Bonjour de Senegal

Le 16 mars 2008

Greetings from “warm” Senegal. I say warm because it’s probably in the high 80s and mid 90s and we have about 30 degrees more to go before we hit the Dry Season. Yes, that’s right…we are currently at the very end of the wet and “cool” season, which is the windy season. The Marmottan (sp?) Winds are warm desert winds that sweep down from the Sahara (Mauritania, etc), bringing strong winds and kicking up dust but at least it’s not humid…not yet, that will come in April or May.
So after about 36 hours and five or six legs of our journey and tons of airport waiting (our flight from NY was 3.5 hours late leaving and we were forbidden from leaving the Brussels Airport), we arrived in Thies around 12:30 to many excited happy faces at our compound, le Centre de Formation de la Corps de la Paix/Senegal. To our surprise, the training compound is HUGE! There are lots of camp/dorm style rooms, bathrooms (yea squatty potty), classrooms (indoor and outdoor), and other facilities. It turns out that some of our staff members actually live on the premises, so there’s of course a lunch hut, a kitchen, a refectoir (where we eat breakfast and dinner), showers, laundry facilities (ie counter with buckets), and some gardens where the Ag trainees and volunteers practice growing things. The compound is beautiful and actually part of an old military base, so it’s surrounded by old abandoned barracks and such. To say it in another way, we all feel very blessed that the Peace Corps/Senegal program is so established and has some great facilities available to us.
In other news, I’m covered in mosquito bites because apparently if your hand is inside a net but touching it while you sleep, evil mosquitoes will attack your left hand, leaving 8 bites up and down it…boo! Don’t worry, we started our prophylaxis drugs last week and while I remember having had one dream since taking it that was pretty “vivid,” it wasn’t vivid or trippy enough for me to remember it. Give it a few weeks though… Also, soon we will start receiving more shots, such as rabis and a few Hepatitis shots (A and C? Don’t remember), plus more… Apparently we become pin cushions upon entering the country.
Today we received our Peace Corps-issued bikes, helmets, and toolkits for the bikes. My bike is probably one of the oldest, dirties, and rustiest (on the handle and bells, not really where it matters), so I need to clean it up. If anyone wants to send me things like cool bike stickers or those colored things for the spokes to make it look a little prettier (but it is red, so that’s awesome), that would be super fun.
I haven’t yet purchased a cell phone (a current Volunteer is trying to get us a deal though I dont think it will work out), but will hopefully have one in a few days, so I’ll make sure to post it so you can get in touch with me as needed. I will also eventually look into getting a Skype account (heard that you can download your account to a thumb drive), but that will probably depend on what things are like at either my homestay or my final placement (ie vicinity to an internet café with a decent connection) and I need to purchase a headset in that time too. As for general internet-ness, ca depend. The nearest internet café has a terrible connection and we haven’t yet seen the slightly better ones, so I’m hoping for something near my training homestay.
As for the homestay, I’m definitely more nervous than I was for my Belgian or French ones because I at least knew the language. Here I know French, but will most likely be placed in a village outside of Thies (since that’s more like what I will live in during my service, rather than living in Thies), so it will be either Wolof or Pulaar (another West African language) and will make communication VERY DIFFICULT for quite awhile, since it’s not very likely they will speak much/any French. I’ll just have to wait for Tuesday and see. It’s definitely a nervous excited, but I also am really looking forward to seeing what life in a village is like. This city is kind of crazy and overwhelming, that’s for sure.
Anyway, I’m borrowing a fellow trainee’s computer now, so I should probably go now. Ba ci kanom! A la plutard! Please send me letters and stuff, I would really love it and I think all of us are looking forward with eager anticipation for our first pieces of mail from the States.
Vous me manquez!