Ants in my Sallidaga

written March 2, 2011
There really are ants in my Salidaga and I have no idea why. First off I'm not sure if I've ever explained what a Salidaga even is, so let me go ahead and do that: A Salidaga is a sort of large plastic kettle that holds water that Malians bring into the bathroom with them to use instead of toilet paper. I however ONLY use my salidaga as a part of my hand washing station. I still have, to this day, NEVER had to go without toilet paper (knock-on-wood)! Okay, back to the ants. So yea, for some reason ants love to commit suicide in my salidaga. Everyday I find hundreds if not thousands of dead sugar ants floating in my salidaga, it's really very gross. The first time I discovered this I almost died. I was attempting to wash my hands when these large black clumps were poured over my hands. At first I thought they we clumps of dust, like cobwebs or something, but then upon closer look I realized they were tiny ants! Ridiculously disgusting! Anyway I'm now back in village after having been gone for about 2 weeks in SENEGAL!!! Amazing trip! but I will get to that later. When I first got back to village on Monday I was really really really annoyed. I came back expecting for my house to be entirely finished since on the day I left all that was left to be done was cement the floors, add the doors and windows, dig the hole for the negen, put on the tin roof and build the fence, all of which could be done in less than a week. Turns out only the roof was put on and the hole dug! I was so pissed. Now I won't be able to move into my house for at least another week if not more. I just want my privacy!! I want to be able to walk to my bathroom without having to greet anyone, I want to be able to chill in my house without hearing my homologue's TV, and I want to be able to do my chores without having everyone watch me. I honestly can't wait for my new house, and I'm going to bring it up everyday to try and annoy my homologue so that maybe the process will be expedited.
Today in village we had another meeting with this Malian education NGO that comes and kind of does a diagnostic of all your education problems. I'm not sure yet if they actually plan on doing something about the problems or if they are just here to point them out. Anyway, this is the fourth time they have held a meeting in my village. I've ...(If this was a live journal writing you would know that I was just called away by some dude, I have no idea who it was because it is dark outside, but he yelled out my name twice, once I got to my door and stepped outside we said the normal greetings and then he started to say something in Senufo to which I had to tell him that I didn't understand and he then translated and said that he came to greet me. Sooooo annoying!! If I had my own house this wouldn't happen... well actually it probably would, but on a more controlled basis because this dude really came to see my homologue and not me, but just also decided to call me outside too) where was I... oh yea, I've always hated attending meetings in village just because I never understand anything until it is translated in French for me and they are always really long and boring. I especially hate these meetings though. The people who work for this NGO, one woman in particular, are always very condescending towards me. I like to be a silent observer in meetings and not have all the attention placed on me, but on whatever everyone came to meet about. The people of this NGO always like to draw me to the center of attention by pointing out something dumb like me not understanding or something. One time the woman saw me writing in my journal (I was particularly bored that meeting and decided to pull out my journal and write) and she came and stood over my shoulder and said "So you're writing in English."
Me:Yes
Annoying NGO Lady: What are you writing about?
Me: My life, my experiences
Her: Why don't you write in French?
Me: English is my national language, it's what I speak so I write in that
Her: Is it because French is hard to write in?
Me: No. I write in English because that's what I speak.
Her: So you can write in French, you just don't want to.
Me:Yep.
So basically this woman just wanted to be nosy and read what I was writing, but can you see how condescending she was being? Another thing that made me really dislike this woman was that she took the one and only Youki, my favorite soda here (it's fruit cocktail flavor), and only drank half of it while I drank nothing because all that was left were cokes and I hate coke. I'm not saying it's a good reason to dislike someone, but it's a reason nonetheless, especially since the only thing that keeps me going through these meetings is knowing that I'm going to have a yummy lunch (i.e. something besides Toh) and boissons (soda) provided, and that particular day I felt like I was shafted. Today's meeting however was relatively okay. I was able to steer clear of the annoying lady, and was actually able to meet two really cool women from a village that's like 45 minutes from mine. There was this man from their village who was hitting on me hard-core (he was saying thing like I am sooo beautiful and charming and nice, and that he was going to come to my village everyday to chat with me), and the two women kept saying that he had no chance with me, and kept joking with him to help alleviate the awkwardness that he was creating. It was really funny because after I would tell him no for something, for example I told him I was only interested in American men, they would shout out DISQUALIFIED!! There was also a point where he found out how much I loved mangoes and one of the woman pointed out how his village has no mangoes and then burst out into laughter. It was really a fun afternoon with those women, and I hope to meet them again.
SENEGAL- So my vacation in Senegal was AWESOME! I loved every moment of it. Being in Dakar, the capitol, was basically like being in America. There were high rise apartments, city buses, and garbage trucks!!! There were also legit grocery stores, Aldos (the shoe store), and I even saw a Curves!!! (the exercise place for women). Not only is Dakar like a mini-America, it also has the beach!!! I hadn't seen the ocean in 8 months, and God did I miss it! We got to go to two Islands while in Dakar, Goree and Ngor. Goree was really cool because it use to be a slave hub, so it wa scool to see all of the historical things, and Ngor was cool because it is a beautiful Island right off of Dakar where Akon, or so we were told, has a house! We also got to eat some amazing food while in Dakar. They have an ice cream shop called N'ice Cream that is honestly comparable to if not better than Coldstone back in America! I had a flavor called Obama that was rich chocolate ice cream with hazelnut fudge mixed in and little crunchy chocolate pieces as well. SOOOO GOOD! We also had amazing Cape Verdian food that my friend Melissa, who is from Cape Verde, got us for free just because she could speak their language with the owner. I also had yummy pizza and Mexican food!! All in all it was a great trip! Oh and as I mentioned in the previous blog how I wasn't going to play softball, I stuck to that and didn't swing a single bat.
I'm really excited right now because tomorrow I am going to test all three grades of the Secondary school. My host dad, the director of the school, came up with this idea when I came to him and told him I was ready to begin teaching his students English. I already give informal lessons everyday when I go to have lunch with my host family, but now I want to give legit structured classes. However, I am aware that it would be impossible to teach all 300 something students, so I have decided that I want to give advanced classes to the top 10 students in each grade. I originally just went to my host dad to have him pick the 10 kids, but he felt like the village parents would accuse him and my homologue of just choosing kids that they wanted, and would accuse him of not being fair. So he came up with the idea for me to create a small test for all of the students and for me to correct them and then select the 10 highest scorers, and for those to be the members of my advanced English class. I haven't quite decided what I am going to put on the tests yet, but I'm thinking of just having them translate a bunch of vocabulary words from French/Bambara to English and vice versa. I'm going to continue having the informal classes everyday at lunch for the other students, but I am really excited to start up this Advanced class. I am also going to start, sometime very soon, a Adult English class. I am going to teach them conversational English one evening every week. The adults of my village are very excited for this to begin, especially my homologue, and so am I.