One more post - I'm almost home!

At last - back in Dakar where I can get consistent internet access and even wireless! I come back to the states on Saturday morning (leave here at 2:45 in the morning, get into JFK around 8 a.m.) and now we have one final week in Dakar to finish writing papers, buy our souvenirs and say goodbye to our families.
The rest of my "stage" - i.e. time in the village was great. The family was really fun and I got to do lots of things with them, despite the fact that the over 100 degree heat every day meant that from 1-5 p.m. each day, no one did anything. It's hard to summarize 6 weeks, but basically my internship wasn't so much "work" intensive - they confuse the idea of researcher, ecotourist, volunteer and intern - so the first two weeks were me going to interview people, then there was about a week of cultural celebrations: a four day wrestling competition, a marriage, a male initiation ceremony and traditional dance evenings. The rest of the time was me working some in an organic garden and doing a little manual labor where they are constructing a biomass facility that will make natural gas from cow dung. The rest of the time when I wasn't working, I hung out with my family and did family chores - learning how to cook, make senegalese cous-cous etc. It was a little frustrating because the region where I was was Sereer - that means an entirely new language apart from Wolof. Wolof and Sereer are sometimes mixed together, which can make it more complicated. But anyways, I picked up a little but not much - it's hard learning a language with no books and no one who can even really describe how to conjugate a verb.
Anyhow there were plenty of fun and funny adventures - riding on a horsecart and having it break while we were on it, turning 21 and being forced to eat two pounds of vermicelli alone in my own honor, playing with the baby goat, having my host mother's brother show up drunk and threaten to burn me (had to be there, it really was kind of funny), eating lots of mangos, as well as rice, bread, cous-cous and fish (almost exclusively).
Anyhow, I will miss Senegal and most specifically my family in Mbam quite a bit. That said, the next few days will be a challenge because my room mate and I have discovered that money was taken from our room here, and so we will have an awkward goodbye period. Anyhow, I look forward to telling my stories to many of you in person soon! All the best. P.S. - again can't get pictures to load, sorry!

Mbaldo from Mbam!

Mbaldo! (you respond "bay day jamm")

At last I have enough time on the internet to truly do a blog post, this being only the second time that I have been online since getting to Mbam. Short version: things are going really well here - the internship component is pretty light, the concept of internship doesn't really transfer, not to mention that the work day doesn't really exist at my organization, but the family is great, I'm learning a lot and having some great experiences.

I live in a house (meaning a collection of huts with one main building surrounded by a fence) with my host mother and about 10 kids, between the ages of 13 and 25 - none of them are hers, but they all go to school here and it's a lot of fun. During the days I've been learning how to cook some, and going around and interviewing various key people about the environmental situation here. This week I should be starting to do more "practique" meaning helping out in gardens, the community forest and other things. Unfortunately, I wanted to write a long post, but my time is severely limited, so best wishes to you all and maybe one day I'll be able to post a full description!

