An Update (or maybe 10)

Here are bits and pieces about recent events and upcoming happenings:

1.For all of you that shared your concerns about Mero, she's better and almost fully healed, with little scarring.

2.Exciting news! The work for the women's gardens is finally moving along. The land has been mowd down, literally with only one minor mishap. The tractor driver accidentally ran into the cement wall of one of the garden's wells. Ooops. I can't really blame him as it was an accident, but seriously the weed growth was over 1.5 meters high. Unfortunately, this project has moved slowly. For one, things really do move slowly here and rice planting interfered during the rainy season and then we had a month of Ramadan, where people are fasting for most of the day. In addition, my travel back and forth to village and Kombo also affected the progress. However, much to my surprise and happiness, the garden committees met during my absence and collected money from every woman in the village in order to pay for the tractor use. I was so proud of their ability to get the job done! And once again, thanks to all of you for your support.

After returning to site, I was fetching water one morning and someone approached me saying that the tractor arrived! It literally was like Christmas, except no one told me Santa was stopping by unannounced.

3. I have less than 5 months left here now. It's bittersweet. Then I hope to travel a bit with my sister.

4. I'll be home on Christmas and will stay for a 3 week vacation, primarily to celebrate my Grandma's 100th birthday!

5. The cool season here and I'm back to wearing long sleeping pants and using a top sheet at night. How glorious!

6. Thanksgiving was absolutely fantastic this year. And it was great to spend time with some of my closer Peace Corps friends and staff. Many Volunteers (including this one) helped to make food and bake delicious desserts. Our American Associate Peace Corps Director of The Gambia kindly opened his house for about 100 Americans (and a few Brits). It was great, and the turkey was amazingly. Despite all the food and the fact that it felt like it was America, the power went out at one point in time and we didn't turn on the generator, and we were reminded that even though we had our little America, we were still in Africa. It's great to be able to have feelings of thankfulness and gratitude and I think they become even more apparent when one is away from home. Despite a great Thanksgiving, I missed my family and look forward to celebrating in the U.S. next year.

7. Training is going well and in two weeks, I'll leave my site again to assist in a few more training sessions where I am teaching about Community Assessment Approaches. Then, my job as part of the PCV training team will be finished. While I'll miss it, it's nice knowing that we've hopefully made a positive contribution to this year's training and future ones.

8. I'm so excited to be heading to site for 2 weeks. I have a lot to do while I'm there, and despite the limited time schedule, I hope to be fairly productive. There's work with the garden committees, possible local beekeeping training with a few of my counterparts (we'll make local grass hives), clinic work, tutoring/mentoring of my host brother and his friend,
souvenir shopping, and the Muslim holiday of Tobaski, for which I'm very excited as I already have my fancy African dress made. Can't wait to don it!

9. I had another infection on my leg this week, but it healed fairly quickly. Woohoo!

10. I still miss you all...A LOT!

Love,

Steph