Home again...

Hello, everyone. Thanks for following my blog while I was in Senegal. (I am so grateful for the internet.) I am even more grateful to be home, though leaving Africa was certainly bittersweet. I have been home for a little over a day now, and I'm still trying to adjust to the time difference. I have been up since 4:00 am (8:00 am in Senegal, breakfast time at la Maison de Universite), and I'm still taking the malaria medication for the next four weeks. Every great expereince has a tradeoff.

Now that I am home, I have a few loose ends to tie up (i.e., grading for online classes) before I can jump back into blogging. My plan is to have the grading done by Wednesday, July 2. After that, I promise to post photos and more details from my trip.

Thank you all for praying for my safe return.

Shown: "Door of No Return" (Maison des Esclaves), Goree Island

So much to see...

Well, we are down to our last few days in Senegal. While I will be happy to go home, I will be a little sad to leave. I feel like there is so much more to see. I can't wait to get home so I can post my pictures for you all. This past weekend was spent in Toubab Dialaw, a resort (loosely speaking) built by the beach. The rooms wouldn't get a whole star by American standards, but the common areas were splendid. The trip to the Holy City left me speechless. Unfortunately, I will not have any pictures to post of the mosque in Touba. I'm not feeling especially chatty this morning. The last couple of days have been a little rough...malaria medication.

We have some more school visits today, and we will be distributing the school supplies we brought from our respective institutions. According to one teacher we have spoken to here, the supplies will be very much appreciated. There is never enough to go aroud here, and the lack of supplies contributes to the drop out rate. Many parents cannot afford both supplies and lunch for their children. (The schools don't have cafeterias or free lunch programs. If the students don't bring food or have money to buy food nearby, they just go all day without eating. This, too, contributes to the drop out rate.)

So, maybe I will have lots more to say later. I have not had a chance to read or respond to all of my email, but I did see that Kaela wants to know what the weather is like and what the temperature is.

Currently, it's 8:20 am (4:20 am at home) and it's relatively cool, about 77 degrees. Most days it gets up to about 95, but it feels like closer to 110 at times. It has rained only one day since we have been here even though it's the rainy season.

Khalil, what's up? Come up for air every now and then with the video games. ;O)

And for Mykal and Darius... no, I have not seen any elephants, lions, or giraffes yet, but I did see a camel and plenty of goats. I'll keep my eyes open though, and my camera ready. I can just hear the two of you singing the opening song to The Lion King, and Mommy can't wait to get home.

Common to man...

I'm excited. I actually found a computer with a QWERTY keyboard at the West African Research Center. Blogging will be easy this time. Today was a day of school visits. We went to a private, Catholic primary school and a public middle school. The difference between the two was astounding. One thing they had in common was relatively large class size, between 40 and 60 students per class. I cannot imagine. The children at the primary school greeted us with a song as we were entering the school gates. The teachers were very gracious in allowing us to come into their classrooms mid-morning, especially considering that students are now preparing for their end-of-year exams, which I am told are very tough. Only about 30% pass to the next level on the first try.

Our next visit will be to a university later today. Some of the others are currently eating lunch. We did lunch and computer time in shifts today. (Dama xiff.) I ate, but the meal wsa grilled fish and tossed salad. Just before I was about to devour my salad, one of the program directors stopped me and warned that the salad had been washed with local water. Sigh. So I just ate my little fish and drank some bottled water. I am happy, though. One thing I have noticed is that in certain parts of Dakar, any meal is a luxury. Some people eat only one a day, while others do not always get a meal each day.

That's not to say that all of Senegal is poor. It's not. In fact, while walking through some neighborhoods today, we saw quite a few nice residences. One had a Jaguar parked outside. Another had a new Range Rover. The division of wealth here is as inequitable as it is at home. And just like at home, the price of fuel is causing chaos. Gas here is nearly $9 US per gallon. That would be catastrophic for us, and the average income per month here is a fraction of ours. Still, like usm they have managed to keep their cars on the road. There are many more vehicles here than I expected. The streets here are no different than any other larger city in the US. In fact, downtown Dakar looks a lot like some areas in New York. The market place could have easily passed for China town.

The longer we are here, the more I see how widespread the economic effects of the state of foreign affairs are. With the exception of the language being spoken, most of the conversations oveheard here are much the same as ones you would overhear at home: fuel prices, unemployment, need for education reform, the media's unhealthy influence on the nation's youth... the list goes on.

My photographs from today are probably some of the most interesting I have taken so far, not because they were of things I had never seen before, but because the sights were remarkably similar to what I would see at home. One example before I go: At the public middle school, we sat in a classroom today at desks students would normally occupy. There was carving all over the wooden desk, just like students do at home. That was to be expected. Kids are just kids everywhere. What I did not expect to see, however, were the names "G-Unit, The Game, and Young Money" right beside a carefully carved hand holding up a middle finger.

Some of the girls were eager to pose for pictures, and they were dressed no differently than any girl you might find in a US middle school, except I'm sure these girs were violating a few US dress codes. It's amazing the influence American music and hip hop culture has had even here. And most of the students don't even speak more than two words of English. They are educated in French.

My time on the computer is about up, and I think we are leaving soon for our next school visit. If I do not get the opportunity to blog again later this evening, I'm not sure if I will be in touch again for quite a few days. Tomorrow, we leave for Touba, the Holy City, and from there we go to Toubab Dialaw for the weekend. I am not sure about internet connections there. My next entry could very well be Sunday evening when we return to Dakar. If so, I should have quite a lot to tell by then.