Spring Break in the Casamance

Hi all!
Well, we are fresh off the boat (it arrived in Dakar at 6:30 a.m.) from the Casamance, where our whole group spent a week for our spring break.
This will probably be an abbreviated summary, but here it is. We took the boat (14 hours) to get down to Ziguinchor, which is the capital of the Casamance region. This is because the Gambia is in between, and while you can get a car, it takes a long time and you risk having lots of trouble and bribing to do at the Gambian border. As it was, the boat happens to be very very nice - we got sleeper cabins and all slept very well! The story behind this is sad - there was an older boat that sank about 6 years ago, killing 2,000 people. Now, it's one of the safest and most modern ferries in Africa. In Ziguinchor, we were met by the relatives of one of our friends' host families. We thought they would just help us find a hotel, but they ended up letting all 15 of us stay in a house that they owned! They showed us around town as well as the good spots to go out at night - lots of fun. They were also a huge help the next day - there was a gas shortage in Ziguinchor and so getting to Cap Skirring (where we wanted to go) was going to be very expensive for us to negotiate. Fortunately, they found a 13 person van for us (we crammed in and my hips almost died) for cheap and naturally, the driver of the van knew of a cheap hotel by the beach where he could take us. I don't know what we would have done without all that help - the bargaining would have been impossible.
Cap Skirring is the touristy beach town of Senegal - as proved by the fact that there's a club med there. However, we were in a pretty little hotel ($6/person/night - the rooms were basically beds and the bathrooms were outside) that looked out on the beach and we met a lot of the local shopkeepers - 15 young people are pretty rare there. During the days we sunned ourselves (my nose and feet have not forgiven me), swam, and walked around the village, about a 20 minute walk away. For food, we had a great bakery for morning pastries. Then at night we had another good find. A guy came up to one of the members of our group (he has dreds and every Senegalese loves him - so he's acted as our ambassador many times) and said he knew a good restaurant nearby. It's basically one (very nice) woman, who makes one thing each night and serves it in her "restaurant" - plastic chairs, a few tables, and TV - very local. It was some of the best food we've had here, and it proves to us that we're becoming very accustomed to the food - rice and fish for three nights in a row with no problem.
Also, one of the days we got a Pirogue tour to several different islands. Each had it's own little touristy appeal - an old slave fortress (completely abandoned - people do laundry in it and the occasional guide comes through), beautiful birds amongst the mangroves and one had a fishing village. Pirogues leave from this village to go way out to the ocean (for up to a month) to catch not only fish, but shark and stingrays . We happened to get there when one had just returned and I had never seen so many flayed, raw, and (in some cases) moldy shark (and other fish) in my life!
Anyhow, we had a lot of fun, and now we have the weekend to do laundry, get a few last provisions, and see what local elections are like here on Sunday (stones have been thrown in some places, but I think it should all pass fine) and then Monday morning we will leave for our internships. I will be in an ecovillage called "mbam." Others have done the internship there before and have loved it, so I'm excited. I'll be far away from internet, but when I do get a chance to check mail and post, I hope to have heard from some of you! Ba beneen yoon!

Markets, dancing

So a few new little things. This was our last full weekend in Dakar and it was a relatively productive one. We went out dancing in place in the fishermans village, along the water on Friday night (not the best smell ever, but you learn to live with that here). Then on Saturday we went to what I think is the biggest market here: Marche Sandaga. It was quite an experience. The market spreads out over a lot of streets and you can find almost anything there. I was particularly looking for fabric, but first we were found by a group of guys trying to get us to come to their one shop. No amount of saying no, or not saying anything at all, running away, or staying in one place could shake them. They were harassing us and grabbing for a full 40 minutes - very discouraging. It took a fatay (like fried dough but with meat and onions inside) and the most amazing ice cream at the really good, famous Dakar ice cream parlour in order for us to recover. Then we were finally able to go out and actually look at things (though everyone is still constantly all over you - browsing is impossible). I finally found some really nice fabric that I hope to have made into an outfit. The price was decent, though I'm sure there was a toubab mark-up. By the end, we were exhausted and came home and napped.

Then we got to go to another "family meeting," this time at the house of one of Maman Amitie's daughters. She and her husband and their three daughters have lived in the States, Britain and France and now they're building a bed and breakfast, so the house was very nice. While the adults did their meeting thing, we hung out with the kids, who speak English and a few other francophone cousins. One of the girls was so excited that we knew Harry Potter that we ended up playing the Harry Potter board game "scene it." That's one thing I didn't expect to do in Senegal. But though we were definitely at the kids table, it was still fun to see the family and see a different part of town. It was also fun to see Maman Amitie after a few too many - we were introduced to many members of the family many times and I got yet another tour of the family photos in the living room at 1 a.m.

Now we're into our last week of classes here. There have been a few minor exams but it's nothing like finals in the states. All in all, though I like Dakar a lot, I'm getting very ready for a totally new experience in the ecovillage. I've posted a picture of a mangrove to celebrate. Additionally, there's a picture of the whole group from the first week at the president's palace.

Oh and it's Mohammad's birthday today, so it's a national holiday and most things are closed and the kids don't have school. Happy Gamoul!

