Journal Post 1/21

Big day yesterday. Woke up late since I stayed up abnormally late the night before. I decided to walk into town to buy soap, met up with a nice Touray relative who’s actually a nice old lady who lives behind me, and we took a new path toward the market. This new way is a short cut since I wouldn’t be seeing the VDC sitting place or the bakers. I’ll be sure to get my face known in this new way to work. We went to the market, I bought some sweet potato or some kind of leafy greens that looked like choi – 1 batch for 1 dalasi – it was more than enough for 2 days worth – and 5 dalasi of tomatoes. I whipped out a picture of my ‘husband’ and everyone loved that. I had a nice talk with my relative on the way back – we stopped by one of my relative’s husband’s clan’s house and talked for a hot second before continuing. She stopped at a compound and told her grandson to bring me home. I worked out for a good hour before washing the food and prepped them. I think I’m going to use my filter as a faucet for running water next time I wash food. Genius. SO I did everything to prep and proceeded to make the BEST noodle dish in awhile – so yummy and full of veggies PLUS no oil! At 5, I got my game face on and walked to HM’s to meet up with Ceedee to finally pick up my table. The carpenter here is OK, not the nicest and tried to rip me off, but he made a nice simple table. I paid and Ceedee hoisted it all the way back to my house. I proceeded to clean/move stuff around for the next 3 hours. I eventually got a layout that I’m pretty satisfied with – 2 chests and my hockey bg on the table (the bag’s extendable handle serves as my towel holder… I know, genius), my every day items are on top of my chests, my luggage is against the table and my food chest on top of that. My chest full of books and miscellaneous hobby items are on the floor for a temporary seat and my big kitchen test is on a chair inbetween the door and my bed. I have my stove to the left of my table and right of the back door. I still need a small desk that’s transportable outside and two more sturdy chairs, but other than that my house will be all set!

Today I woke up late again, oops. My community representative still hasn’t come back so I spent the morning with my family attempting to pound coos, talking, fetching water, and wrote out what I wanted to say to my tutor’s dad. I finished, even though HM can translate, I wanted to contribute effort from my part because this really hits close to home and affects me. I read it to my host mom and she understood – which was good. Then I went to Camara Kunda – the compound behind my house – chatted with them for a bit before coming back to make lunch and exercise. The leafy greens/choi from yesterday didn’t go bad! It was great but now I know not to add two servings of rice noodles, they soak up water fast, and to always add seasoning. Adobo’s/Sazon’s great. I exercised, called Hadja, and apparently her dad was going to the bush. I’ll try again tomorrow. Instead, I drew my dress/complete ideas and took them to the tailor’s. This guy is a friend of my family’s and as said before, he knows English! He’s not from Kulari but he’s one of Baharu’s friends and always sits in my compound to chat. He understood my drawings but one of them I’m going to have to break out my iTouch to show him what I mean. Plus I have to figure out a way to secretly whip that out so that my family doesn’t know I have it or else they’ll bug me forever to take pictures. We chatted for awhile and thank God he knows English. The kids who surrounded us were loud and obnoxious so unfortunately I couldn’t hear him too well – he’s soft spoken. It was nice anyways. I got measured, dropped off skirts stuff to fix which he returned perfectly in the evening!