Aleze Goes To ...

pirogues about to go to Ngor Island Sorry for such a long break between posts, it’s been a crazy couple of weeks. Here’s an account of two little trips I have taken since I last posted. Enjoy and please comment! Sokone     We left for Sokone, a little town near the Gambian border, last Monday to work with the Cheikh Anta Diop University students on their “vacances citoyens.” Every year they go to rural towns and work in health clinics, teach computer skills and plant trees. After much waiting around on the first day (everyone keeps telling me that there is no concept of waiting in Africa, but it’s difficult to be patient), on our second day, we got up at 5am to eat with the students who were fasting for Ramadan and left at 7am to drive to the forest. The forest has very few trees, but the ground was covered in wild mint plants, which smelled amazing. We planted palm tree seeds. The boys dug the holes and the girls planted the seeds. This was a tiny demonst...

kids playing at the beach baby palm trees at the Radisson WARC (West African Research Center) where I take French rix au poisson at the WARC caf é     Salaam aleikum! This weekend I had a very typical Dakar experience. On Saturday we went to the marché Sandagar, a huge outdoor market where you can buy absolutely everything. I took a cab from my house to the marché and my cabdriver, when he saw that I was white, goes “America? Barak Obama!” It was a fun ride. When I got to the market I met up with some of the other kids from the program. They had been at the market for a bit and a guy had latched onto them. He followed us around the market, trying to get us to come to his stand and assuring us that the Senegalese do not eat white people. It made me feel much better ☺     After we left the marché we went to the Casino in the new mall on Corniche. The mall has a bunch of western stores but is not completely built, which is the case w...

A house inside a bunker in a military installation on the coast The president's house My room with mosquito net and other necessities of Senegal Fishing boats off the coast         Here is my first post about my adventures in Senegal.  Sorry for the lack of detail and compactness, I should be able to post more often soon.  Please comment and let me know what you think!     We arrived in Dakar really early on Monday morning. When we got off the airplane, it was immediately apparent that we were in a different country. The humidity is so high here that the air just surrounds and envelops you. I saw two kittens in the parking lot of the airport. There are animals everywhere here. We spent the first two nights in a hotel in Yoff, in northern Dakar, and I saw goats and puppies and horses pulling carts.      For my first meal in Dakar, we had rice and fish. The food is served on a big platte...