Puzzles and Green Cards

Salaamaalekum,

I hope you have all been having a great week. I've been playing catch up at school and have finally, I think, caught up, which is great. I've had a lot of time with family, so I've even finished a 1,000 piece puzzle, that mom sent me, with my brothers! Quite a feat! We are supposed to be in dry season now but it is still raining once or twice a week which does keep the boys in so going to redo puzzle number one and then start puzzle number two!

I am still on the mend to feeling better which is great. The doctor gave me a clean bill of health last Thursday and told me to start running. Of course, following doctor's orders, I did and had a lot of difficulty breathing at one point so I'm going to not follow doctor's orders and walk more than run! That way, all of you loving people will not have to worry about that part of my life until I get back to the USA. So please, stop worrying, I don't want to be the cause for stress, love you all too much for that!

I was hanging out at my program director's house the other day and playing with his wonderful kids when Baboucar, the 7 year old boy, told me that he wanted to have white skin. It was interesting because I had heard other people's host siblings saying similar things but to hear it first hand was quite shocking. I then made a joke about my preference being neon green or purple and luckily that made the conversation a little better but he still came back to saying that, in the end, white was the best color for skin. I guess it is that thinking that makes so many people here bleach there skin and so many white people sit in tanning beds trying to tan (or go orange). So strange.

Elizabeth, probably my closest friend here, had her 22nd birthday last Friday so a few of us decided that we should hold a huge celebration. We found a crepe shop, which was delicious, then a wonderful Indian dinner, a big wonderful chocolate cake, and a night out dancing. It was a lot of fun and was a great experience out (which makes up for my not so great clubbing experience from before). One of my friends, Hannah, had this guy that kept following her and kissing her which she most definitely did not appreciate. So I was given a great opportunity to slap him and tell him that she, and all other women do not appreciate that, he was angry for someone getting between him and a girl that wouldn't slap him, but he left and soon after we went home. Felt very tough telling off a guy like that - hopefully he learned!

On the same note of Senegalese guys, being here has made me realize that I have a huge problem with people 'using' me, and others. The way people here spend a lot of their time expecting to get presents, money, and other things from foreigners is pretty mind boggling, especially when I'm expected to call them family. In my program, there are about six or seven girls that came here to find their African man, I know, worrisome, and have very easily found them. Though for those of us not looking it is amazing how quickly a guy will say 'I love you' without knowing your name and say, so when will you be taking me to America? It really makes being here tough when you feel that everyone is out to use you and not to just be friendly. Hopefully though, with time that will change on both sides.

A few days after I got out of the hospital I went to another student's house and hung out there playing uno. All of a sudden there was a scream like one of our brothers smacked there head on the tile floor, but as soon as we turned around we saw a little goat being carried in. I quickly realized what was going to happen, it was going to be dinner, but Allison, didn't jump to that conclusion and followed it to the patio asking questions. She started making a huge fuss when she realized it was dinner and started crying (in a culture where no one really cries). She decided she wanted to watch it get slaughtered and held through it pretty well but kept making a scene. Luckily, I think her family just thinks she is crazy anyways and didn't get annoyed with her. It was very interesting how clean the whole thing was and how everything was put in piles for food. Blah. Not quite what I wanted to see, brains, eyes, lungs, heart, everything was thrown into the little piles. I didn't mind watching it but in a few weeks we will be celebrating 'Tabaski' which is where they slaughter all the goats/sheep in celebration, which I feel will be a bit tough! More on that when it happens though!

Lots of love,
Katie

Popenguine and a vacation in the hospital

For those of you who are already in the know, yes, I am doing better!

So this is going to be a pretty crazy addition to my other emails (blogs). As I'm sure many of you have noticed that I have been able to be silent for two weeks now. Well, after my fall break I got hit with a big sickness, more on that to come! What does need to be said though, is for all of my family and friends that have been thinking of me this past week thank you, it is most appreciated! Also, if you check out the blog, that won't have pictures until sometime next week, decided it was better to get something out soon than to wait for all of it!

