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Published: August 1st 2006
So it has been 4 weeks since my last entry, oh how time flies. I am still enjoying my time here in Senegal tremendously. As it is now home…and I’m not really a tourist, I don’t have all that many exciting stories to share.
French class is over, and I must admit I don’t have much to show for it. We now have our evenings free…not that we have a lot of options of things to do here. Our fun of late is guessing whether we are going to have power or not. Apparently they have issues here with some corruption and the government dealing with the electrical companies. In turn, power is turned off nearly every day. They turn it off anywhere between 1 and 10 hours. Luckilly our office has a generator, so when power is turned off during the day, we are able to still continue with our work (this is different from other Plan offices around the country, where they are only able to work a couple hours out of each day)…but at home we are out of luck. So far it has often worked out that we lose power from around 4pm to 11pm at
Mambodj
Mambodj holding up his new presents (notice the crowd of people behind!)our house. This leads to very dark and boring nights if we are at home (i.e. reading by flashlight), but luckilly we eventually get power so we can sleep with the A/C on. It gets quite hot without fans or anything in the house.
When we do have power, Nicole and I have been keeping busy watching DVD’s accumulated over the last few months from my travels to Thailand and brought by visitors. Our guard Mameena is also enjoying our lazy TV nights…we are often surprised when we stand up and see Mameena (usually just the whites of his eyes or his shirt as it is pitch dark outside)…telling us “I am watching” (through our windows). A little creepy, if you ask me…but I guess it must get boring sitting outside our house all night. We are pretty sure he is harmless.
The highlight of the past 4 weeks was a recent visit that Nicole and I took to 2 villages to meet the children we chose to sponsor. As I had mentioned in a previous blog, after my first visit to the villages and seeing ALL the kids, I had to sponsor at least one. Nicole and
Feel the music
Mambodj's mom and twin sisters dancing. Not sure if you can see the little feet from the little baby tied to the back of the mom. I guess that is where they learn to love music as they get whipped around! I were able to arrange a visit to our children with Plan and it was a trip I will never forget. Because of weather, most people don’t work here in August (they actually close down the offices…yes, Nicole and I will be going to an empty office every morning quite soon) so we were fortunate enough to arrange a visit to our sponsored children’s villages last week before it became too difficult to do so. We planned to leave Dakar early in the morning to miss traffic, but in typical Senegalese fashion…we left about 2 hours after we were meant to. However, we arrived in Thiess at the Plan program office without major problems. After some confusion (a common thing here) and a cup of tea, we finally transferred the goods we had brought for the families to the vehicle we were taking and were on our way. After driving only a few minutes outside of the city, I was in awe of how beautiful the country side was. I kept saying, “this isn’t Senegal”…with the recent rains, there was grass everywhere, beautiful trees, etc….Definitely not the typical dirt and trash that we see in Dakar. After driving for approx.
30 min through the bush (a mighty bumpy ride I must say…thank god for dranamine!) we arrived at the village of the little girl that Nicole is sponsoring. The village was quite small, consisting of 4 families (about 25 people). Upon our arrival, the entire village had come out to greet us and talk. Her little girl, Ndague, was all dressed up in a beautiful dress. She was very cute….and VERY shy. We were fortunate enough to have Falilou (who is the manager of the Thiess office) come with us, so he was able to translate. We heard about her family, the community, school, etc. Nicole gave her the presents we had brought with us (markers, colored pencils, paper, candy, rice, tea, etc.) while I played with some of the other young children. As this is a pretty remote village, I don’t think that they had seen white people or cameras before…because they seemed quite enamored with both. They were all very quiet, but also very appreciative and welcoming.
After talking for a while we got back in the car and headed to the village of my sponsored child. It took a good hour of off road driving through
Kids in the village
They loved seeing their images in the camera. the middle of nowhere it seemed, but we finally arrived. We first stopped to pick up the community volunteer (who works with Plan to translate letters for children, and helps to organize the visits) then we headed to ‘the meeting spot.’ I got out of the car expecting a similar set up to the last village, so I was completely shocked when we walked in and saw close to 200 people (about 75% of them being children) gathered. As soon as we walked up, they immediately started playing music, singing, and dancing. The father of my sponsored boy, Mambodj, came up to introduce himself and his son to me. They immediately pushed us toward the crowd of dancing villagers where I was greeted and hugged by all of the women of the village. I know I met Mambodj’s mom and aunt and twin sisters…but I am not sure who all of the others were. They had set up this table in the middle for us to sit at with some refreshments (bissap juice - from a local flower, and baobab juice - made from the famous trees here), as well as peanuts (which are the ONLY export of Senegal).
Mambodj is 8 and the cutest little boy. He was very sweet and polite. Obviously we had the language barrier so I had Falilou ask him a few questions about school (he goes to Koran school - which parents often send their children to prior to ‘regular’ school) and what he likes to do (play football). I gave him the presents that we had brought, including a new football. What little kid wouldn’t like getting all these gifts, but on top of it he was the center of all this attention….and really the cause of this whole celebration by the village. I think he enjoyed it. I can tell that he is not the first sponsored child in the village, as they had this whole program set up to show us their ‘way of life.’ They of course made us TRY and dance with them (which I think gave them a good laugh), next they demonstrated some of their customs/traditions - a woman showed us how she makes couscous, young boys showed us how they separate dirt for farming, and they even did a mock marriage ceremony with a young boy and girl. It was all very cute. The father
Wedding fun
I know...a bit random. We went to a wedding a few weeks back of our new friends Leah and Stephane. Stephane is Senegalese and his family lives right next door to our office. Leah is from the states and works for Accenture in San Fran. Small world!!
(oh yeah, she is Jewish...thus the chair dance!) and mother were so lovely, they (the mother often near tears) kept telling Falilou how thankful they were that out of all the children in the world, I chose their son…and how even without all the gifts that I brought, they are so thankful and honored. The father kept saying, how he hoped we were now friends for life, and welcomed us back to stay with them (as we are now family) at anytime. He walked us to his farm area (not like farms at home…it was maybe 1 acre - ok, actually I have no idea how big an acre is…but that is my guess!) where he proudly showed us how he grows his different vegetables. As this was a larger village that has had some support for a while, they were fortunate enough to have numerous wells to run water…which I am sure makes life MUCH easier. All in all, it was a great experience and I look forward to being able to correspond with Mambodj and his family throughout the years!
The only other exciting news I have, is that my mom is coming to visit in a few short days! She is probably wondering what
mmm...bring on the food
I figured I would throw in a picture of the team at our dinner out for Meg's birthday. Danielle is on the left (she is from the Plan Netherlands office, and was here working in Dakar in July). she is getting herself into, but hopefully I will be able to give her a feel for the country that I have grown to love calling home.
Hope things are well and everyone is enjoying their summer. It sounds like it is really HOT (for those of you in the states), hope you are surviving!
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Mom
non-member comment
touching
You are all looking good and well. I love seeing you new child. I know the family will never forget how much you are doing to help their family. I suppose I will end up with another child too. See you very soon.