Senegal in the News

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7214792.stm

More Books

I am sitting at home waiting for my lunch to arrive… it's 3:23pm. There has been another death in the family this week, so my host mother/sister I guess is at a gathering for that at the main family house. Earlier this week it was a grandmother who passed away and today it was a guy around my age. So my being hungry at the moment is not really the world's biggest problem at the moment, obviously.

Work this morning was great! We had three people come in from the local high schools to look at the books we laid out yesterday. We discussed how the project will proceed and what they are going to do, and what additional types of books they need for us. Right now, we're starting with three high schools… their English classes, English clubs, and books for the teachers. It also includes setting up basic libraries for students to be able to check books out of, because the current school libraries do not allow this. So at the moment there will be novels and geography books in it. Little by little. There are so many boxes and so little space at the school that is hard to see everything we have. So once we get these English textbooks out of the way, we will have some space to work with. Also, I would like to send a big thank you to the people who thought it a good idea to send "Keyboarding With Word Perfect 97" to Senegal. Not only do people here not use Word Perfect, but the keyboards in French speaking countries (like Senegal) don't use the same keyboard we use in America. We have hundreds of copies of this book that are useless and won't be going anywhere.

Tomorrow is another holiday, so I don't know how much work I'll be getting done. I still haven't mastered the Senegalese art of sitting around and doing nothing. So I'm hoping I'll be able to at least work in the morning, and then enjoy the festivities during the afternoon. I'm told that it's a holiday of eating, and children go from house to house begging for candy (much like Halloween), and that men dress like women and women dress like men. I'm not so sure about that last part of the holiday, so I'm interested to see what really happens.

Saturday I will return to Dakar again. My good friend, and fellow Rotarian scholar, Allen is leaving for the States within the week so I will return there to say goodbye to him.

It's 3:54pm… I still haven't eaten lunch. (And yes I've done other things in this half hour besides write this entry)

Idleness

I have basically been on vacation since December 15th when my role with Rotary technically finished. Just this past week when I started working with 10,000 Girls did I start having a job again. I was kinda going crazy feeling like I didn't have a purpose. Waking up in the morning and knowing that I didn't have anything that I needed to accomplish that day. It drove me crazy! I had enough of a break and was ready to actually start doing something again. This is a good example of how I am obviously not Senegalese (not that a million other things such as skin color and language would've given it away). When I started working last week and this week, even when I only worked for two hours and I felt like I really should be doing more, my family told me that I work too much.

It doesn't help the situation that about 50% of the working-capable population here is unemployed. But, the Senegalese have an amazing way of sitting around and doing nothing. Often, it's sitting around and talking. There is a lot of that as well. And people say that this society is built on the art of chatting. Aside from that, there is also simply sitting around and doing nothing. At this moment, while I've been sitting here for the past hour or so typing away, my two host siblings have been sitting on the bed with me… doing nothing. Occasionally they'll say something to each other or to me, but overall they're just laying there and not even sleeping. I went to a party yesterday afternoon with Bethany for a woman who had just returned from Mecca. We arrived and after greeting everyone, we were ushered to sit under a tent with a bunch of other people. Hardly anyone was talking, and no one was doing anything else. There was music playing, but not dance music, in the background. And they simply sat there. They were all dressed in some of their nicest clothing, and sitting. One man took his cell phone out when Bethany and I arrived to take pictures of the two toubabs who were there and then he filmed a short video of everyone seated under the tent. After a little while we got up and sat down next to some girls who were a little older than us, who wanted to ask us questions and become our friends. Before we arrived, they weren't talking either. But at least that kept us entertained for awhile.

Even this morning, a guest came to our house and just sat down on the porch away from where everyone else was sitting. She sat there for at least a half hour and then got up and left. During the middle of that she spoke with my host mother/sister for about 2 minutes. I was introduced to her, and I exchanged greetings but she kept looking away.

I'm amazed at the ability of people here to be content with sitting and not being active. This is a country filled with people who have lots of patience, and very little ADD.

Streets and Dancing

In Dakar, you can find just about anything along the street. It is exactly the same way in Kaolack. In Dakar, you will find horse carts on the national highway on occasion and people pushing cars that aren't working and all sorts of things, but there is still a crazy order to things. In Kaolack… the order is even crazier. Cars fly by without regard to any pedestrian. Animals run across the street all the time… typically sheep, but sometimes cows as well. The main paved roads are big enough to support three lanes of traffic, but of course there aren't traffic lines painted on them. The vehicles on the street consist of horse and donkey carts, taxis, hundreds of little mopeds (the most unsafe ones you can find, and they're often skidding and falling over), the Kaolack equivalent of car rapides, the occasional personal or business car, and the even more rare bus. All the vehicles go so fast (except, of course, the animal carts). It just looks like a free for all out there, not exactly the safest thing ever. I live on a paved road like that, and whenever I'm with my host mom/sister she takes my hand before crossing and then runs when the coast seems clear. It's worse than Dakar, which I didn't think could exist.

