November 29, 2005 We’re finally making some progress on our work. We’ve got some dates finalized for going into villages to ask women about their health care needs. It should be really interesting, and hopefully we can gather enough information to write a half decent report. It’s really frustrating here because we’re always at the mercy of someone else to get something done. We need the supervisors to organize our meetings, because they have the links to the women, we need the interpreters to work on translating our questions, and we need the drivers to take us to the villages. None of these people work at the pace that we’re used to, so Marian and I are having a real lesson in patience. I think we’re getting better at handling the pace of life here, and ... read more

November 23, 2005 Yesterday we traveled from Dakar to Tambacounda. We were warned to leave early because it can be a long journey, so we were up at 6 and ready to go. We had to wait for Saida, our busy-body landlady, so we could pay her our electricity bill. She came by just after 6:30, and told us that our bill was 48,000CFA, which is almost $100. For TWO weeks. We were under the impression that it was 60CFA per kilowatt hour, so we thought we were doing okay, but found out it was really 150CFA per kilowatt hour. Whoops. Well, we were mad. We couldn’t believe how much it cost, we were just happy that we were leaving early, because we wouldn’t have been able to afford another month and a half! So, grumpy ... read more

John’s entry: Alex and I have found a new local basketball court near our apartment. We were very excited to find it after having to leave the good pick-up game we had in Camberene deux. When we first got there only little kids were playing so we sat around waiting for the older crowd to get there. After waiting a long time we deciding it would be absolutely essential for us to get a basketball of our own. A game did eventually start up but it wasn’t as competitive as in Camberene. We were a little disappointed but decided to come back again and it was a good thing because it seems that more people come every day. Yesterday there were about 20 guys waiting to get into a game of 3 on 3. Alex and ... read more

November 4, 2005 Moving Day!!! It is like Christmas Eve in Senegal for two reasons: one, it is last day of Ramadan (the night before the big party where everyone eats all day) and two, we’re moving into the house tomorrow!! We’ve had an interesting couple of days…no French classes cause Gora (our teacher) has the runs, so we thought we’d be able to head our and discover some more of Dakar. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Magueye told us that there was a big party yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. He explained to us that some people celebrated on Thursday and some on Friday, it depended on the moon. Someone should alert NASA cause apparently there are two moons in Senegal….Anyway, Magueye and his family decided that they were going to celebrate the ... read more

October 31, 2005 Happy Hallowe’en!!! We wish we were there to celebrate with you, but more importantly, we wish we had the candy!! We’re counting down the days until we have complete control over our diet…we can’t wait. We’re really sad to be leaving Magueye’s house, because in a lot of ways our true Senegalese experience will end when we move out. While we’ll still really enjoy Dakar and the contact with the Senegalese through our placement, we’ll also be living much more like we would at home. We’re moving out this Friday, and Magueye is currently trying to find us a placement closer to where we’re going to live. Hopefully we’ll be able to get some good volunteering in before we leave… This weekend was a true African adventure for us. We decided to head ... read more