Sundays

I don't know what it is, but every Sunday, without fail, I end up depressed and alone in my room. Not all day, but it does happen each week. It's really frustrating. Dakar is fairly dead on Sundays, so there's not a lot to keep me busy and un-depressed. At least it's only Sundays, right?

Yesterday after falling apart for a little while, I went to a wedding at Meredith's house. In true Senegalese style, neither the bride nor the groom was present. The party was for the joining of the two families, not to celebrate the couple. Anyways, the bride was given a choice between two different men she could marry, so it's not like we would have been celebrating young love or anything.

I have 33 days left here before I head home. I'm getting more and more excited to go home, but I'm hoping I'll be able to come back here this summer to do research and play with the circus again.

My ICRP (research project) is coming along...slowly. But I have more direction now than I did last week, and I know what I have to do next, so I'm feeling okay about it. Now if only I wasn't constantly tired.

Thoughts

I'm going to try to make this post sensible, but since I couldn't sleep last night, that may not happen. Last night Caleb was scheduled to leave for Peace Corps training, but he wound up being delayed because of a snowstorm. I was excited for him and had a lot on my mind, and then there was a cat prancing around on the roof above me making little pitter-patter sounds, and then a mosquito started buzzing nearby... So I might have gotten to sleep around 4 or 5 in the morning.

This morning I forced myself out of bed to go to circus practice and had a fantastic workout with Modou and Valentina. I'm hoping we'll get to work on some partner stuff before we go, though Modou points out that he won't have a partner after Valentina and I leave. I also taught Modou Enligh yesterday, which was a lot of fun. He only recently learned to read and write, so it's challenging to teach him, but I feel like I'm learning about as much as I'm teaching.

It's getting chilly here. I had to stop on my way to school to put a sweater on because it was so cloudy and windy and cold. It gets harder every day to get myself to take a cold shower. I had both my pairs of jeans washed last week, and it was challenging to get through the week without them. I think it's finally turning into winter here.

I've been dreaming almost every night about going home to the States. I feel like I'm caught in a vicious cycle, where the more I dream of going home at night, the more I think of it during the day, which makes me dream of it more.

My birthday is coming up soon, and I'm excited to celebrate it here (and then at K, and then at home). I'm still not sure what I'm going to do for it, but I'm sure it'll be fun.

I was going to talk about my SIP (senior individualized project) ideas a bit, but maybe I'll do that tomorrow. It got late and my attention span is shrinking.

What's New?

My mom points out I haven't been blogging much lately. I feel like I've become so accustomed to life here that nothing I do seems very blog-worthy to me. The last few days I've spent very little time alone in my room, which is a step in the right direction.

I've been to the market, wandered downtown, eaten at the French Cultural Center (delicious!), had Thai food, been to a jazz club (there was no jazz happening, though), worked on Meredith's new dreadlocks, had a sleepover, made attaya, hung out with my host cousins, etc. I've kept busy, but still feel like I haven't done anything.

In the meantime, I feel like things are piling up. I'm stressing out about my ICRP, friends in unhealthy relationships, the fact that I still don't have housing for the spring, and the fact that Caleb is leaving the day after tomorrow.  Too much stuff is happening!

Plus, every day I feel more and more ready to go home. Which is great, except that I don't want to spend my last month counting down the days (there are 38 days left). My birthday (21!) is coming up in just under two weeks. I'm still not quite sure what to do for it, but I'm excited.

Katy is sick right now, so I brought her drugs earlier and I'm going to eat dinner with her family, hang out, and watch bad tv episodes on my computer with her tonight. I'm excited.

Modou told me his life story the other day, which was fascinating. It was really cool that he opened up to me like that, and I'm looking forward to helping him write down everything that happened.

I'm having trouble focusing on things today. I'm sort of assuming that I'll be a mess for the next week or so, while I'm getting used to the idea of an even more challenging relationship with Caleb and trying to catch up on everything else. When I really step back and think about it, I realize that I don't actually have that much to do. I'm sure I'll catch up and be just fine.

