This weekend we took a trip to Saint Louis in the North part of Senegal. It was very beautiful and I'll tell you all about it soon! Here is Sarah, Hannah, and Rosa in front of the bridge
A "pirogue" (fishing boat)
Hannah standing on the balcony looking over the courtyard of our wonderful hotel!
The Mosque on the island of Saint Louis. According to our tour guide, it's the only Mosque that uses a clock and bell to call for prayer rather than the typical praying through a speaker.
We took a very "toubab-y" tour of the island via horse drawn carriages.
We were told that this was an area of Saint Louis with lots of polygamy (and therefore lots of children running around). The guide said that each antenna was for a TV so that the "other" wives could be occupied and not get jealous.
Hundreds of ducks in flight
Pelicans
All of those little black specks are pelicans! Tons of pelicans. They are hunted by jackals
A little crocodile
The view from our WONDERFUL hotel in Saint Louis
Here is my blurry attempt at capturing Gamou on my camera. This was during the midnight meal time.
Just wanted to put in a quick word about La Coupe d'Afrique.
I'm not sure if anyone reading this really keeps up with the goings on of African soccer, but it's pretty exciting!
Last night was the finale and it was probably the longest soccer game I've ever watched. It was Zambia vs. Ivory Coast. Ivory Coast was favored (I think) to win, and Zambia had never one the Cup before. By the 90th minute, it was tied 0-0. The teams were very well matched with only one or two big scoring opportunities for each side. After two 15 minute periods of overtime, the score was still 0-0 and they went into penalty kicks. No one likes when a game ends in PKs, but that's the game. Both teams made all five goals, so it went into extra PKs. The 9th shooter for Ivory Coast missed, Zambia's 9th player scored, and that was it! Zambia won! It was very exciting. Most of my family was rooting for Zambia because apparently Ivory Coast and Senegal are rivals of some sort. It was a good night.
I’m finding it’s harder to write in length about my time here now because the oddities of daily life are becoming so normal.It’s been the better part of a month now, and this is really starting to feel like another home to me.I suppose I can tell you all about the classes I’m taking now that we’ve had almost all of them!
First is Wolof, which we’ve been taking for quite some time now.My Wolof class is the smaller of the two, with only four of us.Our professor is named Abdou and he’s a very funny man.It’s cool because a lot of the class is sort of driven by what we have heard or what we want to know how to say.Wolof is hard though.Unlike anything I’ve ever spoken.When I’m sitting in class with everything right in front of me, it seems to make sense, but once I’m out of that setting, it just all flies away!And it seems as though all Senegalese people think it’s the easiest thing ever and that four weeks is plenty of time to be able to speak it.Not true.Oh well!It’ll be fun if I ever run into a Senegalese person back home.I’ll be able to greet them, that’s for sure!
Next is French.Three of the girls in our group were in an upper level French literature class before coming here, so they are in a literature class with the five girls here from Beloit College.The rest of us are broken into French classes based on our skill level.It’s been really helpful to have French classes because I’m not really afraid to speak up in French (compared to every other aspect of my life here, where I’m pretty terrified to initiate conversation).There are just three of us in my class and it’s been quite helpful!I do really just need to get over the fear of speaking thing though.It’s completely psychological.In time, in time.
We have History of Islam three days a week, which is really interesting!Our professor is pretty funny.We spend the first hour of class asking questions and discussing things we’ve noticed in our stay here, which is very helpful to understanding some of the culture.Someday I’ll get up the energy to type up some of the interesting stuff we’ve learned in that class, but it’s Friday afternoon right now and I just can’t do it.The last hour of class is spent discussing more of the history and traditions of Islam and more specifically Islam in Senegal.
We have seminar class twice a month that’s sort of a time to ask questions about issues we’ve noticed living in this new culture.It’s also meant to be related to volunteering that we’re supposed to be doing.None of us have done it yet though because we haven’t really had free afternoons during the week and with the strikes and manifestations (which are pretty much done now) it’s been hard to go anywhere.But it’s an interesting class nonetheless.
We have a Senegalese literature class as well.The poor girls in the other French lit have it too.It’s the same professor for both of the lit classes as well as our seminar.She’s a brilliant woman, but her idea of a discussion based class is that we ask a question or raise and issue, and she discusses it for a half an hour.It’s brutal.
We are taking an African/Senegalese art history and culture class (I don’t know how to better title it).It’s pretty interesting.We’ve only had it twice so far though.
