Rain, Rain Come to Stay

The war versus ceeb has started again. I slacked off in my exercise routine, but intense boredom has led me back to the track and I'm feeling good. Half of the battle of exercising is the harassment I endure while doing it. Heckling, constant demands to greet people, and the like are all excuses not to go out. I've discovered that riding my bike or walking to the track provokes many less responses than running so that's a start. I've also made some friends at the track. If I get there early enough there's a really nice and cute old French woman, there's also some Senegalese women around my age who get there really early. The men have been surprisingly nice as well. They always greet me and then we all get on with our workouts. Not one of them has asked me if I'm married. Refreshing.

This morning when I got up to talk to Matt it was still pitch black and was obviously going to storm. I decided that I would go for a run anyway... "because it's not THAT bad." I was wrong. By the time I arrived at the track I knew I had made a terrible decision. I saw the usual guys there and they asked why I had even left my house today. Good question. They told me to go home before it started to pour. This was the first time they asked where I lived and when I told them they started laughing at me. This was a situation when I knew to follow a Senegalese person's advice, just like following the local bike trail in Kedougou. Senegalese people have an amazing sixth sense for weather. Anyway, the group of guys told me I didn't have a prayer of making it home without getting rained on. I started a nice paced jog back, but by the time I got to the main road there were zero people outside and the wind was blowing so hard I felt like I was making no headway. I started sprinting while trying to scrape sand out of my eyes. I'm not sure I've ever run that fast. I was actually slightly concerned for my safety because the weather was not messing around. Fortunately I made it back with 10 seconds to spare, but by the time I turned my key in the door it was monsooning.

The rain was an absolute blessing. The past three nights we've had no power and therefore no fans and my room is hot box. I've been waking up in a pool of my own sweat which I haven't done since PST and just not sleeping well. Everyone in my family is smarter than me and therefore saw that it was going to storm and continued to sleep. I gave myself a sponge bath in my room and took a nap in the cool that the rain brought. It rained the entire morning. It was great. I napped, read, attempted to do work until we lost power again, and enjoyed a quiet morning without feeling guilty that I had absolutely no interaction with my family.

By noon the rain had subsided from monsoon into occasional bursts of precipitation for the rest of the day and my family was finally starting the day. We ate lunch at 4pm. I called Dioss who still hasn't opened the bank account and is super stressed about the funding for Pauline's catalog. He usually invites me over regardless of what he's doing and he didn't which means he's exhausted and completely overwhelmed. I'm going over tomorrow whether he likes it or not. So with no alternatives I read almost all afternoon. My host dad did bring Ahmed some new toy dinosaurs so I played with those for a while too.

The rain has brought back one of my arch nemesis: crickets. There's at least one in my room that I can't find. I plan to wage war for several more minutes until I surrender, but it's still cool because of the rain so I want to get into bed!