talibe

READ THIS:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/24229321/

this article from april 2008 describes the condition of talibe, boy beggers, that are a constant part of my life here in senegal. there are no talibe in my village but any time i step outside of my village i am encountered by small boys in rags with tomato paste cans asking me for money. you have to be a cold stone bitch to not have your heart torn to pieces when this happens, but it is virtually impossible to help them all. moreover, i am torn with the conviction that when i give them money, i am only furthering this awful industry. usually i try to buy bread or fruit to give to the boys, but certainly there needs to be long term solutions.

there is a little talibe i know named sidi. he is a bright little boy with big eyes and a nice smile and he helps take care of all the other boys -- especially the ones that don't speak Wolof -- in the Kaffrine garage. the most heartbreaking moment at the garage was when the car was about to leave and he came up to me and asked me quietly if i would take him with me, if i could take him away from there. of course i couldn't. i haven't seen him in a very long time but i think about him often and wish so badly i could do something for him. but what??

one also must remember that not all instances of talibe-marabout relationships are bad. my friend lives in a site with a marabout (who also happens to be her "dad) who has about 15 to 20 talibe living with him. these boys are quite happy and have never been asked or forced to beg. they help their marabout with work in the fields and are well fed and taken care of. they are treated like members of the family and are not forced to stay. i am told that if their families need help in the fields, they are free to leave and come back. i've met them and heard plenty of anecdotes about their silly antics in the field and at home.

Some Islamic schools produce beggars
Billion-dollar industry springs from religious system based on servitude

By Rukmini Callimachi
The Associated Press
updated 5:55 p.m. ET April 20, 2008

This story, part of a yearlong investigation, is the first in an occasional series on trafficking and exploitation of children in West and Central Africa. Related stories will move in the coming months.

DAKAR, Senegal - On the day he decided to run away, 9-year-old Coli awoke on a filthy mat.

Like a pup, he lay curled against the cold, pressed between dozens of other children sleeping head-to-toe on the concrete floor. His T-shirt was damp with the dew that seeped through the thin walls. The older boys had yanked away the square of cloth he used to protect himself from the draft. He shivered.

It was still dark as he set out for the mouth of a freeway with the other boys, a tribe of 7-, 8- and 9-year-old beggars.

Coli padded barefoot between the stopped cars, his head reaching only halfway up the windows. His scrawny body disappeared under a ragged T-shirt that grazed his knees. He held up an empty tomato paste can as his begging bowl.

There are 1.2 million Colis in the world today, children trafficked to work for the benefit of others. Those who lure them into servitude make $15 billion annually, according to the International Labor Organization.

It’s big business in Senegal. In the capital of Dakar alone, at least 7,600 child beggars work the streets, according to a study released in February by the ILO, the United Nations Children’s Fund and the World Bank. The children collect an average of 300 African francs a day, just 72 cents, reaping their keepers $2 million a year.

Most of the boys — 90 percent, the study found — are sent out to beg under the cover of Islam, placing the problem at the complicated intersection of greed and tradition. For among the cruelest facts of Coli’s life is that he was not stolen from his family. He was brought to Dakar with their blessing to learn Islam’s holy book.

In the name of religion, Coli spent two hours a day memorizing verses from the Quran and over nine hours begging to pad the pockets of the man he called his teacher.

It was getting dark. Coli had less than half the 72 cents he was told to bring back. He was afraid. He knew what happened to children who failed to meet their daily quotas.

They were stripped and doused in cold water. The older boys picked them up like hammocks by their ankles and wrists. Then the teacher whipped them with an electrical cord until the cord ate their skin.

Coli’s head hurt with hunger. He could already feel the slice of the wire on his back.

He slipped away, losing himself in a tide of honking cars. He had 20 cents in his tomato can.

Children seen as entry to paradise
Three years ago, a man wearing a skullcap came to Coli’s village in the neighboring country of Guinea-Bissau and asked for him.

Coli’s parents immediately addressed the man as “Serigne,” a term of respect for Muslim leaders on Africa’s western coast. Many poor villagers believe that giving a Muslim holy man a child to educate will gain an entire family entrance to paradise.

Since the 11th century, families have sent their sons to study at the Quranic schools that flourished on Africa’s western seaboard with the rise of Islam. It is forbidden to charge for an Islamic education, so the students, known as talibe, studied for free with their marabouts, or spiritual teachers. In return, the children worked in the marabout’s fields.