Dancing is such an important part of life here. If music is on, someone is dancing. They don't sit like Americans and tap their feet or bop their heads. The Senegalese dance in their chairs or stand up and dance. I put music on in my room one of the first nights I was here, and little Maguette came in and started dancing. 30 seconds behind her was her mother who joined us and started dancing as well. My host mom/sister will dance whenever there is music on, even if it's a television commercial. It's so great! There's no shyness . Everyone just gets up and dances (and for the women of the house, except me, shirts tend to be optional). Before I left for Senegal I saw a YouTube video of a girl who was staying in Senegal, it was 3 minutes of a group of people in a living room sitting down with music on in the background, and as time went on different people would get up and start dancing and by the end she danced, too. I didn't realize until coming to Kaolack how normal that is in typical Senegalese society. So almost every day since coming here we have had some kind of dance party at the house, aside from the two days of parties for the returnees from Mecca. I always know for certain that if I put on music with any sort of dance beat to it, within a few minutes I will have company in my room who have arrived to dance.

Book Work

I had a nice unexpected surprise on Monday… the university professors went on strike (again, as usual), so all the classes were cancelled until Friday. This meant that my friend Bethany from Dakar decided to come with me to Kaolack for a few days until her classes started up again. So, Monday afternoon we piled into a sept-place in Dakar with other strangers. One man who asked if we were French, we told him we were American, and he made a horrible face and told us that he's afraid of Americans. That then started an interesting conversation. He's basically afraid of Americans because he sees Bush as someone who will start a war wherever he pleases, and the guy didn't really like the idea of that. It was probably the most lively trip I've made outside of Dakar. At the beginning, there was some conversation between passengers. After awhile a woman got a CD out and gave it to the driver to play, it the was the music of a local Senegalese artist trying to get his name out. The music was alright. A little while later the woman who had provided the CD fell asleep. So, the woman behind me got her cell phone out and started playing music quite loud. All kinds of music: Akon, Nelly Furtado, The Pussycat Dolls, and Celine Dion. Needless to say we had a little dance party in the back of the sept-place. Ok, no dancing, but there was singing along and bopping our heads along with the music. (Side note: Playing music from cell phones is very popular here. No matter where you are. On the street. In a restaurant. People will get their cell phones out, sit it next to them, and blast music from them.) The sept-place ride took entirely way too long because the driver wouldn't pass if he saw any cars coming… he could not possibly have been Senegalese. This left us caught behind large slow-moving trucks for most of the journey. I was not very pleased. It took us well over an extra hour to reach Kaolack.

Tuesday I worked all day and Bethany came to help as well. We were incredibly productive, and it really boosted my spirits after a frustrating week last week. It started off rocky, but really what I have to do now is open up the boxes and look around to see what's in them. We searched for hours for English books and finally found sets complete with teachers guides and workbooks. Now, the 39,000 books are in boxes in all rooms of a school where I'm working. And please don't think that the sets of books, teacher guides, and workbooks were all in the same area… that would've been too easy. Nonono, they were all spread out and in no particular order. Even two days later I found additional boxes of books that belonged with them. But we were kept busy all day, and I was happy enough.

Wednesday we arrived at work later than I would've liked, but of course it didn't matter. There was not enough work to keep us busy all day. We worked until about noon, and then were done. We were told not to come back in the afternoon, because there was nothing left to do until Thursday. So, we returned back to the house for the afternoon. Amadou, the son of the family who is almost 18 years old, wanted to go to the beach so we decided to take him and his little sister and a friend to the beach for the late afternoon and early evening. About 5 kilometers outside of Kaolack there is a beautiful beach next to the village of Kahone. The water is insanely salty, but it's beautiful. There also isn't exactly a lot of water. You'll have to look at my pictures to really get an idea of it. Bethany and I didn't swim in the water because we didn't trust it, but we were content to sit on the beach and watch the kids play. We attracted an assortment of 15-18 year old guys who came over and started doing pushups with the two boys we brought. Bethany and I decided that we really like that age group of Senegalese guys because they're too young (in general) to propose marriage. There's always the occasional kid who tells you that he loves you, but in general that's left up to the guys older than them. The beach was surrounded by typical African scenes… people on horse carts, thatched roof villages, baobab trees, and such. It was so pretty! We were there for about two hours before the sun started setting and we headed back to the city.

