After ringing in 2011 in front of Akon standing in a bubble on a tree in St. Louis, I decided that nothing could beat it besides having a village new years, clearly. Especially because of all the family and friends visiting plus All Volunteer Conference and WAIST coming up, I am spending a lot of time outside of village and miss it sometimes (also an excellent money saver).
Anyways, everyone all day was talking about the 31, but as I’ve spent so much time here now, I’ve found that people are often a lot of talk when they talk about the crazy things they are going to do for holidays. I.e. Tabaski when they say they are going to party all night, everyone passes out at like 9pm, which I have no problem with, but something I had to learn. My sister said that we would have a fabulous party at home too, which meant eating lettuce and meat! Which, doesn’t sound that awesome, but trust me, it is. I dream of eating salads, and this is the closest thing to it. My host brother bought an absurd amount of lettuce from Yasmin’s master farmer site (i.e. basically the garden of eden) and we made meat and onions and all sorts of delicious. Then to make it a real party, I bought soda. Then everyone got tired and I went to play with my friends at the hospital and had dinner #2- chicken, fries and salad. Now talk about fancy. Then we drank fancy juice mixes. Everyone kept asking me where the champagne was. I mean, all that champagne that is all over Saraya and that nobody here drinks? Yeah that kind.
Then Frank, my new site mate came to meet me and we hung out at the hospital until everyone seemed too tired and went to my hut to watch Arrested Development and drink tea until midnight so we could go to sleep (I know, we’re cool). Then I get a call from my friends telling us we MUST come to the soiree! And actually came to my hut to make us go. He was all dressed up in a suit, I put on jeans (what?) for the occasion. We got there and there were about 10 teen-aged boys there and 2 girls and loud music in a classroom at the school. Apparently 11:45 was still too early for a new year’s party…So Frank danced while I watched and made fun of the boys. We high-fived at midnight and at around 12:30, to the dismay of our friends, it was bedtime for the toubabs. Apparently the party kept going until 4am. I think my days of middle-school style dances are long over and don’t think I could have ever stayed awake for it. But either way, I would say success on New Year’s being spent with good friends, good food and entertaining as always, even if it is not Akon.