I'm going to start with the happier and calmer parts of life since I last wrote to all of you. I went to Popenguine for my fall break. It is about two hours south of Dakar, right on the coast, cute small fishing village, all in all very enjoyable. The five of us decided the best decision would be to not take a taxi down there but try to take a 'sept-place' a hearse-looking car that fits seven people and goes to a fit destination. In this case, it was Mbour, which is, as we realized after, quite a bit further south than Popenguine. We then got dropped off in the middle of the transportation center (at first I thought we were at a car garage for how many broken down cars there were) and I did an amazing job fighting for a terrific price back to Popenguine, the whole group was very proud!

So the house, the one we finally ended up getting, is a cute little house that looks down on the beach. It had two bedrooms, a living room with a kitchen and a real toilet (though that didn't start working until Monday - it's the idea that counts sometimes). The first day, we decided that we needed to do some grocery shopping so that we could have a cheap dinner. On the walk down to the main part of the town we noticed an incredible number of foreigners the same age as us, that all spoke English and knew some Wolof. Pretty weird. Then we got a bit further down and saw some more of them with a horse pulling a huge thing full of booze and then I got down to two thoughts. Spring break college students or PCVs? Well, of course, it was a group of new peace corps volunteers getting their first weekend off and having a partying little time in this tiny town. Made me think of all of you that have done that at some point or another, we were invited to the party but was too tired to get my act together and get there. As a side note, it is the first time that I have ever realized how young PCVs are, I have always thought of them as big people, and now they are almost the same age as me. Pretty crazy.

In Popenguine there is a celebrated author named Arma. One of the girls I went down with, Rezina, had met him before and was staying with him for the week. He is a really interesting man that is an atheist and divorced (some would call bitter) but has written some of the most well known books about West Africa. His whole family was incredibly welcoming and it was great to know an insider to the little town!

A little bit on the food now. The food we cooked at the house, spaghetti and the likes, was awful. The food we went out for, was amazing. We had a great meal at the hotel that we got our house through. Garlic shrimp and jasmine rice! Yum. The second night we went to a women's community group restaurant and had more local food that was very tasty and we knew that we were giving our money to a good cause all at the same time. There were these two bugs at the restaurant that looked and acted like they had some relationship to the rhino, they were huge and always charging, made me a little nervous in the service but luckily the food was worth it!

On Monday, we took a jagenji (local bus) to Mbour, to meet up with someone Matt knew. The man's name is Eric and he works for SIL (a bible translating group). He ended up showing us around his side project, which is an interesting agriculture and reforestation project (the website is http://beershebaproject.org/). I liked it so much that I am going to try to work there for my week for rural visits! Of course, there had to be a problem in the day and that was in our jagenji on the way home. We had to sit in a little VW bus and wait for an hour and a half to get 28 people in it. Let's just say, I've never thought of myself as someone that is claustrophobic but started getting pretty close!

So, the sitting on the beach part, was awesome. Yes, there was a bit of trash, but it was nice and sandy so who am I to complain! I was able to relax and read a whole book in one day - quite a feat for me! However, I did get covered in something that looked like hornets though none of them stung me, just kept scaring me. Also, I befriended some semi-street, semi-hotel dogs and they came and joined me whenever a young Senegalese man wanted to try his moves on me.

The part some of you know is that I came back from that wonderful vacation about four days early - yes, this was not by choice. Monica, the other girl on the trip, ran out of funds within 24 hours (meaning she came with 50 bucks in her bag and nothing in her bank account) and then the other two decided Tuesday morning (while I was down on the beach) that they were out of money too and were packed up and ready to go when I came back up. Let's just say in short, I was beside myself and very annoyed with this not so great travel buddies but luckily, I had a good time while I was there!

Now, the story you have all been waiting for, how the heck did Katie end up in the hospital? The answer, by poor thinking on her part.

To start this out, I have been hanging out at my CIEE directors house, who is a very nice Senegalese man who has three very fun kids that want someone to hang out with (and Serigne wants them to practice a little English). So I have gone over there a couple times now and they are a blast. Each time I go over there I get to play games and just leave feeling very happy.

