Keeping up with the Saines

Rachel has recently wrote some awesome entries on her blog about her recent adventures with me and the crazy inhabitants of Saine Kunda in Njongon. Basically everything she says is how I feel about life and challenges here. It is cool to see an outside perspective on my family life too. PaSaine is truly a character and Rachel's post gives good insight into some of his craziness. For those of you who are family and know my Uncle Gunnar Zorn, PaSaine is the Gambian version of Uncle Gun. Priceless.

So check out her blog, it is linked on the left at Rachel and Carson and the entry headline is Wed Aug 29th titled "some updates, stories and a fabulous old man named Pa".

I'll try and not be to terribly lazy with my updates. So I will give a quick rundown of my happenings this summer and what I am getting ready for this coming school term. This summer I got a good chance to take a big step back from work and kinda of just be. I did a couple summer projects to keep me busy and connected to my work but most of my time was spend helping out with the training of the new Ed PCV's, visiting friends to do fun work like paint libraries and make teaching aids and plan workshops and trainings. I also continued to help out once a week at my the Stay Green Foundation training the staff in computers and generally hanging out and eating delicious benachin. I got the chance to head out to one of their villages to see some of their on the ground work and was very impressed with what they are doing out int he communities with farmers setting up orchards, woodlots, gardens and doing environmental education trainings. In addition to this stuff I also took some time out to head up to Dakar for a couple days and also visit some volunteers. But mostly it was a lot of down time in my village, hanging with my family, having some much needed me time and relaxing. The big news of the summer was that we officially got full funding for the Solar Power Project for the schools computer lab!!!!!!!!!!! In fact at one point we had too much money because at about the same time we had funding from two separate organizations. Too much funding is a rare problem and I was a little overwhelmed with it at first but we decided to go with the group who has some other projects in The Gambia and that would be around for the monitoring and evaluation of the project. It was definitely a lot of answered prayers and is a huge lift off my shoulders. A large part of my focus this fall and winter will be purchasing and installing the equipment and training the relevant people to maintain the system. But half the battle is done and I am definitely excited and motivated to make this project a success for this school and these kids.

At the beginning of the summer the idleness was definitely welcome but now that it is getting towards the end of the summer I am definitely ready to get back into action and for the school year to start up again. A huge plus factor to hanging out with the fam all summer and doing some farming (that's right, I used a donkey drawn plow to sow groundnuts...who would have ever thought?) was that my wolof has gotten lots better and I generally feel more connected with my family and with the families and children in my neighborhood. I got to spend some awesome days hanging out with the kids and coloring, reading books or just generally being silly. I got to tutor some of them on simple ABC type stuff and also begged and pleaded until the stepfather of one of the little boys let him enroll in nursery school for this coming year. The little boy, Ammadou, is seven and starting a little bit late but at least he is finally going instead of being stuck at home and going to be the resident small boy and go to the shop a million times a day. Speaking of school, we finally start on Monday, only two weeks later then originally planned, so not to bad considering how stuff rolls here. Ramadan is starting this Thursday too, so Ramadan tummy grumbles and the craziness at the beginning of the school year should be a fun combo. At least it certainly won't be boring. I am fasting this year for the whole month, as opposed to my 2 week attempt last year, so I will be in the same boat as everyone else with lack of energy and motivation and just really desperately wanting a sip of water.

Plans for the coming fall, other then dreading my decision to go without food and water for the day are:

• continuing with read alouds during library class, trying to get the class teachers doing some instead of just me. Teachers here are really uncomfortable with being silly and playing with kids so it might be a challenge but reading aloud is just so useful....
• getting the community going on the Computer lab renovation, their contribution to the Solar Power Project, so that the space will be safe for electronics. Right now, the roof is separated from the walls by about two feet. This allows for a lovely breeze but also lets in rain, dust, birds, insects....we've got a whole ecosystem in there.
• workshops for the teachers of my two schools
• helping out a fellow PCV with a basketball female empowerment clinic program for some upcountry communities
• Girls Club fun and maybe a sleepover in Kerewan with Rachel's girls
• Stay Green Foundation computer training
• figuring out life plans for after PC (scary that its only like 10 months away)
• whatever else comes across my plate.....

So that is basically what is going on over here in the TG. I also posted pics from our swearing in BBQ for the latest batch of Ed volunteers. Mostly just some pics of fellow PCVs and I trying to have a semi-normal American day. We succeeded, we even had quac!

Love and Peace! Miss ya all!