A picture is worth a thousand words

Ogie!!! My family's dog. I absolutely adore him, except when he humps me.

This is the group of students from three different highschools that the ASK program invited to their launch ceremony. ASK is AIESEC's program in spreading awareness and prevention of HIV/AIDS around Africa. There was a group of girls around 14 years old who put on an excellent play about prostitution, pregnancy, AIDS, and suicide. I dont think such touchy subjects could ever be so funny. The launch was really effective in destigmatizing HIV/AIDS and spreading awareness.


This is Papa Dia's Dorm room. Its meant for two people but sleeps 9. For a country that does not accept homosexuality their actions are sometimes gayer than americans. They sleep 3 to a bed, hold hands in the street, and all that. But I've come to learn its more an action of taking care of one another since they are all family. And now they consider me family!
The guy in the white shirt in front speaks excellent english and makes GREAT tea. Tea making is apparently the college boy's past time. It takes a good 15 minutes to prepare, and they prepare it often. It has the consistency of watered down syrup and is really sweet and really good!


The lunch room at the university with PapaNgdyaie Dia (pronounced paapeyja). Hes eating Mafe (meat with a peanut sauce with rice)which normally is good but since the university has to feed 60,000 students this SUCKED and it stained my brand new white dress. I forgot to bring my tide to go, or "Bic Magique" that day.

For the rest of my pictures click here

Day 2- UCAD

Today was my first day discovering the university UCAD. To get there you have to take a bus or a clando from sacre coeur. This in itself poses two problems for getting there. The “Clando” is a fake taxi that is run illegally and you basically just go up to parked cars and ask them to take you places for 250cfas, which is like 50cents. I am still too scared to do this by myself, partly because you have to go to a very dirty part of town to get them and I don’t really like the walk by myself and partly because I don’t know my way around yet so I don’t know if they’re going to take me to the right place. Nonetheless they are fun to take when Virginie is with me.
The bus on the other hand is ok too, but you walk a ways to get it and it only runs sometimes because there are a bunch of student strikes where they attack the cars and the busses that come on campus. I’m excited to see this happen. I’ve been told it’s quite frequent.
Anyways, we get to school and it is HUGE. It literally goes on for MILES. I was shown the AIESEC office, and even though it is run down it is like quadruple the size of our AIESEC office at GW. Everyone was there! I met most of the E-board and the MCPresident and some others. My work hasn’t technically started yet, so I was offered to help perform interviews for prospective AIESECers with the President, Coumba. The questions are pretty rudimentary: sell me this pen, describe yourself, why do you think you should be part of AIESEC, etc. But then that’s where I came in, the white girl who speaks English asks: How do you feel about homosexuality? Keep in mind I’m asking this in an EXTREMELY Muslim country. Answers ranged from we should kill them all, thus commencing another genocide, to people being extremely open about it.
Interviewing these people about who they were and where they came from was extremely interesting. I found out that UCAD is one of the best universities in the region. It was built to teach and hold 40,000 students, but currently it holds 60,000 and you can see that there is not enough room.
After the interviews, I still had no clue what I was supposed to do for the interviews so I just wandered around and then went back to the office. Guess who was there!?!?! Nicolette!! The other American girl!! So naturally we were both like omg another white face! We went exploring and I found an internet café. Today was fun, but nothing that interesting.
WAIT! At around 8pm we had a meeting for the launch of afritour. I basically sat there while 20 African men fought Saly on what time we should have the next meeting. I’ve never seen so much indecisiveness in my life. Then it was time to go home. The food here is EXCELLENT. I had blowfish skewers and fries with bread and salad. To die for. Then Virginie and I went to buy fruits and ice cream. I was proposed to yet again and turned them down yet again. I feel bad breaking all these Senegalese hearts.

