Yes, it's true: now I am busting out the Arabic. It turns out the pervasiveness of Islam in Senegal has also left an indelible mark on the language here; we're learning to always greet everyone with assalaam alekum and to throw alhamdelilah and bismillah into everyday conversation. But, more importantly, my Wolof is also making strides, and I can now pull out certain key words from my home-stay family's conversations (as opposed to it all sounding like gibberish, which it did for awhile). Hell, I can make a few simple sentences, too! Key among them: asking people how the fast (for Ramadan) is going!
All this has come from my first week at my pre-service training home-stay site. Being out in "real" Senegal made for a difficult week, honestly. The living conditions are beyond what I could ever have imagined back at home, and I feel very vulnerable walking through a town where it is so obvious I am an outsider before I even open my mouth. Still, being back at the training center for a few days with the other volunteers has been reassuring, and I'm not quitting yet! Here are some highlights:
Home-stay I'm living with a small, youngish family in a town called T~. We'll be going back and forth between our home-stays and the training center (with internet) for the next two months. There are four other volunteers in my town, and I see them every day for language classes. I pee into a hole in the ground (Turkish toilet), we sit on the floor for our meals and usually eat with our hands.
Food We eat fish A LOT. The national dish here is ceeb u jen - rice and fish. There are other rice and fish dishes, flavored with tamarind, with bissap (hibiscus), with anything, it all still tastes like fish. Veg is lacking here; we eat lots of carbs. The food is good and spicy, though, and the families are really happy to see us eat (guests gaining weight reflects well on the hosts).
Cloth As I mentioned before, women in Senegal dress impeccably. So, one of the first integrating activities here is buying cloth and getting it tailored into some neat outfit. My "uncle" happens to be a tailor, so I was able to get a pagne (wrap skirt) made this week. It's even got pockets which is a huge deal since most skirts don't have them. I was really thrilled with the skirt and I think my family passed the message to the "uncle" who refused to accept payment for this first skirt. I promised to recommend him to the other volunteers in my town (since we'll all be getting outfits made over the next two months...I've already bought five more meters of cloth here in Thies).
Work Unlike the agriculture volunteers, the SED (aka business) group doesn't really have much we can do during our home-stays. Our real training won't start until two months after we've installed at our permanent sites. Still, we have classes while we're back at the training center; today we learned about marketing and about two current volunteer projects - one on increasing computer access/literacy and one on eco-tourism in a region south of Dakar. It's promising.
I've posted a few (21) pictures on picasa at http://picasaweb.google.com/
Well, that's about it. We head back to our home-stays tomorrow for another two weeks (without internet again, ack!). I love having emails from you all when I come back; my head's a little too discombobulated to respond to everyone (hence the scatterbrained email here), but I really do appreciate them.
Love to all of you!
Babenen!
Tamar
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