This one’s going to be short and sweet… I think, and sort of. Sweet because it’s short, not because of what happened. Because what happened was decidedly not sweet.
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So, this is part three of the three part series about Peace Corps Mail Run in January 2008.

Tuesday, Day 5: Tendaba to Fajara

Today, woke up in Tendaba all ready for the last real day of MR. It’s the last real day of MR because tonight we’ll be back in Kombo, and I’ll probably be crashing at the Stodge, our capital-region transit house. But before we can relax on the couches eating beans and cassava while drinking a JulBrew in front of any number of movies I’ve already seen ten times, we’ve got to handle the South Bank, a notoriously bad road – very possibly the worst in the coutry – for the better part of the day. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.
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So, tomorrow we’re heading back up to Dakar, Senegal, to take part in WAIST, the West African Invitational Softball Tournament! Early early tomorrow morning, I’ll be leaving town with some of my PC cohorts to catch the ferry across to the north bank, then up to the border on a gele, bounce into Senegal, and then spend the next six hours cramped into a sept-place. And then I’ll get to argue with the taxi driver that’s supposed to bring us to the club we’re meeting at in Dakar in Wolof about how he hasn’t brought us to the right place, and no we’re not going to pay him more to bring us to the place we originally agreed on. *sigh* it is not easy.

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This is the second post in a three-part series about Peace Corps Mail run. The first part is here.

When last we saw our courageous hero, he was going to sleep on an actual bed on McCarthy Island in The Gambia, several days into a week-long trek around the country. Let us now rejoin him and his faithful sidekick as they make their way to the Far East (no, not China folks… think smaller)…

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Last week, Doug (a buddy of mine from Gunjur) and I went on Peace Corps Mail Run (hereafter MR), an intensive six-day trek around The Gambia to deliver mail and packages to every Peace Corps Volunteer in the country, of whom there are over 100. It consisted of early starts, long days, lots of sunscreen, work, and dirt, and more than a fair share of beer. Read on for details.
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I’ve recently begun to tackle the last major milestone in the initial development cycle of this software I’m working on – that of reporting. It’s something that all good business intelligence applications have, and is arguably one of the most important parts of the system. I mean, imagine if you could use a system but not print anything from it? No records, no reports, no anything? It would seem rather crippled, wouldn’t it?
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Okay, lots of stuff all at once. That’s sort of how it goes, though, isn’t it?

So, for the longest time – all semester in fact – I’ve been trying to teach my computer classes without the benefit of computers. Oh how much fun that is. Anyway, I’ve been getting annoyed, as have my students, for the lack of computers in the labs, and GTTI listened! It’s more likely actually that they were aware of the problem well ahead of time and it just took six months to acquire the boxen. It’s pretty sick, actually – I’ll have to upload some pics. All the computers are new Dells that were shipped here from Ireland. All flat screen, dual-core Pentium 4s. Totally unnecessary firepower for the kind of work they’ll be requested to do, but hey, why not? And my counterpart at GTTI (Mr. B) is taking my recommendations on getting voltage regulators for all the systems, as well as listening to other recommendations about routers, firewalls, anti-virus techniques… things are looking up!
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Last week was Halloween, and a buddy of mine decided to have a party at his place in the small river-side village of Sapu near Brikama-ba. I wasn’t sure if I was going to go or not, but in the end I decided to go. I figured that my work would still be here when I got back, and I haven’t gone anywhere since August, so a few days of R&R wouldn’t make or break anything.
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Okay, so the first pic is a still life only in the sense that it’s a photograph. Check out the video though, it’s hilarious – Rhythm just goes tearing around tormenting these sheep that are only trying to protect this little baby lamb between them all. And Rhythm just goes racing around them, darting out of the way when one tries to ram her – no fear, just play. Nothin’ but play. What a great dog.

(Incidentally, these were taken by my now failing camera in Tara’s compound when I came to pick Rhythm up after my trip to Sapu – stay tuned for a post on that trip, I’m working on it, but there’s a lot to say so it’s a long one at several thousand words).

Actually, you can’t check out the video… I can’t upload it. It’s 16 megs and the web interface for uploading stuff times out before I can upload it, and I can’t use FTP because these computers in the PC lab are really locked down. I’ll try to use the systems at GTTI to upload the video, but the internet there is flaky and everything’s all virused up, so I’m sort of paranoid about plugging any of my flash drives into those systems. Well, at least you have the photos for now. Too bad about the video though, it’s really funny.

I’ve just been busy. Really busy. Mostly writing code with a little teaching thrown in for variety, while also doing my part hanging out with other volunteers who come to town.

Pretty much the reason I haven’t written much of anything in the last couple months since I got back from Italy, is because every day is basically the same. Yes, even the weekends. Get up, shower, let Rhythm out, set up my laptop, and work until about 4 in the afternoon. Pack stuff up, go to Omar’s to get some late lunch (hopefully his chicken stew or benachin, my favorites on Tuesday and Wednesday), then head to the office to check email and do some research to find solutions to problems I ran into earlier in the day. After that, I head home, where I usually resume where I left off, and keep coding until about midnight, but sometimes I’ve gone as late as three in the morning.
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