Weekend in Dakar

My work last week was quite a bit frustrating. By Wednesday I had finished all that there was for me to do until my boss returned. So after another evening at the party for the man who returned from Mecca, I took a sept-place Thursday morning and returned to Dakar. I spent the afternoon at the Baobab Center, where I used to study French, catching up with friends I hadn't seen since before Tabaski and my old professors. I found out that a new group of study-abroad students will be spending some time in Kaolack, so the guy in charge of the Baobab Center wants me to show them around a bit… that will be nice and give me something else to do in a couple weeks.

I spent much of the weekend visiting with friends, as well as my old host family. However, Friday during the day I spent the whole day working on things for the Rotary project. Although my Cultural Ambassadorship is technically over, I'm still trying to help them raise $15,000 US to finish phase one of the maternity clinic. If anyone reading this is interested in donating, or knows someone who would be, please feel free to email me: Shannon.T.Orourke@gmail.com

I also spent the weekend, and much of Sunday, fretting over my graduate school applications which were due Wednesday of this week. My applications were completed and paid for before, but the schools were still waiting on IWU to send in my transcript as well as a professor who had yet to turn in one of my recommendation forms. I'm hoping everything got in, and now I will simply wait for responses… This also delayed my return to Kaolack until Monday so that I could make some phone calls to people in the States on Monday.

Pictures! Pictures! Pictures!

Lots more pictures from the land of Senegal...

Photo Album #3:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2027888&l=40c5f&id=41600114

Photo Album #4:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2029650&l=0fc6f&id=41600114

Photo Album #5:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2029685&l=406dc&id=41600114

What's For Dinner?

Soup. That's what I had for dinner tonight. Not that big of a deal, right? Well, a good question would be "what kind of soup was it?" It was basically broth and beef. However, "beef" doesn't do it justice. I had already had a few bites of broth and a couple bites of meat that my host brother had separated and plopped in the bowl in front of me. Time out…

Just a reminder of the way Senegalese eat… out of one big dish. So this means that when you eat soup, you're eating out of a big bowl of soup together. When eating rice or something out of the same dish, it's easy to stay in your corner and not share too many "germs." However, when eating soup, your section of the soup doesn't exactly stay isolated from the soup in front of the others eating out of the exact same bowl. Ok, time in...

So, we've been eating for a little over a minute. I'd had a lot of broth, and a few bites of beef. My host mother/sister starts chewing on the meat from a bone that she has picked out of the broth. My host brother comments on how much my host mother/sister likes beef. I look closer, and she has just picked dry a jaw bone. Yep, that's right. I give the dish a better look, and yep, floating in the soup is a jaw bone with teeth intact. Yummy. Looking closer I clearly saw a skull that was being broken apart in the bowl. It's a good thing I'd been in Senegal awhile and I guess worked up to this… because if they had tried to feed this to me back in September I don't know how I would've handled it. But, I kept eating. Towards the end of the meal my stomach finally started to realize what it had been consuming. So, I stopped eating and removed myself from the porch. Now, a few hours later, I of course feel fine and not sick. But man, that really tested me.

It has been confirmed… it was sheep head soup. So the skull of the sheep was floating around in the soup. Mmm, yummy.

Party Over Here

One thing that I always felt like I missed out on while living in Dakar was a real Senegalese party. The Senegalese celebrate everything: marriages, births, new houses, etc. Celebrations include the renting of tents to hold the celebrations under, music and dancing, singing, lots of talking, food, and the usual. My family in Dakar never held a party and never invited me to any of the ones that members of the family attended. Here it is, my second night in Kaolack, and I got to go to one! It was very exciting.

A family friend returned tonight from his pilgrimage to Mecca, so they of course threw a huge party for him. I know more people in Kaolack than I knew my whole first few weeks in Dakar. I was taken around and introduced to all the family last night, and tonight I met everyone at the party as well. Everyone knows my name, but I of course hardly remember anyone else's since I've met well over 100 people in two days.

The beginning of the party consisted of lots of women sitting around in circles cutting vegetables. There were men around talking in some areas as well. There were tons of children who immediately started hanging on me and calling me "toubab." White people are much more rare in Kaolack than in Dakar, so they're a bigger deal to children. But luckily, unlike yesterday, my looks didn't make any of the children cry. Instead, it made some of them simply laugh uncontrollably. But they were adorable. A bit obnoxious after a little while, but adorable. One little boy wouldn't let go of my hand. Another little girl attached herself to me as well and started crying when her mother tried to take her away. She was absolutely adorable.

The party started without the guest of answer. Lots of dancing, singing out to Allah, and drummers drumming away. I was sitting and watching all the commotion, but was dragged up to the dance area by a woman I had met earlier in the evening, so I danced along with all the others. When the guest arrived, it was a mad rush to the door of the compound to meet him. Hadit, my host mother/sister, dragged me out with her into the mass of people and had me take pictures. The man was welcomed into the house, but I don't know what happened in there. Then he was brought back under the tents where he said his prayers while everyone watched him. People then went up to him to get what seemed like a blessing and to hear him speak. They then gave him a chair and they continued to kneel in front of him and hear him talk and say things to him. Hadit pulled me over as well and had me kneel down with her. He shook my hand and we exchanged greetings. I put my hands out like the others, and I guess received some kind of blessing like the others. I need to ask my host brother what exactly this was, no one who was around me spoke French so I couldn't get an explanation.

