HAPPY RAMADAN EVERYONE!!! Actually ramadan was two days ago so happy late ramadan! Karem is the 30 (i think) day fast that muslims do where they cant eat or drink anything from 5am till 6pm, and its very difficult in this hot weather. Well the last day of Karem everyone goes to the mosque in the morning then around 10amish the prayer is over, the fast is over, and everyone is relieved and happy and they celebrate by gorging themselves until they get sick (I drank so much bissap that I literally thought I was going to throw up). Last year ramadan was soon after I got to my village so I didnt really know anyone, but this year I was with francois in his neighborhood so I got the full experience of ramadan. It's like the best possible mix of thanksgiving and halloween: you go door to door to all your neighbors but instead of getting candy you get entire meals. And bissap. Lots and lots of bissap, which is like a syrupy-grapeish type of juice made from boiling flowers. Seriously drank SO much of that stuff, and then we biked way way out to buy really good zoom koom, which is like sugared flour water (really good once you get used to it), but when we finally got there, they didnt have zoom koom that day. What did they have????? Bissap of course!! Bissap was like the last thing in the world I wanted to consume more of, but since we had biked all the way out there I figured what the hell, and we drank more bissap, and then the owner came out and of course since francois knows everyone in this country he knows the owner of the zoom koom/bissap place so he came out and greeted us with... YOU GUESSED IT more bissap!! So thats when i started to feel ill like I was literally going to throw up all over the place and we still had that long bike ride back. I didn't throw up, I'm happy to say. But to this day I still don't feel quite right. I guess rediculous ammounts of that syrupy grapey juice just isn't good for you.

So francois is on his way over to help write a new grant for the theatre project. We're still working on that its taking way longer than it should. The deadline is in four days so we'll see if this thing actually ever happens.

Okay well I just found out I'm getting a sitemate!!!! That means another peace corps volunteer will be living with me in bourzanga. Score!!