africa light---

well my immediate thoughts as a i type this on october 30 are MAN the staff at peace corps center in senegal are unorganized!!!!!!!!!!! things take forever and there is constant misscommunication TOUT LES JOURS> ----- all of the time. c'est bizarre, mais c'est la vie au senegal.

none the less, im happy (as i dump dead spider on ground without a second thought)

man this pas weekend a lot of us went to dakar for the weekend and i felt like my former self for a few nights. MAKEUP and clothes....ok i havent used a normal purse in ages, and didnt there, but i was close to old claire. clooooooose.

that city is pricey though. bucks for a cab ride? non,cest trop chere, and walk away.wait 30 seconds for cab driver to lower price, hahaha oh what has become expensive has changed. its a constant bargaining scheme here in senegal. fortunately i was with those who have much b etter french. anyways lots to say but id rather use other web pages so let me post what ive written at times when im not connected to the internet. see below:

from Oct 7:
Hello ---

Ca va bien? Oui ca va bien. Nanga def? magni fi…. Ca va. Ca va merci.

Greetings are a huge part of Senegalese culture. Big time. That above was a typical greeting. Wolof and French. Frolof. Sometimes greetings are the whole conversation for a good while. If you don’t say hi to someone here, it is an insult. Like when you are in your village or your quartier in a city. Or Work. Etc. Things run differently here in Africa and it is going to take me a while to sort it out and if ever…iron out the kinks. First, the language. I can kinda shmumble through things when I go out alone now, but it definitely makes traveling a bit harder. Ok, a lot harder. Though I have been surprised by the amount of people speaking English. However, at the moment I am in a city of 1 million. And even most of those who speak some English, it is not much. Clearly the case is that the reply people learn first for “how are you?” is “I am fine, thanks”. Its so endearing. “I’m fine, I’m fine thank you”.

En general, people in Senegal really do follow through on the hospitality thing they promise. I mean, all of my encounters have basically been pleasant. My host family goes with me some times some places and that never hurts. ☺ I hang out with my brother a lot here. He is my twin because we are the same age. He looks older though.

I am sweating a lot right now. My room is a sweat box and I felt like typing this alone in here. I don’t really feel like conversing much in French. It is tiring and today is my only day off. I hung out with my uncle today: he is 35. I went to his house and it is really nice, actually. And a Peace Corps volunteer lives there. It has to be the nicest set up of all of the volunteers. I was chilling, with a fan on, music, in a room with couches and such. And also on the doors there are generally sheets hanging so you can have privacy and air… at this place there were luminescent peach crochet-ish curtains and they were beautiful. The sun was coming through them and creating such a lovely glow. And I hung out there. He is kinda like an African Rastafarian looking guy. He speaks fluent English, so honestly that is what we used the entire time…. Woops. Whenever I hang out with Antoine, my brother, he will occasionally slip in an English word he knows and instantly the dynamic of my mind changes. “J’ai compris!” – I comprehend. I, for that one minute, stop squinting my ears and lean back a little.

As languages go, first you start to understand what other people are saying. And more and more every day I do. I have a lot of vocabulary to learn. I should be doing it now but man it is my only day off out of the week. It is Sunday, it is almost 8 pm here, 4 pm in Ohio. Dinner is ready at 8 30 every night. That is quite early because a lot of families eat at 11 or so. That is mainly because it is Ramadan right now, which is the muslim holiday when they fast for a month from sunrise to sundown. Everything slows down during this time of the year. Not even water during the day. In the freaking hot ass African sun…. no drinking or eating all day. Us volunteers have some interesting thoughts about this. No big deal or anything though. The Catholics respect it, too. Me living with a Catholic family has been really nice. Because here Catholics are the more laid back or the religions. It is kinda weird, but it works. And my name fits in well with the family

