Begge naa tella teddi.

My village and my family are absolutely wonderful.  It’s a small village of about 200 people, but about 3 km from two larger towns where I can buy mangos, vegetables, and other items.  There is also a large weekly market about 5 km away in the Gambia where I can go to buy a larger variety of vegetables, plastics (they use imported plastic buckets, cups, etc. for everything), second hand clothes, fabric, cookingware, and pretty much anything else you can think of; the market is very well stocked.

In my family, I have a mother, a father who is village chief (more a title than anything else as far as I can tell though he does attend some meetings and collect payment from everyone), 2 younger brothers, and 3 younger sisters.  There are also 3 other families living in my compound and always other people in the village coming and going.  I absolutely adore all the kids in my compound.  The older ones – there are 2 girls and 1 boy in high school – are very helpful since they can speak some French and some English.  Some of the middle aged children – between 6 and 13 – are very patient with me, have learned to understand my accent and to teach  me new words, and I spend a good part of my day playing games with them and learning from them.  One girl in particular always makes my day because she loves to smile at me and is always happy.  And then there are the toddlers.  Only one will look at me or come near me, and I love her; the rest shirk away or scream at me when I get close to them because they're scared of me.  But with time, this safety bubble size has decreased, so I have high hopes for the future.  Also, there are all the adults who are wonderful.  At meals, they always encourage me to eat more, they're constantly trying to make conversation with me, my mom always checks that I have enough water (filled from a robinet-they charge a fee to use it, but I'm  not "allowed" to use the well yet), and my dad has hand-made me a stick bed for inside and a cement bed for outside.  of course, there's also the rest of the village who call to m e whenever they walk past my compound, always stop me to talk whenever I walk past them, cheer for me when I bike ride home, and invite me to eat a third lunch at their homes.  With all of this going on, I somehow find myself very busy doing not much at all - just sitting, watching, listening, and sometimes talking.  (Does that even sound like me?!)

There is always something interesting to see.  Horses walk up to my parents' hut door to wait for water, children race by playing with a hoop on a stick (think Colonial American game), toddlers pick up anything on the ground to play with, women carry buckets on their heads, people always visit everyone else, and lots more.  I have also learned a few new games, which interestingly are very similar to American games only they don't require fancy boards - just dirt and rocks.  No one was good at explaining them to me, so it's a good thing that I easily pick up on games.  There's one similar to checkers that I've become quite good at.   There's also one similar to tic-tac-toe, another to mancala, and another to jacks.  They get a kick out of watching me play them all.  I have also shown them how to play jacks, which they really enjoy and have crocheted a jump rope - which they already know how to use.  There's lots of children here to play all these games with, and they're a great way to improve my Wolof.

My Wolof is slowly improving.  I can understand more of what's said to me, though I am still laughed at for continuously asking people to repeat things to me so that I can understand what's said to me and try to remember it.  Also, though they are increasingly able to understand me, there have been some notable instances when they have no idea what I'm saying.  On my first night here, I was exhausted and wanted to go to bed early.  It took me 10 min of repeating this,  looking it up in my Wolof dictionary and notes to ensure I was saying the right word, and trying different pronunciations of the phrase to finally get the message through: Begge naa tella teddi.  3 weeks later, they still make fun of me for this (and I still go to bed early).  But at least we can all laugh together about everything.  It is quite comical (and I have a greater appreciation for ESL students in the US now-it's hard!).

Every day here seems so long because it's jam-packed with such a variety of activities.  I usually wake up around 6:30, though I don't emerge from my room until around 9 and spend this early morning time just taking some time to myself to exercise, journal, eat breakfast, and just think.  This is the only time I have really to myself all day.  Then I either sit outside with my family and the children all morning, greet other compounds in my village, go to a neighboring town for the market, or to the high school or health post in the neighboring towns.  My work hasn't really started yet.  Right now, my  most important job is to get to know people, adapt to village life, and gain the trust of my community.  Essentially, my job right now is to shmooze.