Two broken hoes and a bucket continued...

So, the story that I wanted to get to that related to the title was about the last day that we were leaving the garden. We were told that we should collect all of our tools and bring it back to the center. While we were gathering our tools and leaving a man starts to chase. We look back to see who it is and to our surprise it was the school director yelliing at us in Wolof. We have absolutely no idea why he is so up set until one of our teachers helped us out with the translation. Apparently he was complaining about us not leaving the materials for the garden. The school director had made a comment to us be fore about how bad our garden was looking. He also told us at the time that if we took the garden tools away he would destroy our garden. This made no sense to us because we were told that we had to bring the tools back. Also, we are not suppose to supply them with materials. If they want to continue the work they need to get their own materials. We already provided free labor for them and also a demo. The school director was just really on a power trip, I hate to say. He had not good intentions for the community and the children that the garden could benefit for.
I was shocked at the un-professionalism that the man had when he tried grabbing the bucket with rope and pulley in it. Which they told us to buy before had because they didn't want to share theirs. Also, what was left of our tools was ridiculous, not only did they want to take our bucket but they left us two broken hoes and our wheel barrel which was in alright shape. Yet, we came with a lot more tools then that. They seemed to just all disappear. While our teacher argued with the school director on the next course of action was made sure that we kept the bucket close so he would try to pull another fast one. If he took that bucket we would have felt as if we lost our pride over the garden, not to sound over extravagant but its true! So, all in all we made it out of the school grounds with our bucket and one broken hoe :/

Two broken hoes and a bucket

Back again at the training center and trying to distress from the last language and tech tests that we had today. The last week of CBT (Center Base Training) also known as our home stay, has been kind of an emotional challenge. There has just been so many changes in the past two months that it is at times hard to keep up. That's probably why just a small glass of coca cola makes my day. You never really know how the day is going to be here, some good some bad so many unexpected things to occur. For example, two and my friends and decided to go to the post office, we weren't exactly sure where it was so my friends host Dad went with us. This is just some random information, my friends host Dad is so Patron it's funny. He is such a religious person yet something about him make it seem like he's up to no good.

Note: So, just to give some back ground on my friends host Dad he is a person that studies the Koran and people go to him for help or information. He seems to be well respected in the area. He also carries lots of money all the time, why? I don't know. One day we were in class and he pulls an American hundred dollar bill from his pocket like it was chump change. Where the heck did he get that???

So, back to the story....We thought that it was going to be a walk away but instead it was more like a taxi car away. It ended up being at the big market near the beach which also is where most of the tourists hangout. So, were were dropped off at the market and walked over to the post office. My friends Dad leaves us because he has some type of business to take care of. We were greeted by seated women with their hands out ready to receive money. After waiting for some time Coumba and I decided to scoop out the market for a bank. We walked down a few ally ways to discover a few uncrowded streets which at the time felt like bliss. We finally got to the bank and Coumba was able to grab some money out. When we were done we went back to the post office. We didn't spend too much time there, or at least I didn't want to spend too much time considering I hadn't eaten anything and was really craving for a egg and bean sandwich. Let me tell you that those sandwiches and cafe toubaab make my day! Anyhow, on our excursion to find such a sandwich at the market was more then what we expected but not more then we bargained for. A man had come up to us and started to do the formal greetings. He was a sketchy guy that smelled like booze and we quickly tried to get away from him. When we did he immediately tried to find his friend that spoke Mandinka. The Mandinka guy was kind enough to show us one of the best places to get Kingkiliba ( this is a tea they have, not sure with sp?). While I ate the sandwich that I was so hoping for, I had also ordered the tea. It was amazing! It tasted like eggnog and for anyone out there who really knows me...I love eggnog! The whole time that we were there we were surrounded by Wolof speakers that tried to communicate with us but we had to translate everything through the guy that showed us the sandwich shop. Once we were all done eating we came out of there with some what of an overwhelming feeling of the question "What just happened?" We were brought to this place by a stranger and communicating in so many ways imaginable. In addition the streets were filled with cars, trash, sellers and buyers, there was no way to focus on just one thing. We were able to make it out alright and make it to our language class with some delay but all in all we had a pretty interesting experience out in the market.