Did I already write about The Monkey Wrench Gang, by Edward Abbey?  I don’t remember mentioning it.  Anyway, I just finished it, and thought it was fantastic.  Since so much of it takes place in the southwest, it had me thinking a lot about the beautiful land (and tasty food) back home.  And whenever I start thinking about beautiful places on Earth, I end up revisiting what I think my future consists of, primarily because its hard to imagine spending most of my life in an office when I could be spending it out in the beautiful and interesting places in the world.

But my desire for the less confined spaces is balanced by the need for some kind of intellectual stimulation and development, and so I end up sort of caught between two worlds that seem rather hard to mesh.  And I need to successfully mesh them, because I am getting to the point in my life where every door I walk through closes other doors.  If I travel after Peace Corps, or even bum around trying to get a book published, that makes going to law school and potentially finding meaningful work as a lawyer more difficult.  But at the same time, if I go to law school I don’t expect to get much of a chance to explore for the several years that follow.  And its not just an either or choice, because there are more than two roads, potentially any number of roads.

Its an old story because I find myself in this spot so often, wondering what I want my future to look like and wondering how to balance the different things I want to do, each of which seems capable of taking up an entire life on its own.  How can I lead three or four different lives?  And I suspect that an inability to choose between them will at some point, if it hasn’t already, hamper my ability to excel and be content in any of them.  Do the most satisfied people know how to give up the things they want so that they can gain something else that they want?

I had an excellent three hour meeting today.  I bet I never in my life get to say that again about a three hour meeting.  With my counterpart and the Secretary Comtable, we revisited the three month plan and fit everything together for what I will be doing and how that will proceed.  I will be making an excel sheet and will put it here once I do.  Hopefully it will give everyone an idea of what I am doing, which right now is mostly just having a lot of meetings, but in a couple of weeks will be having a session or two every day.

One of APIC’s initiatives (APIC is my partner ONG), is to have a serious of sessions on how to start and run a business, for which they would like my help.  I was happy that, after looking at what they wanted to teach, I felt competent to help teach on several of the topics.  I also made a suggestion that is probably my first real attempt to change something they are doing, and they liked it a lot.  What they were going to do is somehow do a study of different types of businesses to see what was feasible.  Sort of a large scale feasibility study so that they could tell people in these business trainings what business they could go into.  Feasibility studies are good, but I thought it might be better if the people in the trainings did their own feasibility studies, and in the process learned about how to evaluate a potential business.  That way they could also make their own choices about what kind of business they want to start, which is better for them, and APIC doesn’t have to do some giant amorphous study of the feasibility of a million different tiny businesses.  Also, it helps to weed out the people who are just there because they think they will get something without having to work.  Anyway, point being that it went over pretty well and I felt like I actually contributed something good.

Which brings me to the ridiculousness, which isn’t so much an event as the fact that a small thing like that can put in such a good mood that you bike back to your house, not noticing the heat and barely hearing the petites yelling Toubabu at you, thinking that this is the best damn mood you have ever been in in your life, and if you were a little more of a sissie, you’d be balling your eyes out in happiness.

Instead I unrolled my plastic mat on my cement floor and took a nap until this afternoon, when I sat through another meeting, this one two hours long and in the local language of which I understand barely any.  I managed to stand up to be acknowledged at the appropriate time, and also met a French guy who works in the nearby national park, and therefor consider it a success.

PS - My posts have been filled with humourous tendencies lately, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

I feel the need for a synopsis post, something to sort of sum up what has been happening, but it probably will be a few days until I find the time to do it.  When I was applying to Peace Corps I remember being frustrated with the day to day content of most blogs, feeling that they lacked any sort of substance or analysis, defaulting to a report of daily events.  I’d like to remedy that as much as possible, but its hard not to sit down and just report on what has been happening.

I have spent a lot of money the last few days, buying supplies in bulk and generally getting things that I have needed or wanted to get but not had the money or chance to buy yet.  Mainly this consists of a case of tomato paste and a case of pasta, a case of candles, and a tea set and charcoal burner.  But I also had to get my cat vaccinated.  70.000 FG!  Sajay and I almost just threw our cats in a ditch and ran away (just kidding, we would never do that, as long as they don’t scratch us anymore).  So yeah, he was here today and we did a lot of shopping.

