03 November 2005 - 00:02
Within the last week, I have…
- Moved from my old house (three rooms, two kitchens, a bathroom, and a storage room-worth of stuff) into a new house in the old part of town…in three hours.
- Negotiated my rent down by 6000 ougiyas per month (by playing my two landlords against each other)
- Harassed the electric and water company into turning my water and electricity on in a reasonable amount of time instead of waiting several weeks for it
- Thrown a Halloween party (I was a genie)
- Organized a sight-seeing expedition to my old village and another city for 10 volunteers and argued endlessly with the driver over the price and where we wanted to go
- Played tour guide
- Almost got taken to the police by the aforementioned driver
- Repaired a toilet by myself
- Made enchiladas from scratch
- Repaired a wall by myself
- Got in an argument with my old landlord over something that I didn’t do
- Almost got taken to the police by the aforementioned landlord
- Not broken my Ramadan fast
- Started my garden
- Acquired two tortoises (I now have a dog, a puppy, a small tortoise, and a large tortoise living at my house)
- Written a proposal to fund a community garden in a village 20K away from Tidjikja
- Met with the Regional Education Director to ask permission to work on a new health curriculum to be implemented into the educational system next year (and I got the green light!)
- Met with the Regional Health Director to get an update on the planning for the upcoming polio vaccination campaign and a new trash clean-up project in town
- Started teaching myself to read and write the Arabic alphabet
- Found some poles to give to my friend who wants me to help him get a group of people together to play volleyball every week
- Learned a few phrases in Bambara that will come in handy when I visit Mali at the end of this month
- Sent some information to the TU Alumni Magazine, which is preparing an upcoming story on TU alumni in the Peace Corps
Never a dull moment…