Family Drama

Yesterday was the first time I felt completely uncomfortable in my house. I was hanging out in my room, waiting for lunch, when I heard Youssou yell at Aida. Then I heard some slapping sounds, more yelling, Mama joining in, more hitting sounds, more people yelling...etc.

My room is off of the dining room, the central area of the house. All this was going on right outside my door, and all I could think was, "This would NEVER happen with my house, with my family."

Lunch afterwards was delicious, but I felt pretty uncomfortable. Mama tried to explain to me what happened. I didn't understand it all, but it was something to this effect:

Aida came home late from school, and Youssou demanded to know where she was. She said she'd just been at school, so he demanded to see her school schedule. She refused to show it to him, or something, and he started hitting her. She started screaming, so Mama came and started hitting Youssou. He restrained her, everyone yelled a lot.

Glad that's over. It left me shaken up all day. Hopefully that'll be the only time I have to hear that here.

Slacking

I feel like I'm not really taking advantage of the fact that I'm in Senegal lately.  The thing is, I don't know what to do!  My schedule lately goes something like this: wake up, say hi to the family, get breakfast, go to circus. Come home, take a nap, take a shower, eat lunch, go to the Baobab Center and do stuff online. Go back home, read and hang out with the family, have dinner, go to bed.

I've actually been enjoying it.  But I've been dreaming (not pining, just literally dreaming) about being back in the States, seeing friends and family, etc.  I feel like I'm here and going through daily life and being happy, but I'm not really here.  I just don't know what to do to fix that.

I just found some more articles I can use for research for my ICRP, so I'll be reading those later tonight. I think tomorrow some of us might have a picnic on an island off the coast of Dakar.  Otherwise? There's very little that distinguishes this weekend from last week, and I don't mind too much.  I don't want to go out dancing or drinking.  I'd be fine with going to a restaurant, but...is this what it looks like when I've settled in so completely that my life just seems totally normal because I'm used to it?  Or have I stopped doing the fun, exciting things that made me feel like my life was exotic a few months ago?  When I look back on these last two months, will I regret spending so much time relaxing?

This morning I had a great circus workout.  I finally did several moves smoothly that I'd struggled to do at all before today, and I'm making good progress on a few others.  I think once I get back into the regular swing of circus, I'll take off!  I hope.

Niodior

It's going to be really hard to remember everything I want to talk about regarding last weekend, so I've been putting it off a little.  Here we go.

We left at 8 am on Friday morning for Niodior, Prof (Pap) Sarr's village.  We took two taxis to the Garage Pompier to get a sept-place (seven-seat taxi, pronounced set plahss).  The seven of us took one sept-place to...some place whose name I can't remember. Something with a J.  The drive too about 5 hours and went by some stunning scenery.  In parts, we seemed to be in the middle of nowhere and not following a road.  At one point, we were passing through a village, and a woman asked to hitch a ride up the road with us.  She hopped up front, and suddenly our sept-place was a huit-place!  A few minutes later, three more people approached asking for rides, and the driver said, "Sure, but you'll have to sit on the roof."  Then there were six legs hanging down in front of our windows, and we were in an onze-place!  I swear, if that's not a new record, I don't want to be in whatever is.

At last, we got to the "dock", where we would be taking our pirogue (little fishing boat with a motor and a cool paint job, pronounced peh-ROGUE) to the island.  There are two pirogues per day, the second leaving at 1pm sharp.  We got there at 1:07.  The boat hadn't left yet, but it was waiting for...something.  It was unclear what.  In any case, we wound up waiting there until 3.  Then we got on, along with somewhere around 20 people, 1 sheep, and a heck of a lot of cargo.  There was no dock, just a beach, so we waded into the water to get in the boat.  I sat down, and then I was told to move.  I moved up with my friends, and discovered why I'd had to move: I would have been in the way of the man who bails out the water from the boat.

There was water leaking in--rather quickly, though not alarmingly so--from leaks all over the sides and bottom of the boat.  Bailer-man stood there behind me and bailed water out with his plastic jug until it got sufficiently low, and then waited for the bottom of the boat to fill again.  As we approached the island, we were sailing through a channel marked by tree branches sticking up from the water.  On either side were people wading in the water about waist-deep, each of them holding a long stick in one hand and a bucket in the other.  They were fishing for mollusks!