After a bit of a frustrating morning attempting to work but being unable to, this was a great way to kick off my sejour in Kaolack.

Home Sweet Kaolack

I've arrived. I left in a sept-place from Dakar yesterday morning around 10:30am. Surprisingly only about 3 1/2 hours later, I arrived in Kaolack. I was lucky that we didn't run into much traffic while leaving Dakar. I arrived at the Gare Routiere in Kaolack and waited for people to come pick me up. I turned down taxi after taxi who wouldn't leave me alone. A little Talibe kid came up to me and asked me for my water, and I actually said no. I know I should've said yes, I felt bad, but I only had about 3 inches left in my water bottle and I wasn't sure if I'd have money left by the end of the day to buy myself water, and I can't drink the water here or I'll be sick. Anyway, the kid stuck around by me and asked me if I needed a taxi. I said no and told him a friend of mine was coming to pick me up. He didn't speak French, and my Wolof is horrible, so we spoke in a combination of Wolof and hand gestures. He then told any taxi that honked or slowed-down and any guy who came back asking if I needed a ride that I didn't need their help, which was actually quite nice. The bad thing about being the only white person in the entire Gare Routiere is that everyone sees you as a rich person who they can overcharge so they all rush to your help. The good thing about being the only white person in the Gare Routiere is that when you don't know what the person looks like who is supposed to be picking you up, they can easily recognize and find you. Two kids ran up to me and asked me if I was Shannon, and this was who I had been waiting for.

Amadou and Maggot (yes, those are the names of my two host siblings… yes, the poor girl's name is Maggot) brought me by taxi to their house. I am quite lucky because I now happen to live on one of the two paved roads in Kaolack and I live close to downtown, so it's easy to get around. However, this of course does not mean that my street is void of the trash that this city is known for. Oh no. A drainage type thing lines each side of the street and is filled with trash and what I'm sure is sewage. Yummy. It really is truly disgusting the amount of trash and sewage and whatnot (n'importe quoi) everywhere in this city.

Anyway, I arrived at my house. It looks like I'm living in ruins. Don't get me wrong, I do live in an actual house, and it's nice (relatively speaking), but behind the house looks like a building collapsed and they never did anything with it. There are broken cement pieces that cover the entire backyard. There also is one last standing wall of what used to be a very large and nice house, but now the rest is simply rubble. The house I live in has three rooms; well, technically two rooms but one of them is divided into two by a curtain. There is a porch that is open to outdoors, which is where Amadou works out and sometimes we eat meals and there are a few things stored there. You then walk into a door to the interior of the house, which is also my host mom's and sister's bedroom. In it there are two couches, a queen-sized bed, and a television. Across the curtain in the same room is another queen-sized bed where the boys sleep. From the first room, there is a door to a second room, that second room is mine. I have a king-sized bed, another bed that serves as a couch, a chair, and a huge dresser, plus two bedside tables. Through my room is a door to the bathroom which has the refrigerator, bathtub, and toilet. Needless to say, privacy is very limited, but honestly by now I'm pretty used to it. People walk in and out of my room, but usually just in passing, and that actually doesn't bother me one bit anymore. Houses here kinda make me sad, because they obviously looked a lot nicer when they were built. And they were built to have running water and electricity. There is no running water in this house, and my host mom brings buckets of water in every morning. And the electricity is very sparse. It worked last night, but not at all during the day. Houses everywhere here look kinda like people are living in the aftermath of a war. Windows are often just openings in cement with fabric over them. It's a bizarre thing to see. The paint in each room of my house here is well passed starting to peel off, both the walls and the ceiling. But, it's still very homey.

My host mother hardly speaks French. She speaks Wolof. Same with my 10 year old host sister. And I'm realizing that my basic Wolof that lets me talk to taxi drivers, haggle at the market, count, and greet people, only gets me so far. Basic vocabulary like "taking a shower" which were all rushed through during my last day of class did not at all stick in my memory. But the son who is here speaks French, so he's easy to communicate with. There is a nephew staying with us for the week who is a Baye-Fall who also speaks pretty good French, so I've been talking to the two of them a lot.

