Don't Call it a Comeback...

I've blatantly neglected my blog over the last few months. I'm going to get retrospective and catch you up on the life that is. The entries around this one may be pre-dated to show when these events took place. Without further ado...

I went down to Kédougou for the 4th of July. If Senegal were the United States, I live in Northern California. Until this trip, I hadn't been past New Mexico, and Kédougou is the equivalent of Florida.

With 7 bikes stacked on top of a station wagon, my Volunteer friends and I headed out to the wild blue yonder. The Kaolack-Tamba road has a reputation for being a terrible road. 5 foot potholes every 15 feet make it so. The rainy season has ruined the detours around the worst parts of the road. For us from the western part of the country, the road had reached legendary status. All told- just over 200 miles and about 13 hours later, we rolled into Tamba. For the record, the road wasn't really that bad. :)

The next morning we biked out to our friend's village 5k outside the city. They had already had lots of rain down there and actually have trees, so it was a really nice ride. On the way out there, I realized that this was how I pictured Peace Corps to be...

Anyways, we roll up to what we think is the right village. The four of us city folk, who speak Wolof and French, cruise through rural Pulaar territory alternately yelling our friend's name and 'Toubab!'. The universal 'Where the heck is...' hand motion paired with repeating 'Saare Moudou' (friend's village), gets the villagers to point us onward and rattle off some gibberish Pulaar.

At one point a woman was trying to direct us down the right path. Her 5 words of Wolof and my 2 words of Pulaar added up to...comedy. After a minute of me saying 'Saare Moudou?', and her responding in rapid Pulaar, we were nearly on the ground laughing. It got to the point where she walked to the first path and said 'Déédèèt' (no in Wolof). We understood. Then she walked to the other path and said 'Eh' (yes in Pulaar). We understood. Finally we found the village and my jealousy of this Volunteer's beautiful site continued.

The next day, the adventure continued after another 4 hour car ride down to Kédougou. We hopped on our bikes and road out to Ségou waterfalls, about 15k from town. This was sweet bike riding through huge open fields, around puddles, and in between hills. We got to the river and hiked up along the forested banks. I thought I was back in California. Just beautiful. There were a few little pools and eventually we climbed up to a waterfall with a nice big pool. It was a decent height and had a lot of water, with a panoramic shelved face. This has to be the coolest spot I've been to in Senegal.

I hope there will be more journeys like this one to come.

Diarama!