Class and Beach Update

So I've been a little lazy of late, but here's a little update on how things are going, as we enter our last week in Dakar. We have one more week of classes, then a week of spring break (I'll be going to the Cassamance, southern Senegal, below the Gambia, with friends) and then we head off for our six weeks of internships. My internship, if there are no changes, will be at an eco-village called Mbam, located near the mangroves here. I'm not sure exactly what I'll be doing, but they have mangrove planting programs, vegetable gardens, some sort of biomass project as well as the possibility to teach kids about sustainability, so I'm very excited.
So a few highlights of the last week or so:
Class: not so much a highlight necessarily, but there sure has been a lot of it. All of our classes are two to three hours long and since two of mine are taught by people who work for government ministries, they get moved around constantly. Unfortunately, the professor we have the most (for both development and country analysis of Senegal), is absolutely insane. In trying to show off his English he has asked us whether we understand the words: town hall, pill, and witch. His style is to write his entire lectures on the board and then give us handouts (often without any indication of where they're from), and have us present in groups. The other day I thought I recognized the writing style of one article and sure enough, if you look up "mourides" on Wikipedia, you'll read what I did (assuming it hasn't been modified in the last week).
Beach: We finally made it to one of the nicer beaches around here: ile de ngor. You take a bus-ish thing up to a fishing boat that takes you to an island. It's kind of surreal once you arrive - touristy, restaurants on the beach etc. It seemed to be Senegal's answer to the Caribbean. Though the water was freezing, we did go in, built a sand castle and bought a coconut from a woman who cut it open for us so we could drink the juice.
This weekend I'll be headed to some markets for fabric shopping and visiting other members of my host family's extended family, and trying to make the most of some of my last time here. Best!

Pictures, Daras and a little conflict

First: what the pictures are: a) view of hazy Dakar from Ile de la Madeleine, with Cormorants taking off.

In Toubakouta, one of the two boats we took into the mangroves - we were having a competition between the boats as to who could sing louder and have more people standing up at once.

Also at the mangrove park - two friends from the trip.

I hope this picture shows up better on your computers than mine, but it's me on the beach at St. Louis.

A picture of the roadside scene on the way into Dakar - you can see people selling fruit and these buses waiting to fill up and go somewhere. This picture doesn't quite do the chaotic scene justice.

A very quiet, colonial St. Louis street - Dakar does NOT look like this.

Well now that I got some more pictures up, a little more news. Yesterday for our Senegalese culture class we got to take a field trip to a Dara - a Koranic school for young boys. These schools are all over Senegal, and they are run often in a pretty horrifying way. The basic idea (and this was the case in this one) is that kids are sent by their parents for a minimal fee (about 2 dollars a month) and they live with the marabout (koranic scholar) and study constantly. However, this doesn't include food and doesn't cover the expenses of the Daara. Therefore, the kids from the Daara (talibés) spend hours every day on the street holding empty cans (usually of tomato paste, for whatever reason), and begging in order to get their food, and get additional money for the marabout. They are at every major corner and often will follow you for a while. People will give them money or food.
The place we visited was in a poorer suburb of Dakar - almost no paved roads, mostly very tight alleys. The daara itself is a small courtyard with only about two or three rooms off of it - somehow 60 barely clothed boys live there. We got to ask the Marabout questions for about 45 minutes and interact with the kids a bit. We learned the most though from just observing and from what wasn't said. The boys all clearly have pretty significant health problems - we could see various swellings, open sores, and chronically runny noses (a sign of malnutrition, not just a cold). I asked the kids (in front of the marabout) what they wanted to do when they left, the only person who was allowed to respond said he wanted to teach the Koran. Afterwards another friend asked another of the boys and he responded that he wanted to get out of Senegal and move to France. Anyhow, not all Daaras are like this, but it was a sobering look at this phenomenon that we have been seeing here every day.

