What have I been up to since my last stint in Dakar? That is a great question haha! Well the rainy season has since ended, meaning that my tree work is finished. Outplanting is finally done and my papayas from this season are already fruiting! In about a month I'll be eating the fruits of my labor, so to speak. And, we made our first sauce with the leaves from my nebadaye trees the other day.
Korite has come and passed, which means that Ramadan is over. Hooray! Like all senegalese
holidays that i've experienced, everyone made a big fuss, dressed up, ate about 4 lunches and then sat around for the rest of the day talking about how fat we all are. Ha! Very anti-climactic. Where as last year I was in my training village, this year in Pakane we ate chicken instead of goat. Which to be honest, was much better despite the chickens being the miniscule. They were delicious none the less. Although, I must admit that opening the bowl to see the boiled chicken head the the feet stuffed through the neck hole is not really what I was expecting.Thinking back to last years Korite post, I have to wonder, why is it that Senegalese always want to eat animal faces? Last year it was goat face, this year chicken face. I mean seriously, there cant be very much meat on that, and there definitely isnt any on the feet! But sure enough, my little sisters chomped away at the msg flavored parts. To look over and see a chicken foot or a beak sticking out of a 3 year old's mouth, well, I guess all I can say is, thats interesting.
As with all holidays, I became the village photographer. Such is life I suppose. Annoying, annoying life lol.
In other news, we've got a new little bundle of joy in the Ba household! Halimatou Ba, tiniest little thing ever! She's a doll. In her honor, we had everyone in the village over for lunch to pray and eat goat for lunch. While its awesome to have meat for lunch, or ever, having 200 people hanging out in my compound all day and every single one of them wanting to hang out in the toubab's room is not my idea of fun. After a few hours I had to grab my book and escape into the bush.However, I did discover that I thoroughly enjoy tying babies on my back.....until they pee. After the fourth time I took the munchkin to my room and tied a plastic bag around her butt. Problem solved. Now everyone gives me funny looks and thinks I'm weird for tying bags onto babies. But hey, theyre the ones getting peed on, not me!
My least favorite thing about Peace Corps is when my friends leave the country. This last group to go was by far the hardest. These were my best friends, my closest neighbors and my support group. Saturday night, one of by bests left, fellow nioro-er and romance novel extraordinaire. This weekend, Kate and myself came up to Dakar to see of Abigail before she left. A night on the town, which was pieced together the next morning lol, a trip to the zoo and tapas/drinks at a nice restaurant was a great way to see her off. I must say, the zoo in Dakar has to be the most depressing place I've ever been! You know how growing up you think that the zoo has metal bars encaging every animal, and then you go and its actually nice cases with little habitats and the animals actually eat better than you do? Well, here is not the case. They fed them all with the 
city's left over stale bread and whatever visitors decided to throw at them, and for the first time, those metal bars were there. Except for the camels. Walking around to the otherside of there chain link fence, one stuck its head out to nudge us, turns out there was an entire chunk missing and the camels could easily escape. Hey more power to them! Run camel run! And seriously Senegal, where the heck did you get a tiger? I'm pretty sure they're not native to Africa!
Saturday night, Abi left and Kate and I decided to do the Goree Swim. I wrote about it in my list of things to do before I was 25. Well done Miss Knight, you can mark one off the list! I swam 4.4 k in open ocean (with my shark friends) to an island just for a tshirt and a couple of small cookies. Well, and I guess the bragging rights. Less than a quarter of the way there I remembered, oh yea, I am not a swimmer! The farthest I've ever swam is from the middle of the deep end to the wall. Divers should not attempt this EVER. Poor life choice Sira Ba, poor life choice. With the only things going through my head for the next three quarters being dori's voice from finding nemo singing "just keep swimming, just keep swimming" and the chorus to "Oh what a night" you can see why I wanted to finish immediately. I was even annoying myself. A 2 and a half hour long swim with waves? Kill me. But now its done and I never have to do it again!!!! Alhumdoulillah! There were four volunteers who swam and if I may say, we're cooler than the ones who didnt do it. Haha, well maybe more crazy than cool, but whatever. Its been a eventful month or so, so there was a lot to say, but this is for you rachel. Your blog post, I get lazy sometimes. My bad. Love you all and thanks for the care packages this month!!!! Im eating like a queen!!!! Jabba the hut better watch his back, sira ba might be able to kick is ass pretty soon. HA! yes mom, I said ass!
----Side note, I have creeping eruption. Look it up, its gross!
