Brotherly Love

My one year anniversary in Sare Sara (only 10 more months!) was marked by my second family member to visit. Shortly after quitting his job in preparation for business school, my brother Charlie hopped on a plane and made his way to Dakar. After a few moments of craziness at the airport, I let him catch a few hours rest before we headed straight to the beach for jet lag recovery and relaxation. Once Charlie was fully on Senegalese time and able to eat whole fish - bones and all - while avoiding beach hawkers, we headed to Kolda.

We spent three nights in village, with lots of greeting and awkward handshaking. A few other volunteers stopped by to hang out and partake in classic hot season activities - sitting in the shade and sweating. Upon arriving out first day, Omar first announced that Charlie would be named after him and then proudly showed us the ram he wanted to kill for lunch. My attempts to spare the creature's life were unsuccessful, so it was three days of sheep for us. Charlie did great with all the food - even when one dinner bowl was opened to reveal a giant pile of intestines. Yum.

After village, Charlie got to see what life is like for Kolda volunteers in our downtime at the regional house (settlers of catan, warm beer, crashing hotel pools) and meet another handful of PCV friends. For our second week, we made a two day trek up to the far northwest corner of Senegal to the city of St. Louis, the former capital of French West Africa, where there is an annual international jazz festival. Although we missed the festival weekend by a day, we did get to enjoy the beach, good food and more volunteer socializing. Our last day was spent in Dakar visiting Goree Island (along with every 7th grader in the city) and sampling the best ice cream in country.

All in all we had a fun time and I successfully played tour guide while convincing Charlie I can actually speak French (not true). He put up with a fair amount of confusion, hours of painful transportation and less than tidy accommodations without complaint. I'm glad that now 2/3 of my immediate family have made it to Sare Sara and will have some idea of what I'm rambling out when I return home.