Aleze Goes To ...

Fatu (my host cousin) and me on Korite Sorry there hasn’t been a post in a while, but here’s a little update about what’s been going on in Dakar ☺     Last Friday was Korite, the celebration of the end of Ramadan. I think the name Korite is individual to Senegal and in most of the Muslim world this celebration is called Eid. For my host family, it basically consists of wearing nice clothes and eating a gigantic lunch. My host mother and cousins were up most of the night before Korite cooking and cleaning the house. I accidentally slept to late and missed the beginning of eating, which started early with a very sweet drink that was like very thin and very sweet peanut butter with cooked millet mixed in. As you can imagine, I was not too disappointed to have missed that. When I got up, my cousin Daba lent me one of her outfits, which was way to long for me, but I fit in. We spent the morning cooking and sitting in the backyard. My host parents friends all came ...

a baobab tree near the beach on the plateau in Dakar Here’s an account of my week of Orientation, Part 2.     Last week, the French pre-session ended and this week we had a second orientation with all of the new students. On Monday we spent the day in Yoff in northern Dakar talking about living in Dakar and eating wonderful tiéboudienne (pronounced chebba jen, I finally found the right spelling, it is rice, fish, root vegetables, and eggplant cooked in a spicy tomato sauce) and yassa poulet (chicken with onion sauce) and French fries. French fries are very popular here. Every sandwich I’ve eaten in Senegal, even the falafel, has had French fries in it.     On Tuesday, we went back to the Marche Sandaga (sorry for the misspelling in my second post) and went shopping for fabric. We took a car rapide to the marche. I spent the ride squished between a middle-aged woman and a very skinny little boy. It took twice as long as a cab ride, but it onl...