Advertisement
Published: June 27th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Kris and Nic Waterfall
Kristin and I eating in our scenic waterfall room. Doesn't it look tropical? I am finally ‘settled’ here in Dakar. Kristin and I are fully moved into our new house and trying our best to adjust to our new way of life. On the outside, things are not all that different from home. We wake up, walk to work, spend 8+ hours in front of a computer, then go home. However for some reason almost every aspect of the day is quite a chore for us. Ok, maybe waking up is not all that difficult (except for the fact that I hate mornings). Our bedrooms have these shutters on them that are always closed, which is probably good because it keeps more of the mosquitos out, but bad because it stops any sun from shining in and therefore makes getting up that much harder. I feel like I am in a bat cave.
In the big scheme of things we are very lucky. We have a house right by the office (2 block walk) and there are air conditioners in our bedrooms. This is a god send because other 8 rooms in our house feel like a sauna. I did say 8 rooms. There is so much space in this house….but oddly enough
Kris and Nic In Front Gate
It took 20 minutes to get Manamee (not sure of the name...or his role, we think he is guard #2) to figure out how to take a picture of us in front of the house. You can see that it didn't work out so well, but cracks me up nonetheless. not space we can use. Now, Kristin and I thought that this house was just for the 2 of us, but we have somehow have lots of “friends” and people in out. Due to the fact that we can’t exactly communicate with anyone (note: my French is still terrible or should I say non-existent), we have a lot of questions about our house that we are a bit confused on:
1. Who owns the large, mean, and very loud dog that is tied to a tree in our “yard” and enjoys barking at everyone and everything at all hours? Are we supposed to feed the thing?
2. We have a maid, Louise. We have figured out that she washes dishes, but other than that we are not sure what she does all day because we wouldn’t call the rest of the house ‘clean’. The one thing we do know, is that she showers every day before she leaves. We have 2 bathrooms, but she has taken over one of them. Her dirty clothes, etc. are always hanging around. So I guess that means we only have 1 bathroom?
3. We have a guard, Bouba. It appears Bouba has a lot
Kris House
Kristin in front our house. Sicap Amite III in Point E of friends so we have people hanging around outside out house. Bouba lives in a room attached to the back of our house. Bouba also has 2 assistants Mameana and Mala. Apparently they are Bouba replacements when he is busy.
It has been quite fun around here since its World Cup time, Senegal is looney about football. Everybody got the opening day of the World Cup off work, which I thought was really funny. Game time is crazy….bunches of people crowding around little TVs on the street, groups standing around sharing a radio, or staring into restaurant windows to catch a glimpse of the games. We catch our guards pulling up chairs outside to watch the TV through the window. Sometime we feel guilty shutting the TV off when we leave, so we leave it on for them to watch through the window.
We have managed to do a bit of exploring around our neighborhood and have found that we should be able to walk to most anything we need, which is key because trying to hail a taxi and communicate with them where we need to go as well as barter over the price of the fare
Our Friends
These are our only friends here in Dakar. They are fantastic. Left Mansour (who speaks English as he went to universtiy in the states). On the right is Aldo (who we communicate with through broken English, sign language, or Spanish oddly enough). I know this picture looks oddly posed but in reality it was spontaneous...not sure why it looks like that. is the biggest chore.
Last week we started French lessons….finally. I don’t anticipate getting very far….but figure we should try. We are going to start to take a few Wolof lessons as well. Our 2 Senegalese friends taught us some basics:
“Wholley” - What are you looking at?
“Bugama” - I don’t want that.
“Baima” - Go away!!
These are very important words navigating our daily lives.
So things are running fairly smoothly day to day here. As smooth as to be expected at least. Unfortunately, the bouts of sickness have begun. Agnes and myself both got pretty sick a few weeks back. Very high fever (at one point it was 104), major stomach pains, body aches and pure exhaustion. Kristin was the best roommate and took me to the doctor (I could barely stand up on my own) and got me medicine and took grand care of me. After a few days we recovered. Apparently it was an intestinal flu and we may have gotten it from eating the mangos. I didn’t quite get that….and I figured they were wrong…so I still eat the mangos. They are yummy.
It is starting to turn into rainy season
Living Room
I am begining to love the 70's style decor. which is a bummer. The rain doesn’t get bad in Dakar (apparently still quite a bit of street flooding, and problems with the sewage which I am not looking forward too) but the southern portion of the country essentially closes down. The big National Park is closed, and the really nice beach close as well.
Many of you mention that I haven’t given any work updates. Usually people don’t want those…but here it goes. It is going good…well better than it was a month or so ago. We all are working on different things, I am working on Plan’s global budgeting and planning process. I know…to many of you it sounds awful, but it is actually quite interesting as I get to really understand how programs get implemented etc. We actually got to visit a few villages last week to see Plan in action, but more on that in my next blog.
Thanks for reading my last blog and I loved all your comments. Miss you all tons!!!
More to come.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.079s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 10; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0435s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Michelle
non-member comment
what an experience
Hi Cole i love reading these! I feel like i am on an adventure! Have soo much fun out there and we're holding NYC together until you get back! xoxo