Half A Month in Africa

I arrived in Senegal at 5am June 15^th via South African Airways (which is the way to travel coach!  Posh).   It is now July 3^rd, 2011 almost 10pm.  I sit in the Disco Hut (so named for the dangling disco ball) at the Thies Training Center.   It’s pretty quiet save for the train passing nearby and the crickets and bugs singing their nightly tunes; I’m keeping the mosquitos at bay with my deet perfume.  I’m here enjoying some alone time.  Some of the group has gone to the Catholic Compound for beers, some are showering off the dust and heat and some are already in mefloquine dreamland.

I’ve been here for just over 2 weeks and it feels like an eternity…  I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve been so busy or that I’m surrounded by a different culture, weather and language…probably a combination of such things.  I’ve had many things to process since coming here and I haven’t had the easiest time; my first week with my host family was filled with crying on the phone to those who would kindly listen.  My stress level has decreased and so has my crying.  Cey Allah!  (Thank God!)  Any one thing that I encountered would be easy by itself, but when all things exploded like a Mentos dropped in a soda bottle, it really became a force to be reckoned with.

My current status is that I am full.  I had 3 helpings of beans for dinner with some onion sauce.  Beans have a lot of fiber and rice does not – I’ve had plenty of rice in the last 2 weeks, likely more than I’ve had in my entire life.  But that is the food of Senegal and it’s prepared quite nicely sometimes.  I like it with fish and veggies and I don’t like it with mystery meat washed in grey water.  But hey, I ate that for lunch and dinner and I’m still alive and feeling healthy.  This meal, among my group, has the moniker “Cow Jaw Mafe”.  Mafe is peanut sauce and rice and you know what cow jaw is…

I recently changed host families because my original host family’s toilet crapped out.  How does a hole in the ground break you ask?  Well, it fills up after 22 years.  So I was moved to a nearby neighborhood.  I miss my first family, especially my little brothers who have only love to offer when they run up and jump in my arms.  I have visited them already and will continue to visit.  I am now living with the family that my language teacher lives with…so I have no excuse not to practice…so much for locking myself in my room and reading books in English! 

My training site is in Mboro, north of Dakar and on the coast.  I’ve been to the beach twice and it’s been glorious.  Swimming is forbidden because people have drowned there.  Let’s remember that most Senegalese don’t know how to swim.  The waves are like a California beach on a calm day with a slight undertow.  Those of us in Peace Corps could handle the water…but we only go in up to our ankles and hope the cooling waves splash the heat and sand off of our entire bodies.  I look due west and realize if it were much, much closer that I could swim to the Caribbean and I long for a rum drink…but I digress.

Africa.  It sounds so exotic and romantic, at least to me.  My biggest culture shock is the unending amounts of trash everywhere; I mean everywhere, even in the air as the smoke of burning trash and plastic wafts into your nasal passages at certain times of the day.  Walking home from the Catholic Compound the other night, I looked behind me and saw the trees enshrouded in a misty fog and thought how beautiful it looked – then realized the misty fog was smoke from burning trash.  In town, gutters are piled with trash and debris.  I have to watch my step and I have to wash my feet when I get back to some clean water and soap.  I love the traditional dress and fabrics and the big baobab trees, red fish and rice and bissap juice.  I’ve bought several meters of fabric and have had some skirts made.  Skirts make it much easier to use the Turkish toilets in this country!  The juxtaposition of a well-dressed Senegalese against the trashed filled back-drop of towns blows my mind.

Wolof is the language I am learning and one I didn’t know existed 3 months ago.  It’s the hardest language I’ve ever tackled and am frustrated that I’m not catching on as quickly as I expected…and then I am reminded that I haven’t even been here for 3 weeks.  I find that to be a minor comfort

In one week I’ll know where I’ll be working and maybe what I’ll be doing.  I’ll then visit the current volunteer at their site for a few days to see what they are up to.  I’m looking forward to knowing this currently secret information.