St. Louis and Mardi Gras

Well we successfully had our first weekend trip without the group or guide. Six of us left Dakar at 7 on Friday night and took a sept-place up to St. Louis - a city on the coast that was the first capital of Senegal. The way up was a typical Senegal transportation experience - we got the gare routiere, which is basically a huuuge parking lot, and were accosted by people who then found us a driver and negotiated the price (for a small commission of course). A sept-place is basically a station wagon with three more seats in the back - so eight people in a station wagon can be pretty cramped, not to mention the fact that the car couldn't go above maybe forty miles per hour at its absolute best (this is the estimate given that no dashboard indicators were working). All in all it took six hours to get there, though its possible for it to take as little as three and a half. In St. Louis we met up with my room mate's friend who is studying there and she showed us to our cheap but quite nice hotel. From there we went out to a bar around the corner and had a good time dancing, also discovered that there are lots more europeans and Americans here than in Dakar!
St. Louis is really different from Dakar - particularly the main touristy island, which is very quiet with grid streets and lots of colonial architecture. We really enjoyed being able to enjoy just sitting in a cafe - something you cant find in Dakar, not to mention that there were good bakeries. There are some in Dakar as well, but nowhere ever has seating where you can just hang out. We also walked around the fishing village area and the market, which were naturally much more lively. That night we went out for a nice dinner too, which meant getting vegetables, something I miss a lot here! We left Sunday afternoon and successfully got back in only four hours. We were shocked :)
In other news, yesterday was Mardi Gras, our sister's birthday aaand the day we had promised to cook for our family. We decided to make tomato soup, grilled cheese and salad (previous Americans staying with them seemed to have taken a lot of our ideas). We went to one of the big, intense and cramped vegetable markets to get the vegetables, and then to the main supermarket to get things like sliced bread, cheese and ham (family is catholic, but ham is still very hard to find here). The cooking went well except that we failed to realize exactly how different their tomato paste is until it was too late. The stuff here is very dark and VERY bitter. We managed to salvage the soup so it was acceptable, but still wasn't the best. The sandwiches were a hit though, and afterwards we all had beignets and cookies for mardi gras. Most importantly, they seemed to appreciate it, so phew. It was also fun throughout the day to see all the little kids who go to school: it seems like their version of halloween, with lots of little superheros, princesses and peter pans etc. all over the place.
Finally a note on birthdays: even though Fifi was turning 17, they barely acknowledged it. It seems like people celebrate their birthdays (if they know them) very selectively: you decide to fete it one year, and then not for a few more. I think the only people who I heard wish her happy birthday were me and Vanessa.
Well, off to class, and then off to find out what lent is like in our house!

Photos

Finally a few pictures though this has to be very quick because my internet cafe time is almost up. The first is the little street where I live. My door is just behind the little orange bread stand. The second is my host mother proudly showing off a massive meal, then a picture of a village hut in the mangrove park we visited and then an island we went to ( its a bad picture but I accidentally clicked on it and then didn't have time to change). So although my time is almost up here, I now know that I can add pictures in the future - tomorrow or after the weekend. much love!

