Pretty quiet over here.

This morning I woke up and was suddenly struck by the thought "I've lived in Africa for the past 9 months. And I speak a native language. And I'm doing developement work with rural subsistance farmers. Holy Crap! I really joined the Peace Corps!" These thoughts never really stop happening. It's kinda fun. It helps keep it sounding exciting.

Truthfully though, when I'm not going crazy from medication mishaps or social inequality, Peace Corps is actually quite dull and unexciting really. I guess it has it's fun anecdotes. But Jimmy and I were talking the other day how we had actually spent the last two weeks at post happy to be there. We hadn't had a burning desire go to Niamey, or give up and go home. It was nice. And it really wasn't very interesting. Most of my time is spent hanging out in my village reading, playing guitar, and occaisionally socializing with villagers. It's nice though.

I guess I do have some news from the village side of things. First off, I have a sheep. Yes that is correct. I purchased a sheep at last weeks market. For less than $40. Why? Why not? It's not a particularly large sheep and it doesn't really produce wool. So I'll fatten him up over the next few months and then have some people over for a sheep feast.

Buying him was a fun endeavor as I had to give two of my villagers money and then hover around the animal market while they went and poked all the sheep and did negotiations. Every now and then they would come over and ask which ones I liked. After they finally bought the sheep and gave me the little piece of paper that says it's my sheep now, it was hilarious to see the look on the vendor's face when he realized he just sold a sheep to a white guy and didn't make a rediculous profit.

Also, it seems things are moving on my Cereal Bank project that I'm doing in my village. The purpose of this project is to have a an organization in the village that will buy grain while it's cheap after harvest, and then when everyone has run out of food it will sell it at only slightly above purchase price, but way below market value. Well it seems my villagers have a ton of kokari as they organized an executive board for the cereal bank with a president, vp, etc. all by them selves while I was in town for swear in. So we've been holding meetings and now I just have to get the budget and project proposal approved and then I can start asking all you nice folks for money.

Aside from that, life in the bush goes on as it always does. Nothing too exciting. It's just kinda nice. Rainy season is over, which is sad but the mornings are nice and cool now. Still, after 9 months of summer, I'm ready for fall. I am insanely jealous of all of you in the states right now as this is generally my favorite time of year, in New England especially. But atleast I have a sheep.