Stoves, Summit, and Spooks!

As we welcome a new month, I figured I should post something about the rest of last month to keep you all updated on my newest and most exciting adventures...

Stoves

 

I headed to Thies earlier this month to take part in a experimental program, building mud stoves. I am excited to be part of this project because it is something that people have taken an interest in and hopefully will turn into a service-long project. I hope to have more updates about how this project goes on the ground, but from what we have talked about and what I have been trained to do, it should be really interesting to see how it all works. The picture is of Ibrahima and I next to a mud stove he built for his house. It is not the best model type, but it is a good starter way to building stoves and I am excited to expand his project.

Summit

Immediately following our "Stove Camp", we had our annual Health and Environmental Education Summit (seminar). this was something that we were prepped would be boring and not useful, however this year they took a different approach with it. It was hosted by most of the 3rd year PCVs who have extended in Dakar. It was very personal and overall extremely helpful. They took the initiative to make this years summit the most useful it could be by taking in some of the advice other PCVs have given them over the  years. I felt that if the rest of the summits during my service are as useful as this one was, I will be set! We covered various topics and different projects going on in the country. Most of the summit was set up as a "round table" discussion on these various topics. It was really nice to talk to volunteers who had made mistakes and who had lots of advice about what we could do in our own projects to make them more seamless. I am excited to bring back this information for my community.

SPOOKS!

HAPPY (belated) HALLOWEEN! Tambacounda hosts the annual Halloween Party for Senegal. We take pride in this party and spent weeks going over the various things we would be needing to make sure this party went off without a hitch. I was on the decoration committee, and with the help of my wonderful mother, and other PCV's great parents and friends at home, we were able to make it look like Halloween threw up in the Tamba regional house. We had every Halloween novelty sold at Big Lots.We had an expected head count of 100 guests to RSVP to our party, and we had a GREAT turn out. I was unaware of how elaborate people would get with their costumes. We had Black Swan, Tron characters, Tetris pieces, the entire cast of Mario Brothers, Lady Gaga, Captain Planet, and his Planeteers, PLUS many more. I went has a "Jungle Cat". It is really fun to have all the Peace Corps volunteers in the same house at the same time, because you are able to take yourself out of the situation (living in Africa) and get to pretend you are on American soil for a little. I look forward to the next get-together (I believe will be our All Volunteer Conference in Jan).

And From Here...

I will be heading back to Maleme Niani tomorrow and I will be there for a couple of weeks. I am not quite sure what is on my agenda, but I will be excited to be back and get some stuff off the ground. Until next time....