Half way through

Hey guys,

I am posting a little early this week as it is atypical all around. Like the title suggests, I am about halfway through my stay in Senegal. Monday marked my two month anniversary of arriving in Dakar and it looks like I will be leaving around the second week in May.

Anyway, my parents got in Monday morning bright and early at 5:30 am, and quite on time, I might add. We rested and got them settled in at home and after breakfast, jumped right into life in Dakar. We went to Castor market with Bea, our housekeeper to buy vegetables for the week. My mom is a vegetarian (for those that don't know) and so we got lots of veggies for her. It was a big, bustling market and we got a lot of attention as toubabs. I walked my parents around the neighborhood so they could get their bearings a little bit and we had an excellent ceebujen for lunch. I wasn't able to bring them to any classes as all classes were cancelled Monday. One of the Wolof professors at ACI died over the weekend so they had the funeral on Monday. So, we walked to the post office, which had decided to close an hour early and then along the coast. Monday night we had salad, pork and french fries at home.

Tuesday I took my folks on another big walking adventure. We stopped by Village SOS to see the students I help out with. We swung by ACI Baobab to meet some of the lovely people that work there, and we also went to Ramadan's tent to get some cafe touba! I also took my folks to HLM, a big fabric market to show them a different type of Dakar market scene. For lunch we had my all time favorite: Mafe. We went downtown in the afternoon to IFAN, a big museum right in front of the National Assembly building. This was part of my seminar class and I translated as we walked around. After that some of the other students and I took my folks to the French Institute for drinks and Ali Baba's for a low key meal of good Senegalese fast food.

Wednesday was a day of rest. I forget that Dakar can be overwhelming at first. Between the heat, time change, temperature change and all the walking we've been doing, my folks needed to slow down a little. So I went to school on Wednesday and my folks hung out at home.

Thursday we went back to the post office, now open, and had lunch in Point E, not far from ACI. Unfortunately, just as my parents started to get used to the dirt, noise, people and uneven roads of Dakar, they were just about to leave. So, I took my dad to a big market in Grand Dakar and we got him a Senegal t-shirt, and then we all got ready for a Rotary meeting. I had made connections with a club here called Dakar Almadies so that my folks could go to a meeting while they were here. It was quite different from in the States. The meeting was mostly just business stuff, not a meal, and the club was a lot smaller. Afterwards, the president of the club invited us next door to his restaurant and we had a wonderful evening there with him.

So, my folks had a good chance to get a glimpse of my new city. I think that they are no longer 'big city folks' like I now am, but I hope that they enjoyed it for a few days. They left early this morning in a 4 am cab to catch a 6:30 flight to Johnannesburg. I think the next leg of their trip will be much more luxurious than their time in Dakar. They stayed with my host family, and I think they enjoyed themselves. I spent the day recovering from translating all the time. I slept in and then started research for my big History of Islam final paper which is due after our Spring Break.

Tomorrow I head to Kaolack with Sean to do research for another big paper that I will be writing in the future. For our Continuity and Change class, we have a 10 page final paper (in French) based around organizations that we have chosen to research. Sean and I are going to work with Tostan, an organization that works on sustainable development that we are both very interested in. We leave early tomorrow morning, this time getting ourselves to the site by tpical Senegalese bus taxis. I will be back next Wednesday, so I will try to blog then otherwise I will talk to y'all again next Monday. As always, have a great week!