Dear Friends,
It’s been only slightly longer than a week that I’ve been here in Sénégal, but I feel like I have months worth of stories to tell. Perhaps I will try to update more often, but the unreliable internet makes that difficult. There is wireless internet at WARC (West African Research Center) where I take classes, but fairly often their wireless router can’t connect to anything. It’s kind of refreshing to not be completely connected 24 hours of the day, but more often it is a patience test.
I arrived at JFK airport with hours to spare, and the flight over was really unremarkable and surprisingly easy. I watched my last American movies and tv shows, or at least the last in English, since Sénégalese tv is inundated with American influence. My first night in Dakar was spent at a hotel, with the other students in MSID (Minnesota Studies in International Development). The first two days were mostly the MSID staff talking to us about Sénégalese life, what to do around our host families and other orientation stuff.
On the second day of orientation we met our host families, so our hotel stay was short lived. I live in SICAP Baobab, which I think is a mostly Catholic neighborhood, since there are several churches around us. My family is also Catholic, although only some of the family members seem to actively practice. They have had previous foreign students, some of whom I think made bad impressions, but it means the family knows better what to expect from us, and is very accommodating. The food is good (lots of fish), and Danielle (my roommate) and I have a nice room with our own bathroom. Our house is about a half and hour away from WARC, and it’s not a hard walk.
Getting around Dakar is interesting. At first I didn’t understand why everyone was walking in the roads, but then I realized there are only sidewalks about half of the time. Taxis are comparatively cheap, but you’ll get ripped off unless you haggle well since there are no meters. Fares change based on where you’re going, how many people are going, time of day, and how much the driver thinks you’re worth. One of these days I’ll get up enough courage to take a “car rapide” which is basically a little bus, usually stuffed beyond capacity with guys riding on the bumper.
The third day of orientation we went to L’Ile de Gorée, a small island of the coast of Dakar. It was a exportation place during the slave trade, and we toured a recreation of slave holding house. Also, Gorée has the first African women’s museum. I’d like to go back, because I was feeling nauseous and wasn’t paying very close attention. Other the day and night before Gorée, I’ve felt fine which is pretty good as far as adjustment sickness goes.
Last Saturday, the group went on a bus tour of Dakar to get a sense of the city and see some important places. It was interesting, and my favorite part was just seeing different spots along the coast, since there are some beautiful rock formations and beaches. While I’m glad we went, I wasn’t crazy about feeling so much like a tourist. A group of 14 white people screams tourists with money to spend, so everyone tried to sell us stuff. Actually, this happens every day as we walk to school, and it seems more normal now than a week ago. I can understand the the street venders are trying to make a living, but the sad requests for money come from the street beggars. They are usually young boys at coranique schools sent out to beg for money for their schools. The young ones just come up to you with their can walking along asking for money, but the older boys have learned to do tricks to earn money. I don’t know if the schools are really that desperate for money, or if there is some other motive behind why they send out so many boys to beg. Regardless, it’s disturbing to see so many boys spending their days begging instead of actually being in school.
With the exception of Wolof, classes started on Monday and show great promise of being really interesting. We had a little preview of the classes, with each professor explaining some of his or her philosophy to help choose classes. Although, most of the classes are mandatory, each student only has to choose a “track,” which is basically an area in development in which to specialize. I’m pretty set in environment, ecology, and sustainable agriculture. We can also audit another track if we want, and I’m considering auditing the education and literacy. We started Wolof last Friday, and Sidy, our professor, is really funny and animated. I like him a lot, which is good since we have Wolof for 7 hours per week.
All of our orientation and classes have been in French, and language has been the biggest challenge so far. While there are cultural differences and things to learn with living in a host family, the language barrier is more difficult to deal with, at least so far. Danielle is very good at French, and is much better at speaking than me. I can tell that my comprehension, and speaking to a lesser extent has already improved, so I have hope that by the end of the class period, or at least by the end of the semester I will be able to more easily express myself. I don’t know how much French practice I’ll get during the internship phase, since it is fairly likely that my host family won’t speak French. I’ve heard that French is much less common outside Dakar, but maybe I’ll be lucky and they will speak at least some French.
If I didn’t know that it was designed to convey the best cultural and Sénégalese experience, I’d say that this program is an exercise in lingual frustration. The students arrive with various levels of French competency (in my case, most of the others are better than me), and we take classes in French and study French. Then most people leave Dakar for their internships, and go somewhere that speaks Wolof, the language they have only been studying for a little over two months. And, I’ve heard stories of students who were placed in villages and families where no one spoke Wolof or French. Anyway, I’ll cross that bridge if and when I come to it.
Love Always,
Mel
