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Happy new year! I hope you all enjoyed the holidays and made some good new years resolutions for 2011. We're back to school after only a week of holidays this time and it's back to the grind.
Started off the holidays with a visit to Aicha's sister in Dakar for a night before caching the ferry to Ziguinchor on Christmas eve. The ferry was pretty much a european ferry complete with cabins and ham and cheese baguettes. My first proper sandwich in 3 months and it was definitely worth the wait. Also treated myself to a full size ice cream sundae for christmas... yum! The ferry took 14 hours so there was time to admire the scenery as we sailed up the delta of the Casamance river the next morning before spending the morning doing a site visit for PT volunteers arriving in January. After all the work was completed it was time to enjoy a not-so-christmassy christmas with a bit of food and a few cans of fanta before heading off to a wrestling match. Our host in Ziguinchor wangled us some free seats as he knew the chief of police so I got a few snaps of some pretty ridiculous looking wrestlers prancing about with their entourages and throwing blessed water over themselves. Very entertaining. Unfortunately it was a very quick trip and it was back on the ferry the next day to spend a night of feeling a litle seasick tucked up on the ship^floor this time with no cabin. Still I made it back in one piece!
Sinead's flatmates have all moved out so we took the opportunity to enjoy a very empty appartment and keep her company for a few nights. The others came up from Kaolack along with Master P and we went out to see a couple of concerts at the Festival de mondiales arts negres for free at a gigantic stage at Place d'Obelisque. One was a Congolese singer called Papa Ouemba, really good and we had an awful lot of coffee shots from the many stalls to keep us awake but the second was a bit of an odd rasta guy who kept shouting 'burn' and slithering across the stage. Incredible atmosphere though and definitely worth the trip. Also spent a day at Sandaga market haggling for many, many things and getting hassled a lot by the sellers eager to start the new year with a bit of cash in their pocket.
Home to find there'd been no water for the week and so it was another donkey cart trip to the well with 12 containers to haul back to the house. The family though hadd very much enjoyed their Christmas gifts and we thought we'd attempt a belated Christmas dinner with a twist due to the new oven!! No longer are we using a little gas stove but a proper oven! Managed to cook a very tasty chicken drowned in honey and soy sauce but burnt about 7 onions to the pan. Thankfully Aicha was there to save the day and russled up a few other vegetable s to make one very big, very colourful and very different christmas dish with baobab fruit juice for afters. New year itself wasn't very eventful but we went down to Fadiouth where there was a little music and a few stray fireworks bouncing around. The best bit was definitely the very, very sweet cards we got from Amadou, Aicha and Mohammed which are now proudly stuck up beside my bed.
Spent the next day in bed with the flu which wasn't a great deal of fun but back into the swing of things now and beginning to prepare a welcome for the Connecting Classrooms visitors from England and Uganda in March. Unfortunately the lady who helps out with the cooking because everyone in the house works and lunch is a very important and lengthy affair is pregnant, the one before wasn't serious, the one before had leprosy and ran away and the one before stole our clothes so there's a lot of cooking to be done at the moment - busy busy busy! I've started another class aswell but luckily they're not quite as talkative as some of the others so hopefully, fingers crossed there aren't too many strikes, we'll get through a bit more work.
Thank you for a all the cards and messages and comments on here too and I wish you all the very best for 2011!
Kirsty x
- comments
Jess Sounds like you're having a fab time! I've just come across this site and been having a good read through:) Happy New Year, hope you enjoy the rest of your time there xxx