Weekend and Streets

So I figured I'd put in a little something about what the streets are like here, but first a little about the weekend. It was nice to have a quiet Dakar, and made exploring a little easier. On Friday night, we went to a dance/party of sorts at a community center put on by a church called something along the lines of "Church of the Martyrs of Uganda." It was good dancing to Senegalese music and we were with several host siblings, so that was nice. On Saturday we had a cooking observation day followed by a family meeting. We got to peel vegetables and watch the different stages of making our lunch - a tomato sauce on rice with beef. Then we watched some of the making of the food for the family meeting in a massive pot. We had been excited for the Reunion, which, though I knew it meant meeting, would be a general get together. However, it seemed to be an actual business meeting - all the adults went into the salon and talked business almost the entire time while we watched tv with the other kids, three of whom were very sweet girls who had grown up in the U.S. Also - it was valentines day on Saturday and surprisingly, though there's no hallmark stuff here, everybody celebrates it! We kept on being asked if we were going out to celebrate it.
The next day, we got up very late and most of the day was relaxing, although we did take our first solo car rapide trip downtown and explored all over the place, which was nice. It seems like most if not all of Dakar is pretty safe during the day and people don't harass you for the most part. This brings me to the idea of what streets are like. I'll start with sidewalks. There are a few different varieties: the sandy shoulder, the "this was at one time a sidewalk but now it's mostly sand," the cobblestones, and occasionally an actual sidewalk. To add to this, sidewalks can be obstructed by a few different things: trees, cars that park there, and a few different kinds of shops (among other things). Shops along the street can be as simple as just selling shoes or cell phone covers. There are also women who sell little bags of peanuts and the local oranges. Then there are the slightly more permanent fruit stands that sell what looks like imported fruit (bananas, oranges, melons, tangerines etc.). Finally there are the little "alimentation general" stores that are tiny and yet seem to contain everything - they sell bread, candy, and then if you look closer they have eggs, and all sorts of general cooking supplies. There's one every couple of streets even in the very residential neighborhoods - we have one right next to our house where we buy our bread every morning. Sometimes they're in a building, sometimes they're just their own stall sitting in the sidewalk. Regardless they spill out and tend to be local hangouts.
All this to say that most of the walking happens in the streets. This also means that traffic is pretty slow, given that cars have to share not only with other cars (without the idea of traffic laws, signs, or a single stop light in the entire city), but horse drawn chariots that pick up trash, and people and the occasional goat. While this is totally hectic and accidents clearly do happen, it seems like for the most part no one's ever going fast enough to actually get hurt. They also use horns a lot more just to let pedestrians know that they're here. Taxis also honk whenever they see us as well, since there's a chance, as a westerner, that I'm totally lost. Of course there's much more to say about the experience of walking around here (particular examples come to mind), but I have to get offline soon. It's been great to hear from people lately, so keep that up :)
Sonya

Food! (no pics)

First: about pictures. Maybe this weekend I'll be able to get something to work from an internet cafe, but for the moment, no one I know has had any luck with pictures, regardless of their size, in days. So sorry about that! Otherwise, I thought I might do a more subject related post.

I've mentioned a little bit about food, but since it's what I smell right now, I thought I'd add in a little more detail. Senegalese meals are always eaten out of a communal dish (for lunch or dinner, unless it's soup). The typical meal is rice (or cous-cous or sometimes pasta) with either fried fish or beef in a spiced sauce over it. Sometimes these sauces have vegetables - which almost always means carrots and potatoes and onions. While we're talking about vegetables (or the lack thereof), we are fortunately in green bean season, which means that we'll get some very oily beans as the basis for a meal sometimes. Every once in a long time there will be a salad - though often with french fries on top. We eat on low stools around a low table, though some families sit on the floor, and occasionally some eat only with their hands (we use forks in mine).
Breakfast is always the same: it's set out and everybody eats when they get up. We have cocoa mix and nescafe crystals (all coffee here is nescafe), bread and their version of nutella. Senegal is a peanut producing country - peanuts are sold by women on the street all over, they have a peanut sauce they eat frequently, and so what they spread on bread is basically nutella but a little more liquid and with peanuts instead of hazelnuts - really pretty good. Interestingly enough, despite being huge on peanuts, there is NO peanut butter here - even in the western supermarket, it cannot be found.
Since the dinners are so heavy and intense and oily/fatty, most of us have taken to pretty modest lunches from the street food that's nearby. There are fruit vendors and little stands that sell all types of bread and candy all over the place. I usually get fruit or a piece of baguette with cheese or peanuts, because the idea of getting an actual sandwich (usually composed of schwarma and often with french fries in it) is just too much, and more rice doesn't seem like a possibility.
Overall, the food is really good - and I'm definitely going to be much more tolerant of spicy food when I get back. However, it can be so overwhelming, particularly since there is always a lot of pressure to eat a lot. We don't ever really do dessert, but sometimes we get juice - either Bisab (made from hibiscus flowers) or a combination of pineapple and the baobab fruit, which is more like a smoothie and really good.
I'm off to do some of my actual homework, though there are very few of us here. There's a HUGE muslim festival happening in the religious city (Touba) this weekend, and many of the group have left. This weekend will feature a pretty empty Dakar, though I already know of one Catholic block party - seems they like to party during religious festivals :)

Toubakouta!