Last night I was taken around to meet all of the relatives. I'm sure I met over 30 people last night. This family which I have become a part of, the Dieng family, is one of the biggest in Kaolack. They are also in Thies and Dakar, so all sorts of people in this country know of them. My new name is Ada Dieng (pronounced "aye-duh", "aye" such as in "aye-aye captain"). I hardly remember anyone's names. I made a toddler cry last night, just because I'm white. That was a nice experience. He again refused to eat lunch outside today because I happened to be sitting outside. It feels good to be loved. The adults kept laughing about it, and I repeatedly was told that Senegalese children are afraid of white people. I never found this to be true in Dakar, but I am still one of only two white people I've seen in Kaolack since arriving.

I was supposed to start work yesterday, but because my new host family wanted to take me around and have me meet the whole family, it was postponed til today. This morning when I called my boss, I was told to wait until she called me back. Three hours later she called me back and gave me two numbers to call to get a hold of a girl who will show me what progress has been done on the library project. I repeatedly called the two numbers once an hour, and was told that she was somewhere else. At 4pm today I finally got a hold of my boss again, and she told me that I must just be missing the girl, and that she would tell the girl to call me and she hung up without giving me the girl's number. 15 minutes later she called back, told me that the girl had been looking for me, and gave me the girl's phone number. I tried it twice, it didn't work. I called my boss back again and she said she would verify the number. She called me back 5 minutes later and told me she had given me the wrong number and then gave me the correct one. So I finally called that, and was told that the girl was in the bathroom so I'd have to call back. 10 minutes later I called again, FINALLY got a hold of the girl, she asked me if I was in Kaolack. I said yes, and she said she would meet me at 8am tomorrow at the mosque. GAHHHHHHH. I've been bored all day. I spent time with the family and with the relatives, and they're all nice, but man, I'm going crazy. When I want to get started on something, I have no patience, and this is driving me nuts. At least now I know I'll actually have a purpose for being here tomorrow. So I'm a bit calmed down. But man, earlier today I was kinda losing my mind. I'm now wishing that I had borrowed more movies from my friends before coming, because I only borrowed one, and I already watched that last night. I could wander around and take pictures of the city, but today I really wanted to get something done, and wandering around wouldn't exactly give me a sense of accomplishment. So instead, I got my sense of accomplishment from reading Catch-22 (thank you Patrick, you helped save me from losing my mind today), and with each finished chapter I felt like I had done something.

Alright, enough of my rambling. A few other items to note about my living circumstances. Last night, as I unpacked my stuff, I heard a mouse. Sure enough, about 2 minutes later one scampered across the floor. Late this morning I was in the "main room" of the house watching television with the others when I saw a mouse run under my chair. I can tell if the electricity is working by the refrigerator… if it is chugging away making lots of noise, the electricity is working… if it is quiet, the electricity is not working. The toilet does not have a toilet seat, and I flush it the same way as I did in Dakar, by dumping a bucket of water into it. I take a "shower" by standing in the bathtub with a bucket of water. I was very spoiled the past few weeks with hot showers and electricity, but now it's back to normal.

I am quite lucky again though. The family I am staying with is as nice as can be, even if communication is a bit of an issue at the moment. Hadit, my host mother, is not much more than 30 years old, so she's like a sister. She's always smiling and laughing and gets a big kick out of me when I say things in Wolof. Earlier when I was writing one of the paragraphs above I was zoned out of my surroundings and focusing on my writing, when I realized that she had been calling my name "Ada! Ada!" I ran outside to see her sitting in a chair with her foot covered in blood and a knife with at least 10 inches of blade sitting beside her foot. I ran to get cotton balls and a bucket of water. When I brought it back and cleaned off her foot, it was better seen that the cut was actually quite small, but it had produced a lot of blood. We cleaned it up with iodine solution and put a Band-Aid on it. My first-aid kit was quite helpful. I'm still curious now, because when this happened her nephew was laying on the couch watching television in closer proximity to her, but she didn't call for him she called for me. And he didn't pay any attention as I crossed in front of him a few times with cotton balls and other first-aid type things.

Week in Dakar

Time to talk about the present day. It's January again. I've spent a great week in Dakar. It has been really nice to come back here and feel completely at home. It is great to see all my friends and my host family. My host family treats me like I've returned after a very long trip, when I actually was only gone about a week and a half. I haven't stayed with them this week, which has actually made me feel even more like part of the family. I just walk in, sit down, eat, chat with everyone, nap on the couch, etc. That is all what their other relatives do when they come over. It's not unusual for the relatives to simply show up, greet everyone, and then spend an hour sitting on the couch and sending text messages or watching television before simply getting up and leaving again. I always thought it was strange that they wouldn't spend more time interacting and talking with the people in the house, but that's just how it's done. They immediately treat it like it's their own house. So that's how I've been all week. I dropped by at least once every day except for one. It was sad having to say goodbye to them, but I'll be visiting every few weeks, so it's not so bad. I gave them some presents from the states including two MSU coffee mugs (so now they have 4 coffee mugs altogether), some dried nuts and fruit, a t-shirt for my host father, and a blanket with some winter images on it. One of the images on the blanket is a snowman. When I pointed it out, my host mother called it a penguin, because the only show they have on television with winter images is a cartoon with penguins in it. The other favorite thing that I brought back was pictures of winter in the States. I had pictures of my street covered with snow, and the trees in my backyard without leaves, and the snow piled up a few feet on the side of the road. Their eyes grew wide and they couldn't stop laughing, it's all unbelievable to them. They got a big kick out of seeing me with boots, a heavy winter jacket, scarf, and hat.