The droughts of the late 1970s and ’80s forced many schools to move to cities, where their income began to revolve around begging. Today, children continue to flock to the cities, as food and work in villages run short.

Not all Quranic boarding schools force their students to beg. But for the most part, what was once an esteemed form of education has degenerated into child trafficking. Nowadays, Quranic instructors net as many children as they can to increase their daily take.

“If you do the math, you’ll find that these people are earning more than a government functionary,” said Souleymane Bachir Diagne, an Islamic scholar at Columbia University. “It’s why the phenomenon is so hard to eradicate.”

Middle men trawl for children as far afield as the dunes of Mauritania and the grass-covered huts of Mali. It’s become a booming, regional trade that ensnares children as young as 2, who don’t know the name of their village or how to return home.

One of the largest clusters of Quranic schools lies in the poor, sand-enveloped neighborhoods on either side of the freeway leading into Dakar.

This is where Coli’s marabout squats in a half-finished house whose floor stirs with flies. Amadu Buwaro sleeps on a mattress covered in white linens. The 30 children in his care sleep in another room with dirty blankets on the floor. It smells rotten and wet, like a soaked rag.

Buwaro is a thin man in his 30s who wears a pressed olive robe and digital watch. The children wear T-shirts black with filth. He expects them to beg to pay the rent, because there are no fields here to till.

But their earnings far exceed his rent of $50. If the boys meet their quotas, they bring in around $650 a month in a nation where the average person earns $150.

Buwaro expects the children to suffer to learn the Quran, just as he did at the hands of his teacher.

So when Coli failed to return, Buwaro was furious. He flipped open his flashy silver cell phone and called another marabout who kept a blue planner with names of runaway boys. The list stretched down the page. He added Coli’s name.

His tomato can tucked under one arm, Coli jumped on the back of a bus, holding on to the swinging rear door. He was hundreds of miles from the village where he grew up speaking Peuhl, a language not commonly heard in Dakar.

He could not ask the Senegalese for help. So he got directions in Peuhl from other child beggars, who like him were trafficked here from the zone of green savannah just outside Senegal.

Coli made his way to a neighborhood where he had heard of a place that gave free food to children like him.

“Do you know where you come from?” asked the kind-faced woman at Empire des Enfants. The shelter’s capacity is 30 children, but it usually houses at least 50.

Coli knew the name of his mother, but not how to reach her. He knew the name of the region where he was born, but not his village. “My mother is black,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll recognize her.”

The shelter worker told Coli what to do if his marabout came. We will protect you, she said. If he tries to grab you, scream.

Days went by. Maybe weeks.

Then Coli’s marabout arrived.

In 2005, Senegal made it a crime punishable by five years in prison to force a child to beg. But the same law makes an exception for children begging for religious reasons. Few dare to cross marabouts for fear of supernatural retaliation.

Coli’s marabout entered the shelter flanked by a column of religious leaders in cascading robes that tumbled onto the ground. One of them stabbed his finger at the clouds and yelled out, “The sky will fall down on you if you don’t hand over our children.”

The shelter is used to such threats. But this time the marabouts had discovered the center’s legal paperwork was not complete. They threatened to close the shelter if it did not hand over 11 boys.

To save more than 40 others, the shelter handed over the 11. Coli was on the list.

Back at the school, they beat the 9-year-old until he thought he was going to faint. At night, they dragged him off the floor, doused him in water and beat him again.

Three days later, he ran away again. When he arrived at the shelter, he said: “I want to go home to my mom.”

Radio used to find parents
To find Coli’s mother, aid workers broadcast his name on the radio in Guinea-Bissau. The names of over a dozen children also from Guinea-Bissau played in a continuous loop, like sonic homing pigeons trying to find their target.

No response. Some boys worried their parents might be dead.

“I’m sure my mother is still alive,” Coli reasoned. “When I left her she was well, so why wouldn’t she be well now?” Underneath his bright eyes is another worry. Will she be angry that he disobeyed his teacher?

Over the past two years, the International Organization for Migration has returned over 600 child beggars to their homes. Several had been hit by cars. Some had scars on their backs. One 10-year-old was so hungry he ate out of the trash. Soon after he returned home, he vomited worms and died.

Almost all the boys had begged on behalf of Quranic instructors in Senegal.

