A Brief History of Senegal (as it concerns me)

I thought I'd fill people in with a little timeline of what's been going on lately.

On September 10th I arrived in Atlanta with 43 other new Peace Corps Trainees (PCTs). We spent two nights at the Sheraton there, doing activites during the day to prepare us for culture shock and to fill us in on the logistics of the flight and our arrival. It was also just a good time to get to know the other kids in the program. In addition to Agroforestry, I am also with kids in programs of Sustainable Agriculture, Small Enterprise Development, and Eco Tourism.

On Sept 12 we flew directly from Atlanta to Dakar, arriving at 4:00 AM and boarding a bus to Thies (pronounced "chess") where i currently live.

The Peace Corps training center, an old French Army barracks, is in Thies. During my first few days at the center we splept there and had some cross-cultural courses and survival wolof classes (wolof is the dominant language, along with french, in senegal).
After 4 days at the center we were sent off in pairs (i ended up alone) to stay with current Peace Corps Volunteers in their villages to get a taste of what our lives would be like and what type of work we'd be doing. I spent 4 days with a guy named Ken in a village of 500 people without power or running water. Vilage life really isn't that bad, but I'm going to have to find a way to supplement the protein in my diet, cuz they're not big meat eaters here.

Then we returned to Thies (pop. about 500,000) and were sent off to live with host families. I live with a huge family of about 20 people who also speak the language I'm learning, which is Jaxonke (you can say Juh Hon Kay). The last name of my family is Cissé, which means chicken, and they have given me a Seneglese name of "Boubacar." In fact, they never even asked what my real name was. As far as they're concerned, I am Boubacar Cissé. They call me Bouba for short, or Bouffs.

I have been living with them for the last couple of weeks, taking classes from 8AM to 6PM M-F at the center and 8am to 1pm on saturdays. Classes are mostly in Jaxonke and Agroforestry, with some cross-cultural, security, and medical training thrown in as well. We started with 44 people in my training "stage" as they call us, but we've already lost 5 who decided they just couldn't hack it.

I'm the only one learning my language, because it's not very common, so all of my language classes (either 4 or 6 hours a day) are one-on-one with my langauge instructor Lamine. Jaxonke is is first language, but he also speaks French, Wolof, Pulaar and Mandinka fluently. He doesn't really speak English, so our classes are conducted in French, which gives me good practice there too.

We are in the month of Ramadan right now, in which Muslims fast from Sunup to Sundown every day. Senegal is 90 percent Muslim, as is my family. On Sundays I do it with them, as I am right now. It should be my last time though, it ends next weekend with a holiday called "Korite," should be pretty fun.

Anyway, I should get going now, running out of internet time. I'm happy here. Going through a little social withdrawal because we're expected to spend most of our free time with our families. But we're allowed to leave Thies on the weekends after Korite, so I took it upon myself to organize a beach vacation. I have rented a huge house directly on the beach for us and all 39 of us are gonna get the heck outta Dodge.

Post your comments, I love to hear from you. And email or me send me letters, I hate the walk of shame from the letter box!


Miss you all,

Love Andy