Day 14

Day 14 1/16
Last night was a very disrupting sleep, strange noises with Josh sleep talking and knowing the creature was still in the room prohibited us from getting our sleep. We went to breakfast and had an oatmeal like texture with banana flavoring with bread. Then we went back to our room where we were to get ready for the day, but there were a few problems the night before so we could not take showers. As we were getting ready for bed last night we flushed the toilet and it started draining extremely slow. It completely drained but within a few minutes it starting coming out of the shower drain back onto the bathroom floor. We told the owner in the morning right after breakfast and he cleaned it up but did not fix the problem, but he did contact the plumber for us. While in the room getting ready we saw our creature. This creature has been present in the room since we have been living there, but we have become accustom to him. At first we thought it was a huge cockroach; this however was not the case, it happened to be a mouse. The mouse ran out from Josh D’s bag and immediately everyone was on top of their bed. We then saw it run into the other room where Justin and I originally moved out of. We moved out of that room because the creature was content in the couch located in that room and it did not have a functional light that we could use at night. So anyways the mouse ran into the other room and we decided getting ready to visit the Peace Corp would have to wait. We opened the door took the couch outside hoping he would be inside of it and our problem would be solved. As we were opening the door the neighbors asked us what we were doing and I asked her if we could borrow her broom to get the mouse out. She gave us a hand broom and a neighboring boy got the regular broom. We shut the door to the other room so as not to let the mouse back into the other room. They saw him shoot behind my bag so I said that I would move it. As I began to move things around Matt grabbed my drum and began to beat on it. I pulled by bag out of the corner and the mouse began to climb the wall. The boy knocked the mouse off the wall and began swatting at it trying to kill it. We were armed with 2 brooms, a hammer, a trashcan, and a towel. It scurried across the floor where it was first grazed with the hammer which knocked it slightly off balance. Next came the small broom which pushed it close to the door. All along the boy was swinging the large broom with killing force and Matt continued to beat on the drum. Justin somehow caught it in the trashcan as it made a dash for the open door, and the neighbor boy grabbed the tail of the mouse, swung it around, and the story of the creature ended as it was thrown off the ground. So now we could get ready to go to the beach followed by a visit to the Peace Corp. At the beach we studied our map and notes to get ready for the test on Saturday. We then went to the Peace Corp where we met some volunteers. Jonathan, our guide, was involved in growing crops in rural areas. He majored in film making and was a very interesting man with a good sense of humor. We asked Jonathan what the term Tubob meant. He told us that it means White Person or Foreigner but it not meant to be derogatory. He said that at times he takes it as a derogatory statement and doesn’t appreciate the children calling him that. From the Peace Corp we went to the fruit liquor place named Kim Kambo. This place was originally run by people from Belgium but they sold the place to the British because they fell in love with tourists and moved back to the tourists homes. The alcohol produced there is from the cashew trees. The fruit of the cashews is squeezed and made into a very poor quality wine. This wine is distilled to get straight alcohol where they later use fruits to flavor and dilute the alcohol. We did some testing of 4 different types I enjoyed most of them but was only willing to buy 2 bottles at 300 dalasi per bottle which is 15 dollar for each. Hopefully we are able to get the bottles back into the states without breaking, and because they do not have labels on them we can simply say that they are fruit juices and will not be questioned about them. After Kim Kambo we went to the Serekunda market which was pretty busy. Many of the markets are used by locals to get supplies they need and are not so much made for tourists as we have seen before. People did not approach us as much as they had done before, I’m not sure if that is because they knew we weren’t buying or they just didn’t care. We went back to the house and went back to our room where we discovered some of the damage the mouse had actually done to our room. He ate part of a chewy bar, a pack of crackers, a Snickers, and some of the paper protecting our sand paintings. Later we had dinner at 8 which consisted of Fried Chicken, French Fries, and Cole Slaw. Tonight we are going out to African Queen a restaurant/bar where the owners of Kim Kambo said they would be tonight giving out free samples. Today was a very good day, we got rid of our creature and had some free time to relax, but it was not too relaxed that we didn’t get anything accomplished today.

Oh dad, guess what? Remember that sink you just got rid of at the office? We have them here except yours may have had them beat because you had hot water on one side and cold on the other, they have only cold water. So now you have taken one more step up from a third world sink.