Saturday, March 29, 2008

Other PC Senegal friends' blogs

Check out a few other blogs that my friends in our stage have going on:


I'll add more when I get more info from others. Happy reading!

15 days in!

All right! Two weeks in Africa, and all continues to go well. We've been taking classes 6 days a week at the training center, living with Senegalese homestay families in and around the city of Thiès, and I'm starting to feel like I'm not quite so helpless as when we first arrived.  I can hold my own for most of the greetings in Wolof, and have even started to be able to ask simple questions of my host family, who are a tremendous resource, even though it can be hard sometimes to feel like I have privacy, with 18 or so extended family members all living within the same compound. But they all know who I am now, even if I'm still learning all their names, and when the Peace Corps Land Rover drops me off every evening at my village, 9 km from Thiès, I hear my name from every direction:

"Bineta! Bineta! Asalaam malekum! Nanga def? Naka wa Thiès? Naka wa ekool?" 
"Peace be with you! How's it going? How's Thiès? How was school?" 


Bineta is my name here, now, after the first night with my homestay family in my village. My older sister named me, and it's how I introduce myself to people.  I hear I'll probably get another name when I go out to site, after swear-in May 9th, Inch'Allah (God willing), but I like Bineta - it's easy to remember :)

It's been a tiring few weeks, but it's a good tired - the kind you feel when you've been working hard, challenging yourself, and constantly moving forward.  Hopefully I'll get to put up some photos soon, though it seems to take quite a while to get anything up on this site.  Send your best wishes and good vibes, and I'll write more later. Until then, ba beneen yoon (until next time), Inch'Allah!



Waiting in JFK... 

The plane was delayed a few hours, but we had plenty of extra time in Brussels, so no sweat.

First, from 2 weeks ago.

After two days of orientation in Philadelphia, and over 36 hours of travel, we have arrived at the training center in Thiès, Senegal. You don't need the hairy details of flight delays or landing specifics, but let's just say no one lost their luggage, and the Peace Corps knows what they're doing giving us pleeenty of time between flights. Night had already fallen when we arrived, and as we stepped off the plane at the airport in Dakar to the smell and moisture of the salty Atlantic, it was something to realize how far we'd come to smell the same ocean, from another shore.

The bus ride from the airport to the training center was where it hit me that this was really Africa - a place I had only read about in books, seen on TV, and imagined from the pages of my parents' monthly National Geographics.  Looking out the windows of the bus onto the highways, lit at night only by the occasional roadside fire and the headlights of the other vehicles, I took in the sky, the earth, the trees, and the bright produce stands that seemed to still be open for business, even though it was already 11 pm.

The last two days here at the training center have been a little surreal, to say the least, feeling that we are in Africa, but not quite. Crash courses in Wolof are going pretty well, and so far I can greet someone, ask their name, where they are from, and if they slept well (only to be used, of course, if you really know them. If you don't then you don't have any business asking how they slept.) We are supposed to go out to the market this afternoon, so we'll see if we can get along there without any major mishaps. I'll have to remember what we were taught to say for "I don't have any money." :)

Monday, March 10, 2008

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

these Chacos will never be this clean again.

After much searching and frustration, yesterday I finally found a store who had these in stock. They're leftovers from last year, but I certainly don't mind. I feel much closer to being ready now that I have the proper footwear. All the rest is details, right? ;)

Peace Corps called me at home today to tell me that I won't have to wake up at the crack of dawn on Monday to have my mom drive me to the airport in Philly to fly to staging in Atlanta, because the staging event has been changed to Philadelphia. That's pretty sweet for me - one less flight, one less step between here and Senegal. I also think my mom will be happy to be able to drive me right to the hotel and drop me off in the lobby, rather than leaving me at the security checkpoint at the Philly airport. Security is where we said "au revoir" at JFK when I left for my year in France, but this time is going to be different. Two days between the tears and the takeoff.

Sunday, March 2, 2008

one week left until the big show.

Here it is, one week left. Next Monday morning, bright and early, I'll be driving away from the house I grew up in, with my mom at the wheel, and heading to the airport to meet the group of people I'll spend the next two months with, in a totally foreign country. And between now and then, it seems I still need to do so many things. Ok, so it's probably not thaat many things. But it seems like for every one thing I accomplish, three more pop up that need my attention. And come tomorrow, all of those things will be staring me in the face when I return to my mom's after four days of blissful irresponsibility spent with my little sister. Maybe irresponsibility isn't the right word - more like lack of any responsibilities. I got to follow her around at work for a day, sleep in late the next, get late-night Chinese takeout from the Wonderful Dragon around the corner... and just put on the back burner for a few days the fact that I am embarking in a week on the scariest and most exciting adventure of my life.

What's killing me the most right now is the waiting, and the not knowing. I think (I tell myself) that when I'm actually there, the anxiety will ease, or at least alter, once I can see what my surroundings really will be, once I see with my own eyes what life will be like there. But for now, all of the unknown is weighing on me, coupled with the cumulative effect of the waiting after waiting after more waiting that started when I filled in the first blank of the 18-page online application last April, ten months ago. I may not be packed yet, but I'm ready to stop waiting, and start doing.