These are my host sisters in my training village, Ndeye and Mben. They were super friendly, helpful, and fun, even in the first few days when we could hardly communicate with each other.
Ndeye looking over the edge of her father's roof, onto the street. Thieneba, the city, is a fair-sized road town not far from Thies. Wealthy families like my home stay often have roofs like this. They're very seriously lovely.
They're not techinically sisters, but cousins. Though in Senegal, extended relations have the same status as very close family.
Things get a little out of order here. These guys are drummers, hired to perform at the Peace Corps party held at the training center for home stay families in Thies.
Dancing toubabs! Traditional Senegalese dress is crazy, man.
More dancing. At village baptisms and weddings, I usually get bullied into dancing for two seconds. Eeh.
So this is my hut! That big blue thing filters most of the bad stuff out of my water, but it still tastes gross. The puppy followed me around for a long time, but now he kind of chills out with other dogs.
Buckets! Senegalese use buckets for everything, and that's a habit I'm totally bringing back to the States with me. Those gardening tools are getting a lot of use these days. The yellow sack is the bag I use for traveling around.
So these pictures were taken months ago, when I installed. I lost that water bottle a long, long time ago. The chest is where I keep my food stash. Man, I miss having a million books all the time. Also, those walls are way dirtier now.
My latrine! The corner you can't see is collapsing. So that's cool.
Leaky thatched roof.
Buckets, bed, mosquito net! I'm not sure what I'm going to do when I come back to the States and don't have a mosquito net. I don't think I'll be able to do it.
Jiall, poking around in the pepiniere.
Senegalese kids are way into having their picture taken, and they often insist and holding some sort of prop.
"AISSA, take a picture with us and THE CHARETTE!!!"
Fama in the pepiniere. She's one of my favorites.
Abib is 8. He's a little irritating, truth be told.
Mosquito net distribution helpers!
Mosquito nets for old people!
Jiall helping me out. She couldn't carry more than one net at a time, so luckily a bunch of other kids also showed up.
Properly hung nets!
Senegal is full of old people and adorable babies. The kid in green is Thian, who is just over a year old.
The baptism party of my name-sake, Aissa. I would have been more impressed if they named the girl Jessie, but this was still a lot of fun.
Baptisms are always big deals, but this one was during Ramadan and it was for the newest daughter of the village chief. So there was tons of food, none of which we could eat until after sunset. But breaking fast with the whole village was great.
Women gathered for the baptism. Yards and yards and yards of fabric, yikes.
Baby Aissa, her mom, and her sister.
The view leaving my compound. During the dry season, it really really doesn't look like this.
The first hut on the left is my dad's. The stick hut is the kitchen. The last hut is my mom's old one. The building back there is where my mom and my dad's second wife live now. My hut is out of the frame on the right.
So late one night, at around 3 AM, I heard an incredible shuddering boom over the noise of the rain. I was cranky, getting dripped on, and half asleep. I assumed my latrine had collapsed, cursed the world, and went back to sleep.
When I woke up, it turned out that the noise had been the back wall of my mom's old hut. She had moved out two weeks before. No one was hurt.
I guess this is how it goes when you make huts out of mud bricks and a smattering of cement....
Some Peace Corps Volunteers have neighbors and site-mates. I have a bunch of birds living in my roof.
My mom's hut collapsed completely a couple of weeks after the first wall went down. Scary!
Thian again, because she is abnormally awesome for a baby.
"AISSA TAKE MY PICTURE TAKE MY PICTURE." Fama was about to get her hair re-braided. That copper coloring at the tips is a sign of malnutrition.
Fama again. That might me my forehead in the lower left corner of the frame, though I don't know how it came to be there.
Rainy season!
Clouds. For serious.
Babies in Senegal are way way clingy. They never fall.
