Day 3

Note: After finishing my blog late last night, I was kept up even later by the Muslim chant from the nearby mosque. Apparently, these chants are amplified and broadcasted until at least 1230am here. Just one more thing that makes this place different…

Lying here on my bed now, one part of me feels like I’ve been here for a couple of days, and another part of me feels like I’ve been here for my full three and a half months. Today I woke up at around 7, without my alarm. Strange…considering it was 3am back in Boston, a time when I might normally be going to sleep. Anyway, it had rained all night and was still raining, and our bedrooms on the roof had collected a good amount of water. Luckily I had subconsciously moved all my luggage and clothes away from the door and incoming water, so I was able to elevate it all before the water completely took over the tile floor. Let me explain a couple things. Even though we are in what’s called the “rainy season,” it rarely rains for continuous periods. A real rain might occur around ten times for the whole rainy season, so some might even think of the “rainy season” as a misnomer. Secondly, every building here has tile flooring. When I say tile flooring, I mean beautiful large tiles, and sometimes even mosaic floors as well. After working for a luxury homebuilding company over the summer, I have learned a lot about flooring from Paul the Tile Guy, and I am now able to appreciate the beautiful flooring, as well as other architecture here. Hopefully I will get some good pics of my house online, once the lighting gets better and I can fully show the beauty of this architecture.

After making sure all my stuff was dry, Rich and I went down for breakfast, but found that no one in our family was late. Off we went to CRESP where Marian was very kind once again and fed us the rest of the rice krispies while we talked about world events and Senegalese culture. To Marian’s credit, she has done a great job of accommodating everyone so far. Even though this is only the second time that the program has been run, she really has a very good idea of how to make kids feel like they are at home, rather than in a totally different world.

After breakfast we had a couple activities and a lecture about the origin and evolution of man, or en francais, l’homme. After the lecture, the American students, myself included, were given a lesson in Wolof, one of the two official languages of Senegal. We learned three questions and their response, and repeated them plenty of times. For example, Asalaam aleekum : Aleekum salaam, is how the Senegalese greet each other at any occasion. After language lessons, we went home for lunch where we ate a nice fish dish, which tasted different from all of the previous meals. Let me take a moment to explain about the cuisine that I have experienced so far. Every meal has had fish, except for last nights beef dish. However, they have all tasted different from each other, and each meal seems to taste better than the last. Sure, it might have something to do with my gradual acceptance of their culture, but let me tell you, this is good food. Tonight, they even made French fries to be served on the fish platter.

After lunch, we went back to CRESP, and received a full tour of the facility which was completely in French. By French, I mean to say very advanced French with lots of tough vocabulary which all of us except for one had a very hard time understanding. After the two hour tour, we tried to schedule a rendezvous at the beach. I went with a couple of girls while they got their bathing suits, and the others we’re going to meet at CRESP and then meet us at the beach. After quite a lot of walking along the beach, we decided to take out our cameras to capture the beautiful scenery. However, we were immediately swarmed by young kids who demanded that we take pictures of them and posed for us until we said “C’est tout, c’est tout!” (That’s all!) (see pics) Finally we got to where we were going swimming, which is right in front of the house where I live. There were hundreds, probably thousands of people on the beach, but no one was in the water. There were many soccer games going on, and people just sitting, but no swimming. We were nervous, but the water looked perfectly clean and quite inviting so we went in, and swam in the surf and waves. This reminded me of summers spent at Wellfleet beaches on the cape, except for the water temperature difference of about 40degrees. The water is a beautiful hue of turquoise, around 80 or 90 degrees, and extremely pleasant and refreshing. After about an hour of swimming, we went back to our houses, showered and ate another great meal. The rest of the night consisted of watching French news, then some experimental photos using time exposures and etc, and now a journal entry, then sleep.