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." :)
No comments:
Post a Comment