We finally got to the island about 45 minutes later, and we docked at a real dock!  The island's pathways were covered in mollusk shells (which are easier to walk on [and make a great crunching sound] than the deep sand that covers the island).  We were quickly served lunch in one of Pap Sarr's family's many houses on the island (I think this one was his brother's, right next to another brother, a sister, a cousin, an aunt, etc).  It was delicious!  Some sort of tomato-y sauce with fresh (but cooked) sea snails!  We all ate a ton and came alarmingly close to finishing the whole plate...but we fell short.  Then we had oranges, and then a nap.

After that we went and watched a wedding that was taking place between two of the villagers.  All of the village women were there, and a DJ played great tunes like "Beauty and the Beast".  The villagers ceremoniously gave gifts to the bride, and then they danced.

We then ate dinner (spaghetti with yassa onion sauce, potatoes, and bread) and crashed.  We had our own room, complete with a huge bed and a smaller mattress on the floor.  There were seven of us, and we could fit three comfortably on the bed, and two on the floor.  I wound up being kind of an odd one out, because I'm too light of a sleeper to be packed in with people like that.

I had awful insomnia, I wasn't used to the noises of the house, and I realized that I hadn't heard from Caleb in 36 hrs, even though he would normally have been texting with me pretty regularly.  I'd talked to him last when he was driving from MA to OH in the snow, so naturally I thought something terrible had happened.  It hadn't.

I survived the night by grabbing a hugely fluffy blanket and making a tent out of it, and then reading from my Kindle (I'm reading Guns, Germs, and Steel right now) by flashlight.  It was kind of nice once I relaxed.

The next day we took a tour of the island, led by Pap Sarr's first son (who was actually given to him by his brother).  The tour was great, introducing us to the village's only doctor, the prize that the village women won by reducing poverty through sustainable agricultural practices, the local radio station, and much much more.  By the end, having not slept the night before, I was about ready to fall over.  We were served a lunch of ceeb bu jen (fish and rice), and then we took a long nap.

Later, we ate coconuts picked for us straight off the tree (by a 10-year-old boy), drank locally produced baobab juice, and hung out.  I cut Rachel's hair for her (I'm trying to develop that skill, and it's really coming along) and we all drank cafe Touba (a spiced coffee) and listened to the radio and talked.

Dinner was delicious--lettuce, green peppers, tomato, and fish, eaten with bread.  After that I went to bed, with the help of a Benadryl, while everyone else watched a lutte (Senegalese wrestling match).

We were up at about 5:30 the next morning to catch the boat back at 6.  The boat actually left at about 7:30, of course, but we were on time.  Then another sept-place, then we switched to a new one in Mbour (thankfully, because the first one leaked a ton of exhaust into the back seat where I was sitting).  We got back to Dakar at about 1pm on Sunday.  I spent the rest of the day with Rachel, who left late that night.  It was nice to spend some time with her and eat food prepared in a French style (with my own plate, and water I could drink during the meal!).

I hope you'll all look at my Niodior pictures on Facebook, because I don't feel like I did a great job of letting you know what the village was like. In any case, there were no dolphins, but I had a fabulous time.

Improvement

Things got much better last night.  I was sitting around wanting to talk to someone and starting to cry and feeling lousy and depressed, and then Anja (the Swiss-German woman living in Sweden who trained Modou, who started SenCirk) called me and said she and her husband Maksim were heading to the Radisson to get drinks and watch the sun set over the ocean.

I went to meet up with them, said hi, and started crying.  They bought me tea and told me that what I was feeling was good because it would make me stronger and more mature, etc, and then we kept talking and I started feeling a lot better.  When it got dark, we went out to dinner at a restaurant where my family had lunch their first day in Dakar.  We shared a bottle of red wine over dinner, and I got slightly tipsy.  I went to bed feeling much better about life in general.

Today I have a few Skype dates, which should be nice.  I'm going out of town for the weekend to a village on an island down south.  It's called Niordior (nyoor-dyoor), and it has dolphins and manatees.  Our Wolof professor is taking us (it's where he grew up, I believe), so we'll have a Wolof class either en route or when we get there.  Should be a fun time--I'm looking forward to it.

