Blogs from Saint-Louis, Saint-Louis Region, Senegal, Africa - page 2

Dear Family and Friends Life has truly become an pleasant monotony here. I have come to the point that I see myself as an inhabitant here. I am enjoying myself, the intern ship with Caritas is really neat, I feel like to am doing something here and that going to work is not always an exercise in patience and killing time, but like you guys, the day to day activities, as exciting as you or others may find them seem banal to post on travel blog. On this tangent of domesticity, I am going to rent an apartment for the months of February and March. This appears to put an end to my aspirations of going to Mali, the fabled city of Timbuktu that I tried to kick so many of my child hoods friends too ... read more

Dear Family and Friends As christmass is quickly approaching I am taking some time for reflection. As i talk to you people back home I realise just how fucking different Sénégal is. In Sénégal there is no snow, christmass shopping, christmass music(thank god, not sure if i could take X-mass music in these 25 degree heat), no family, and most importantly no food, well there is obviously food, but its the same shit every day, eg no cookies, stuffing, egg nog, etc. I suppose you really do not notice how much you appreciate something when you do not have it. So to give you guys an idea of how different things are ill just give you a small update for what the average daily life is like here in Saint-Louis. Now that I am becoming a ... read more

Dear Family and Friends Already last weekend I went to Dakar for a conference. I wrote most of this blog while sitting at the Open Africa unference(unconference if such a thing can exist, I suppose though when you gather a large body of social inept, but technologically inclined techies in a conference they tend to shy away from concrete plans rather starting the conference on the fly, which i find quite an ingenious (un)system. So what this (un)conference is, is a low key meeting where people show up present information on technology. This is called a barcamp, which is a cousin to foocamps, things are fairly chaotic, no set talks set, nor time tables thing more set up on the fly. Any way as i sat and watched the disorganize chaos materialize into some kind of ... read more

Dear Family and Friends My trip to Dakar was quite eventful. Overall was not enamored with Dakar. It was big, dusty, dirty, busy, angry city. It was amazing to see hallmarks of western civilization in Africa though. There were high-rises, fancy cars, rich business men, paved streets and side walks etc. However, Dakar, much to my peers disappointment, had not yet truly submitted to western Capitalism, one last vestige of Africa was holding out. No McDonalds. It is amazing how many people from west, when asked what their first meal will be back is McDonalds, or a variant thereof. What drew me to Dakar were two things, a potential job interview and the Ile de Goree. I apologize for my lack of interest in the Ile de Goree, when you spend thousands of hours studying a ... read more

Dear Family and Friends Life is starting to settle down into some bizarre rhythm, thus last week nothing of particular happened beside things getting better as opposed to bleaker. I have been working with several different groups, thus my days activities change rather frequently and have little repetition. One day I have painted doors at a centre for talibe, met and interviewed potential host families for volunteers for a local volunteer organization. Others have been spend punching data into excel sheets and calculating stats. Thus things are still influx. Not all has been work, or the search for it. There has been a lot of RnR. Many intermittent days spent reposing by a pool or at a friends place playing drums and sampling smokable products. Thus I will take this opportunity to just attempt to give ... read more