Day to-day

Things have been good, I have started to get use to life here and finally feel like life in the village is home, all I can say is the 7 hour truck ride on the back of truckload full of okra through the desert night was a small price to pay for the warm shower I took when I arrived in Nouakchott. Needless to say life right now is a swing from one extreme to the other. I have become so use to pulling water from the well for my daily use that even the faucet seems like an excessive luxury. Day to day I live a pretty simple life of waking up with the sun, I drink coffee with the neighbor family that hosts me and eat some fish or porage and then head to the garden to work. I fill my morning with any number of things: planting trees, irrigating the garden, harvesting Moringa trees to supplement their diets, growing vegetables or planting a live fence around the garden. This all takes place before lunch when the heat begins to reach a point thats unbearable. By 2:00 I have usually eaten lunch with a family in the village seated on the ground around a big bowl of rice and fish and in the good seasons a few vegetables with a dozen hands grabbing for a bite to eat. After lunch life settles down for a while as everyone retreats from the sun untill it falls from high in the sky, sometimes its 5 before people head out to work again untill the evening prayer call as the sun is setting. I usually fill my evening with a chance to talk to the village chief, play some soccer with the kids and take a bucket bath. As darkness falls life is transformed as life exists under the illumination of the stars much like the middle of the day. I usually take to reading by flashlight, writing, or listening to the shortwave radio. After a dinner of couscous and fish or porage I turn in for the night by 10 sleeping out front of my house under a mosquito net. Project wise I am making head way with my well construction project as it sounds like the money is going to be approved soon. I am also hoping to write up a proposal for purchasing the village a new local canoe for their use in crossing the river and getting around in the rainy season. I am hoping that you friends of mine would be interested in helping the village out with this considerable need which would otherwise be an insurmountable expense for the community to afford. The pirogue is not only a necessary link to the outside world, but in severe rainy seasons this may be the only means of bringing their agricultural products to market, the sick to medical care and even transporting people for daily needs. Needless to say I feel so strongly about this need I am asking for you all to help support it and as always you are welcome to come and visit to see the reality of how you are helping. I hope to have more information to follow and a link to donate money through the peace corps website in the near future.