Nangeen def?

(How are you all?)

There were a number of power outages today, which I am told is nothing unusual. I had hoped to blog earlier while at the West African Research Center but was unable to for that reason. There have been a couple of outages of power and water since I got here, but they usually do not last very long, or they occur at times when we are away from the university guest house. I keep hearing people mention the possibility of going to an internet cafe, but so far not one has materialized. I would love to go to one right now, because as much as I would like to keep a record of my trip for everyone at the moment, Dama Xiff. (I had a Wolof lesson today; that means I'm hungry.)

Speaking of food... I haven't mentioned it, but the food is absolutely wonderful here. The first meal I had made me want to jump in the plate and wallow. Every meal since then has reqlly been something to write home about. I have taken a picture of everything I have eaten. I hope my camera battery holds up. Between the market, the beach, downtown, Goree Island and all of my meals, I know I have taken about a thousand pictures. It's a shame I cannot upload them from here. I would try, but I'm afraid this IBM E74 will wipe my pictures out and neither of us will have them.

Today we visited a high school and learned about the education system in Senegal. We also had the Wolof lesson and a discussion of the slave trade. Tomorrow there will be more school visits and a reception with educators and community leaders at the WARC. We're into the business part of our trip now. This weekend, it will be all about play again when we spend a few days at Toubab Dialaw (a resort of sorts). I wonder if there will be internet service there?

Listen to me. True to form. Of all the things I could ask, and it's about internet access; I can't help it. I like to stay connected. Still, if there is no connection this weekend, I promise to go with the flow and just enjoy myself and take many more pictures of delicious food.

Jàmm rekk. (I am at peace/It is well with me.)

A buyer's market...

As internet time is hard to come by here, I have to keep in contact with everyone here rather than via email. It's hard not being able to read messages regularly or to talk on the phone at all, but I'm adjusting. Perhaps as well as I am adjusting to the French keyboard. Someone should have warned me to pack a good old American QWERTY; I never would have imagined the need for it.

I'm sure somewhere in Dakar someone will give me a "good price" for one. I have learned that anything can be bought here. After bluffing to a vendor that I was out of money today, she offered to trade the necklace she was trying to sell me for my lipstick. Maybe if I had two tubes...but I packed light, so no deal. Plus, it was used lipstick! I could not do that in good conscience. After we exchanged US money for CFAs yesterday at the bank (the value of a dollar being down to 395 CFA, whereas it is optimally closer to 500 CFA), we were introduced to the open market, and it's everywhere! Obviously because we were Americans, we drew a crowd, but people were selling everything from cell phone chips, t-shirts and caps, dolls, and jewelry to boom boxes and jelly shoes. I lie not. It started raining suddenly and a flock of umbrella salesmen appeared. One girl was selling shower caps.

So far, I have spent my money on internet time (500 CFA per hour) and jewelry to give to my friends when I return. Still, the computers here in the guest house are slow and do not have Microsoft Word, speakers, cameras or microphones, so my communication seems one sided, except when I can use Yahoo Messenger. Too bad my boys are too young to type.

I have only been here about two days, but already I have a million stories to tell and about as many pictures to show. I'm having a great time and learning a lot, but I'm surprisingly homesick. It feels more like I will be here a year rather than twelve days. Today was fabulous, though; going to Goree Island to see the slave houses and the "Door of No Return" was a truly priceless experience. It was so worth the trip to have that tour and to hear Professor Ousemane Sène's lecture on Leopold Sedar Senghor and the Negritude Movement. I am so full. I could go home now and be happy, but we are just getting started. I can't wait to get home and add my pictures to my blog. I might later check to see how difficult it would be to upload them from here.

I have so much more to share, but the rest will have to go in my journal. My time is about up in the lab, and others are waiting. Before I go, however, allow me to share a thought from Prof Sène:

Humans (westerners, Europeans, etc) are too narcissistic to accept anything they cannot control (i.e., the spirit world)--they try to turn everything into something they can control--money.

Waking up in Dakar...

I awake near 6:30am to the sound of what may be a truck passing but sounds like a plane overhead. I wait for the sound to pass and I listen more. Nothing.Other than the gentle hum of the window unit and the oscillating fan set to blow on the shirt I washed in the sink last night, there is no noise, no indication of where I am.

I step onto the cool tiled floor and sneeze. There is mold in the room. I could not tell last night, but this morning it is very noticeable. Having crossed into the next room, which also smells moldy, I soon display the knowledge of my first trial and error lesson from the day before: Pull the lever up to flush, not down. Actually, it is more of a button than a lever. Any American would have pushed rather than pull.

I open the curtains to reveal the view that was concealed by darkness the night before. The sight does not match the sound I now hear at the window. I hear birds, but I see none. Unlike the area that I was led into yesterday, the back view of this university guest house looks as if a bomb went off or a construction project was thwarted years ago. What could easily be five or six, five-story buildings lie in gray ruins. In the center of that scene, in a littered courtyard sits a mature tree with bountiful foilage and far-reaching branches. The birds must be there I think. So this is Dakar.

I open the window to my bedroom and lean out for q few photos. I can see far from the fourth floor. The Caribbean color and landscape of the building I'm in blooms in sharp contrast to the gray ruins ten paces away across the courtyard. The faint smell of ocean brought in by a breeze erases the trace of mold until I close the window. This will be my first full day in Senegal. Today should be interesting; we will go to the central banking district to exchange dollars for CFAs...