Cashew nut and mango heaven!

Supposedly the hot/dry season has came and went and we are due to get rain in a couple weeks or so. It seems like the hot/dry season completely skips my tiny village of Njongon that is about 14 k from the coast. I don't know actual temperatures during the day because I don't have any means to measure it but my best guess is that is has been about 95 F in the sun, 90 in the shade - but that is dry heat which is lovely. At night it gets down to a frigid temp of probably 80 F that believe it or not sends me indoors to keep warm. My entire sense of temperature is completely skewed now.

For obvious reasons, I am loving the mild temps of my coastal village. Just 20 k inland, temps are soaring well above 110 F and I have heard even 130 F way up in Basse, the city furthest upcountry. Even though we don't get the brutal heat that most people are suffering through right now, we get all the great perks like buckets full of cashew fruit and nuts and mangoes. My compound, and village in general, is overflowing with mangoes and cashews from all the trees we are lucky enough to still have. The worst effects of deforestation have not really come to Njongon yet and we still have a fair amount of tree cover and orchards. After a potentially disastrous allergy scare I have determined that while I can never eat cashew fruit (look like miniature apples but with a tart flavor and juice that sucks the rest of moisture out of you mouth, weird but tasty) again I am not in fact allergic to mangoes. I can eat fully ripe ones just not any young ones or my face swells up and I get a gnarly rash. So now that I have figured out the trick to enjoying the mangoes and not getting sick, I eat about 4 a day.

Another current favorite past times is collecting cashew nuts. It always feels like a very typical "down home on the farm" activity when I do it, but then again I do live in a tiny African village. Its great fun to go out into the orchards and collect as many as you can carry and then bring them back to the compound and burn them over and open flame. Burning the outer shell releases the gas that is inside and also poisonous, so as I've been reminded many times..."Burn outside the compound or you'll kill the chickens!" After the shells are burnt, you crack them open to reveal the nut inside, dry the nuts in the sun and then enjoy a tasty and nutritious treat! The only downside is that the whole process takes awhile so now in true Gambian fashion, I send a small boy to the bush and have him burn them for me.

Aside from eating massive amounts of cashews and mangoes, I am super busy with the end of the school term. I helped out another PCV with a workshop for teachers on alternative discipline techniques that went well and I've also been hard at work trying to drum up funds for the school's solar panels. We are trying to get the grant proposal out to as many people as possible in the hopes that we will be able to raise enough money. Hopefully, it will all come together and I can see at least the money come through within my service time if not the actual system. Next week is a big week as my school is having the official "Speech and Prize Giving Ceremony" for the grade nine students that are graduating from our basic cycle school and going on to senior secondary school or just life, as compulsory education ends here after grade nine. Gambians absolutely love their programs (Gambian English for any special event, essentially a party) and the day is sure to be filled with lots of elaborate speeches, certificates for everything imaginable, food, music and fun. It will also be a bit sad as it I will have to say goodbye to a lot of grade nine students that have participated in my Girl's Club and that I have gotten quite attached to. Also my host sister Njemmeh is graduating so once she leaves the compound will officially be childless (it's a good thing every other compound in the village is overflowing with kids so I don't have to worry about getting lonely any time soon. I've definitly collected my own little broad of minerature friends and it is great to come back to village and be greated by lots of little hands and smiling faces!). In addition to the graduation ceremony, next week also is the big week when the new group of Education Trainees get into country! It is crazy to think that almost a year ago I was in their shoes. Some days it seems like so long ago and that I have come so far and then other days I realize that I am still so far from understanding everything here and really knowing what is going on. I am excited to meet the new group and help out with their training! But like all happy things, sad things seem to creep in as well and with the arrival of the new group I will also have to say goodbye to a lot of really good friends, leaders and sources of inspiration in the exiting education group. Happy and sad, can't have one without the other but each makes the other all the more poignant.

Fun Language Tidbit of the Day: I learned to speak Wolof, but my village is a Serrer village and most people speak Serrer to each other unless they are talking to an outsider and they often mix Wolof and Serrer together which, along with my laziness, may be one of the reason why my Wolof skills are not so hot. Anyway, one day I had a grade 4 class for library and I was reading them a picture book. They were being very well behaved even though they can't understand all the English in the book. Until, I got to the word "shoes". I forget what the story was about but it had the words "shoes" several times and every time I said the word the class would erupt into nervous giggles and uncomfortable glances. I had no idea what was so funny and went the rest of the period completely ignorant because none of the grade 4 students would fess up to what was so funny. Later, with the help of another teacher, I learned exactly what they found so funny. Turns out "shoes" in Serrer means anus. Nice. At least that is one English word that they'll never forget.

That's all for now! Be bineen yoon ci jama! (Till next time, in peace!)