Happy Birthday to me!

Out the window: the huts of Kedougou. Maybe it's billed as a big city, but it's definitely the dirt roads and huts and naked babies kind of city.
Inside: me on the internet. facebook, blogger, nytimes.com, e-mail, whatever my greedy modern heart desires
mood: surreal and also incredibly content

I woke up this morning in the full sized bed that I have been sharing for the past three nights with two other students. Evie and Chesa and I took one look at the bed, and at eachother, and burst out laughing. Once we'd calmed down, we decided to sleep sideways on the bed with our feet hanging off so that we could fit all three of us. We used my mosquito net, but our feet stuck out the end so I don't know how much good it did. So I woke up this morning achy and scrunched up. But happy.
I opened my present from my mom that I had brought all the way from Dakar to Kedougou to my rural village, just to have a present to open. It's a really pretty necklace that somehow matches perfectly with the only pair of earrings I'd brought with me.
The second thing I did this morning, not to get to graphic here, was to pee outside. Then I had breakfast. We were served many varieties of cornmeal mush in the village, but breakfast was the one we have affectionately named Witch's Brew. I'll post pictures. You'll understand. Sort of a cardboard-flavored ground chalk substance. I managed a whole bite and a half.
We were supposed to leave our village stay at 9am ish, but we had gotten up early. Maleke, who I think was supposed to be one of our host fathers, had been our most valuable friend during this short trip, and he had offered to take us to see his fields. We were supposed to go the night before, but forgot and had gone on a walk to show Chesa the soccer "field" and gorgeous views up on the hill surrounding the village. So instead he took us this morning. It was a little bit of a walk- not far, just hot, though. His fields are all planted by hand. He grows eggplant. Others grow eggplant, corn, and peanuts. The views of the Gambian River by his fields were breathtaking. Its hard to explain, especially on this keyboard with the keys so stiff with dust, but I felt so happy and lucky to be where I was this morning. So many people never get a chance to do what I have just spent the past few days and months doing, and to have such an amazing landscape be a part of my birthday was humbling and just plain nice.
Of course to be completely honest I just as much enjoyed the other part of my birthday so far, which came after we crossed back into kedougou. (crossed with the pirogue/wooden canoe with so many holes in it that it needs to be bailed out as they are paddling us across). I don't know that I've EVER had as great a birthday meal as the baguettes and jam and coffee that they gave us back at the hotel when we asked for some breakfast. I don't think I've ever been so consistantly hungry with no way of getting food before in my life, and I just couldn't stop grinning as we SHOVELED the baguettes into our mouths and laughed about the twenty different kinds of corn mush we've sampled over the past few days.
Then other students started trickling back to the hotel from THEIR ethnic minority village stays and then I took an AMAZING shower in my AIR CONDITIONED hut/room and then ate a GREAT lunch with RICE and BEEF and mafe-like sauce and a COKE and then went and lay down on my bed where my head and feet all fit and opened a card and a present from Alex, my friend from home, and a bottle of maple syrup from my mom and then rested and then set out for the internet cafe. And here I am checking my facebook and reading all of my friends and relatives birthday messages to me and feeling loved and in a few minutes I will go and buy TONS of the indigo fabric that is imported from Guinea and is gorgeous and cheap here.

This is why it is only 4:30 and I am already having THE BEST BIRTHDAY EVER.

Love,
Robin Claire Mariama Diop McGrath

p.s. sorry for the lack of posts lately, and how confusing this one must be. more when i get back to dakar on sunday!