Heading to Kaolack in the morning. I'm really nervous now about leaving. I never do well with transitions. I'm just so comfortable in Dakar now that I don't have a huge desire to move away from my friends and the comforts of a city for a few months in Kaolack. But I really am looking forward to my work in Kaolack. So, inchallah, all will go well.

Sheep

There are thousands of sheep on my street, and I'm not exaggerating. They're absolutely everywhere. They've appeared over the past month or so. Now there are at least 50 tied up in view of my front porch. But they line the streets all the way into the city. It's insane. There are of course sheep droppings everywhere. And it's hard to believe that by the end of the week the vast majority of these sheep will be dead, and eaten. Tabaski is on Friday. It's the most important Muslim holiday of the year. The feast focuses around sacrificed sheep. So everyone with a wife must by a sheep by Friday. One of my friends has about twenty sheep that he's trying to sell. They are tied up on my street, and he stays next to them day and night. He and our other friends are always hanging out next to the sheep, and he must sleep outside next to them so that people don't steal them in the middle of the night. The prices of the sheep skyrocket in the days before Tabaski, but the majority of people are still scrambling to get money to pay for one. They can cost anything from about $50 for a very small one to $1,000 for a big one.

We now have two sheep at my house. The one that has been there since I arrived, and now we're guarding a sheep of one of the relatives of my host family. This afternoon, my host father called one of the neighbor boys over and the kid helped my two oldest host brothers wash the two sheep. They had buckets of water, a hose, and the same soap that's used for everything (laundry, dishes, cleaning, etc). The sheep did not exactly like what was going on and they did put up quite a fight. But the neighbor kid scrubbed them with a huge brush and now they look squeaky clean and ready for Tabaski.

I have gone shopping for Christmas presents this week. The markets are always crazy here, but right now they're close to out-of-control. They're swarmed with people making last-minute purchases for Tabaski. In Marche Sandaga and all the streets filled with shops and stands near it, there are men standing on tables with megaphones yelling prices, music blasting from shops, and people trying to push things into your hands. Prices have plummeted because many of the vendors just need any amount of money they can get so that they can buy a sheep before Friday. It's crazy.

Weekend in Toubab Diallo

Since my classes finished last week, I decided to break out of Dakar for the weekend. I had originally thought that I would simply travel for all of this week, but there's too much I want to do and see here in Dakar in preparation for Tabaski, so I decided just to leave for the weekend. I went with two other Rotary scholars, Allen and Andrew, to Toubab Diallo. It is on the coast, outside of Dakar. It was wonderful. The town is a village with a few hostels and a couple hotels, but since it's not tourist season there was hardly anyone there except for the residents. Our little resort was lovely, and empty, which left the beach and the hammocks and lounge chairs and everything to us. And for the first time in three months... it was quiet. Allen and I laid out for quite some time, just listening to the ocean. I forgot what silence sounded like... no cars, no people, no mosques, etc. Incredible : ) It was incredibly relaxing, and I was immediately disappointed that I hadn't stumbled upon this place before and gone there more often. It was only $8 a night. And there was a wonderful restaurant across the street where an incredibly delicious sandwich was only $2. It was great. A great way to spend the weekend all my classes finished.

Safari

I finished my classes last week. I can hardly believe it. My time here has gone by so quickly! Last week my professor made very intense to review absolutely everything. On my last day of real class, Thursday, she brought a huge book of French exercises that covered all general grammar type things... and we went through it cover to cover! It was a bit exhausting. Then on Friday, I had an "exam." It was supposed to last 3 hours, and it took me 3 1/2 because she forgot to tell me that I didn't have to rewrite all of the exercises. Halfway through she told me that the exam didn't really matter, because she already knew what grade she was going to give me. I was certain it didn't really matter anyway, since I'm not really a student, so it's not like my university or anyone is holding me accountable for my grades. But I know that my French improved immensely, and I wanted to show that... so of course I took my time and actually took the exam.