“Cultural habits have been manipulated for the sake of exploitation,” said the IOM’s Laurent de Boeck, deputy regional representative for West and Central Africa.

Two months went by before a shelter worker pulled Coli aside. His parents were alive.

The 13 boys from Guinea-Bissau pile into a bus. Coli screams with glee as it takes off for the airport.

“Is this Guinea-Bissau?” one of them asks as they descend onto the cracked runway and enter the small airport of the nation’s capital. “Senegal looks better,” says another.

Though Senegal is among the world’s poorest nations, it’s visibly more developed than Guinea-Bissau, listed 160th out of 177 countries on the U.N.’s human development index. The capital they left had streets clogged with taxis and flashy 4-by-4s. The buildings were tall. The capital they returned to has squat, low buildings and crumbling colonial villas.

“I’m not sure I like it,” Coli confides.

As the bus leaves the capital, they pass villages of cone-shaped huts and fields where boys herd bulls. They sing songs, clapping their hands. As they pull into the shelter where their parents were told to expect them, the boys fall silent.

Timidly, they file off the bus. A few of the 12- and 13-year-olds recognize their families. They approach them respectfully, shaking hands.

Coli’s mother is not there.

Judge admonishes parents
A judge tells the parents they will be jailed if they send their children away to beg again. They have to sign a statement promising to protect their boys from traffickers. Most are illiterate, so they leave a thumbprint in blue ink next to their names.

“You sent your kids to hell,” the judge says. “You can’t say that because you are poor you’re going to allow your kids to be abused.”

His booming voice ricochets off the cracked walls of the building. The parents stare straight ahead.

But the conditions that made these families send their children to hell still persist.

Many of the villages do not have enough food. Few have schools. In one, the schoolhouse is a bamboo enclosure that doubles as an animal corral. “We haven’t had classes here in over a year,” an elderly man says as he ducks into the classroom and skirts a pile of bull manure.

The aid group pays for school fees and supplies. But the stipend cannot cover the economic worth of a child. Some of the children returned in previous months now work as bricklayers and goatherds. Others have already been sent back to the marabouts by their parents. The idea of child trafficking as a crime is so new in the region that no African language has a word for it, experts say.

With each passing day, more parents and relatives come, but not Coli’s.

On the third day, the shelter pays for another radio address.

By the fourth, half the 13 children are gone.

The others become increasingly agitated. Maybe the radio is broken, Coli muses. His wet eyes fill with the invisible color of worry.

Coli's mom arrives
Early on the fifth morning, a woman in a pressed peach robe walks up to the shelter.

Coli rushes outside. He stands a few feet away as tears topple down his cheeks. She covers her face with her veil and weeps.

The two sit side-by-side in plastic chairs. Coli’s mother looks at her feet. Her family is poor, she says, and she wanted Coli to get an education. It took her several days to reach the shelter because she didn’t have $2 for the bus fare.

For more than an hour, Coli cries. Tears run down either side of his cheeks, forming two watery garlands. They meet at his chin and plop down on his collar bone, pooling above his shirt.

She stands up and wipes his chin. They leave, crossing the dusty boulevard.

Her arm reaches around his shoulder and the long sleeve of her robe falls around the little boy. It hides him from the remaining children, who silently watch Coli go home.

EPILOGUE: Soon after Coli left, his marabout traveled to Guinea-Bissau. He angrily demanded to know why Coli had run away. Ashamed, Coli’s father promised to make up for the boy’s bad behavior. He is sending the marabout two more sons.

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/24229321/
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ramadan

today begins ramadan -- 30 days of fasting (no food or water) between sunrise and sundown.

i'm not a muslim but i will be participating in the fasting when i am at the village. why? part of the reason is that my villagers kind of just assumed i would be fasting alongside them and secondly, it wasn't until a few months ago that people truly started treating me like an adult. children are exempt from fasting so i don't really want to take a few steps backwards and be treated like a kid again.

since i'll be fasting, i'm going to try to use this time to reflect/meditate/pray on certain things in my life -- lots of things regarding my future (aka post-Peace Corps life) and my work here.

so we'll see how things turn out. since i'm not religiously bound to fasting during ramadan, i figure that if after the first few days or so i am truly miserable i'll stop. wish me luck. this should be an interesting/enlightening experience.




in other news, my dad bought me a plane ticket home for thanksgiving! i'll be home
from november 22 to december 7. i'm so excited!

also: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LEANNE!

me & jammo

it rained the other day for several hours so me and jamm rekk were trapped indoors.

she sat at the door for a while contemplating going outside and then gave up and took a nap.

i got bored so i decided to take some pictures.







