Snail Mail from Mandy transcribed to eBlog by Jane!

Happy (very belated) Holidays!

Well I've been in The Gambia for almost 4 months [editor's note: 5 months actually, because snail mail is soo slow!] and at a site for 5 weeks [again add another several weeks to that]! The time is flying by! My host family is quite large--I have 3 host moms and 3 host brothers that live here with their wives and children. There are about 30 people in my family compound including all the children. It took a while to learn all the names...
I spent Christmas at the Taiwanese Agricultural Mission about 20 km down the road from my site. Several of me fellow PCVs came and we made beef stew, played Scrabble and just relaxed for a couple days. The next week was Tobaski, the big Muslim holiday. My family slaughtered 2 rams and a goat and more than once I ate a piece of meat and I wasn't sure where on the animal it originated. But it was all tasty! My host mom and I had matching outfits made for the holiday and we paraded around the village eating meat and visiting people. Everyone was dressed up beautifully in vibrant fabric and all the women had new braids in their hair. It was quite impressive!I usually wear pants in the village and sometimes I'm told that I should wear a skirt because I'm a woman, but it seems more important that I wear earrings and a necklace at all times. When I don't and someone calls me on it I just tell them I'm a man that day and they seem to enjoy it immensely.
My host mom just got another batch of chickens from Dakar. This time broilers that should be ready for market in less than 2 months. The layers should start producing eggs around May and my host dad is currently building a coop suitable for laying birds. A couple of weeks ago we made chicken feed here. We have a milling machine in my village which helped the process but it is still difficult to mix 1 ton of feed with just shovels and manpower!
The weather is starting to heat up a bit--my host mom tells me that the cold has gone and soon Gambia will be very hot. Right now it is only hot if I stand in the sun. The heat will come but then so will the mangos!

Hope all is well back across the Atlantic!
Much love,
Mandy