So maybe there is no work?

Things are ok here. I am respected in my village, I am liked by my family and peers. People tell me about their hopes and worries. I get visited all the time! I understand more and more the weird traditions they do.

So from a cultural exchange standpoint, I am doing a great job and learning a lot about how to interact with people who receive information in very different way. I am learning about not being greedy, that's probably been my lesson of the month, but more on that in another blog.

Soon I will start the music class and maybe have hopes of finding funding so that the school can build a cafeteria and have the funds to make free lunches for the kids, that way ensuring a higher attendance and more likelihood of attracting state funding and another sorely needed teacher and batiment. I also want to see if I can get old French books from students at UNC sent over here, you know how the re-selling of French novels is worthless on that campus. I have also told the middle school that I'd love to do an English club of some sort for afterschool.

With my village girls club, we will soon be having a tie-dye formation. Tie dyed material is really expensive here, so hopefully in the future it will be a money making adventure…..I think I'll have a friend do a feasibility study with them.

I am starting a cabbage pépinière and will be working in a much more visible location then the big garden where no one goes. I'll be gardening on my mom's land, and several ladies pass by that area every day, sooo…..I might set up drip irrigation too.

Of course, I am also tired and frustrated on the work front, though. Very tired of little things. Trying to work with people who don't respect appointments, not even missing the hour but missing the day, really grates on me, something I have trouble getting over. Not only does it mean in some cases that my only real work for the day has been negated and I have nothing else to call that day productive, but it means also that later so and so will want to schedule a make up appointment during a time when I've scheduled rest or a fun excursion. . I'm just sort of sick of having to dig up my work ideas, like scratching for gold under hard packed land every new day. I rarely dig up any ideas that are workable and valuable. I'm having to face the fact that I have little practical knowledge to offer these people, little outside of mudstoves and compost that can practically help them and that they couldn't do before….and these two things I have stumbled and stumbled and failed over and over again trying to communicate why they are good and how to make them, with person after person. I should not be here as an ag extension agent ):

I don't know. I don't hate it here at all, sometimes I really love it, and I could see myself successfully completing another year, learning and dealing with things little by little as the months slip by. But should life be like that? A constant hope that things will get better, that some work project will be culturally appropriate? I dunno. I am tired and I feel unkempt and disappointed seventy percent of the time.

Is it just normal to feel, once you are used to a place, that you want to move on? That you want to develop another part of yourself? That you want clean feet and pretty clothes?

Are there other development agencies that work better than peace corps? I wanted to work in development, and I feel pretty strongly that this is the best I can do in this field right now. Things won't change for the better until powerful people in the Senegalese government and international governments start spending money responsibly.
I don't have the kind of power to make any measurable change in my village. But I do have friends that sometimes listen to my ideas. i dunno.