I am typing on my computer without the internet, so I do not even know what I wrote the one time I blogged, so I will introduce my family to you. There is my dad (must introductwe him first in Senegal….) Gabriel. He seems to really like me. The father role in Senegal is much more hands off and kind of maintains the role of the worker. Gender dynamic here is worth noting and will be a constant point of reference throughout my years here when I write. Anyways, He always says “Claire comme la loon!” Meaning Claire like the moon. Apparantly it is a French song. I am glad I found that out because I thought he was saying I was like an alien a few weeks ago. He is a retired police officer. He has been to the US. New York, North Carolina, and somewhere else. And he really speaks no English at all, so I laughed at him a little bit when I pictured him in the USA. “how are you doing?” he has beeen saying lately. Though more like “how youu doin”.

My mother’s name is Suzanne. (weird). She is a commercante, which means she sells thing like fish and ice. People buy ice from the people who freeze it at their house: those with water on site and a freezer. She puts water in bags, then people come by, sometimes with a little cooler or something, and take it. She is a hearty women, as many are here.
She is warming up to me as I can speak French more. They have had lots of volunteers stay with them. So she is very nice and always passes me pieces of fish at the dinner bowl.

I have 3 sisters, Madeline, twenty-seven,Veronique, twenty-five, and Virginie, 14. (My two button is not functioning on my computer.)

I am not kidding when I say I am soaked in sweat right now. ☺ Just painting the picture. In a month it is supposed to start cooling down. Goooood.

And then I have a brother Joseph living in Italy. In Senegal, I believe this means he sends the family money.

I can hear them speaking Wolof outside now. The girls make the dinners. Kids do a lot of work here. Like all of it, actually. Especially the girls. Men are for working outside of the home or whatever.

So here is my daily day here….

I wake up around 6:30 a.m. it is usually still dark when I get up unless I continue on woith this snooze button thing. Mmmm sleep. So I get up, climb out of my mosquito net through the little “door” opening that is tucked under the mattress. I find my toilet paper and go to the bathroom. Because with the food here, let’s just say it gives people u happy stomachs a lot. Sooooo the bathroom is outside. My bedroom door goes straight outside onto like a little patio thing where the other people’s doors go to, too. And I walk just down like an alley thing back to the bathrooms. It is two separate rooms. One is the shower and the other is for the toilet. The toilet is a Turkish style, which means you squat. I think it is better than the other option of a toilet without a seat cover. Because that’s really fowl. At least no one’s ass touches the Turkish hole. And people use a bucket of water instead of toilet paper. So I flush my stuff down with a cup that’s in the bucket, because it does not flush, it just does down a hole…I imagine. Then I go to the next door and get the shower bucket. I take that out to the courtyard area and fill it up. Then I carry it back and take a bucket shower, which is just dumping water over yourself with a cup out of the full bucket. One of these days I am going to take a shower at the center. Not having to work for a shower sounds kind of cool. But I don’t even notice already. I am getting used to my house here. Which is crazy because in 5 weeks I am moving out.

By the time I think I will post this blog (in a week) I will know where my site is, which is where I will live for two years. I am finding out this Thursday. The way they do it is they take all of us trainees (39, down from the original 44) out to the basketball court at the center which has a map of Senegal painted on it. They blindfold us and place us where we will be living. I think we are all going to celebrate knowing where we will be living and working for two years with lasagne. Word on the street is there is a place here that can have it if you order it a day in advance. That sounds like heaven on earth.

I miss American food, oh yes I do. It is pretty standard here. Though I have found ways to eat for cheap that is not bread. Today I bought a hard boiled egg and two bananas. That cost 50 cents in total. Haha life is pretty cheap here. A soda in a glass bottle is about 40 cents. Fanta, coke. Apparently cigarettes are a dollar a pack for Marlboros. Its dollar beer day every day at this one restaurant peace corps volunteers go to a lot. There is a discount for pcvs. They serve pizza and icecream there too, it’s a bit ridiculous. I occasionally get food there, like once a week at most though. I have been getting cheese a few times at the store though. And MULTIGRAIN bread and eating that in my room before dinner. Because sometimes I cannot even stomach the food, like when it is Senegalese (note: unless you have been here and had it, you don’t know what it is…haha “mmmcous cous is goood tho! Noooo). It is made with millet. And one night I had to pass on the dinner all together because to me, it tasted like my vomit. Hhah but in general its not so bad. However, it is not nutritious. As you can understand, food here is to get full. So it is heavy on the carbs, like rice, white baguettes, and sometimes potatoes. That is even a bit fancy. And my family is not poor by Senegalese standards at all.

