W.A.I.S.T. 2011

I'm writing to you all from my hut in Kounkane. It's great to be back, except for everytime I'm away from my hut for more than a few days I come back to a dusty mess full of rat poop, bugs, spider webs, and ant hills.  Things are always trying to burrow into my home.  Not on my watch though, I spent this afternoon cleaning, sweeping, and dousing the room with bug spray. The first day back is usually the worst; even though I cleaned the bugs still sometimes enter my room. A cockroach crawled up my leg tonight as I was sitting on the floor using my computer...so gross.  He is dead now. Alhamdulillah!
So, I just got back to site today after being away for about a week and a half.  I've been spending my time away from site at the Kolda house for a few days to finish up the stories I translated into Pulaar for my friend and fellow volunteer's project.  I think the translations came out fairly decent, and we should have a pretty awesome pulaar storybook in the Velingara department :)  After a few days I headed up to Dakar with the other volunteers in my region so that we could participate in the West Africa Invitational Softball Tournament (WAIST).  All the Peace Corps volunteers participate with the members in their region, and we usually have themes so that we can dress up in fun costumes.  This year team Kolda did Space Corps! We had a pretty good representation of space stuff on our team from Star Wars characters (Princess Leia, Luke, Yoda, Darth Vader, Chewbacca, etc) starship troopers,  Avatars, and we even had Lady Gaga! There were other random space costumes too, just to mix it up! I went in with a few girls in my region and we had "space rompers"....I guess the look we were going for was sexy space girls? Maybe? We even dressed up the costumes with sparkly accessories. :)

So it was a two day event.  Kolda did awesome!!! We won two games out of four, and I even played in one of the games...surprising because I don't like baseball/softball or really anything that involves a bat and a ball.  But i hit the ball and made it to first base before getting out. Yea!  It was so much fun just to hang out and support my team too!  My region is definetly the best in Senegal! Go Space Corps!

It was a great weekend in Dakar. I saw some friends in other regions, ate some great food that wasn't just rice and oil, and I danced all night two days out of the four I was there! Oh Dakar, you're like a miniature Europe :)  It is nice to be home and back at site! I have so much to get started here in Kounkane! Enjoy the post!

May the Force be with you!