the Apeironian

The Eagle has Landed

Executive Summary:

The installation of the solar power project at the Senior School has been completed. There were some electrical design changes, but the end result is very robust and satisfactory. Many thanks to all who contributed time, work, and money to this project!

The Details:

I found waiting for the Peace Corps to transfer the money to my account unacceptable, so I leveraged a temporary funding mechanism against the presumably forthcoming Peace Corps wire transfer. UPDATE: the PC money has arrived. Armed with that loan, my local electrician counterpart (Banu) and I planned to travel to the Kombo (“big city”) area to buy all electrical supplies for this project. Our initial plan was for me to hitch a ride on an NGO vehicle on Thursday the 17th, and Banu and Ansumana (the School Management Committee Chairperson and official community counterpart for this project) would follow on Saturday in Ansumana’s private vehicle. We made a backup plan for Banu to come down on Sunday using public transport (taxi-bus or gele-gele).

I arrived in Kombo on Thursday, and spent all of Friday hitting every solar power shop in the area searching for the perfect inverter and batteries. If I had known what a battle it would be to source an appropriate inverter for this project, I would have imported one a long time ago. Eventually I located the perfect one. I also located a few battery candidates. My favorite batteries were American imported, top quality sealed VRLA (valve regulated lead acid) AGM (absorbed glass matte) models, and were HUGELY expensive compared to what I had budgeted. I decided to get four of these outstanding batteries instead of 10 cheap ones. My theory is that the extreme heat up here would kill 10 cheap batteries long before their capacity advantage came into play over the four higher quality ones. All the other supplies were readily available at various shops.

Saturday came and went, with no word from Ansumana. I was disappointed, but now I’m over it. True to his word, Banu came down on Sunday, and we met at our chosen shop Monday morning. Apparently Banu and the shop operator are long time buddies, so the shop guy didn’t try to rip us off too much. Don’t get me wrong: the haggling process for all of the equipment we wanted to buy literally took all day. I got there at 9, Banu got there at 10, we made a field trip looking for inverters and got lunch, went back to the shop, and finally concluded our deal around 6:30.

On our inverter field trip, we went to the shop where I had found my “perfect” inverter. We tested it, and it didn’t work. The shop assured us that they had another one at their other location. They called and confirmed that they had one. We went there. They didn’t have one. We taxied all the way across town to a solar power integrator owned by a Dutch gentleman who didn’t have an inverter for me, but was willing to discuss my electrical design. He convinced me it was a bad idea to connect the solar charge controller in parallel with the water pump controller. Essentially, the argument went, both the pump and charge controller assume they are the only thing connected to a solar array, and modify their behavior based on the available voltage and current from the array. If two such devices are connected to an array in parallel, the algorithmic analysis of each device may become disrupted by the other device, resulting in two confused (or at worst, destroyed) devices. I decided it wasn’t worth the risk, and we went with Banu’s original suggestion, which was to separate two of the 235 watt panels for exclusive use of our solar power setup. He basked in the glory of being able to say “I told you so!!”

Here are Banu and I in the solar shop:

Here’s the receipt for all the solar power equipment:

On Tuesday morning, we returned to the shop, called a taxi, and stuffed all of the equipment in, to the chagrin of the driver. We schlepped it across town, off the paved road onto a horribly pitted, peaked, valleyed, mountainous excuse for a dirt road, to the family compound of the gele-gele driver from Darsilami (the next big town East of Diabugu). The guy wasn’t there, but his wife (who was also Banu’s sister somehow) assured us that our stuff would be safe and that he would call us with a price for transporting the baggage to Diabugu. We never received that call, but I was informed that the vehicle was departing from Westfield junction at 5AM the following morning, and that our stuff would be on board.