...needless to say, i think she was annoyed.

outplanting spree

more rain! hooray. i am almost regretful of the fact that i'm getting out of the village on friday.

this morning -- when it wasn't raining (it started about an hour ago) -- i went out and dug holes for 20 trees. i sweated a lot but it was good. i came back exhausted and dirty and covered in grime, showered, and then chilled (including a nap) until lunch. right before lunch a strong wind started to blow in -- a little freaky (remnants of my childhood fear of wind)-- and heavy clouds started to enter the sky.

we had lunch (which was actually good!) and the doors were getting slammed shut by the wind and everybody was running around getting ready for the rain. i was worried that the rain would ruin the holes i had spent all morning measuring and digging so i started to look for trees for outplanting. it started to drizzle.

talla came and helped me get my trees together. they've gotten so big that their roots are bursting out of the bag and desperately need to be clipped before outplanted and somebody gave him a great pair of pruning shears (i wish i had a pair!) which was far better than the quasi-sharp knife i was planning on using. we then went on an outplanting spree as the rain fell on us and everybody came out to watch.

it was slightly thrilling...and slightly obnoxious because the kids were noisy and i was cold and it was rushed and i generally like to outplant slowly and methodically. nonetheless, it got done and the trees were in their new homes being watered by the sweet rain. talla and i are like best friends now, which is great...although he still takes on an instructional tone with me. but maybe i am growing as a person -- i've learned to deal with it and while i notice it, it doesn't really bother me unless i am in a cantankerous mood (usually caused these days by my allergies to the flowering crops and/or the ceaseless crying from the 3 youngest children in the family).

it feels good to work and amazing to plant trees in the African soil...and years from now i can remember that the trees i planted are still growing and still providing beautiful benefits to my village (Inshallah...if the goats don't get to them). its been such a saga with these trees -- the pepineer, the struggles with talla, the lack of rain, the task (plant trees in senegal) in and of itself was daunting...and now it's finally come together and i have an incredibly clear idea of how i will conduct next year's work.

after we were done planting trees, talla stopped by my hut -- he can see my papaya growing taller than my fence now and wanted to see it. he also got to see all the trees in my yard that i've lovingly made into a little haven of trees when it was once only sand and cement. he seemed quite delighted by my 1 papaya (which is actually not a tree), 2 Leucaena leucaephala, 1 Moringa oleifera, 2 bombardiers (i forget the latin name), 1 flamboyant (Delonix regia), 4 mangoes (Mangifera indica), 5 tebananes (Jatropha curcas), a patch of basil, and a wall of cucumber plants. no doubt he'll probably move into this hut when it ceases to house volunteers so he will have a beautiful little yard to grow old in...and i feel like that's the best gift of thanks i can give.

aside from smelling bad (i'm still in my work clothes with hopes that the rain will stop in an hour or two and let me have a few more hours of labor -- i want to start my garden in the valley) and being badgered by flies and my wisdom tooth (the other one is coming in!) -- i'm quite happy and content right now and the two years i've given in lieu of making money and going to grad school and the comforts of urban life and cosmopolitan luxury feel worth it. its moments like this that i really love my job and wouldn't give this up for all the good food in the world.

it's finally raining!!

and i'm pooped.

after nearly two weeks of no rain, we finally had a real, significant rain. alxamdoulilah. for those two weeks i just sat around on my ass staring hopefully at the sky, since no rain means no tree planting even though my trees were crying out to be planted.

after the rain ended (it was about 4 hours!) i started clearing the field and measuring holes out for a live fence at about 4PM. i did a line of 19 Prosipus juliflora and Ziziphus mauritania. it felt good to work. i got off of work about an hour ago and i'm ready for bed.

hooray for trees.

panic in the bush!!!

i spent the past few days out at JC's site helping her out with some outplanting and her girl's group meeting. we had a good time.

however, getting back was a mess of a day (yesterday). i tried to leave in the morning but left too late -- all the charettes going to kaffrine (where i had to catch a car to mbirkelane and then bike 7k back home) had gone already. we sat and waited for several hours until we gave up and decided we'd try again after lunch. after all, the sun is hot. (actually, "naaj bi, dafa tang" which is something that senegalese people say all the time.) i was a little bit worried because getting out of kaffrine is always a pain in the ass and takes longer than i estimate and i didn't want to be out in the bush during/after sunset. at 3 we started to wait for charettes again and i finally caught a slow donkey charette at about 4:30.

