Day 58: Déjà vu… kind of

Last night, at around 8pm, I finished my college application essay and submitted my early app. to the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell. The focus of the essay was my last stay in a village at Medina Kouta.

This morning, I found myself on a bus once again bound for a rural village. Instead of going East towards the interior of the country, we were headed North towards St. Louis (and the Sahara Desert.) Instead of increasing (like the last trip), the amount of green plants decreased as our journey wore on. On the contrary, the temperature rose. By midday, we had reached St. Louis (the first place that the French colonized.) We ate lunch at a place there that had good food but sub-par service (to say the least), and continued on our journey. About 2 hours later, we reached Nder. Nder is basically in the desert, but it’s next to Senegal’s largest potable water source – the Lac du Guiers.

(it’s important to note that this entry would be longer if not for the ridiculous amount of mosquitoes that are biting me right now. Right now, I’m sitting here typing this up, attempting to cover myself with my sheet…just try and imagine it…)

Anyway, we arrived here and hung out in front of the chief’s house while the staff worked out our living arrangements. I ended up being put with Eric, one of the Senegalese students. I was quite happy about this because quite frankly, Eric is awesome. He’s just really laid back and definitely the kind of person who would be cool to live with.

We ate dinner with the men of the family (rather than by ourselves) and enjoyed the national dish: Ceebu Jen (fish and rice). It’s basically the same thing we’ve had about 100 times here so far…but they make it a little different here (not so spicy, less oil.) After dinner, I rested, met a few of my family members, struggled to communicate to them in Wolof, etc. We then had a short meeting, the point of which was just to check in…

After finishing this entry, I plan on lathering up with bug/deet cream and wrapping myself in my sheet, and trying to go to sleep. We’ll be spending plenty of time here over the next month, so I’ll have plenty of opportunities to describe my surroundings…A demain…