Some H's C's and A's

HCA: Happy, Crappy, and Awkward highlights:

What's cool is I think I have more Happies to talk about than Crappies and Awkwardies!

Happy:

• Sitting around "learning" how to eat fresh sugar cane with my host siblings Yura and Maram - rainy season
• Seeing the garden grown in Kaur and all the active children watering and hearing the teachers say, "we're growing more food than we know what to do with!" - just after rainy season
• Seeing the school take initiative without any of my input to build a local fence and start garden beds hauling water from the pump several hundred meters away because our garden pump is broken, again - post rains
• Watching the grade nine students wash their hands with the tippy tap that we built - recently
• Watching my host family wash their hands with either the tippy tap in our compound or kettle that I gave when I first moved in - since moved in and recently with tippy tap
• Christmas brunch was amazing, thanks VSN! - xmas
• Coming home from a bee keeping training and seeing the motivation of my counterparts as we hung our catcher boxes - couple weeks ago
• Receiving letters and care packages from home! - since coming, thank you!

Crappy:

• Alpha getting denied on his US visa application- It felt like a personal rejection since I and others of us had worked so hard for MONTHS to help him.  What the heck US Counselor?! - Nov
•  Running out of gas for cooking food - Jan
• Stink bug infestation! Fat small flat weird looking insects that are/were everywhere.  Was kind of like a living nightmare - Nov-now
• Uncovering and having to deal with two mouse nests including nine infant embryonic looking mice and the killing of... - every so often it's just one of those things that happens
• All the trees we tried to plant this rainy season, including the 5 Leuceana in my host fathers field, have since died or been eaten by the ruminants- they weren't lying about the tree guards..!

Awkward:

•  Asking my family to build me a cement bed if I buy cement and then coming home to see both bags gone and not enough bricks to explain why both bags were emptied but no other bricks in sight.  So it felt like they stole from me which was really awkward.  I then told them that I lost one of my keys which was true and so told them they had to take everything they were storing in my house out, as I was going to change the lock and not give them a key...  Was awkward for me but my host father moved the incredibly heavy sacks of wheat flour or whatever while laughing since I offered to help and my sister said I couldn't and I said I could and then I tried and couldn't and conceded that yes, my younger sister is in fact much stronger than me, which I conceded verbally in Wolof which they thought was very funny.
• Learning a new word that I thought meant spoiled, I tried it out with a "spoiled" groundnut announcing that "this ground nut is "spoiled." The whole compound starts laughing hysterically, my English speaking brother who is a teacher and was up for the holidays comes out laughing and tells me that xamadi means rudeness, and that I was calling the groundnut rudeness.  Well, it is rude that it's spoiled! I defended myself in English in my sense of humor which he translated for me to be met with even more laughter.  Fortunately I don't mind being the blunt of the joke- which is good as it's going to happen again and again! : )