So I wrote this post last night thinking "oh I'll just put in a few things about the trip" and believe it or not, this feels like it's just a few things, though it's still really long. Basically, we had a great time and it was good to get out of Dakar and out of our routine.


Well! We had a fantastic weekend in Toubakouta and environs. There's so much to tell, but I'll try to give a few highlights here. We stayed at a “campement,” which was basically a few (very nice) huts around a courtyard with an open air restaurant type place. We actually brought all of our food and our own cook with us, so all our meals were provided and that way we didn't risk getting really sick. We also took six Senegalese university students who study with the head of WARC down with us, and they were a lot of fun to have around (and helpful for translating Wolof as well).
First night: a traditional wrestling competition. Wrestling is huge here and watching a competition is QUITE an experience – lots of music, singing, dust in your mouth instantly, dancing, etc. Someday I'll describe it more fully.
The first full day was mostly environment related things: we spoke with the director of a fishing center about the way that they help local fishermen, and the problems with fishing shortages. Then we got to talk with a technician who helps local farmers and learned about agricultural issues. Then in the afternoon we went to a protected area. As it turns out, a lot of the senegalese coastline has mangroves, and so it's a pretty complex and important ecosystem. We got to take these small-ish fishing boats out to the area (featuring lots of singing and careful dancing – the Senegalese students taught us well) and then walked a ways to talk to the park ranger (actually an army technician, but surprisingly welcoming and not very “army”). It was a beautiful area, though sad to see where sea-level rise is intruding into the mangrove areas and causing some of them to recede.
Saturday: village visits. First we went to one village where we got to talk to two “groupement de femmes” - these are women's collectives that pool resources to make extra money through selling things at markets or through vegetable cultivation. One had been receiving some microfinancing help and the other had not. We had to work entirely through translators, but it was really fascinating. Then we got to go to an even smaller village to tour. We got there and were completely engulfed by kids (actually, we're engulfed every time we get off our bus – between 5 and 30 just come out of nowhere, in fact 47% of the population is under 15 here - crazy). Then we sat and talked mostly to the village elders with the entire village watching about what their lives are like and what problems they face. In the 105 years since the village was founded, this was the first time that anyone had come and asked them any questions, they said. We got to tour a few houses as well – each house is a group of huts with places for sleeping, for storing food and keeping animals and common cooking areas. There is almost no electricity and two village wells. However, during our time with them, the main elder's cell phone kept ringing to the tune of “we wish you a merry christmas.” Go figure. While it was a positive experience in terms of people being welcoming, it was sobering to see the need for health care particularly.

Sunday morning we saw another pretty incredible thing. Every Sunday, the village where we were staying gets together to clean common village areas. It sounds sort of mundane, but it was one of the most dramatic things I've seen here. First off “cleaning” in this case means a type of slash and burn of their forested areas where they leave the big trees but burn all fallen branches and take off all the branches of any smaller trees. The image is this: all the boys and younger men of the village are starting fires all over the place and running around hacking at things with machetes. Girls are around with pails of water in case things get out of hand. To keep everybody motivated, drummers were playing and then there was the “concurrent.” The concurrent can best be described as a man in a Chewbaka costume: From the distance I saw, he looked about that furry and he runs around with a rope to hit anybody who isn't working. It certaintly adds an element of excitement – people run around and work really hard any time he comes here, and so you can hear screaming kids, crackling fire and banging drums the whole time. It's amazing, but also painful to see this kind of habitat destruction when there is trash all over the place that really actually needs to be cleaned up.
Overall though, the weekend was great – the group bonded a lot, and we got to see so much more than we've seen in Dakar thus far. It makes us all really look forward to our internships and to traveling around more.

Off for the Weekend

First, in answer to the Amiga comments: Nafë is pronounced nafee and basically every family gives their student a Senegalese name - in my case there were a few pieces of paper in my host sister's hand and I chose that one. It's basically used by anyone who doesn't want to bother having to learn a foreign name - my host family still calls me Sonya.

