Are You There, Allah? It's Me, Hadiatou

I very much enjoy that Allie's Senegalese name is Fati (Fatoumata) and mine is Hadi (sounds like "hottie"). I also enjoyed her visit. I didn't completely enjoy feeling like a sadistic personal trainer from hell on the bike-ride in, though. Let me take a moment here to remind and emphasize to potential visiters that this is not an easy bike-trip. It involves carrying your bike through rivers, heat, rockiness, and not a whole lot of what you would consider "road." So you have to be kind of in shape or else have enough money to hire someone to drive into the bumpiness of my Guinean shire.
Luckily Fati was a grade-A trooper. She survived a scorpian-siting, tuti flies, red ants, and corn mush. We christened ourselves the DindeFelo-ship and went to the waterfalls there (Dinde Felo) before failing to find the ones in the shire. We also gave an info and question and answer session to a group of visiting American high-schoolers. (Alexa the 2-year volunteer, novelle moi, and Fati the Fulbrighter.) It was pretty fun to feel so cool and make me realize how far I've come already.
The other members of the DindeFeloShip took some great pictures so you should bother them for them...