My Site

This week I spent visiting my site, the village where I'll be living for my two years of service. Timbi Madina is a good site and I'm excited to be moving there after I finish training in another month. The village is large enough that it has a few restuarants and I can get a good variety of foods and supplies. I spend my time in the village with Ricky, the PCV who has been living in Timbi for the past two years. He introducted me to people all over town and showed me where I could find everything that I'll need. The center of town is depressingly dirty since garbage removal isn't a concept that's hit africa yet. But, as soon as you start to head off the main roads the landscape is beautiful. I'll live in a little 3 room house. It's nicely constructed of concrete, tin roof, latrine outside and I have a decent sized yard (hopefully where I can construct a garden). I have furnishings already, thanks to ricky, so I'll probably concentrate on some house upkeep. I plan to paint each of the rooms, buy a new end table, have shelves commisioned in my kitchen, and have a fence commissioned for my yard, to keep livestock out of my garden. This should keep me busy for my first few months at site!

We're not supposed to start any major projects our first 3 months at site, so i'll have time to explore and get to know the city. I visited the high school when i was in town last week and have agreed to teach a few English classes a week. The school just got it's first English teacher about a month ago, Madame Bah, from sierra leone. She happens to live right behind me in timbi and speaks decent english (english teachers here are rarely proficient themselves). I'm excited to start working with HS students because myself and another business volunteer in a neighboring village have some intersts in trying to start a youth business club. We are thinking that if there's interest we can spend the summer months preparing some cirriculum and start up in the fall.

I also met my counterpart, a really motivated, really nice guy, (sometimes not the case with counterparts - so i've been told). We visited the agriculture research center where he's employed and he had a second desk in his office for me. Nice! It's about a 20 min bike ride from my house, so i'll be getting in shape around here. We also went out and met with one of the groupments (co-op type agriculture groups) that I'll be working with. My role, as far as I can tell will be to help with the marketing, commercialization of their products. More details as I work more with them in the future.

Well, time is about up here. It's back to Forecariah for another month of training and learning the language of Pulaar. Hope all is well at home...keep the updates coming!

P.S. Mom, Dad, Amy...it was great talking with you all the other night!

Love you & miss you,
amy