The language school arranged for me to go to a national park this week with one of the other Rotary scholars. It was like going on our own private Safari. We left a bit late, so we ran into traffic in Dakar... so it took us way to long to get out of the city and to the park. When we arrived, we ate lunch since it was the hottest part of the day and all the animals were hiding in the shade and the water. So, we ate at the restaurant at the park while monkeys and warthogs swung and wandered past our table. It was really cool. The food was good, too. After lunch, we still have to wait another hour for the sun to go down a bit so that we could see animals. So of course, in true African fashion, there was a huge tent set up with tons of pillows and mats underneath. After our guide had said his afternoon prayers, we settled under the tent and took a nap for about an hour and a half. At 4pm, we finally got up and were ready to go our on little Safari. By that time, in true American fashion, I of course felt useless cause I had done nothing that day except for sit in a car, eat lunch, and nap.

The Safari itself was great. Tinari (the other Rotary scholar) and I were on the back of a truck with a guide. We went zipping around the park looking for animals. We saw ostriches and something else first, and then I spotted the next animal! It gave me a sense of accomplishment for the day, I had actually done something. I spotted some gazelles before the guide did. It was great. We saw all sorts of animals. Giraffes, warthogs, things I don't know the names of in English, and huge black rhinocerii. We actually stood on the ground about 20 feet from two fully grown black rhinocerii. That was definitely a highlight of the day. Those animals are absolutely massive. No elephants, no lions, no tigers, no cheetahs... sorry, we're in Senegal not Botswana. But it was wonderful nonetheless. It was even just nice to be out in the countryside on the back of a truck for two hours... fresh air, not hundreds of people everywhere, hundreds of baobab trees, animals... it was great.

Christmas in Dakar

Street vendors in this city sell everything, as I believe I have said before. Phone cards and peanuts are the most popular item for them to sell. But you'll see them sell all sorts of things. A friend of mine bought a carrot peeler out the window of our taxi once. My favorite new addition to the street vendors are ones that now carry around a 3-4 feet tall fake Christmas tree and tons of tinsel! The tinsel isn't even on the tree, it's wrapped around their necks like scarves. They look like walking Christmas celebrations, it's absolutely fabulous!

The entire city is lit up for Christmas. Yes, Tabaski (the most important Muslim holiday) is coming up about 4 days before Christmas, but it's Christmas lights and Christmas trees and Christmas decorations that can be seen everywhere. Almost everyone celebrates Christmas here, it's a holiday with Santa Clause and presents for the majority, and of course the Catholics and other few Christians celebrate Jesus' birth.

One of the patisseries near my house has a huge display with Christmas-type things on the street corner in front of it. I was in my friend's car driving by the other day when I glanced over and saw a huge creepy Santa Clause smiling and waving at me. In general, Santa Clause does not scare me. But this one was a Senegalese man wearing a mask to make his skin white with a beard... it was very disturbing. It wouldn't bother me if they had a black Santa Clause, but with the mask to make the skin appear white it just looked like a scary Halloween Santa Clause. I am not a big fan.

Braving the Car Rapide

I've been in Senegal almost three months now. Up until yesterday, I had not ridden in a car rapide. Car rapides are super colorful public transportation run by Muslim Brotherhoods. I believe I have described them before. They're like little busses, with writings and decorations all over them. They are typically packed full of people. There are hundreds, possibly over a thousand of them, in this country. They're everywhere. There's a driver, and the other worker hangs off the back of it. In order to get into one of these things, you have to climb in through a door on the back. The man who hangs off the back yells the destination of the car. So if you want to get on one of them, you stand on the side of the road where you know one with your destination drives down. If one passes, and the man is calling out the place you want to go, you get his attention. He then bangs on the back of the vehicle, and the vehicle slows down. Yep, that's right, it rarely stops, it just slows down. You then run after it and jump up into it. They're very cheap, and definitely not the safest form of transportation. You get packed into them with too many other people, particularly when it's rush hour there are multiple people hanging off the back of it. But they cost about $0.20 to take downtown. Outside of Dakar, they are incredibly dangerous to take from village to village, but in the city they're not too bad. Anyway, yesterday I rode in one. It was great. Packed with people, but not overpacked. We were squeezed in quite tight where we were sitting, but the vehicle wasn't also packed with too many people standing or hanging off the back of it. My friend Bethany and I got strange looks from the Senegalese in it, because it is rare that a tubab (white person) rides in a car rapide. The man in charge even tried over charging us for it, but we wouldn't let him. I'm definitely glad that I finally road one, but again I don't think this will become a habit. If they went down my street they probably would, but they don't, and I do value my safety.