I woke up at 4 AM Wednesday morning, and hiked from my buddy’s place in Bakau to the Westfield junction. I got there just after 5, just before the vehicle showed up. Banu uncharacteristically arrived on time as well. All our stuff appeared to be on the vehicle, though much of it was buried, unobservable, under a mountain of other baggage on top of the vehicle. We traveled the half hour to the Banjul Ferry Terminal, where we hoped to catch the first ferry departing at 7 AM. Only one of the three ferries was operating that day, and we didn’t get on the ferry until noon. That’s six hours waiting for the ferry, plus an hour ferry ride. During the wait, I learned that the gentleman sitting in the front passenger seat was a Sarahule from Diabugu, who had lived for 20 years in Spain, and 14 in the USA. He is a martial arts instructor (Muay Thai and Tae Kwon Do), has trained in both Thailand and South Korea, and has a training studio in Brooklyn. He was flabbergasted and thrilled that I can speak Sarahule. I got his business card. He also showed up in the compound across the lane from my family compound the following day – apparently my neighbors are his family. Banu and I used the first couple hours of our wait for the ferry to negotiate the fare for our cargo. This process consists of the driver and the customer alternating standing, sitting, yelling, waving arms, acting shocked and destitute, deploring the outrageous exploitation of the other, being devoured by clouds of mosquitoes, and eventually settling on a price about half of the original quote. It was the most intense and protracted such interaction I have had the dubious pleasure of experiencing in this country.

After the Ferry Fiasco, we finally commenced the long journey Eastward. Luckily, a friendly police officer occupied the second front passenger seat in our vehicle, so we cruised through the copious and notoriously troublesome police/military/immigration/customs checkpoints with little difficulty. Here are a couple pictures of our rig stopped at Farafenni for a lunch break:

We arrived at Diabugu around 9 PM, unloaded all the baggage onto a waiting cart, and hauled it all back to my family compound. Here’s a video clip:

Thursday morning, my host Dad and I wheelbarrowed all the stuff down to the school. I called Banu, and he came down to discuss the plan of attack. I told him I wanted everything done ASAP. I asked him how long it would take us to install everything. He claimed it would take two days (it was already late morning, so Friday and Saturday). He gave me a price. I told him I would agree to the price if he and my host Dad (who is his assistant on jobs of this kind) shared the money, and if I could subtract 300 Dalasis for every day after the first two that it wasn’t completed. In return, he asked if I would add 300 if we got it done on Friday. I said sure! We got it done on Friday.

We started Thursday evening with the trench digging, filled the trench with water so it could soak overnight and soften up the ground. We finished digging Friday morning, pulled the cable through the conduit, laid it in the trench, placed and wired the batteries, secured the conduit along the underside of the roof of the Admin building, drilled holes for all cables, installed sockets, light, and switch, and connected everything. Before the sun went down, the entire system was operational. Here’s some video of the process:

Ultimately, the system works very well. When we decided to separate the two 235 watt panels for use of this project, we also decided to go with a 12 volt battery system instead of a 24 volt one. This opened up our choice of inverters as well. I have been running one and two computers on the system for the past few days, and it has behaved very well. If the users of the system show any kind of restraint whatsoever, the system should last for many years.

That being said, if the school had newer, more power efficient computers, they could probably triple the number of computers they could run on the system. The ones they have now are P4 Dells with CRT displays that suck down the power about as fast as any consumer desktop computer ever made. This is too bad, but it’s better than nothing! Who knows, maybe someone else will supply them with modern computers, and then they will really be able to take advantage of the solar power system.

Here are all the pictures from the whole shebang:

I would like to thank all of the benefactors to this project. The individuals and organizations that contributed to this project are listed here (in no particular order) – please let me know if you would like your name removed from this list!:

BRAD TREAT
MARILYN ROMERO
MS L CLERVI
LINDA RAINWATER
MARC PAQUETTE
MAREA BISHOP
ADAM JACOBS
MARK TREAT
JEFFERY MUNDY
JACQUELINE A. TAYLOR
AUDREY HARE
LINDSEY KISLINGER
ELIZABETH MUELLER
HEATHER TREAT
KEITH HODGES
BRIAN FONKEN
LEE EDBERG
KEVIN SERAFIN
MATTHEW PITTORF
ED DELLEFEMINE
JAMES L BROCK
MICHAEL MUSCATO
ANDREA L ZIMMERMAN
ROGER G DARLEY
HARRIETTE TREAT
MATT AND ERIN TWYMAN
BRAD TREAT
VINCENT L BOVE
FERDINAND D. CLERVI
ANDREA SCHLOTTMAN
BILL SEXTON
AMICS I AMIGUES DE DIABUGU BATAPHA (a Spanish NGO from Santa Coloma)