Day 1

So Today the 18th of May I arrived in Africa. Dakar, Senegal to be exact. The South African woman on the plane who absolutely detested Montgomery, Alabama told me I was lucky, and that Senegal was the best place to start discovering Africa. It’s not so European that it looses its feel and definitely African enough to let you know you have left what you’re used to.
My first impression of Senegal was getting off the plane at four in the morning to about twenty smiling faces surrounding the steps on your way off. Everyone seemed so awake I swear they don’t sleep. I got my bags and went through customs. The guy handed me back the wrong passport, hahaha. The airport, for being the central airport of Senegal is tiny. It’s the same size as Tortola’s probably.
You walk out into the hot summer air, which smells strongly of urine and manure but its easy to get used to, and immediately get accosted by men wanting to carry your bags, people who have a good taxi deal, or people who just want you to use their cell phone so you can call your party. Luckily enough I was saved by Papa Dia, Caty Sarr, Yacoumbe Sanga, and some other AIESECers and we were on our way.
By 5 am I came to the realization that nothing happens here quickly. We had been standing on a sidewalk cracking jokes and just talking for about 20 minutes in the wee hour of the morning till we got a taxi. At that point I was ready to sleep. I was told in the little information that I had been given that I would be staying with Yacoumbe. That being the case, I somehow ended up on these two girl’s piece of foam that came from holding the bead stable. They kindly gave me a sheet. Their apartment was literally just a room with a bed and a dresser. The bathrooms are outside and around the corner, and I have no idea where they would cook. Nicolette, thank you for telling me to bring a sheet, its come in useful.
At what I thought was 10am but really was 8 I woke up and was offered a shower. Well let me tell you, there is no water during the day in that girl’s apartment building so they must collect it in the middle of the night. Soma the girl who let me sleep in her room was so nice as to give me a whole jug of water that she heated up to shower with. For those of you who don’t know, and it was my first experience, you basically take the large bucket with water and put in it the toilet/shower mixture and take a watering can type thing and pour water on yourself. Yes the toilets are squat toilets too.
So after I woke up and showered, Soma tried to teach me some Wolof, but its really hard. I know the greetings now.
Yacoumbe decided to move me to another place, to a girl who spoke some English around the corner. You walk out and are witness to slums lie you cant believe. Literally places made out of cardboard and metal. It’s so different. Also, you know how the US has raccoons that dig through garbage, and Chile has wild dogs? Well in Dakar its CATS, millions of them. Thank god I’m not allergic. We walked down the street to Sonja’s apartment, which was a smaller room with a window that looked into the hallway. It had a piece of foam on the floor for a bed and her really nice laptop, that’s it. She loved out of her suitcases.
After I put my stuff down Yacoumbe and I got some water and I got to take my meds. Bad news not having eaten! We were taking the car rapide to down town (the nicely adorned yellow and blue minivans), when I started to feel disgustingly sick. Yacoumbe sensed it and we got off, I RAN to a squat toilet and vomited everywhere. Lesson: eat. He then purchased me a baguette, which was delicious. Any who we met up with his friends who are graduating uni and had the job to pass out invites for commencement to all the government. What a cool experience! I went to all the gov. buildings and had visitors passes and got to explore. So cool! Then we went and took another bus called a NganyieNdgine or something and waited probably 30 minutes for it to fill up so we could leave. While waiting I was offered to buy water in bags, Colgate toothpaste, sequined scrunchies, and my favorite item superglue. (The man next to me bought two bottles, I’m not sure why knew what it was since it was in English and who buys superglue on a bus?)
Once we got off I was in the heart of the market where the bank to change my money was located. We changed my money in a high tech bank and then walked along the market. Mom and Dad, no one offered me anything! They did however tried to get Yacoumbe to buy me things I think. Tomorrow I will wear shorts so they can try the sock scam.
Afterwards it was time for lunch where we went to Genevieve and Alain’s room house to eat. Alain had prepared the national dish of the fish in rice. It was delicious!!!!! I was given a spoon to eat with thank god but it was a whole fish which for anyone who knows me well will be so surprised to know that I ate the hole thing. After that I spoke with a nice guy named Thierry who takes English in college and plays basketball as we watched La Lutte on TV. Honestly I never thought I would be in a situation with whole fish a room/apartment, 5 African men, and wrestling on TV, all speaking Wolof and French. I felt right at home.
After that we went back to Yacoumbe’s so I could nap as Sonja was at school and when we got there AIESEC was there!!! So exciting. I finally got to meet Claire who I have been corresponding with since March. Everyone is soooooo incredibly nice. I really do understand why it’s La Teranga. So the whole group then went to Sonja’s to get my stuff again, as I found out I was being moved to an actual house, so I could get the family feel. We took a taxi to Fann and went to the MCVP’s Aunt’s house.
I feel so spoiled. I’m currently lying in my own bed in a room I share with Virginie, their daughter who is 23. The have a toilet that you can sit in and a tube that I can use. I’m about to take a nap but I just found out that Sunday I get to go to a first communion!!!!!! So excited to see how African’s partayyy! Harriet comes June 1!
So far I feel that I was exposed to so much in a matter of hours. Can’t wait till tomorrow!!!