Bethany and I took the car rapide to Marche Sandaga, the biggest market in Dakar and the one that was set on fire during the riots last month. We were on a mission to buy jeans. I ended up buying a great pair for $10. The place where we got it was a little shop on one of the main roads. And when I say shop, I'm not suggesting this structure was a building with a door. Think of a structure like a garage stall, but smaller, and with the garage door open... that was the shop. So basically a structure with three walls, where the fourth wall would've been (or the garage door would've been) was just open to the street. There were jeans hanging on every inch of wall space. I found one, but was concerned because there was obviously no dressing room... but I was wrong. The guy in charge pulled a sheet aside that was hanging like a mosquito netting from one of the back corners of the little shop (about 8 feet in from the opening to the street). I was quite a bit hesitant about his make-shift dressing room, but really wanted the jeans, so decided to give it a shot. There were 2 other men sitting in the little shop, plus the guy running the shop, plus my friend Bethany. When I got behind the sheet, I became quite concerned because I could easily see through it to the other people in the shop and the people walking by on the street. My friend laughed at me and thought I was crazy when I told her because she insisted that she could not see me. I had her stand behind the curtain for a second, and she realized how transparent it was from the inside, but when she was behind it I could not see her at all... which means neither could the other people in the shop or the people on the street. So I ended up trying on the jeans behind the curtain, while watching the people walk by on the street. It was the most bizarre thing ever. Not exactly a comfortable experience, because it was difficult to believe that I couldn't be seen even though I knew I couldn't. There's a public toilet in a sidewalk in Europe which is very much the same, it is built so you can see the people outside on the street walking by, but they can't see in, kinda like two way mirrors... and that's what it felt like. But it worked, and I bought the jeans, so all was good. However, it definitely was one of the strangest experiences I had in Dakar.

New Cardinal

West Africa was appointed a new Cardinal in the Catholic Church at the end of November. He is Senegalese and lives in Dakar. It is a HUGE deal here. The President and everyone are super are incredibly proud and happy about it, not just the Catholics. He was "sworn in" or "appointed" or whatever is the appropriate term in Italy, and when he arrived in Senegal afterwards, there was a HUGE celebration in his honor at the stadium near my house. They set off a huge fireworks display and I watched it from one of the nearby suburbs. All the proceedings have been on television all weekend.

Apologies!!

Hello everyone! Sorry it has been so long since I've updated this. December became a very busy month for me and then someone stole my laptop charger… so it was impossible for me to access anything on my laptop until I arrived back in the States for Christmas. A quick update on my trip home, and then the next few entries will have to do with life in Dakar right before I left.

I was scheduled to leave on December 22nd at 3:35am (early Saturday morning). After arriving at the airport at midnight (after a long day of celebrating Tabaski… biggest Muslim holiday of the year), I went through security and made my way to the plane. I boarded at 3am, and waited on the plane for over an hour and a half before they announced that the flight was cancelled. Some part of the airplane needed to be replaced, and the part was not available in Africa or Europe… so it was being flown over from Atlanta, which was the destination of my flight. It took until 6am to actually exit the plane. And then we waited for 2 hours for our luggage. And then another 2 hours to be shuttled to a hotel which they had booked for us. I arrived at the hotel at 10am not having slept in over 24 hours. The hotel was nice, a beach resort in Ngor… it had hot water and a beach, so I could not complain. The other passengers who were all on their way back to the States from South Africa found plenty to complain about. I ate the free breakfast with other passengers, gave them tips on what to do in Dakar, then retreated to my room and crashed and slept til about 5:30pm. At that time I ate the free dinner they provided. Then I ventured out to buy overpriced shampoo and took a hot bath, the first time I'd had access to hot water since arriving in Senegal. We had a 3:30am wake up call and a shuttle to the airport at 4:30am (early Sunday morning). I was at the airport by 4:40am, where we sat and waited while they reprocessed everyone and gave us all new boarding passes, even though we were all the same passengers boarding the exact same plane as the day before. That lasted until 8:30am. The flight was supposed to leave at 9am, but was delayed again. It was a bit ridiculous. For instance, at around 10am they made an announcement for all of us to go to a lounge for free beverages, and then we arrived in the lounge and they told everyone to leave but families with small children. There were very few people working at the airport that morning and I was shocked that the communication failed so badly. We finally boarded the plane and left a little after noon. I got to Atlanta with 6 minutes to run to my gate… I felt like I was in the movie Home Alone running through the airport… but unlike the people in the movie, I missed my flight by 3 minutes. So I waited around and was transferred from flight to flight, ended up waiting an additional 4 hours until I finally got a flight to O'Hare. During my time at the Atlanta airport I dealt with very unhappy Delta people who kept lying to me, my cell phone died, my credit card was blocked, and I developed a migraine. It was not exactly the best few hours ever. Eventually when I arrived at O'Hare at 10:40pm, I made the discovery that my luggage did not make the same flight. It was quite an experience. But that's ok, all is fine now. I got my luggage when I finally arrived in Grand Rapids. Christmas with the family was wonderful.

Now I'm sitting in an airport in Detroit at the moment on my way back to Dakar. The trip was incredibly short, even more so due to the delays and being exhausted because of them.