Yesterday I tried to do a lot of stuff, stopping by people’s places multiple times but finding no one.  Today was slightly more successful, and tomorrow should be semi-productive before the mailrun arrives on Sunday.

When you first arrive at site and you are sitting around wondering how you are actually going to pass two years without going crazy of boredom, it seems impossible that you will ever be busy.  But after IST my calendar has filled up so quickly its scary.  Today Sajay and I sat down and planned out rough dates for the various trips we want to do, and in such a way that we will actually get to spend a month at site every now and then.  Basically between trainings, regional trips, training a new group of volunteers, and miscellaneous other things, it hardly seems like we will have the time to get any actual work done at site.  So we wanted to schedule things so that we had some long periods of time, especially in these first early months, so that we could actually get some work done and some relationships well enough established to be able to make things happen easier once all the other stuff kicked in.

Still, I can’t help but get a little panicky.  On average there are maybe three weeks between trips, which doesn’t really seem like a lot.  In my first couple of months I wanted as many diversions as possible because each day at site was a trial, but now traveling is much more of a trial and I want to be home as much as possible.  Its a good sign of being integrated I guess.

I also started an accounting system, beginning June 1st.  I want to see how I spend my living allowance, and it might be useful information for both the Peace Corps office and for other volunteers and prospective volunteers.  Plus its just an interesting thing to know.

And I bought a larger agenda book to plan out and keep track of what is happening.  I may or may not be further developing an already dangerous addiction to organization and planning.

I am doing my best to get rid of my mango jam because I am realizing that I am much more likely to eat pineapple or mango salsa than mango jam.  Its a rough world.  Hopefully by Sunday I can do a batch of pineapple salsa.  I expect it to be amazing.  Also, I thought I had found a woman selling beans that would be an easier way to eat beans than preparing them myself, but they tasted something awful, so for now I am back to square one with that.

I have so many things I need to do or am in the middle of doing that I might go crazy.  And I started running, which has been really good.  A volunteer is having a half marathon in September or October (I forget) and I need to be in good enough shape to run it.

Okay, that’s enough rambling for now.

So I was in Kankan for a few days for “Warden Training.”  Warden training is a day long affair in which we discuss our roles and responsiblities during different states of elevated alert.  It didn’t seem particularly useful, but I thought it was at least going to be a fun chance to see other volunteers.  But instead I didn’t have much fun, spent a lot of time feeling like I wasn’t connecting with anyone, and wanted to come back to site.  Now that I am here my spirits are picking up again, but it wasn’t very fun, which is too bad, since regional visits are supposed to be a sort of vacation.

The trip there went fine.  We had four volunteers in one car and so we got a row to ourselves and played games the whole way there.  I went running Saturday and Sunday with some other volunteers, which was really nice, and inspired me to get running at site (we will see about that).  I had the chance to go back on Monday, but instead I decided to wait for Tuesday and go back with some other volunteers, which was a mistake, cause Monday was a giant waste.  We spent the whole time wandering around en ville and waiting for our money to arrive at the bank.  Result is that we did nothing but also didn’t get to relax, and I was exhausted by the end of it all.  I did win about 17.000 FG playing poker though ($3.20).

There is one plus though.  Kankan has copious amounts of frozen beesap (made with habiscus) and gingam (made with, well, ginger).  That stuff is so freakin good I could, and did, drink ten or more a day.

Oh yeah, and the taxi ride back was a danger to my life.  I will skip the details, but it was ridiculous.

My first day back in Faranah has been good though.  I cleaned and organized my house, bought a few things, recharged my computer, and set up a record system to keep track of my finances here.  It should be interesting to see how I spend my money.  People are always to excited to see me after a trip that it almost automatically puts me in a good mood.

I made pancakes, but they came out more like crepes, and the taste isn’t that great either.  Unfortunately I tried several different things this time, and so I don’t know exactly what it was that made them weird.  The scrambled eggs were good though.

Okay, nothing specific to report.  Mail run comes on Sunday, and Friday Sajay and I are taking our cats to the vet to get their rabies shots.  Tomorrow I am supposed to meet with my counterpart to work out a plan for the next few months, which should be interesting, and hopefully will be good.