voilà quelleques photos du centre talibe et la preparation du thé (pictures of the talibe center and the preparation of tea).
to explain the title, each tea has two or three rounds. we do two at the center, and the first is bitter the second sweet and minty—so the first is said to be bitter like life and the second to be soft (sweet) like love.
the guy to the right is bai—a volunteer at the center. he ropes me into doing the tea alot bc its a pretty lengthy process. here hes trying to show me how to get the right amount of foam in each cup. you can tell by the spilled tea that i still cant do it right…
relaxing and playing cards with some of the talibé—we pretty much hang out after every day of the clinic to have tea and decompress a bit.
kabu, the rabit of senegal—a talibé from one of the local daras, the dara of the flies we call it.
the pictures up here are from johnny’s last day—so the guys at the center made doghnuts for us that they called beignets but that were not at all the beignets that i know from café du monde, although they were delicious!
making the second cup—yes, that is a huge bag of sugar going into the pot.
all the volunteers, senegalese and toubab, as well as some of the talibé from the center…
anyway life is good! no real news. getting over my cold and learning new songs on the guitar. had a shrimp broil last night which was phenomenal and then will be volunteering with the red cross this weekend so not doing the usual pool/beach routine. ill try to steal more photos soon, but until then, hope everyones doing well!
**i decided to raid another volunteer’s facebook for more pictures, so here you go:
talibé at the center
getting their heads shaved—im really horrible at this bc usually we just use a naked straight blade and im afraid of scalping a kid (which has happened before though not by me thank god!)
the front of the center
talibé lining up for the friday snack of choco-pain and milk that we give them
the view from the roof of the center
talibé lining up to get washed at the center
scabies. most of the kids have to deal with scabies to some degree or another. we mostly disinfect the area and put antibacterial ointment on the scabs that are bleeding or pussing before wraping them up. needless to say, even cleaning these infections is super painful for the kids.
playing with old tires in the street in front of the center—they put kabu in one and rolled him for awhile until he threw up and so now they just have races. haha
another picture of me trying to make tea with the senegalese volunteers watchful nearby—im pretty good at it now except for pouring the tea to make sufficient foam.
st lois as the sun sets…
