Happy February! January is finally over and I seem to be settling back down here in Senegal with lots of work and what seems like LOTS AND LOTS of free time on my hands. Transferring myself back to a Senegalese schedule has been nothing but diffcult. I have found it hard to deal with the creeeping days and looong weeks. Thankfully a new month has started and hopefully it will bring on a feeling of normalcy for me because this past month has been nothing normal at all.

Things this past week have been absolutely crazy. I will say hands down that this has been the worst week i have ever had in my village. I probably shouldnt be typing up a blog when im feeling completely frustrated but it will be nice for people to see how things really work around here. For starters, i finally got the community garden project that i have been so looking forward to going. I bought all the materials, had a village meeting, made plans with the president of the school assosiation about the when/ where/ what/ hows of the community garden. I was so excited that things finally got underway and then..WHAM!! Things starting falling apart before they even had a chance to get going. I always thought the president of the school was a respectable man: Nice, friendly, willing to help...WRONG! This man has burned me time after time this week. Lets just start from the beginning. I came to kaolack and bought all the materials for the garden based on what the villagers wanted. He took one look at some of the things i bought and critiqued it all saying i pretty much didnt know what i was doing. He told me the wire that i bought to hold up the fencing was not thick enough and he needed to exchange it. He asked me for money because the thicker wire would be more expensive. Normally, i would never hand a villager money but i was out doing runs for the Book Mobile at this time and was about the leave the village for a few days and they were anxious to get started while i was away. I handed him the money he asked for and then told him i needed a receipt. Well... long story short, he bought the wire and gave me a fake receipt and kept 25% of the money for himself. Strike 1!
I left to head out with David to take out the Book Mobile. While i was gone, the village got started putting in posts where the fencing will be later added. For some strange reason the president thought it was ok to change the demensions of the fence without consulting me making it 30 meters shorter than it was originally supposed to be!!! Strike 2!!! Now there are unused materials laying all around the school that will never be used for anything. The total cost for the extra materials is over 300$. I cannot understand why he did that. He later explained that the school wanted to save space to build another classroom in the future.... NO PROBLEM.... BUT WHY DID THEY TELL ME THEY WANTED A BIGGER FENCE IF THEY REALLY COULDNT FIND SPACE????
I could go on and on about strike 3, 4, and 5 but ill spare you and get to the biggest problem of them all. After talking (and arguing) with the president of this group for several days, even more bad news came. When PC gives a volunteer grant money to help out their villages, the village has to find a way to conrtibute 25%. They generally have to give 10% money contribution and 15% in-kind contribution..meaning some sort of free labor. My village handed over their 10% money contribution without me even asking. I thought i was going to have a super easy time getting them to get the project going; they all seemed extremely motivated! The 15% labor contribution was agreed upon by the community as a whole and they decided that they would build the fence and dig the well themselves. Now i realize that digging a well can be complicated and that average villagers have no way of knowing how to do this. I talked with the president several times and he informed me that they were planning to pay a mason to come in a do it for them. No problem! Great! A few days goes by and a friend in the village comes to my room at about 9 PM and said.."look, you are my friend so im gonna tell you the truth. we dont have any money to pay for the well and they are planning to ask you to pay for it after you buy all of the materials." I was pretty angry at the president for lying to me straight to my face for the past few weeks about this but i was also happy that someone came to me and told me the truth about what was going on. I talked with him and thanked him for his honesty. I then called a meeting in my room that night around 10PM. 4 men showed up and i questioned them all about the village contribution and who would be paying for the well. The president just sit there and said nothing. I finally point blank asked him if he was planning for me to pay for the well, etc, etc. They all came clean and told me their sob stories about how the village has no money and they are so sorry and embarrassed that they didnt want to tell me. We talked and tried to find a solution. They asked me if i would pay for it. I said no! We continued and somehow, they convinved me to contribute about 100$ to the cause. I agreed i would help them out if they agreed they would pay for the rest of it and they would put in solid effort in helping the mason. I also explained to them about the whole point of the 25% contribution is so PC knows that the village is invested in the project and really want to see it successful. We came to a final agreement and i felt fine about contributing a little of my own money to help out the village. I mean, they did kind of take me in under their wing and have taught me a lot in the last year and a half. I felt much better about the project UNTIL YESTERDAY! My counterpart and i were chatting about how thigns were going. He has been a huge help in dealing with the villagers all wanted to put their two cents into the project and having too many cooks n the kitchen. He said it was really nice of me to contribute to the village and it would be a successful project. Then he just mentioned in passing that he didnt know why the village was being so weird about contributing because they have over 1 million CFA in the bank! When i heard this, i was crushed... think about what just happened... villagers lied to me, convinced me to help them out financially, but in reality, the school has a bigger bank account than i could ever imagine having here????!!!???
After thinking this over for two days, i have never been so disappointed. I am so shocked and ashamed of them for tricking me out of financial help. I cannot believe that after living here for this long, people in the village still see me as an open bank account. Im mad at myself for falling for it!