Show Me The Money

I received funding for this project from three separate sources. My original plan was to receive cash from the Partnership grant, cash from a community contribution, and donations of transportation and labor from the community. None of the community contributions materialized. The School Management Committee chairperson essentially did not produce any of the resources he promised to provide. Instead, I was able to secure the funds from two additional sources. An individual American donor provided the cash that was expected to come from the commmunity. A Spanish NGO based in Diabugu also put some money towards transportation and labor.

Here is a link to a PDF of the final project budget spreadsheet

Here is a link to a PDF of the final project report

This project was the last major thing I wanted to accomplish here, and my remaining time here is now short. If anyone has any special requests for anything related to this project or my presence here, please let me know this week.

Thanks for reading.

MC

progress/antiprogress

After four emails, two voicemails, and a week and a half, the Washington Peace Corps guy finally got back to me. He told me by the time all the bureaucrats and banks get their grubby hands on my project funding, it’s going to be at least two and a half weeks until I get it. Since waiting two and a half weeks to start my project is unacceptable to me, I am going to investigate more immediate temporary funding options. More to come.

MC

project = funded!

Thanks to all of you that have contributed to the project; it has been fully funded! I hope the Peace Corps will expidite the transfer of funds here so that I can begin the project ASAP. I will also get a list of donor names and would like to recognize those that did not choose to remain anonymous.

I will update this space when I get the money and begin the project!

MC

Solar project technical update

Some technical info about the Diabugu school solar power project:

The existing panels consist of two arrays, each installed at different times and both connected to the water pump controller. The first array has six 135 Watt (12V nominal) panels, all in series. The second array has three 230 Watt (24V nominal) panels, all in parallel. The two arrays are wired in series to the water pump controller. The total nominal open-circuit voltage of the whole system (calculated according to the labels on the panels) is about 170 volts. I measured the open circuit voltage of the whole shebang at around 150 volts (temperature dependent – voltage drops with increasing temperature). Voltage under load varies a LOT, but is usually around 100 volts.

The grand idea behind this project is to arrange everything so that 100% of the available solar power can be used for EITHER the water pump OR battery charging OR some combination of the two, without having to flip any switches or fiddle with anything. It would have been much easier to electrically separate one of the two solar arrays and use one for charging batteries and one for the water pump, but that would have left some solar power going to waste on a regular basis. To achieve minimal waste, I plan to connect the solar charge controller and the water pump controller in parallel to the existing (slightly modified) solar array.

If you have worked with solar charge controllers, you will know that they usually come in 12, 24, and 48 volt nominal configurations, matched with equivalent voltage battery banks. If you have a nominally 24 volt solar array, you have a nominally 24 volt battery bank, and vice-versa. I have a nominally 96 volt solar array to work with. Even if I constructed a 96 volt battery bank, it would be very dangerous (a short circuit with a metal wrench could liquefy the wrench, the battery, and the unfortunate butter-fingered victim), and they don’t make commonly available DC to AC inverters that take 96 volts input. Fortunately, there is a magical new class of solar charge controllers called MPPT, or Maximum Power Point Tracking, which do two primary things differently than traditional PWM (pulse width modulation) charge controllers. First, it compares the voltages of the PV (photovoltaic, or solar) array and the battery bank. Tracking along the current-voltage curve of the PV system, it then uses a beefy DC to DC converter (mine can do 45 amps) to convert the PV input voltage to the voltage at which the battery bank can accept the highest current for its particular nominal voltage. The end result is that you can have a much higher PV input voltage, which then gets converted down to the correct voltage for the battery bank, while maximizing current flow through the system. In practical terms in this context it means 1) I get to do my project, and 2) I get to use thinner wire to run the 80 meters from the panel to the office, which saves more money than the extra I paid for the MPPT unit over a regular one.

