I spent a good portion of this last week and a half thinking about food. There's nothing worse than having a craving for M&Ms when there is a whole ocean between you and the nearest Wawa. During the hottest part of the day I actually spent a whole hour lying in bed and planning out what I would eat if I was in America. For the record, the perfect menu goes something like this:
Breakfast:
French toast with strawberries, powdered sugar and syrup
Bacon, sausage and hashbrowns
2 blueberry pancakes with butter and syrup
Bowl of frosted flakes, skim milk and sliced bananas
Blueberry muffin
Orange juice
Lunch:
French onion soup with cheese and french bread
Turkey sandwich on an onion roll with thousand island dressing, lettuce, onion, tomato, roasted red pepper, saurkraut, bacon and melted swiss cheese
Sour cream and onion potato chips
Sliced apple with peanut butter
Honey wheat pretzels
Ginger ale
Dinner:
Meatloaf with ketchup
Mashed potatoes with butter and gravy
Broccoli with cheese sauce
Homemade french fries with old bay seasoning
Juicy carrots
Pilsbury crescent rolls
Apple juice
Dessert:
Emery's trifecta pie
2 scoops vanilla ice cream
Piroulines
Skim milk
Sadly imagining a menu like that doesn't make the millet and fish for dinner taste any better. It was after I started daydreaming about super walmart that I realized it was time to come back to Kaolack. At least here I can drink a cold soda and eat a bad hamburger at the french restaurant.
Other than the strange food cravings, things have been going well in Sambande. I collected some fertilizer and got started on a tree pepiniere (nursery) with the help of my two littlest brothers Alaji and Mordu. I put up a tire swing and spent almost a whole day sitting in the shade under the tree and watching the kids try to figure out how many people they could pile on it at one time. I painted a map of Senegal in two of the classrooms at my school and learned that the teachers get VEGETABLES in their rice for lunch, so I conveniently showed up to work around lunchtime three days in a row. I even walked the 2k to my road town with Bassirou for the weekly market last Tuesday and treated myself to some bread and homemade peanut butter.
But by far the biggest news this past week was the RAIN! Rainy season is fast approaching, and we had a little preview Monday night when I woke up to a huge storm complete with thunder, lightning and a torrential downpour. My grass roof kept me fairly dry, just a little dampness here and there, but the deluge turned my favorite shady spot under the big tree into a temporary lake. Along with the rain came an influx of creepy crawlies. I woke in the morning to the company of ants, centipedes, earwigs, spiders and even a little scorpion that had all snuck into my room to escape the wet. The mosquito net the Peace Corps gave me is too small to tuck into my mattress so I found myself sharing my bed with more than one unsavory guest...needless to say I will be buying a bigger mosquito net in the market today. The good news about the rain is I managed to collect enough of it in my buckets to avoid having to pull from the well for two whole days!
One last thing, I think I forgot to mention last time that along with my new family came a new name. I am now officially Mbayang Thiaw (pronounced bay-en chow).
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