got into kaffrine after an hour on the donkey charette and sped walked to the garage (on the other side of town) and waited for it to fill up until a bit past 6. i was increasingly nervous - how was i going to make it back before dark? the ride wasn't all that bad -- probably one of the better rides of my life here -- but because i was pressed for time, the trip was excruciatingly slow and my apprehension was building. not only was the sun setting, but it was also getting very cloudy -- either rain or blocking of the near-half moon would occur.

arrived in mbirkelane and practically ran (ignoring the thorn in my shoe) to moussa's shop (where i leave my bike) and he asked me if i wanted to stay over at his house until the morning , as it was getting dark. i should have said yes, but am a coward about sleeping over a senegalese person's house and dealing with that kind of social situation, so i declined. i hopped onto my bike and sped off into the bush. i started out at an insane pace -- probably from the adrenaline of trying to get home before dark -- and managed quite well but by the time i was 2/3 of the way there, the sun was gone and a dark cloud loomed over me and it started to rain lightly. it was dark and scary. then i heard the call of prayer emanating from some loudspeaker from some village off in the distance and suddenly felt terribly alone and vulnerable in the bush. i was tired, thirsty, sweaty, far from home, and desperately had to pee. i started to hear things -- was somebody following me? what was that rustling in the bush? what was that creaking over there?

finally i stopped to pee under a kaad tree (Acacia albida) and tried to gather myself. i got back on the bike and tried to push on towards home but for some reason, started to imagine up all the terrible things that could happen to me -- alone in the bush at dusk with 70 mille on me, a phone with barely any battery power left, and a tiny bit of water. terrible thoughts of robbery, machete hacking, rape, wild dogs, and silent, lonely deaths were conjured up in my mind. (it didn't help that there has been a recent influx of violence in the area, including somebody going after talla with a machete in the middle of the night.) i guess my mentality started to fall apart and i lost my composure. i was panicking. i got all wobbly on my bike and kept getting stuck in the sand and falling over and my bike chain started to give me problems. i was getting nowhere and almost in tears -- why was i panicking like this?!

i tried to go on for a while -- wobbly and meandering and losing control of my bike or my footing on the pedals and falling. i must have looked like an idiot. i berated myself for my stupid decisions and was shaking from this strange fear that had suddenly so strongly possessed me.

finally, i saw the familiar walls of mbanda wolof -- a village i've never been to or met anybody (formally) from --but know of my name because it is a landmark and close (enough) to my village. i decided i couldn't bike anymore in the horrifying darkness and entered the village, sweaty and exhausted and still stricken with panic. i went into the first compound i saw, certain that they knew my village. i greeted several times and was ignored until an old man looked up and saw me. i announced that i was "aissatou" and he told me he knew that (i guess there aren't that many other chinese-americans in the area). i asked if he could help me in a quavery voice, blurting out "i don't want to ride my bike in the dark anymore!!" could i sit in his compound while i called talla to come and get me? i guess he could sense my panic because he immediately came bustling over to help me with my bike, repeatedly told me to sit down, and ordering one of the kids to go and get me some water.

i called talla twice but it wasn't getting through. i sent him a text message telling him where i was and could he come and get me? and then my battery died. i was disheartened and groaned audibly. the old man asked me what was wrong and i practically wailed to him that my battery was dead. when this happened he said, "come on, i'll tie up my charette and bring you home." so he and his son got their little donkey charette together, roped my bike on, and drove me the remaining distance home -- even though i've never met them nor talked to them. i gave him a little box of tea (that i had intended to give to my family) and thanked him profusely. my panic made me at a loss of words so all i could keep muttering was "thank you so much. thank you. thank you!!!"

it was a totally weird and bizarre experience but i guess i did the right thing (although i'm sure nothing would have happened to me had i grown some balls and gone on) and the old man was so nice and kind. the bush is scary at night!!!! and i am never venturing out there alone at dark again. i can't explain the panic but i'll just say that the genies got to me...?

leanne's pictures

pictures from leanne's trip to senegal (and then ghana...without me...sniff) are up! i was an idiot and forgot my camera cord somewhere so couldn't charge my camera and couldn't take any of my own pictures.

check them out at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/treesaverphotos/sets/72157606540341440/

story of a cucumber

my obsession with cucumbers continues...

i think they look more like melons than vegetables.

who knew that's how cucumbers grew?

the wild mess that are my cucumber plants.

cucumber and fly.

first harvest!