These MPPT controllers are not available in this country, so I imported one at my own expense. It’s possible I may be able to reimburse myself.

The max open circuit input voltage for this bad boy is 150 volts. It starts to attenuate current at 140 V though, so I am going to have to reduce the array voltage a little. I plan to re-wire two of the 135W panels into a parallel configuration, which will in turn be wired in series with the rest of the 135W panels. This should shave about 19V open circuit off the total, which should be adequate. This change should not affect water pump operation.

I plan to use a 24V nominal battery array. I want to get 8 200 Amp-Hour deep cycle sealed batteries, but may have to reduce the number depending on cost. I plan to get a 1000W 24V pure sine wave inverter (best quality I can find).

One remaining big mystery (which nobody seems to be able to answer for me) is how the charge controller and water pump controller are going to behave being wired in parallel. My instinct tells me that if they are both running, they will split the available current depending on their individual resistance characteristics. The resistance for the water pump should be pretty consistent (it’s either pumping or its not), but the charge controller will be all over the place, depending on the charge level of the batteries and the load on the inverter. If you know about this stuff and can predict more intelligently what this beast is going to do, I would be very grateful for your input!

I also have to figure out what conduit I’m going to run the wire in underground, and a few other details. Oh yeah, if anyone knows whether I need to ground this thing on the charge controller end, even if it’s already grounded at the pump controller (wired in parallel), please let me know!

I think that’s about it.

MC

Diabugu school solar power upgrade project

Update #1: project technical information

I am coordinating a solar power upgrade project for the Senior Secondary school here in Diabugu. The school has an array of solar panels used for pumping water, but once the tanks are full, the panels sit unused. This project aims to harvest the unused portion of energy from the panels, store it in batteries, and use it to power small-scale computer operations in the administrative building for official work, student and teacher training, and computer maintenance. Currently, these tasks are being performed under the power of either a small gasoline or a large diesel generator, both of which are expensive and unsustainable to run.

The people of Diabugu, and the students and staff of the Senior School are asking for donations to fund equipment purchases for this project. I have submitted a Peace Corps Partnership Program Grant Proposal to facilitate this process. If you are interested in donating, you may do so here (click this link to go to the project donation page).

Here is a 15 minute video I put together showing the environment, and some of the staff and students (and me losing my hat). Read on after the video for more information.

You may download an MP4 (h.264) of the video here.

Here is the executive summary taken from the application. You will also find this summary on the Peace Corps project donation page.

Diabugu Senior Secondary School has approximately 1 kilowatt of solar power for their water pump system, which is substantially underutilized (the water system doesn’t need all that power). The school has a large number of viable computers, but no consistent power. By co-utilizing the solar panels for both water pumping and battery bank charging to power a small number of computers, the existing infrastructure can be efficiently leveraged to provide consistent training to teachers, students, and community members. Benefits of consistent power for computers includes training on basic and advanced computer operation for students, teachers, and administrators, hardware and software maintenance for lab computers, local completion of mandatory digital office and administration office work, and long-term, consistent computer exposure. Technically, this project will consist of a charge-controlled battery bank and inverter located in the school office building, connected in parallel with the existing water pump solar array (about 80 meters away). Primary equipment needed for this project includes wiring to connect the solar and battery systems, a solar charge controller, deep cycle solar batteries, and a sine wave inverter. The installation and setup of the equipment will be performed when possible by school and community members under technical supervision (by Mike Clervi, the Peace Corps volunteer), and with specialist assistance when needed. The two main goals of the project are 1) development of project-centered, goal-oriented mentality in the school and community project leaders. This project will be driven by these local people, with technical and financial support. 2) The installation, and multi-year maintenance and use of a robust photovoltaic/battery/inverter power system for small scale computer use (2-3 simultaneous computers). The system has been designed with battery/inverter capacity ratios to promote long-term health of the system and to discourage excessive battery discharge, which shortens system life.

