Wow…I can’t believe it’s almost July already! Time sure does seem to fly here sometimes! So, yesterday was not a great day for me… it all started when I was digging a flower bed (all by myself!!!) at my demonstration garden, and I ended up hitting a water pipe, and water squirted out everywhere. Luckily, one of my gardeners was there with me (but for some reason or another he talked his way out of helping me dig the flower bed), and he knew who to contact to get the pipe repaired… . Then I went home and had to wash my clothes by hand. It is MUCH harder than I would have ever expected… My family offers to wash it for me if I pay them about $5, but I feel wrong giving them money to do my work for me… so I’m trying to do it on my own. I had help from my little sisters, but I was tired, and people who decided to come into my yard and watch the white girl try to wash clothes kept telling me that I didn’t know how to do it, that my garden wasn’t getting enough water (which I know, but I got tired of hearing how expensive water is every time I got a bucket of it from the water faucet) and that I don’t know Wolof (SO annoying when you hear it 20 times a day), so my anger was starting to build up. Then everyone decided to camp out in my ‘yard’… they actually brought a BED into my yard so my sisters husband could take a nap under the shade of my tree, and then we ate lunch in my yard (I suppose because it was really pretty from my hard work in the garden…it was the first time we ate in my yard), but this annoyed me too because they threw fish bones all over the ground, and there was rice strewn about everywhere…and the door to my yard wasn’t closed so chickens came in and started eating my garden!!! I got quite upset (I think it was a combination of the 10 people in my tiny yard, my tiredness from dealing with the busted water pipe and the discouraging comments directed at me), so my attitude showed itself a little bit… I was so annoyed; I wanted to leave Senegal for good!! LUCKILY, my good friend and one of my closest neighbors, Elizabeth, came over with her friend Caitrin…and they cheered me up with banana’s, bissap juice, cookies (we ate an entire box of Keebler Elf cookies that were sent to Elizabeth from the USA), chocolate covered coffee beans, wassabi peas, dried fruit and fruit roll-ups. We totally pigged out!!! Then I ended up spending the night at Elizabeth’s… I had a lovely bucket bath under the stars at her place (she lives in a tiny village close to Sokone…she does not have electricity or running water, and she lives in a hut. It was SO nice, I felt like I was on vacation!!! And today I felt so refreshed and much better (I ended up apologizing to my family for my poor attitude).
But today, (luckily it wasn’t yesterday!) construction workers were putting cement on the walls in my yard, and they totally RUINED my garden!! There was cement everywhere, and my plants were trampled… (I’ve been working on my garden every day for the past 3 weeks). They even cut down the beautiful tree in my yard (which I was fine with them trimming it a little bit…the branches would brush on my tin roof at night and keep me awake..) but they totally demolished the tree…it’s so ugly now. I’m just happy that I’m in good spirits today and in a positive state of mind, otherwise I probably would have been very upset. But, there was actually revenge for my messed up garden… my father ended up putting cement on the floor of the ‘porch’ of our house, and right after the construction workers left, our donkeys decided to walk around on the porch, and they ended up totally destroying the porch!! I felt bad for my family, but at the same time I had a mild satisfaction in knowing that they might be experiencing what I experienced when I saw my garden totally ruined. (Does that make me a bad person?).
After dinner I had a long conversation with my sister’s husband, and he was trying to explain to me why it’s good for men to be able to have more than one wife. He believes that men are weak, and that if they weren’t able to have more than one wife, then they would end up cheating on their wives… and because they are ‘devout’ Muslims, adultery is strictly forbidden and out of the question. Therefore, men should be able to have more than one wife so that they can continue to follow God’s laws. I am not satisfied with his answer!!! But that seems to be the rational for having multiple wives for many of the men in this country.
For the 4th of July I will be going down to a southern town in Senegal called Kedegou (also known as the ‘Gou). I can’t wait; it should be a really good time. We’re going to have a wild boar roast I think, and plenty to drink. Apparently Kedegou is really pretty with waterfalls and lots of trees. I debated going down south at first… it’s a long trip (about 12 hours) and it’s somewhat expensive. But my friends talked me into going. The 12 hour car ride is going to be an experience in-and-of itself… the road is apparently terrible, and we will be off-roading for the most part (there are pot-holes everywhere, and driving off the road is actually nicer than driving on the actual road).