Oh what a week

As if I wasn't stressed out enough a week and a half ago, this latrine project, I am convinced is going to kill me. We succeeded in picking up the materials for 9 latrines, 3 of which were built before I left for Kaolack. However, the rest of the villagers have started accusing me of being "political" for only giving them to 9 people. At least 10 times a day, I explain that everyone will, in fact, receive a latrine. At the moment though, we are funded for nine and hopefully, once these 9 are done, the other money will have arrived and we can start the rest. The only reason they are getting them first is because they showed me that they have finished digging their holes. And, since there is only one mason in the village, we can only do one at a time any way so there is no problem and they need to chill. Needless to say, they don't get it. And on my way to another compound to start his douche, I was confronted, wait no, ambushed, by a villager. He begins screaming at me like a crazy person (and a 5 year old). Well, after a week of trying to get my point across and having people treat me like crap, I lost it. Straight up, legit flipped out. Started screaming about how he was acting like a child, what a big jerk he was, how he needed to stop chewing with his mouth open and spitting mango on me, how i'd make sure he never received anything from me as long as I lived in the village....anything you name it, I screamed about it. To add to things, my family decided to leave me out of lunch that day too. So 330 comes around and still no lunch, but luckily I was too upset to be hungry. So I left and said nothing to my family or the village. This was monday night. I'm not going back until Friday, I'm still too angry with them.

On a brighter note, I taught a sexual health session in natalie's village. Since its a pulaar village I was able to speak comfortably about, well, birth control and condoms. I managed to learn a thing or two as well. For example, a bike pump is useful for more than just helping out with flat tires. It can act as "a man" when you're doing a condom presentation. To make things even better, the condoms were Christmas colors! Although, really, who the hell would want to use a green condom? Even in Africa, ok especially in Africa, do you really want to associate green with your errrr ummm "private time?" My vote-- not so much.

While everyone laughed histerically the entire time, we had one woman and one man (separately of course) come up and demonstrate how to put the condom on. Mainly just to embarrass them, but I think that they did end up learning about their options. When we explained how the women are tired of having children and raising them for as long as they can remember, and the men are busy, ok maybe thats not the right word. So, while the men are drinking tea and sitting in the shade, maybe they should consider not knocking the women up quite as often. Condoms! Birth Control! USE THEM!!! They seemed rather receptive and it didn't seem to offend them. Or at least they didn't tell us if it did. The best part came when we needed to take the Christmas condoms off the bike pump. Its so much more fun to actually use the pump. And in doing so, i shot a condom off into the crowd, hitting natalie's mom in the head (not hard). Myself and everyone else lost it and to be honest, I almost peed my pants laughing so hard. Giant green condom flying through the air-- and SMACK! Stuck right in her weave. How charming.

I'm staying an extra day here in Kaolack, as I said and tomorrow I'm going to a hotel pool to drink bloody marys and lay by the pool. Thank god. I'm going to the beach on the 31st to celebrate my 23rd birthday. God I'm getting old. But i'm certainly ready for a vacation. Im looking forward to it. Luckily, considering how angry I am with the village, I only have to be back for a few days before I go to Thies for my meeting. Working on my birthday. Nice. I'm still going out!