Dakar is NOT Senegal

I just spent a month out of village, including about a week and a half in Dakar, the capitol of Senegal…and going back to village was so different that I’m fairly sure I experienced culture shock. Anyway, back to the beginning of this little NotSenegal adventure!

After spending the night having an awesome campfire in a friends’ village we all headed to the beach – where we used to go when we were in training! We spend the night in really cute huts that were Senegalese but clean and adorable. And spent 2 days on the beach…before we left we visited our host families from training and ate at my favorite Senegalese burger shack J

Next we headed on over to training. We were supposed to stay with new host families but after a few days the training staff let us stay at the center – basically this means we got more time to hang out with other Americans and eat/cook American food – always a bonus! But my new host family was pretty cool – they made a rice dish for dinner that was essentially rice pudding – fantastic! And we had mangos every night for dessert. This family speaks an insane number of languages between them. They kind of spoke English and fluently spoke Catalonian, Spanish, Zarma, Pulaar, Wolof, and French. I was impressed. They also had 2 computers, a TV and real chairs! My older host brother lives in Spain and yearly brings a bunch of Spanish students to the Senegalese village where he was born, to do volunteer work. We actually ran into the bus filled with the kids on this trip and my host brother, on our way back to Kolda after visiting Dakar…it’s a small Senegal.

Overall, in-service training was about as uneventful as pre-service training so I was pretty glad when it ended. At this point I headed over to Dakar with a couple of other volunteers to help at an English Camp run by the US Embassy – so we were interacting with Senegalese high school and middle school students BUT got to speak English the whole time. Also, before camp started we got a CATERED meal…the appetizer was so big we thought it was the meal and I couldn’t finish eating…AMAZING. English camp pretty much just consists of the volunteers and campers playing games while speaking English for 4 hours a day…and it’s over by 1 PM…which means we played games all morning and then lounged around all afternoon. Also at English camp I had the pleasure of meeting such celebrities as Young Money, Birdman, Ciara, and Rihanna among others…this is because we asked the kids to pick English names…and apparently most of the English names they know are the names of hip hop and rap artists. There were a ton of volunteers in Dakar for the weekend because one group was having their close of service conference plus the English camp volunteers and the people who live in Dakar were all there. So every afternoon consisted of sitting by the pool at the American club…or swimming in it, and playing volleyball and chillin. We had a trivia night, which my team won, no thanks to me, followed by an amazing party thrown by some Belgians for some independence day or birthday or something or other. We dubbed it the Bouncy Fun Party…because there was a dance floor, trampolines AND two enormous inflatable slides! Plus there was alcohol… I made some sweet dancing Belgian friends after busting out the worm on the dance floor. They also played the World Cup Shakira song Waka Waka no less than 3 times…which was awesome since we had spent the previous month perfecting the dance. Also on the way home one slightly drunken volunteer informed the cab that he once ate so many mangos that he smelled like mangos, this was amusing. The next night was a rather enormous outdoor dance party dubbed KouelGraul or something to that effect. In between dance parties and camp we ate at delicious restaurants and frequented the grocery store…the real life grocery store that is. Don’t take your friendly neighborhood super market for granted! The first time I step foot in an American supermarket I’m going to bend down and kiss the floor…this is not a joke. There was also a Guess store in the “supermarket” (it’s called Casino)…I could have bought one dress with all the money I get for 3 months…tempting.

I also could have helped with a basketball camp in Dakar but I chose to chill by the pool instead. I would have missed meeting Dwight Howard…had he not slept in and missed his plane. The volunteers who helped did meet some other NBA players though.

Anyway, the fun had to come to an end so I headed on home with a station wagon full of volunteers. When biking home the grasses and crops had grown so crazily that I biked right past my village…only to realize I must have missed it about 20 minutes later. Coming home to village was a huge shock, not least because it’s Ramadan! This means we eat breakfast around 5:30AM and then don’t eat again until 7:30 PM. I of course sneak food in my room or eat lunch with the little kids. The adults can’t even swallow their own spit. I can’t imagine working in the fields in the crazy heat without drinking and on top of that spitting frequently; but they do it. The perks of Ramadan are that we have bread and coffee every night to break the fast AND we have 2 dinners! This lasts for a whole joyous month!

As for my garden…FAIL. When I left my garden decided mostly to not grow (with the pumpkins, squash and corn being the exceptions) and my pepiniere was overrun as no one weeded it. Of 500 sacks only 24 trees survived L At least that was enough to give each family in my village a tree! Another FAIL would be the stealing of my cell phone…mostly because I knew when it happened and saw the guy but I only checked for my wallet…anyway, got a new phone now, same number!

And finally…hate to end this post on a sobering note but it’s a crazy sad fact that is worth sharing. I have been talking to the villagers to try and decide my projects for the next 2 years and have just begun realizing how prevalent child mortality is in Senegal. My family has 8 living children currently…6 other children were also born but died before reaching 1 yr old. Thus I will be pressing pretty hard to improve maternal and infant health.

As for other projects – I think I will be working with the relais (Senegalese villagers who volunteer to help with health education and are associated with health posts) and training some of them in specific areas so they can speak with villagers about certain health topics. The hope is that after I leave they can continue educating other villagers. I will also be working with groups of women to help them start small businesses and helping with a weekly class for the adults in my village since many of them wish they could have a shot at school. I am also thinking of putting on an AIDS concert with a volunteer friend of mine! So lots to do J

Love From Senegal!!!!!

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