All project documentation can be viewed here (PDF).
Peace Corps Partnership Program Grant Proposal
Grant Proposal Budget
Grant Proposal Timeline

I plan to update this space with pictures, video, and descriptions of the progress of the project, as well as the final result.

If you have any questions, want to donate but don’t know how, need more information, or just want to chat, please email me or post a comment on this page.

My Woman is Here!

Traveling to Dakar wasn’t as hairy as I thought it would be. Good thing I learned that French though; no English, Mandinka, or Sarahule up there – Wolof and French only. I picked Heather up at the airport the night of the 15th, and we got a car down the coast a piece to the Sobo Bade hotel in Toubab Dialo.

The hotel was fantastic, with pristine beaches, rock outcroppings, rustic interesting architecture, lots of foliage and amazing food. And air conditioning! Click any of the pics to go to the whole album.

Our second day there we visited the nearby Bandia Forest, which is kind of like a huge zoo with no fences that you drive through. They had rhinos, giraffes, zebras, buffalo, water buffalo, hyenas (in a cage), ostriches, monkeys, impalas, crocodiles, and lots of baobab trees. Click any of the pictures to go to the whole album.

After three nights at Sobo Bade, we returned to the Gambia by taxi to Mbour, then sept place (station wagon stuffed with people) to Kowlack (never go there), then to Farafenni. We stayed at a nice guest house there (slept in pools of sweat because the power station blew up and there was no power), then got a car to Basse the next day. Actually the car was just to Bansang, but a nice guy from the Ministry of Education picked us up on the ferry and took us to Basse. That ferry blew Heather’s mind. You have to load a couple cars onto it, then everyone lines up and pulls the cable to get boat across the river.

We stayed the night in Basse, then the next day shopped for presents for the family and lugged our crap across the river to the car park, where we just missed the first car and waited for 4 hours for the next car to Diabugu to fill up. We got home late, but my family was really excited to see us. We distributed the presents, and passed out.

Over the week that we have been here, we have done the following (in no particular order):

• Attended Monday school assembly and met some of the teachers
• Learned how to wash clothes by hand (difficult!)
• Learned how to pound grain and how to prepare green leaf sauce
• Hiked to some nearby wetlands, hung out, and birdwatched
• Biked to some nearby cliffs/bluffs, walked onto an outcropping, and watched a troop of monkeys swinging in the trees below us, then almost got caught in a storm on the way home
• Took a day trip to Basse by bike through the bush, went to the bank, and biked home the same day (never done that before – we are so rugged)
• Visited the market in Diabugu – got veggies for the fam at the market
• Helped type up final exams with some of the teachers at my school
• The Dude (our cat) caught a big rat and two lizards and we are very proud of him
• My family killed a duck for us and the resulting lunch was *amazing*

Click any of the pictures to go to the whole album.

Heather’s and my health have been overall pretty good. My rash is still here only (see previous postings), and Heather had a little heat rash on her arms. It started raining and that helped cool things down a lot.

Tomorrow morning we plan to schlep our stuff out to the river (about 2 miles – on a donkey cart ideally) and get picked up for our boat trip down the river. Till next time!

Michael and Heather

I got a rash, man – part 2

So, back to my story about my rash. After I returned to Diabugu and finished my second full course of prednisone, my allergic rash was under control, but it had weakened my immune system enough to allow all types of skin bacteria to go crazy. My whole back blew up into some kind of mutant super-acne, and I started to get a pretty righteous case of crotch rot. No, you don’t want to see pictures. It was about this time that some people came to visit me on the second stage of the “Tour de URR” which actually means nothing except that a few people rode their bikes through the bush and visited other people. I think I had six visitors. We all went camping by the river near Diabugu, I fell off my bike while trying to answer the phone and sustained minor contusions, and overall the experience was successful. The pictures have managed to avoid being in any coherent order, but what happened was: we all rode to Sarre Demba Torro to see Jenna, and camped in her backyard. My hammock broke her fence posts (actually my fat ass broke the posts), so I slept on the bantaba out front. Next day we all tried to ride to Sarre Ngai, but Kasey had a flat tire, and she and Adrienne stayed behind. The rest of us met Brendan, Dave, and Julia at Sarre Ngai, went to the luumo (big market), then rode to Brendan’s place. This took pretty much all day. We cooked dinner (delicious curry by Brendan), pre-gamed, then attended the Jaliba concert (locally famous Kora player). Kasey and Adrienne didn’t make it; they went to Basse (problems with horse carts, and no vehicles to ride, etc). So, after returning from the concert at 4 AM, Max and I (Adrienne’s visitor from America) biked to Basse at like 8 AM (the other pansies took a vehicle).