BIG LIZARD MEAT

yesterday afternoon the kids caught one of those gigantic lizard things and chopped off its head and cooked it. i -- after a lot of thought -- ate some. not bad. i expected it to be rubbery or mushy or tough or something...lizardy? but it was the consistency and taste of the dark meat on chicken. not something that i'll suddenly crave when i'm back in america ("god i could go for some gigantic lizard meat right now") but definitely worth trying and not something i would refuse in the future. (especially with the food scarcity we're facing right now...)

ma'asou and dey roke show off the kill

eggs and organs!!!

kids posing with the headless lizard

morning musings

strange hour to be awake; i woke up at 2am and haven't been able to sleep since. its humid (not unbearable though) and i am getting chewed up by mosquitoes. i can just feel the malaria running through my veins (thank God and the government for prophylaxis!)

somewhat out of the early-morning-hours boredom, i decided to i eat my first cucumber. i harvested it a few days ago -- entirely by accident. i was pruning the wild tangle that has become my cucumber plants when i cut a "doom" ("doom" means either "child" or "the fruit of a tree/plant" in wolof) off. it was just about ready so i had it sitting in my room a for while as i contemplated what to do with it.

i mean, yes, EAT it, but how? very limited resources to do anything with the cucumber in the village -- salt, olive oil, vinegar. or did i want to wait until kaolack and put it in a salad or even try something creative with it? or, give it away? share it with others? who could have thought that a single plump cucumber could cause me to over-think like this.

finally it was just time to do it and eat it -- plain as it was with no additives (5:14AM -- i hear jackals hunting!!) or anything. i don't think i've ever just eaten a cucumber singularly, just as it is, by itself. i've somehow magically managed to grow HUGE cucumbers that are twice the size of the ones i get at the market for about 100-250CFA. these cucumbers are THICK and deeply soaked in green and could easily fetch 350-400CFA). for the first time, i realized that cucumbers are much like melons -- more fruit than vegetable. my god, being raied with produce aisles has really led me to some major ignorance about food and sustenance.

i grabbed a knife and sunk in -- that in itself was an experience. the cucumber was at its very freshest, the knife glided right through with just the right hint of resistance. i've never eaten a cucumber at such freshness (no in between time trapped in a crate or cardboard box). needless to say, it was delicious -- juicy and crisp and perfectly, well...cucumber.

now my head is churning with ideas on what to do with all of this upcoming cucumber (there is going to be a shit ton -- there are LOADS of flowers and developing cucumbers) from pickling to soaking in a mix of citrus and vinegar (something i learned from karim, my moroccan-store owner friend who speaks impeccable English) to combining with soy sauce, vinegar, sesame oil (precious import from dakar) and garlic to a cold soup to a variation of tea time cucumber sandwiches (village bread, sheep cheese, and cucumber slices). i have a feeling i'm going to have a lot of fun with the cucumbers but by the end of all of this -- will be sick of them.

i know its ridiculous to be so thrilled about growing a vegetable but i've never been a complete part of a food cycle -- i've never had to raise my food before -- and now that i'm doing so, i'm completely with the idea.

i'm starting to feel like working in agriculture (plus trees) -- something that i've never even been close to doing before aside from gardening flowers and helping mom maintain the yard -- is changing my interests. i am increasingly interested in...the "growing of things." i want to grow more vegetables, raise my own chickens for eggs and meat, hell, maybe i even want to go milk a cow. this, coupled with my increasing interest is cooking is making me think that maybe...maybe...i don't want to spend my life in what i thought i wanted to spend my life in.

social science was once really interesting to me -- i could read voraciously about studies and policy and history but now that my life has become so much more about activity opposed to work i'm starting to think that maybe social science is something that should be an interest and not a career choice. where policy or social work or law or study was once what i thought would be my way of living a purposeful life, i think i am now interested in seeing how i can impact the world through more creative avenues -- writing? food? farming? maybe i am interested in nutrition? now that i am in the field and get to wake up to the great outdoors everyday, i don't know how much i want to return to a world of desks and world schedules.

i am definitely reevaluating my plans and goals and career ambitions.