Anyway, after having such a rough week in Diagle, Laura and i decided to bike to Toubacuta and get away for a day. we met up with the new volunteer there and continued biking to Missirah. I got some awesome pictures of wild monkeys along the way. We biked about 40 miles total in a day. We were lucky and had great weather so it was not as hot as it could have been. We arrived in Missirah around 1130AM and planned on sticking around to have lunch and go see this HUGE Baobab tree there. It is the biggest tree in Senegal. We pulled up to the tree and hopped off our bikes. Immediately we were approached by a man asking us to by his carvings. we turned him down and approached the tree. A little old man came running down the hil towards us screaming NO NO NO!!! He came over and told us we had to pay the equivalent to 3 dollars to look at the tree. we kind of just ignored him and kept walking. For some reason, he kept targeting me. He followed me and kept shouting saying it was his tree and we had to pay. By this time there were about 4 men standing around us watching us gettting screamed at by this 4 foot tall Senegalese man that was about 60 years old. Me being the smartass that i am told him that we lived hee and that if we needed to pay to see the tree then he should ask us...NOT SCREAM in our faces. I also mentioned that the tree belonged to God. not him. People dont really have property lines here so there is no doubt in my mind thAT he was some crazy old man that saw an opportunity to squeeze money out of some stupid tourist. I mentioned that the tree belonged to God because usually when someone mentions God, people calm down and realize that what they are doing is in fact wrong. Not this guy! He got even more angry. He would not bug off and continued to hassle us. He approached me and started doing some sort of voodoo type dance around me mocking us all. it was the strangest thing i have ever seen! He started saying the wolof terms for F you over and over and i seriously thought he was about to punch me in the face. He was getting so angry because Laura and I were just acting like he wasn't even there. I dont speak good french but Laura told me he was calling me every name in the book in french. The other random men fianlly came over and said that they were sorry about what was happening but we needed to get out of there because they thought he was going to get violent. We stayed long enough to get about 5 photos and then we split. We got back on our backs and biked back to Toubacuta. Had we just biked 20 miles one direction to get harrassed by some maniac old man that wanted to beat me up?!?!?! What is going on around here these days???

Lets just say things around here have been interesting! I also had a chance to see the Conceran (sp?) Each town or village has someone dress up in a crazy red costume and he carries knives and runs around the village scaring children. Its something like the Boogyman. Its a tradition to have this man do this each year during circumsion times. He chaces kids with knives and they are terrified he is going to circumsize them (Its Senegalese tradition for boys not to be circumsized until they are older. Usually between 10 and 18). Its strange but it was kind of cool to see. I even snapped a secret photo. Laura told me a story about another time when she ran into the conceran and it turned really violent. He started chasing Laura and her friends and was serious about hurting them. They had to go hide in a closet at a restaurant and he even came and pounded on the door with his knives. It sounds so crazy and i cant imagine being in thst closet with her. When we saw him in Toubacuta, he seemed pretty harmless but the Senegalese people went into hiding, even the adults. I had a chance to see him one other time in another part of the country. Thank God i was in a car that time because there was absolutely no one else to be seen anywhere else and he looked a little more dangerous.

This post probably sounds crazy and the last week has been crazy. But just to let everyone know, i am ok! I will be in the village until this weekend and then David and i have more Book Mobile work to do. Next week, i will be in Dakar for the west African Invitational Softball Tournament. All volunteers from West Africa come for a two day conference and 3 days softball tournament. There will be lots of swimming, drinking, and fun! Im excited to get out of all the drama that has become my exhistence here in the village lately!! Ihope everyone in the states is doing ok. Miss you alll!!!

Sorry about all the typing errors in this post. Im too annoyed about all that has happened to re-read what i wrote and correct it!