Rain Showers

Motivation is becoming a major problem. No one around me has much of any and it’s dampening my desire to do anything except lay around the house reading or seek refuge at Les Delices. When I have a million things to do I’m able to quickly mark things off my list, but one I have one thing to do I delay and procrastinate and generally feel sorry for myself. This is how I thought today was going to turn out and most of the day was highly anti-climatic, but this evening was fabulous and one of the times that you check yourself and remember why you’re here and why it's such a cool experience.

Coming home from an afternoon at Les Delices with Katherine, Elizabeth, and Jackie, who are all in town, I was forced to take a cab because it was raining. This totally made my mom's and Khady's day because they are appalled by how much I walk. They think I'm insane to walk across town in the sun every day all day and constantly tell me to take cabs. I actually think Khady takes it as a personal affront to our family's social status and blatant displays of wealth that I walk instead of take cabs. So, my being forced to take a cab totally made their day. It probably also helped that I got soaked waiting for a cab and was a complete mess walking into the house.

To dry off I sat in the kitchen and watched Awa make one of my favorite dinners. Grilled fish that almost has a Cajun flavor to it. Last night's dinner was even better because Jeenaba made this mango slaw/ salsa that was absolutely delicious. It was just grated mango with vinegar and salt and pepper, but it was delicious and a great departure from usual so I really talked it up in hopes of getting it more often. While I was watching Awa cook, Khady and Jeenaba were outside in the pouring rain trying to collect rain water since our spigot hasn't worked in 6 days. They kept yelling at me to come and take a shower with them. I thought they were kidding. They weren't. Once I saw Khady soaping up I knew they were serious and I ran to my room to undress and come and join them.

The house was divided into two. One side for the girls and the other for the boys. Khady, Jeenaba, and I stood in the pouring rain under the gutters of our house with our lower bodies wrapped in skirts and naked upper bodies taking a shower together and laughing. It was absolutely amazing and a kind of unforgettable experience. Showering half naked, during a lightning storm, from water pouring off my room while laughing with my hosts sisters was an experience I'm never going to forget. Was I clean after this shower? Probably not. Was it safe? Hells no, I was showering during a thunder and lightening storm. But, it was priceless to see Khady and Jeenaba bent over in laughter as I was sudsing my hair.

That was yesterday (no power to post last night). Today started out pretty much and much the same as yesterday. There are a ton of other PCVs in Thies right now in preparation for the English camp I'm going to take part in next week and for the gender and development meeting that's taking place this weekend so a bunch of us decided to go out to chicken dibi for dinner, which was obviously delicious and amazing... no matter what Jackie claims about the imitation chicken dibi she found outside of Dakar!

The most interesting part of my day today was after chicken dibi and the bar and back at my house. As I was getting out of the cab I saw a ton of people all dressed up streaming down the street and I wondered to myself who had a part. The answer? My family had a party. What? Yeah. I left late this afternoon and told everyone that I had friends and town and was going out with them, would eat out, and would be back later. Not a single person in my family thought it necessary to tell me that we were hosting a huge party. When I returned tonight I found hundreds of plastic chairs strewn about the courtyard, DJ equipment, streams, plastic plates, and an exhausted looking Deenba cleaning up. I asked what had taken place and she told me that her boyfriend's brother had had his wedding reception at our house. Then she asked me why I didn't come. It's much, much easier to attend functions when you know that they're happening. I attempted to explain this to her to no avail and then had to re-explain it to everyone else in my family when they asked me the same question. It didn't dawn on anyone that when I told them I was leaving that they could have in turn informed me that we were having a massive party. Oh well. I completely missed the party, but helped with the clean up and now everyone's asleep. It's kind of a win win, although frustrating, situation for me!