Friday night/Saturday morning at about 2am I started not being able to breath, but for some reason, I just thought, hmmm, must be an allergic reaction and I should be fine in the morning. Morning came and I was not feeling better to say the least. I stayed in my room until 11 or so. My host mom and Fanta came in and asked me why, silly me, I didn't come prepared with medication for this. I then called Serigne, since I had plans to go see the Senegal-Mauritius game that evening. He told me to come over to his place and have lunch.  I went over to lunch and then the two older kids, Baboucar (M,7) and Khady (F,3) told me many times, 'Katie, you breath funny' so yes, I was breathing very poorly.

Serigne, in his defense, tried to tell me that I really shouldn't go, but of course, I could not let the idea of missing a national soccer game slip through my fingers. So off we went. The game was amazing, we won 7-0 and each score came with incredible cheers. My breathing, however, deteriorated during this, I did a bit of walking to and from the match and had a tough time just sitting and watching the match. By this point if felt like someone was strangling me and throwing rocks at my chest and ribs - aka, not a good feeling.

Once we got back to Serigne's house we called the SOS Medcin doctor (if you end up in Senegal they are amazing) but with an incredibly low blood pressure, a nebulizer, and after many, many shots (I attempted to make a joke about she gave me more shots than the Senegalese team did in the match), they decided that an ambulance was very necessary.

When the ambulance arrived they had me stand up and I fell faster than I stood so they tried to get the different monitors on me. However, the t-shirt and sports bra I was wearing stood boldly in the way. So one of the EMTs threw my shirt and bra to the side (not so gracefully since I already had the IV in my arm). Luckily, I had on one of my awesome skirts that the nice lady doctor quickly pulled up my skirt that converted into a nice dress for four days! I ended up in my first ambulance and was driven quickly down the potholed streets to a hospital (after numerous events visiting local hospitals I was very worried about what was to come).

I ended up watching myself get into an elevator and get rolled into a very wonderful looking and very updated ER room. I was pretty pleased! I got some great food over those four days there, not quite as good as that meal in Popenguine but most definitely some of the better meals I've had here. Of course, in the very Senegalese fashion, my nurse the next morning asked me if I was married and went on to tell me that he would make a very good husband for me. Well, I made a comment about it to Serigne when he came in to visit and Serigne put him in his place. Of course, then when two of my great friends here, Elizabeth (my running buddy) and Kirsten came and visited and there were no chairs he was very rude and would not let them sit on the floor or braid their hair! Though, when my family visited (the one and only time they visited while I was there and only because Serigne told them they better show up) and gave me a bag of fruit. They wouldn't let the two little ones into the room but they jumped high enough for me to wave at them, so that was good. Though when the nurse was about to get off duty he asked if he could have a piece (and I said ok, but wanted to tell him off for being annoying) and then he had the nerve to take four pieces of my fruit!

Other than that, I spent the majority of my time reading (I have found my new found love in the Economist) and finished another book (I'm a little reading machine these days!). Also, I answered a lot of worried calls from my wonderful mom, thankfully, those kept me pretty busy, which was great and very nice.

So to what I actually had. I had/have a lung infection though there aren't too many specifics on exactly what it is. In the midst of all this they also thought that I had diabetes, which I believe was caused by an ice cream that Elizabeth and Kirsten gave me, but caused a bunch of extra picks in my fingers all day every day, and a lot of extra stress. Finally, on Tuesday, they had a pulmonary specialist come in and check out what was wrong with me (a little late in my opinion since the diabetes lady was able to get there on Monday). He checked my breathing and I failed all the tests he gave so I stayed in the hospital another night but luckily he got me on some better meds and was able to be released in the morning.

Since I've been back at my house I haven't really been doing anything. My brothers and I are about half way done with the 1,000 piece puzzle. I spend a lot of time just hanging out. I had a great conversation with my dad (who is actually an imam) about the rest of the galaxy and planets which was great bonding. And I spent a lot of yesterday helping Baba (my maybe cousin) with computer stuff.

I also just found at, while writing this, that a wonderful one of my Sharpies at WM committed suicide, keep her family and all of her friends in your thoughts and prayers. She was a beautiful, brilliant, eco-loving girl and the world will miss her smiling face. Those of you who knew her, a big hug from me, and those to you that go to WM please find my Sharpies and hug them.

I'm counting on getting back to school on Monday and having a pretty calm weekend. I hope you all have a great weekend too.

Lots of love to all of you,
Katie