Announcement: For anyone who wishes to call me, my phone number is 221 (the country code) 6566- 205. 011 probably should go before the 221, but your guess is as good as mine. At some future point I'll be sure to post a calling card number so that those of you with the will but lack of financial means to back up that will will have some way of bothering me while I'm in class.
Apologies for the brevity of the last message, but it basically encompassed everything I wanted to say. FYI, it is still hot as balls, made worse by the fact that I live in a brick oven with a tin roof. Modernity means that Senegalse no longer live in straw huts, which conduct heat in such a way that keeps them cool for most of the day. For those of you knowledgable on the subject, I demand an explanation as to how this works.
Today marks one week and change back from "demistification" and one week living with a host family back in Thies. Of all the words to describe the week, exciting would not be one of them. In fact, life has fallen into a bit of a routine and should continue as such indefinitely until the end of training, i.e. six weeks from now. If you ever wanted to spend days on end learning languages, then Peace Corps is for you. I am dilligently adding Wolof to the list of useless languages I know (outside the correct environment, of course), right before Polish, somewhere after French and English. I have the privilidge of learning a language that is spoken by the majority of Senegalese, so I consider myself luckier than some trainees.
Where is Thies, you may ask, and what am I doing here? Thies is the second largest city in Senegal, which means that it's more than a village but less than an urban metropolis. Its three hundred thousand residents are enclosed in but a few square miles, and everything is more or less accessable by foot. Is the city dity? Yes, especially the food market, which is on the edge of the regular market. Is the city nice? Yes, in parts, especially the Place de France, which was recently completed for the millenium and resembles a large and colorful concrete block surrounded by small, plain banks and a small, green park.
Yesterday there was a lecture on the political history of Senegal. For those of you who don't know, Senegal is a functioning democracy, one of the few in Africa. This means that there will be an election next year, which will be fun for all! By fun, I mean that there will probably be some sort of protest somewhere over the candidacy of the current president and rivals, which will result in God knows what kind of upheaval. As a casual observer, I can only hope for the best. With the French army and American trainees in place, odds are things will not get out of control. Why the commotion, you ask? The most likely candidate, the mayor of Thies, is in jail at the moment at the behest of the president for allegedly embezzling money and taking bribes for the city works project that took place in 2000. Where did the bribe money come from? Is he innocent or not? Who knows.
If you like sitting around and gossiping for hours between classes, Peace Corps may be right for you as well. You do get an interesting story or two out of people in the meantime. The topic of the past few days has been health. There's a story about a girl who didn't really like her village, so she came up with all sort of medical excuses to be sent back to Dakar. After getting tired of her Dakar excursions, she figured that if she got injured really seriously, she would get shipped to South Africa to enjoy the sunny beaches and warm Afrikaans culture. Apparantly, that's where you go if you have knee problems, for what reason I can't comprehend, because both Europe and New York are closer. The girl went about injuring herself, supposedly jerry-rigging a tree branch to fall on the right spot and crack her knee open. Although 'seriously" injured, the severity of the break didn't quite warrant more intensive care than available in country, so the girl had a bit of an accident on her bike. The medical staff got wise and suspicious about these "accidents", and the girl got shipped home.
There are milion intereting and uninteresting stories floating around. The Peace Corps country director was medevac'd (evacuated for medical reasons) to Germany packed in ice because he didn't realize he had dengue fever until a bit too late. A few people end up enciente, etc. Snake bites don't seem to be a large problem, nor does malaria, if you do what you're told. At the moment the medication is giving me lucid dreams, which I enjoy with great zeal.
Apologies for the brevity of the last message, but it basically encompassed everything I wanted to say. FYI, it is still hot as balls, made worse by the fact that I live in a brick oven with a tin roof. Modernity means that Senegalse no longer live in straw huts, which conduct heat in such a way that keeps them cool for most of the day. For those of you knowledgable on the subject, I demand an explanation as to how this works.
Today marks one week and change back from "demistification" and one week living with a host family back in Thies. Of all the words to describe the week, exciting would not be one of them. In fact, life has fallen into a bit of a routine and should continue as such indefinitely until the end of training, i.e. six weeks from now. If you ever wanted to spend days on end learning languages, then Peace Corps is for you. I am dilligently adding Wolof to the list of useless languages I know (outside the correct environment, of course), right before Polish, somewhere after French and English. I have the privilidge of learning a language that is spoken by the majority of Senegalese, so I consider myself luckier than some trainees.
Where is Thies, you may ask, and what am I doing here? Thies is the second largest city in Senegal, which means that it's more than a village but less than an urban metropolis. Its three hundred thousand residents are enclosed in but a few square miles, and everything is more or less accessable by foot. Is the city dity? Yes, especially the food market, which is on the edge of the regular market. Is the city nice? Yes, in parts, especially the Place de France, which was recently completed for the millenium and resembles a large and colorful concrete block surrounded by small, plain banks and a small, green park.
Yesterday there was a lecture on the political history of Senegal. For those of you who don't know, Senegal is a functioning democracy, one of the few in Africa. This means that there will be an election next year, which will be fun for all! By fun, I mean that there will probably be some sort of protest somewhere over the candidacy of the current president and rivals, which will result in God knows what kind of upheaval. As a casual observer, I can only hope for the best. With the French army and American trainees in place, odds are things will not get out of control. Why the commotion, you ask? The most likely candidate, the mayor of Thies, is in jail at the moment at the behest of the president for allegedly embezzling money and taking bribes for the city works project that took place in 2000. Where did the bribe money come from? Is he innocent or not? Who knows.
If you like sitting around and gossiping for hours between classes, Peace Corps may be right for you as well. You do get an interesting story or two out of people in the meantime. The topic of the past few days has been health. There's a story about a girl who didn't really like her village, so she came up with all sort of medical excuses to be sent back to Dakar. After getting tired of her Dakar excursions, she figured that if she got injured really seriously, she would get shipped to South Africa to enjoy the sunny beaches and warm Afrikaans culture. Apparantly, that's where you go if you have knee problems, for what reason I can't comprehend, because both Europe and New York are closer. The girl went about injuring herself, supposedly jerry-rigging a tree branch to fall on the right spot and crack her knee open. Although 'seriously" injured, the severity of the break didn't quite warrant more intensive care than available in country, so the girl had a bit of an accident on her bike. The medical staff got wise and suspicious about these "accidents", and the girl got shipped home.
There are milion intereting and uninteresting stories floating around. The Peace Corps country director was medevac'd (evacuated for medical reasons) to Germany packed in ice because he didn't realize he had dengue fever until a bit too late. A few people end up enciente, etc. Snake bites don't seem to be a large problem, nor does malaria, if you do what you're told. At the moment the medication is giving me lucid dreams, which I enjoy with great zeal.
posted by Unknown at 9:07 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home