So far

I guess I'll start by saying time here is different. The pace of life is much slower but because the quality of life is so different from what I'm used to my days seem fuller. I look back and think did that only happen Tuesday. So much has happened since then that Tuesday seems like it happened last month. Perhaps
its the lack of a schedule that makes days more meaningful. At home I'd go to work, a job I could do blind folded come home and the only question was are we going out and where.
In actuality the only regular event in my week is market day. I love market day in the morning as I walk to the health center. People are pouring into the down town
area dressed in their most beautiful and brightest clothes. All excited for another market day ready to buy, sell, meet with old friends and new.
So many people spill out onto the road cars can barely pass and I wonder how people aren't hurt in the crush. The brightness and optimism of the day is catching. By evening though the atmosphere is different everyone
is desperate to make one more sale and then catch a car back home. Some people are contenct others a little let down. I like Monday mornings the best. Sunday evening is good to, market women arrive and set up selling fruit to
the passing trucks. I live on a highway if you will with all traffic from Dakar, Senegal coming into the main town here going thru the village. They rush at the
cars and trucks yelling "Sote bananas! Mille Franc!"

When I first got here at site I told myself I wasn't going to push myself: little by little (a favorite phrase here)
I would do something. This attitude hasn't lasted as I've gone a little stir crazy. Almost on a daily basis I question my
ability to effect positive change. There is alot of time to think. I have to remind myself most of my work is to promote
crosss cultural understanding. That by just being an American woman I can promote a positive example. Case in point:
when I first arrived my neighbor was shocked I was changing my own lock and she argued with me to wait for a man to come and do it
Two months later after one of the kids lost the spare key she came to me to have me change her lock. It just goes to show you that you
can change the perception of a woman's worth and hopefully in two years I'll be writing about women who change their own locks and don't let men dominate
and control their lives.
This is another change although i've always considered myself a feminist it has never been more obvious than here. I see all these young womken, some barely older than me and they have been married off
at 13, 14 as the third wives and now have 3 children and make their own living while their husbands are off in Dakar or Labe with their other wives.
Maybe he'll send money and a sack of rice but don't hold your breath. What I don't understand is how a man can value
his child so little that he gives her to such an existance. Then men complain how immature their wives are, you want to scream
BUT YOU MARRIED A CHILD It is ture most of the women here have the attitudes of young girls. They are treated physically as women from a young age (pre puberty)
raising younger siblings, washing the house, clothes, the giant cooking pots, making food daily to feed dozens. However they are not iencouraged to thing, express themselves, or
solve problems. Just to do things as they have been done for generations.
Child rearing is a whole different ballgame too. At home our babies are always at a distance. We push them in strollers, keep them in cribs because we don't want to spoil them
by holding them too much. But we always keep a close eye on our children knowing where they are and with whom all the time. Here babies are in constant contact
with their mothers- always strapped to her back. I wonder at how easily they can sleep there as she cooks and cleans or dances at a wedding.
But once the kid can toddle along anything goes often I find a group between ages 3-7 playing on the rickety market stalls like they are jungle gyms free to roam the village.
Often I know where my 3 year old neighbor Jennaba is because you can hear her yelling for her big brother Sekou "Cotoe, cotoe!!!" and you know she has found him because he inevitably hits her and she
starts to cry. I feel nervous and overprotective of these kids. I'd hate to see them get hurt. Its funny to think the majority of people here are under the age of 15.