I got back from Diourbel on Friday - been sort of busy recovering since then! It was a good trip, but Diourbel is incredibly hot and dusty and mosquito-y. Also my anti-malarial-induced nightmares were really acting up, so I wasn't seeping very well. As a result, I'm a little bit sick, mostly dust-induced allergies. But I'm happy to be back in Dakar, have spent a lot of time with friends at the beach this weekend. I can't believe how soon I'm leaving. Of course I feel like I haven't seen half of what I meant to, and there's so much left that I want to do. However, I'll be really happy to be home. I miss my family and friends a lot (not to mention air conditioning, American food, normal running water, etc, etc.)
Diourbel was one of the places I've been before, last November, so it was really nice (and weird) to be back there. I got to see Astou Ndoye, whom I interviewed last year. She's doing really well, and is basically just as awesome as she was last time. Her kids are, of course, a little bigger, which is always weird to see. And she's even more involved in the eco-village. Astou is really smart and driven, and last I talked to her she was talking to me about her micro-loan. Now, however, she is looking to take on more responsibility within the ecovillage, and maybe help organize micro-loans for other people, or help out with the solar ovens project they have going on. Really, I can't stress enough how awesome she is.
A really cool thing I got to do in Diourbel was that if I interviewed a micro-loan recipient at the ecovillage headquarters, I showed the recipients their Kiva page. It was ridiculously amazing and bizarre to show the borrowers their kiva page, and the little pictures of the kiva members who financed their loan. They were sort of into it, but not as much as I was. I was like, see, isn't this AWESOME!? The money comes from all over the world, but not from rich donors, but people like you and me! We are all helping eachother and it is a circle of life and beautiful global community and ...
And Astou, or whoever, would be like, yes, thank you, that's interesting - can you tell me why I haven't gotten my second loan yet? I've got peanut seed to buy, so it'd be really great if you could tell the people in Dakar to hurry up and give me another loan already.
Can't say I blame them, but it was still fun for me to make the Senegal - NGO - Americans - Kiva - Senegal connections.
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A friend of mine lost his phone and needed my number. I vainly told him "Google me!" instead of just supplying the number. Then I realized, since I've switched schools, all of my former web servers are no more. So I googled myself (apparently I'm a main character in the 1997 movie "Warriors of Virtue") only to stumble on my old blog, Au Sénégal. I was just about to log out when I realized that your last update was yesterday. I then went and read every 2009 entry, and even some that I had already read in 2008. I completely feel like an ass for not reading your blog the whole time you've been back in Sénégal. So if you have the time to write about your final days, I'd LOVE to read it.
Arona
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