| (2003-09-29) The Pit Latrine I fell into a pit latrine last night. Okay, so it was dark, my flashlight burnt out, and I was attempting to follow Gambians who knew the way (um... let me just state the obvious- Africans are hard to see in the dark)- past a large group of people hogging the road-sitting in lawn chairs... and suddenly before realizing that there was no longer solid ground under my feet, I had taken the plunge. Let me tell you about my village. Three words: Open sewers everywhere. How I possibly managed to fall in a latrine that *wasn't* filled to the brim with fecal matter is beyond me. That's right, I fell into an empty pit latrine. But I hurt my arm trying to find something to grab onto. And what was worse, was that people who saw me fall in, yelled "Toubab!!" and some other words in an African language as loudly as they could, and everyone looked at me. (Let me state something else, white people, in comparison to Africans, glow in the dark, and so everyone saw me fall.) ** I took a walk across the street from the vegetable market where I get food, to the ocean. A huge amount of people in the fish industry. There were many, many people selling fish, and many, many discarded (rotting) fish on the sand. Not a good place to take a walk or smell the ocean air. But nice to experience, nonetheless.
It's becoming the dry season here, and the clouds are changing. It hardly rains anymore, which is sad, but the thing I miss most are the huge, billowing clouds. The sunsets, though, are still amazing.
It's strange to walk around here, because every single road is a farm. There are dogs, cats, chickens, turkeys, goats, sheep, cows and horses everywhere.
And lizards.
And then yesterday I spent the entire day at the beach. Taking a long walk with Jinny and then lazing in a hammock and reading a book. My view:
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