10.11.04 - 12:30

Last Friday, we had a terrific Hallowe'en party in Kankossa! The entire Assaba region was in attendance. (The Guidimaka PCVs were going to come, but are so well integrated into Mauritanian life that they decided to cancel at the very last minute, after everyone had changed their schedules and bought additional goods to accomodate them. Just like real Mauritanians!)

In any case, costume participation was at a full 100%. I came dressed as Giardia, using the illustration of the microbe in "Where There Is No Doctor" as a guide. This involved face paint (cell parts), rope and crazy hair (flagella), and lots of raspberry blowing. (Giardia, for those of you who have the fortune not to know, gives one sulfur burps and copious gas.) Annika made a fetching Cleopatra, replete with beaded headdress. Luke came dressed, a little too convincingly, as a nerd. Andrew was a news reporter, Adriana was a pigtailed farm girl, and Caleb burned his clothes and used Skintimate shaving gel in his hair to become a Man Struck By Lightning.

We had a costume contest, played "pin the tail on the black cat", and told real life ghost stories. I also managed to find a whole football-shaped squash to carve into a jack o'lantern!

So we had a lot of fun, ate a lot of candy, and generally attempted to ward off the desperate sorrow that came from the re-election of Bush. Well, that is, most of us. Some of us, and I'm not naming names, actually LIKE the Shrub. Which is scarier - that, or having a crazy woman dressed as an intestinal illness cavort around you?

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