this.

            People hate cats and dogs.  They throw things at them.

            People eat freshly roasted peanuts, which at first you think “oh that must be delightful!” but they really aren’t.  they don’t taste like peanuts you would get at Jacobs Field (yes Jacobs field not progressive park because progressive park is a stupid name) they peanuts don’t have salt and are only really half roasted and taste kind of like awful.  I only eat them if I have to or are really bored.

             There is no cheese but lots of cows and goats

            There is no such thing as the color blue.  The color blue was introduced by the French during their colonization.

            For some reason it has been my experience that catholics always have a much nicer house and compound than everyone else.  It is just what I have noticed, perhaps I am wrong.

            People will have their TVs on all day with no one watching, and then not understand why they pay so much for electricity.

            People love meat, but there is not much ground meat.  No hamburgers, or hotdogs.

            There is a time of the year between april and july that people call starving season, because they run out of rice and corn and other field crops but they don’t practice food processing and preservation.  There is no pickling, fermenting, salting, drying, or smoking of foods to save them.

            Even though it is like really hot all the time, people don’t seem to sweat ever.

            One of my host sisters thinks that the word baguette is a wolof word.  She wont believe me when I tell her that it is a French word.

            It is not illegal to be gay, but it is illegal to do gay things, but two guys holding hands is normal

            Girls don’t have to wear shirts, but they generally do need to be covered from the waist to their ankles or at least below the knees.

            Its cool to have 4 wives

            My host brother and sister and I were drawing pictures, and they thought that it was soooooo funny that I drew sunglasses on the sun. 

That’s about all for now.

This is the opinion of an individual and do not represent the United States Government or Peace Corps.