Finally, we have a class called Continuity and Change that we haven’t had yet.It includes a group and individual trip into a village at some point in our stay here, so that will be interesting I’m sure!
Classes are always two hours long, but for the most part they give us a break in the middle which can last anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes!It’s best during morning classes because they always have coffee and tea out for us.Classes are taught in French (though sometimes with Wolof it’s more like Franglais).It’s exhausting.Usually by the 90th minute I find it very difficult to concentrate.Hopefully it gets easier though!And it’s nice because there’s always someone I can ask to clarify what’s going!
We had a bit of a dust storm in from the Sahara for a couple of days, but it’s mostly gone away and it’s nice and sunny again!
Here’s a video that Camille took of our walk to school!
On Friday night we went to a rap concert downtown that was pretty cool. The guy's name is Nix and he's from Senegal. It was at this place called Institut Francais, so there were a bunch of white people, which is no longer normal. It was fun though! Here's one of his music videos (I really have no idea what this song is about...):
Saturday was Gamou, the celebration of the birth of the Prophet Muhammad.I had overheard in a conversation between Mariama and her grandmother a few days ago that we would be having a party for Gamou.I had no idea what that truly entailed.Saturday morning I left early to meet up with the group to go fabric shopping, but when I got back around 1:30, there was a giant tent set up in front of my house.Most of the day passed normally, I didn’t know what time the party was supposed to start, so there was just a lot of hanging around.At one point I went outside to see what was going on and I was set to work by the team of 8-10 year old boys that were taking the job of sweeping in front of the house very seriously.I was happy to help of course, but I wasn’t sure what to do with myself, considering we were literally sweeping dirt off of dirt onto more dirt. So I just played along.People were in and out of the house all day.They started to set up some intense speaker system in the trees around the tent.I was still unclear on when the party would start or what it would be once it did.We ate dinner around 9 pm, joined by a bunch of men I had never met.Even they told me to keep eating when I was done.People just really want you to eat a lot of food here.You have to be kind of sneaking and insist that you’re full in Wolof, otherwise, you’re stuck.After dinner some prayer sounding music started playing over the speakers, but not many people had showed up yet.Everyone was running around preparing things and I just felt so out of place.I ended up sitting and watching music videos with some of my host brothers.My friend Camille came over around 9:30 because somehow our families are related, which is pretty cool.She sat with me and we laughed about the absurdity of the 21st century.Watching Britney Spears music videos with Muslim prayer songs in the background surrounded by Senegalese people dressed to the nines in traditional garb.The best part had to be the guy reading the Koran from his iPad.There’s an app for that.A little later the music turned into more sermon type speaking by some religious heads.We were able to peek outside a bit.The tent was lined with lights and the ground was covered in mats.The women, covered head to toe, were confined to about a third of the space, the men taking up the rest of it.More waiting around, watching music videos, not knowing what to do with ourselves.At around midnight a meal was served to all of the people (not even kidding, it had to have been close to 100).It was quite good, some sort of meat and onion sauce followed by delicious juice.There’s a girl from the US in a different program than us that lives at Camille’s house too, and after eating, the three of us were really unsure what to do with ourselves.We started to go outside to check it out, but my host brother Mohammad said we couldn’t without our heads covered, so we went back in.My host mom came by and encouraged us to go out, but said I had to change because I was wearing jeans.As I do not have any long skirts or dresses, she lent me an outfit.Wrap around skirt and a tunic type thing.It was pretty cool, bright orange and blue.My brothers were taken aback at first, they weren’t quite used to seeing their toubab like that, but I think people liked it.It was actually quite cold that night, but we toughed it out for a while.Considering we don’t speak Wolof or Arabic, there wasn’t too much we had to pay attention to once we were in the crowd, but it was pretty cool to be a part of.At about 2:30 in the morning we were served Café Touba, which is this coffee they drink all the time here.It has loads of sugar, I’m sure (they love sugar), and a sort of woody taste to it.It’s a pretty intense flavor, I’m not too sure I like it, but it’s all part of the fun.At that point we were aware that this little shindig lasts until sunrise.I called it a night around 3AM and was ever so thankful for my ear plugs.I took a couple of pictures, but I was sort of unclear as to what would be appropriate to photograph or not.Also, some random Senegalese man has a picture of me in the formal wear, but I have no idea who he is.All in all, it was a pretty cool thing to be a part of.