Tense

I'm not sure what it is today, but I'm feeling really tense.  I feel like I'm behind (in my studies, in life, in finding a job for the summer, etc) and like I'm too tired to catch up.  It's really dumb, because yesterday I sent my resume out to two people with whom I'd love to intern this summer--one in Dakar, one in Kalamazoo.  I just went to the place I'll probably be interning for my research project here and explained what I want to do.

Caleb is officially doing Peace Corps, which is fabulous.  It's frustrating that we met at such an inconvenient time in our lives, but I guess it'll be good to see where we stand at the end of all this.  By the time he finishes his tour, I'll be out of college, so from there we can do what we want.  Just have to see what happens in these next two years first.

I'm really glad that my family came to visit, but for the last few days I've been struggling against listlessness and homesickness.  I only have two months left here (to the day! Happy four months in Senegal), and I don't want to spend them counting down to go home.  My birthday is in a month, which will be great.  Circus practices are starting up again.  I have research to do and people to see and tea to make.  It's just hard being sick at this stage in my study abroad.  And right now, practically everyone on my program is sick.  We're all feeling about the same way right now, I think.  It'll probably pass soon.

Family Time

As you probably know, my family came to visit last week.  I'm still recovering, but I had a fabulous time.

I'm not going to try to recount everything we did, because that would take far too long. I'll go through some highlights, though.

• We went to the market HLM to buy fabric and clothes.  We got lots of fabric and took it to my tailor, and the menfolk got boubous.  We found outfits for my grandma.  Mom got grazed by a taxi
• We made breakfast in the apartment every morning--some variation of eggs, bread, jam, cheese, and coffee
• We went to the resort at Toubab Dialaw and had a relaxing 36 or so hours by the ocean
• We ate lots of fabulous Senegalese meals.  Lunch on Friday was prepared by the maid at the apartment.  She cooked and we watched, took notes, and then ate our best lunch of the week.
• We ate a cheb bu jen lunch at my host family house. It was my family's first experience eating out of a communal bowl and having the hostess eat with her hands and distribute food to everyone
• We threw a dinner party at the apartment for all my friends.  We made fish and cheese enchilada casserole, a salad, and green beans
• We took tons of taxis, cramming all five of us into them
• I got some holiday presents! New headphones to replace the ones my host sister broke, a Kindle to read on, lots of baked goods, fuzzy pajamas, etc.  Good stuff!

I think my favorite part of my family's visit was just how much they appreciated Dakar.  Dakar is not a pretty city aesthetically, but it is gorgeously rich in tradition and culture.  The people are incredible and the atmosphere is completely unique.  I had been afraid that my family would only see skin-deep, but that wasn't the case at all.  We had innumerable discussions about culture, tradition, development, and meanings of things we saw in Dakar.  I got to say aloud all the things I'd been thinking about Dakar for the last few months, and I feel like I got a deeper appreciation and understanding of all I'd been seeing.  It meant a lot to me to see that my family was willing and able to see the city through my eyes and love it like I do.

I also learned a lot from their visit.  I hadn't realized how much I rely on my French skills.  When Mom first heard me yell at our landlord in French, she was blown away by how fluently I speak now.  I truly have improved a ton.  But it wasn't so apparent to me before I had to translate everything for my parents (and a little for Dan and Becca, but they did exceedingly well with their high school French).  Particularly at the end of market visits, I found myself thoroughly exhausted.  Bargaining for everything for everyone in my family was a lot more work than I'd expected.

On a less warm and fuzzy note, I think I'm coming down with a little something.  I wonder if the season is changing, because I'm suddenly feeling tingly in my sinuses.  My head has also been hurting almost constantly for the last two weeks, and I've been having stomach issues on and off.  Hopefully it'll all pass soon; for now I'm rationing out my drugs.

On the agenda for this week: I need to call Prof Thioub (choob) to let him know that my internship site does not exist at the address he gave me.  Wolof classes resume for a while.  Circus practices resume.  I need to start getting out more and still getting a lot of sleep, get over my current ickiness, and get over the homesickness that showed up right after my family left.