Just so you all know, this weekend (starting tomorrow), we are going on an extended four day field trip to an area just north of the Gambia. It should be really cool since we'll be getting to go to a national park and a few villages and we'll be hearing from people working in the health, environment, and microfinance fields and getting to go to some sort of storytelling performance etc. I'll definitely have a lot to update on then, and I probably won't be back online between right now and Sunday night or Monday morning. It will be nice to have a change of pace though and get to see more than just the immediate area around where we live.

Also, as for pictures, they will come. Thanks to Uncle Dave (Thank you! I'll try to reply soon, but I may be out of connection for the next few days), I now know how to take smaller pictures, so I may have more luck uploading them. It's hard to take pictures though - it's already so apparent being white here, so stopping to take pictures of the street also seems like it's pushing it. While I'm on the topic, whites are "Toubab" here, which is what all the kids yell when you're around, and all the taxis (of which there seem to be millions) beep to see if you need a ride.
Must go figure out how to print out a paper though (I'll comment more on the academic situation here later, but it's ... interesting at times).
Best!

So much weekend!

So this weekend was (okay not that crazy) but still very stimulating. We had a number of extra cousins and an aunt around the house, and so there was a lot going on. On Saturday morning we were allowed to have a cooking lesson of sorts - i.e. watch our aunt make ceeb-u-jen (pronounced cheebujen), which is the national dish: it's rice in a spiced tomato sauce with fish and vegetables on top. The idea of tomato sauce however, just doesn't really give you the right feel for it. But it's really good. The cooking here is over cans of natural gas, very close to the floor, though they have a stove that they use for heating water sometimes. As a side note, there's actually a bit of a natural gas shortage here right now, so by later in the weekend, the family was cooking over charcoal.
After lunch (which is usually about two thirty or three), we decided to go to one of the big markets here. We were accompanied by our host brother and it was quite the experience: so much fabric and color! We took the Car Rapide there - which are brightly painted crammed buses where you hop in the back, tell the driver where you want to go and then he signals to the driver by tapping on the outside when to stop and go. They are everywhere, I'll try to post a picture later in the week.
Yesterday we also had lots of people around, and though it was more relaxing (watching silly movies, cleaning out our room etc.) we still wound up with lots of cousins and some informal dance lessons in their living room. We were all trying everything from Mbalax (the national dance style) to tupac. It was really hilarious for everybody, even though the fact that they speak amongst themselves in a mix of wolof and French makes things a bit tricky to fully grasp.
There were other things too, but I want to quickly get some spiced coffee before my next class (ten cents at the stand across the street), so I'll leave you all now.
Ba beneen Yoon (see you later),
Nafe (my Senegalese name)

One picture: where I study

Here's the courtyard that we sit in (there is a patio with chairs and tables and a covered top behind the photographer). All of our classes are in this building, which extends a litle bit beyond what you see, but not by much.

A little update: it's the first week of classes here an so far, so good. Tuesday, my environment class was cancelled, which was a bummer, but it meant that we got to go see a museum in the downtown area. A few of us took a taxi from the university area and we were dropped off at the U.S. Embassy, where I asked directions from a guard. Then we had to bargain for a while about which one of us would be his toubab (white) girlfriend. We finally put an end to it, and got to the museum. In the museum there was almost no one. Everything was dusty and a little cracked, with missing paint. Even though the building was grand, the top floor with the “expo” was very, very sparsely covered. The labels didn't give dates, just where the thing was from (in this case, mostly fertility masks and statues), and so we were left to guess. Downstairs, was somewhat more interesting art. However, it still felt very colonial, and the collection was small. In the center of each of the two sides of the downstairs were life-sized dioramas of area tribes. The people seemed to be made out of papier mache painted over. All in all it was pretty sobering.

Then yesterday we had seven hours of class, which was totallly exhausting. All told, each week we'll have about 24 hours of class, usually in 2-3 hour chunks. However, there's still plenty of break time, and since the only thing we have to do is school, I don't think it will be too challenging.

