I survived the 12 day home-stay marathon, and much like childbirth, the painful memories faded away quickly after a luke-warm shower and greasy cheeseburger to leave me with happier memories of decapitated chickens and a relaxing day at the beach.
My feelings about my host family change on an hourly basis, swinging from intense frustration to general contentment to genuine affection. I truly believe my issues with my host mother are not cross-cultural but inter-personal, and while my 5 year old siblings can be painfully annoying I imagine children of their age are the same worldwide. I've taken to telling them in English exactly how I feel at the moment I feel it, instead of letting frustration build - luckily no one has caught me yet telling the little boy I want to kick him in the face when he messes up my dish washing routine.
Although my host-mom impressed me with her variety of meals during my first stint at site, this week our meals were consistently rice and fish (maaro e liddi). In order to break up the monotony of white rice and celebrate my birthday in style, my language class spent last Saturday buying, cooking and eating a chicken feast.
My birthday began with the usual host of chores: dishes, sweeping, mopping. This was followed by a breakfast of my least favorite food in Senegal - mooni. Mooni is a porridge made from millet that is sea foam green in color and tastes like last week's gym socks. Add in a little condensed milk and 8 tablespoons of sugar for a warm bowl of horrible. Side note: there are very few foods I've eaten here that I dislike, so this is a rare exception.
After force feeding myself enough to pacify my mother, my class headed to the market to buy the feast ingredients. This was generally uneventful, until we came to the chickens. The chicken stalls are kept far far away from all other food products at one end of the market. After choosing two chickens - alive at the time - we waited while the chicken man prepared them to take. Unlike my last viewing of chicken murder, this time the man was too busy to hold down his victims, so we watched dinner flop around while blood spouted from the neck in true horror movie fashion. It should be noted (so that you can visualize properly) that the blood does not spurt as one would think, but it a continuous arc out of the body. Truly fascinating.
Anyway, we spent the next few hours cleaning, peeling, chopping and frying in order to create a meal fit for the gods. Delicious.
On Sunday we went to the beach and relaxed with current volunteers. I learned all about the region I'm most likely going to and didn't get a 3rd degree sunburn, so a successful weekend overall.
Tomorrow we find out our permanent sites and then it's back to the village for the weekend. Next week we go on Volunteer Visits when we get to visit our future homes and meet everyone currently serving in the region. I'll post more about my site when I'm back in Thies in a few days.
kp
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