Korite and Kalaas!

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 over to visit and chat in the salon. It was really fun to see everyone all dressed up for the celebration.
    For lunch we ate a huge plate of rice that had been cooked with shrimp. On top of the rice was both chicken and lamb (!) and tons of vegetables and olives and onions. It was absolutely delicious and afterwards I felt as if I would never be hungry again. After lunch we all had a nap and then my host mom went around to visit the neighbors. So, that was the extent of the celebration in my house, although I went out that night with some friends from MSID and there were so many people outside, just hanging out and celebrating the end of their month of fasting.

Korite feast

maman and papa in their korite finery

    Classes began two weeks ago and we have so many of them. We are required to take International Development, Wolof, French, Internship and Research Methodology, and Country Analysis. We each got to pick a subject area to focus on and we have a class in that, too. Mine is Public Health and Social Services and I am auditing the Environment and Ecology class as well, so lots of class after a pretty relaxing first month in Senegal. All of the teachers are very interesting and I am learning a ton of Wolof, which has been fun to try to use outside of the classroom.
    On another academic note, I got my internship assignment last week! I will be working in a Poste de Santé, which is a clinic with a nurse and a midwife, in Keur Saloum Diané near the Gambian border for six weeks beginning in October. The nurse and the midwife travel to other towns around Keur Saloum Diané that don’t have clinics, so I should be able to go along with them. I am incredibly excited and can’t wait for that to start, although I don’t want to leave Dakar yet.
So that’s the update and I’ll hopefully have more later this week! Love!

Daba (my other host cousin) frying our lunch