As for a little about home life: we're getting better integrated into our family (finally figured out the whole dishwashing situation, which they wouldn't let us do originally), and they're harassing us less and less about not eating enough (trust me, we eat plenty). Also, unless you think that I'm enjoying a lot of heat and working on my tan, don't. I'm wearing a long sleeved shirt and jeans right now, because it's windy and probably under 70 degrees. It hasn't been very hot at any point since we arrived and all the Senegalese are complaining that it's so cold. However, I have gotten used to never having hot water for showers, and it's nice not having too many mosquitos.
Well if you got to the end of this post, then congratulations. I swear I'll get pictures to post at some point, but these days it just takes me too long. For now, just imagine one to two story houses surrounded by walls, sandy, though usually paved streets, and lots of street vendors selling fruit, nescafe and peanuts.

Okay, this picture took about 15 minutes to upload, so please enjoy. As you can see, it's my bd with my grand mosquito net. I still haven't put the cool pictures of the outdoors and Dakar on my computer, so one or two of those (i.e. what I have patience for), will have to wait.

Quiet Sunday

Nangeen Def! We finally found an internet cafe that was open on a sunday! Even though its a majority muslim country, Sunday is still definitely the day of rest. The past few days have been nice though Im looking forward to starting class tomorrow. We have been at the study center getting more lessons and orientation to our specific program, and starting our Wolof courses. We have also had a fair amount of downtime, which is nice. Yesterday we were taken on a tour of the city, we got to see some of the highlights, even taking a picture at the president's house, à la buckingham palace with the guard. They also took us down to the closest point to the US and to a big lighthouse, where we got a view of as much city as the pollution would allow. It was good to get oriented - we are starting to understand how the geography works, working up to taking the "car rapides," which are basically brightly painted small buses. You stand by them, say where you want to go, they say if they are going there, you jump in the back door and then tap on the roof to get out, or so I hear.
Last night we went out for the first time to a local ,usic place that was really nice, for the birthday of one of our group members. The music was really good, though our host mother was horified that we paid the equivalent of sixty cents too much for the cab home. She is indeed pretty protective, but at the same time she lets us be pretty free and we have our own key and our own door to our room. The other funny contradiction with her is that she seems to love violent and dramatic movies. The tv is on all the time, often on a bad Brazilian soap opera that everybody here watches, or on US movies involving gun fights, alien abductions etc. She also finds some pretty raunchy music videos to be funny too. Our next quest with her will be to be allowed to a) help with dinner and b) be able to eat only as much as makes us full without feeling guilty. They are just being polite when they say to eat eat more (every day, at each meal, even when they arent eating), but its hard not to feel bad when you refuse.
Tomorrow we will start some of our real classes and then we will know our real schedule. I hope everybody is doing well!

Finally!

Hi All!
I finally can get the internet to accept the idea of blogspot.com, and so I'm able to write for five minutes. On my laptop I had something all written up and pictures, but I can't get wireless at the moment, so this will have to be brief. So far things are going well - the flight was smooth, our leaders and the group are all very nice. We have spent this week being oriented - having lectures/discussions of the culture and what to expect from our families, learning about the program and going on field trips. Unfortunately, I missed the latter because I was the first to succumb to the food and climate and got pretty sick. Today I think my appetite is finally completely back to normal, and fortunately my host family was very understanding.
Speaking of my family, we (another American, Vanessa) and I live with an older retired woman and a few of her grandchildren. Three of them live with her, but there are five who are usually there and eat with us a lot. She is catholic and very protective and nice. We seem to watch a lot of dubbed soap operas. Hopefully I'll be able to write more over the weekend, but for now, all the best!

Hello/Goodbye!

Hi All,

In a week I'll head off for Senegal until mid-May. For at least the first two months I'll be living with a host family in Dakar (the capital) and taking classes through the University of Minnesota. Later I'll have an internship somewhere in the country, somehow dealing with the environment and that's about all I know! I'll do my best to post here regularly and include some pictures so that those who want to follow along can. I'll have internet access while in Dakar, but my communication might not be so regular. Even so, I'd love to get some updates from you all, so please continue to e-mail/facebook post while I'm gone!

Thanks!