Senegal Summer Camp

I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is that our training center is this beautiful compound in the city of Thies, and I have some great pictures that I want to put online. The bad news is that I think I may have left my camera charger and the cord that connects it to the computer in D.C. This complicates things somewhat, but I can probably either borrow one or find a new one here.

Back to the nice things, all the facilities here are very nice, including the showers, bathrooms, clean drinking water, food cooked to Peace Corps health specifications, and an overqualified language and cultural staff.

Yesterday we got to Dakar around 6am, drove the 2 hours to Thies, and met all the staff. They're very nice, and quite good. We were greeted with drumming, which was cool, and our usual daily breakfast of baguette and jam, peanut butter, faux nutella, or butter. There is also tea and coffee, and I followed the lead of Assane in pouring hot milk on a tea bag. It was delicious. They left us the morning to sleep, which some people did but the rest of us played cards or got settled in. We then had lunch, which was rice with beef. It was also good, and I do have a picture on an ipod so I should theoretically be able to upload it. It was delicious, and I'm told that rice with beef, chicken, fish, or some other meat is a pretty standard lunch here.

Afterwards we had our Senegal orientation, and our country director Chris Hendrick explained how everything works. To be honest, we were all pretty sleep deprived and I don't really remember that much. I have the impression that things are taken seriously here, but that their training is very good and prepares us well. After, we explored the compound and learned where everything is and how to send mail, use the internet, etc. You can get cold soda for 350 CFA, or a little less than a dollar.

The last thing that I did yesterday, because afterwards I fell asleep for 12 hours and missed dinner, was experience Senegalese dance. They brought in some guys with drums and a guy to show us dancing basics. It was more of an experience things as you go than actual instruction, and the only video or photo evidence is so embarrassing that I won't tell you where to find it online. In fact, I don't think any of us have actually spoken about it since. The drumming is very cool, though.

This morning we had our pre-service training orientation. We learned that the method for training here is community based training or CBT (we only speak in acronyms because its part of the government). We'll be living with a host family that is different from the one we live with during our actual training so that when we make horrible faux pas they don't haunt us for the rest of our two years. We will be near 3 or 4 other trainees, and all of us will receive language training from one of the people that works here pretty much 6 days per week. We will move out there in about 5 days, which is exciting and scary. We all already have cabin fever, we're not allowed to leave the training facility right now, but none of us really want to be dropped off with little to no Wolof in a community. We should be fine, though, and the training host families have all hosted trainees for a while.

Today we had rice with chicken. I also got a typhoid shot and a redundant meningitis shot. We were all given a huge packet of meds, which makes all of the stuff I brought kind of useless. We also got a MIFF (spelling?) kit for sending away diarrhea to Dakar for analysis. Also we got a fancy new water filter and bug net.

The weather is warm, but not too bad, especially in the shade. Many regions are hotter than Thies, and nowhere gets very cold at night. I'm getting used to it.

If you have any other questions, let me know. We don't have cell phones yet, but I'll post something when we do.