petit a petit (little by little)

Well here I am with another month that just flew by. .....

The biggest thing of this month were the "fish fets" (I gues that would be fish festivals in real english). My two closest neighbors both have these yearly festivals when the water is low enough in a nearby lake to go fishing. The first one was full of soccer games and dancing. It was at Ingrid's village about 30 km away. The original plan was that maybe 3 or 4 other volunteers were going to be at this festival. The day after we got there we got a radio message from another volunteer that 11 more volunteers were coming because the date of another festival had been changed. So here we are 15 Tubaboos (Malinke for white person) staying in Ingrids little hut (probably about the same size as my bedroom in Pueblo for those of you who know). It was crazy, but Ingrid handled the change of plans with such grace and it turned out to be an awesome reunion. I wasn't terribly excited to have so many Americans there because you feel like your in a parade anytime you walk anywhere and EVERYONE wants a photo op with all the Americans. Sounds fun I know, but believe me the novelty eventually wears off and you just grin and bear. I danced a little bit, but not nearly as much as I wanted too cause I get too shy. Whatever little dancing I did really seemed to be quite impressive because everyone in my village still talk about it. The second one was a little smaller (not in terms of number of volunteers, however) and much more intimate. We befriended this dance group from the city and learned some dancing from them. At this festival we did a couple of AIDS talks to a group of youth. We thought it was kinda of cheesy but everyone really liked it. They even asked for an encore performance in which we did for a dance party. We went up to visit the dancers in Siguiri and they all want to teach me to dance. I'm thinking that it would be awesome to get in good with these people and have them come when I do big sensibilizations. Everyone in my village knows them so it should attrack a large crowd.

Sorry that's all I can handle writing for now, but I'll try to write again before I leave Kankan
Lots of love,
Melinda