At this point my rash in that certain lower middle sensitive essential area was getting OUT of control. I called the Doc and he told me to come back to Kombo to deal with it. It sounds like I’m always in that place, but I’m really not. I got lots of different drugs (antibiotics, topicals, etc.) and rapidly recovered. There were various other entertaining activities as well.

In the car on the way back to Diabugu, an interesting phenomenon developed. Every time we would approach a police, immigration, military, etc. checkpoint (there are a lot), the people in the car would start talking a lot, and getting really excited. When we got there, one or two of them would usually get out and have some conversation with the police, or military guys, or whatever. Then when we pulled away they would all ask “how much did you pay,” or “you talk next time,” and they would hand money around among themselves. I couldn’t figure out what was going on for a long time; I just knew it would behoove me to keep out of it. Eventually one of the dudes explained to me that the big metal trunk on the roof of the car contained untold numbers of new mobile phones, which one of the passengers was smuggling to Basse under the radar to sell (avoiding heavy taxes). Also, the day before, all the military and police checkpoint staffing had rotated, so all standing bribes were wiped out and people had to start over. So the dude with the mobiles had enlisted the help of the other passengers to keep his butt out of the fire. The best part was the old toothless Fula woman in the back was just as into it as everyone else, getting all stoked when we successfully passed another checkpoint and yelling suggestions for the next time.

If you’re wondering why I haven’t said anything about the school, and computers, and working, it’s because there’s not much to say. At the end of the second term, the Principal and I both wrote letters to the Permanent Secretary of the ministry of education requesting funding for the IT program (primarily to buy fuel). I included a spreadsheet with all relevant data. At the beginning of the third term, we received a visit from the Planning Unit of the Ministry. The people that came were professional, competent, and seemed interested. They were very encouraging, and seemed to suggest that getting the resources we requested wouldn’t be a problem. We haven’t heard from them since.

The Peace Corps training department (and a dude named Josh) arranged a Men’s Retreat, held at Jonjonbureh Camp. It turned out to be a fairly righteous event, with volunteer-led training sessions (I did a session on solar power and one on Tai Chi and Kung Fu). The environment was nice. The monkeys try to steal your food at all times. Here are some pics of the place:

Latest developments: my crotch rash is back, I called the doc, and started taking erythromycin again. I’m leaving on Saturday to go to Basse, then to Farafenni on Sunday, then Dakar on Monday, and Heather will arrive Tuesday night. We have a pretty radical vacation planned for the month that she’s here. I will try to keep this thing more current. Haha, I always say that.

Listen: I’m getting frustrated with the lack of power at the school. I’m about to give up on the generator and focus on solar. They got three new huge solar panels there, bringing their total capacity to around 1.4 KW, which is enough for a few computers. I need funding to siphon power off the water pump solar array and use it for computers (for wire, batteries, a charge controller, and an inverter). I don’t know where that money is going to come from yet, but I’m fairly confident I’m going to make sure it comes from somewhere. This is getting a little ridiculous. Watch this space for updates.

Wish me luck getting to and from Dakar!

MC

I got a rash, man – part 1

Here’s a brief update on the last few months for you fine people.

I got a rash, man. I’ve never been allergic to any food in my life. I had also never consumed a cashew fruit before. It so happens that I am allergic to this particular delicacy. My face swelled up over two days, then that got better and I got a super itchy rash all over. ALL over. This was a bummer, but luckily I was planning on going down to Kombo for the All Volunteer conference anyway. I did so, swung by the med unit to snag a boatload of prednisone (oral corticosteroid), and slammed that stuff over the course of 5 days instead of the prescribed 9. I was really itchy and I wanted it to go away. It did in fact go away, but then it came back, and I had to go get more steroids. Anyway, back to that story later.