And at the center it is this: white baguettes for breakfast. Toppings include real butter, peanut butter, jelly, and generic nutella. Not so bad huh?? Well try having it at tea time too. Every day. Though at the “town meeting” last weekend I brought up the fact that a lot of volunteers are having a hard time staying awake in class for 10 hours on this. So some off the days there are hard boiled eggs and fruit. Though, the fruit in the morning replaces the fruit we got after lunch. Haha small victories. Eggs are awesome. And having peanut butter is too. Though we have chicken twice a week. Its great. Saturdays the food is a biut more western style too, so we all get extremely happy. I am going to take pictures at lunch this week I just decided, so you can just see the food and the way people eat on the ground and whatnot.

I am looking forward to having the option of cooking for myself and having filtered water at home. Because at the moment I could totally drink this liter of water in front of me in one go, but I want to save it for the whole night until I get to the center and get some of the filtered water. It will be nice to be at the place I will live for two years are have more than just a bedroom, or at least a bigger one. This is tiny and my stuff is just all over the floor. Beaucoup de baggage dans ma chambre. I do think in French a bit now, so it is really nice. It is way harder to write or type, though. Hopefully in time. And also I will be learning the national language, Wolof, after my French reaches an intermediate level. And also just at site I will be there for 3 months solely for community integration and language building. This happens in 5 weeks when pre-service training is done. I swear in as a volunteer is just 5 weeks. Finally time is starting to move at a normal pace. It certainly did not do the same for the first month. Tommorrow it will be one month since I left Ohio and flew to Atlanta for staging. So I have been in Senegal for for about 3 weeks. Feels like a whole lot more.

I have bruises all over my legs and I have no idea. My body reacts differently to a lot of things now. I have to adjust a lot of things. For example, last night we were hanging out at another trainee’s house. It was me, my brother, tayo (trainee), his cousin who is also my brothers friend, and some other Senegalese people and another trainee maria. Oh and also a Japanese guy is staying with one of the sengalese guys there. He has been here for a week. He is with an organization similar to Peace Corps. It was a crazy moment in Africa. And for a few minutes it was just the peace corps peeps and it was looking like a big storm was on the way, with lightning, etc. And I mentioned that we are going to have to adjust even the way we looked at weather. Because we asked one of the kids that was around if it was about to rain and he was like nope. And then it sprinked for 1 minute and stopped and cleared up totally. Then we all went out to a soiree. It is two bucks to get in. There is a dj, a stage thing where you get beer and dance. Then there is a huge courtyard with tables and chairs where people sit. No one goes til like 1 am and people stay til 5 am at least. Antoine and I cruised home at 5 this morning and we both slept late all day. I saw a little food stand outside of the soiree and was like yess. I saw buns. I asked what came with the buns. Coffee. Sweeet. Im going home to bed. Hhaa. And so I ate a bun. And I LIKED IT. Haha. Sink or swim. Sink or swim.

I hope dinner is tasty today. Anyways, I am just rambling waiting for dinner to be done.

I will stop though there is a lot more to be said. It is about time I got some substantial information up on the blog though. Currently I am listening to Sufjan Stevens, but really I am learning the men chanting the Muslim prayers over the loudspeakers. Do you know about those in Muslim cultures? It is the call to prayer 5 times a day. I have a mosque nearby, so I hear it.

I will go sit outside. I will put my pagne on over my shorts because, well that would just be inappropriate without it. Ciao for now!!!