Just Dance

So the first “almost week” is over, it feels like it’s been a month but it hasn’t even been 6 days… We’ve had a lot of training classes, cultural lessons and demonstrations, and the most intense language crash courses you could imagine. Some of those training classes included hands-on instruction on creating our garden and tree nursery (that all volunteers are required to make and maintain). But by far the best demo was fetching water from a well (which for men in this culture, it’s recommended we just hire a little Senegalese girl to do it for us, it’s become my running joke), and the BEST, pooping…that’s right pooping and going to the “squatter” because as easy as you think it’d be, pooping in this country is drastically different and a skill to be mastered. Toilet paper is frowned upon here and more importantly it’s just damn expensive, I’ve brought 4 rolls with me to wean myself off, let’s see if I can do it before they run out. The alternative here to TP involves your left hand and a cup of water, the cup is not nice, and for one of my first purchases I’m considering one of these nice marble colored plastic tea kettles that we’ve taken to calling poo kettles….email me for more details I’ll spare the 3 other actual readers of this blog.

Despite learning “Survival Wolof” (wolof is the main local language, French being the official language but we’ll need to be fluent in a local language for our future village), I just found out yesterday that I will be learning Pullo Futa. It’s a flavor of Pulaar (the next biggest language after Wolof) and this particular one is spoken in the south of the country aka the foresty, hilly, lusher part of the country and AKA the sticks, that’s right I’m learning the Hillbilly language of Senegal, and it comes complete with all the ridicule. I think it’s pretty awesome, all the other regions totally hate on each other and my language and region is apparently Senegalese redneck…so this will be fun.

On Monday, I along with 7 others from our overall 42 will move to a nearby town. There’s 4 of us under one Language and Culture Facilitator (LCF as we call them), mine is Jeemba, she’s pretty much awesome and learning the language is rapid fire and fun. We’ll be moving into our homestays where we will be for 9 weeks. I’m very excited to meet my family, I bought them tea and sugar at the market today as a hello gift, the Senegalese are all about giving and sharing no matter how small it might be. More on the homestay next time.

The first day here here while we were completely exhausted from the redeye flight that had only ended eight hours earlier and after the seemingly endless meetings and info sessions, we of course had a dance party. Let’s not forget this is AFRICA! These people love to drum and love to dance even more, and they’re wicked good at it too. At first I felt a little strange joining in the dancing. I usually dance with a group of long-time friends at clubs/bars after a few ginger ales…so with a huge group of new people, and approaching dehydration, it was a bit awkward at first. After awhile I realized the only way to do this, and by this I mean the dancing and the next two years of bizarre and new experiences, is to just go in head first and not care. An hour and a half into crazy dancing, they opened the gates and a huge crowd of local children rushed in. Watching a bunch of 5-12 year-olds out dance us was a great experience. I may have accidentally side-grinded a small Senegalese girl but the overall experience was great and in the end I was happy I really got into it. So that’s why for the next years no matter what I come across I’m gonna have to put my pride aside and ‘just dance’, certainly wouldn’t want to miss out.

Photos from the first week:

Dancing

the training center in Thies

working hard learning to make a tree nursery (note: i actually did do work in addition just posing with the pick...)