During my rash recovery and relapse period, I attended the All Vol conference. It essentially consisted of listening to Peace Corps policy for three days, punctuated by incredible dining experiences. It took place at the Sheraton – nice. During that time I stayed at Chris and Kane’s house, there was dinner at Blair’s, and a really nerdy dinner (except for Katie) at Doug the solar guy’s place. All of this is photographically documented here:

On the evening before the last day of the conference, we had an open mic night at a venue in Bakau called Sinatra’s. The level of participation and the quality of the performances were high. Documentation:

I’m not sure how to describe this next event. I got a call from Marnie asking if I wanted to go to a fashion show. The ticket was usually expensive, but she could hook me up for free. Apparently some of the judges were going to be PC volunteers. In fact, it turned out that 5 of the 6 judges were PCVs, and it was a fashion and talent pageant, called “Queen of Companies” (I think), and each contestant was backed by a corporate sponsor. It was amazing, hilarious, outrageous, and LONG! It was supposed to start at 9, it started at 11, and finished an hour after I left at around 6 AM. I’m going to shut up now and show you videos:

On the way back to Diabugu, a bunch of peeps wanted to get Fula scars. This is a permanent scar traditionally done by Fulas, but other tribes also do it. Normally it’s three parallel slashes, filled in with peanut ash so they stay black, but there are many variations. Here’s the peeps getting cut:

I eventually made it back to Diabugu after the silliness of Kombo. The mangos were ready by this time, and it was the job of Grandma and the kids to go to the orchard and pick/gather them every other day. I started going with them, and it was pretty fun. At one point Grandma walked over to the primitive dirty well in the garden, pulled up a bucket of fetid water, and started drinking it. I said “hey Grandma, that water’s dirty! Is that safe?” She laughed, said “yeah, it’s dirty!” and kept sluggin’ it down! She is a highly robust old woman.

I installed Rosetta Stone on my computer, and started using it to study french (for my trip to Senegal to pick up Heather), and also to help teach my host brother Bamoree english. I started him out on level 3, since his english is pretty good, but realized that was too high, because of the reading and writing components. I procured level 1, and that has been going really well.

Obviously not a golfer

Lately my angling career has slowed down a little. By that i mean I failed to catch any fish this morning on my third such excursion in this place. I did manage, however, to lodge my lure against a foliage abutment, and spend about half an hour wallowing up to my knees in river mud waving the f-ing stick around trying to un-post this valued item from the tantalizingly proximal branch on which it calmly abided. The tangle was too troublesome, and the lure evaded me. So did the fish. I didn’t even get a bite today. I suspect my lack of technique, poor choice of location, misuse of standard equipment, and poverty of any ability or skill whatsoever are probably at least partly to blame. Besides that stuff though, I’ve got all the other aspects pretty well nailed down. Maybe the fourth time will be the charm. I have one lure left, after all.

On a more positive note, i finished reading ‘The devil in the white city’ by Erik Larson today. It’s about the Chicago world fair, its architects, and a serial killer. Fascinating stuff man. All true, too. Recommended.

In case you’re wondering why I’m not doing any actual work, it’s because school is closed for Easter break. That’s right – Easter. Until the 12th. As far as i know, not a single student or teacher celebrates Easter. Or anyone in the town or general area for that matter. Hmm… To be fair, its the break in between the second and third academic terms, and they probably didn’t have anything better to call it.

Posted by Wordmobi

Another one bites the dust

Unfortunately, Peace Corps has lost a good volunteer in the Gambia. Philip is a great guy, and I am sorry to see him go. I am happy, however, that he is safe now, after his little adventure.

Here is a link to a Gambian newspaper article on the aforementioned little adventure. I have no involvement in, nor commentary on this information, I am merely providing this link to publicly available information for your reference. I have to say that so I don’t get in trouble.