Trying to Start Back Up

Things are slowly, slowly, slowly returning to normal after the Tabaski festivities. While government offices like the Post Office (shout out to Shirley for the letter) were open, a lot of family run businesses were still closed as were some schools as most people further recovered from their food coma. My host dad didn't have to work, baby Ahmed didn't have to go to school (although Big Ahmed did), and everyone else hung out around the house complaining that we didn't have power all day. I actually left the house, in an attempt to shake my sickness, and went to see Dioss.

He continues to infuriate me. We are now on week four of him talking about how he's going to redo the floors and paint the walls of his atelier before he starts working again. He has the money and he knows who's going to do it, he's just utterly lacking any type of motivation. He assures me that he will have enough cards for the artisan expo and to sell during the All Volunteer conference that's coming up in Thies even though I just told him about a big order that two PCVs called in to me a few days ago. He's now waxing poetic about how if I'm going to teach him accounting he's going to teach me how to paint. I'm going to paint him a very nice ledger and then threaten him with ideas of never being able to export again because he doesn't have good finances. I guess that's not a threat, it's the truth.

This afternoon I had grand plans to go pay my internet bill, but those were crushed when I realized it was Friday and the office is closed Friday afternoons. To salvage the trip into town I decided to treat myself with ice cream. "Sandra" the name of the cheapest ice cream available is the standby so I was very upset when it wasn't available. There was actually only one option so I grabbed it without even thinking about it. It was freaking delicious. Double Caramel Magnum, in case anyone is wondering is just divine. Two layers of chocolate surround caramel and then vanilla ice cream is inside. I was pretty please with myself. I also like how this paragraph is practically as long as the one I wrote about actually trying to do real work with Dioss.

I'm very happy I had the ice cream because it's actually serving as my dinner as well. We were supposed to have chicken tonight, but after my mom spent the entire afternoon raging around the compound that the chickens (at least 9 that I saw) which were brought to our house were too small we ended up with nothing. Literally nothing. It was fairly amusing especially after the power cut again and there was nothing to eat. Jeenaba came to ask me if I wanted her to make me some eggs (I hate this and never ever request Jeenaba or Deenba do extra work for me), but I told her I was fine, not hungry, and it appears as though everyone is on their own tonight. Very strange and most definitely because Deenba is in the vil until Monday.