Telephone via Two Year Old

Happy Thanksgiving from the Kolda crew

I can't believe it is already the end of November. The last month has flown by like no other month during my service. Between well projects, GREs and now Thanksgiving, November has vanished in a snap. The rainy season is now nothing but a distant dream and the plague of bugs is slowly diminishing as the nights get cooler and cooler. I've even started sleeping in my sleeping bag. There is nothing like cuddling up in my sleeping bag with my cat and her kitten curled up at my feet to make a cold night comfortably toasty.

Penda, the sleeping bag hog

Last week I went to Sing Thiang Poullo to check up on the progress of digging. The work is going, though slowly. The diggers have hit rock which slows things down. "I prefer rock to sand," said Omar Balde, the lead digger. "When there is sand, we have to dig slowly and put cement in all the time. When there is rock it is harder to dig, but I don't have to think about the wall coming down on my head."

Omar Balde at work.

Everyone loves watching others work.

Chipping away. Where's a jack hammer when you need it?

Rock removed so far

It is a team of three and they work from 8am to nearly 6pm every day, except Friday, where they work half days since Friday is the day of prayer. Despite the rock everyone is very optimistic. Since it is the cold season there isn't any need to stop for several hours in the afternoon to avoid the intense heat of the day, which just fuels their optimism. "If it was May," Omar explained. "The rocks would be a very bad thing. The sun would be too hot to work all day, and it would take much longer to dig." But since it is cold season: "Rocks slow us down, but the sun doesn't. We will get these two wells done," he finished smiling.

I am hoping to go back to STP before I leave for Christmas just to get one last check for the year.

In other news, school just began - and I do mean just - and the actual school building that the government is putting together is of course still not finished. The students and teachers are back in the bamboo and tree limb rooms, much to their disappointment. Another disappointment is the lack of well at the school site. After months of delays and promises of 'starting soon' it has now come to the point of either we find someone ourselves to dig the well outside of the government's timeline or I send the money back. The principal wants to do the former because he doesn't trust the government to finish things by the time I leave - which is the requirement for Appropriate Projects, the organization through whom the financing for the well was possible - so we are going to see what happens in the next two months. If we don't start by January then I'll have to send it all back.

Which will seriously suck for all parties involved.

As for the family, my host mother, Aisatou, has returned to our compound at last after Boubacar's funeral. It is nice to have her back as another of my host moms (the third wife, Umu) has been gone for just shy of a month now. She and her baby, Jarta (who is my favorite kid), went off to her dad's village and has yet to return.

We've also started a new game with Alpha, my two year old brother. This little dude - who could easily personify the definition of the 'terrible twos' -  is learning more and more language every day. He's now picked up on how to say the negatives of words. For example, he hates wearing clothes and is subsequently always SO dirty. And when I tease him about it or admonish him for rubbing his dirty face all over my shirt and say 'You are so dirty', he looks up at me with the biggest smile and says, defiantly, 'Not dirty.' His communication in general is really quite humorous. Certain words he knows well but others not so much. As he tries to tell people what he wants he'll start out with clear words and then fill in the blanks of the sentence with sounds that imitate the words he thinks are right, but doesn't quite know. It's hilarious. But he repeats words like a parrot, so the kids in my family came up with a new game.

I call it Two Year Old Telephone.

Instead of the usual line of kids whispering in each other's ears to pass along a message, we just send Alpha. We'll call him over and tell him something like, "go tell mom to give you 25 CFA." He'll scamper off and bug his mother until she finally pays attention to him. Odds are that he's already forgotten what we asked him to say (which just amps up the hilarity factor), in which case he smashes some incoherent words together and points towards us. If he actually remembers it, he'll loudly tell the target what we told him to in his two year old speech. The target will tell him something in response and he scamper back to us with their answer, which is usually in the negative.

It's a great game to take up the time as we all wait for dinner to be ready and get our minds off the chill in the air.

There is one word he knows and I take full credit for his knowing it: 'No.' There are those occasions where someone will ask him to give him something - usually food - and he'll shout 'No!'. He doesn't use it at the wrong times, which leads me to believe that instead of a simple parroting action, he actually understands the word, which is awesome. I'm trying to teach him 'yes', 'mine', 'come' and 'go'. Easy words with easy associations in pulaar and personally I think teaching him 'mine' would just be fun. He, like all other two year olds, isn't the best sharer so why not teach him the word that goes along with 'no' when someone asks for his bowl or his cup or whatever is  in his hand at the time.

My lasting legacy.

With four and a half months left in village, I do think of that legacy outside of projects and work. I know that Alpha and Jarta will not remember me. Nor will my neighbor's son, who is Alpha's age. But perhaps if I can teach them a few English words part of me will linger with them even if they don't remember how they know those words.

The next two weeks will be spent in village and then I'll be back in Kolda to start my trip to America for Christmas. Once I get back I'll have around 100 days left of service. I really can't believe that it has already come down to this. I remember arriving and staring down 24 months as though it were an eternity. Now I've only got the last quarter left and much of it will be spent out of village because of Close of Service Conference, All Volunteer conference, closing medical appointments, needing internet access to close out grants and write up my service documentation. It is so strange to imagine I've come to the last home stretch.

My family and friends in village say I'm not allowed to leave.

Even if I didn't 'accomplish' a lot in terms of work, their wish for me to stay means everything in the world and makes these last year and a half time well spent.

Cheers to all and a very happy Thanksgiving!

-Christine