Motivation

Motivation is becoming a serious issue. As the countdown to AMERICA escalates down and anticipation rises, the patience with Senegal and wanting to do anything that doesn't involve Pizza Hut pizza (yuk, I know it's a really weird obsession) dwindles rapidly. Regardless, I had high hope for today! I got up early to take a run, but before I left I took a bucket of water out of the big cistern and locked in my room because Thies is again a magical place without water or electricity. Feeling good about myself I went to pay my internet bill. Complete. Moving on.

Outside of the internet office I whip out my phone and make all of my calls. Dioss is obviously in a meeting and can't meet today. That man has more meetings than anyone I know yet I don't know what they're about and he has no motivation to repaint his atelier so he can actually get to work. Then I called the women's group that Emily and I have been working worth. They didn't have a meeting today because Tabaski was 10 days ago. Duh. Then in one last ditch effort to actually do something I called Mme. Ly who not only answered her phone, but also wanted to meet.

Mme. Ly as usual is the nicest woman on the planet and had fresh millet beignets when I arrived. Delicious. She is really do a good job with her accounting. I'm impressed. Writes everything down and is great at totally the entire purchase, but she still doesn't itemize. We really worked on that today and I tried to explain why writing down each individual type of bracelet or necklace is important. I think she got everything and she's a very curious person so I think she's going to step up her accounting game. I also got to see how hard she and her daughter Khady have been working for the Expo. They have a TON of stuff, which is not surprising because they usually take over events due to sheer volume of stuff, but it was really cool to see that they stepped up the quality of their beads and incorporated some new designs. Everything looks much, much better to my eye. I'm really excited to see how everything sells at the Expo.

Nothing else much happened today. No one was home for lunch so I took a few bites of a pretty terrible meal and then fled to my room to read. What is so disappointing about this particular meal is that it was one of my favorites in the village. Unfortunately when "rich" families make it (my family) they put so much oil in it that it's impossible for me to eat it. I ate apples in my room while I hunted crickets. I hate crickets. I can deal with cockroaches and ants and anything else, but crickets in Africa are A) giant B) so incredibly loud that I would rather have a mosque relocated to my room and C) harder to kill than cockroaches. I went at one cricket with the September issue of Vogue, which is more akin to a textbook than a magazine, and the thing actually lived. I had to hit it three times! Hopefully my room is now cricket free and I'll be able to sleep tonight.

Also happy belated birthdays to my dad and Aunt Cindy!