hello again one and all!
im sorry that i haven`t responded to emails but i can only get to a good internet cafe every three days or so… life here is slower so even if i did come every day, i would probably have nothing new to say! so lets see… i last posted on saturday (or friday?) and since then, i`ve been up to quite a bit. on saturday we went to the market on the langue de barbary (the island on the ocean side of the island of st louis) where there is a huge market where you can buy anything (literally) for a price. i went with the fench/belgian volunteers, elise (my roomate) amandine and julie to buy material to have some clothes made—its super hot here but you have to be covered all of the time or else you are improper, so i was hoping to make or find some nice tops that were light but that covered my shoulders. i ended up buying a really nice light cloth of white muslin with a blue stripey ribbon pattern on it—and then today i went back to the tailor to get fitted for the shirt. i bargined down the price for the tailor (i made myself proud) and so all in all the two meters of cotton and the making of the shirt will cost me about 8 dollars, which is pretty cheap im told. on saturday we also ate mafé (i dont know how to spell it) at xal`s resto, la linguere. xal is a friend of some of our senegalese contacts at the talibe center so he gives us great prices for amazing food. anyway, mafé is a dish that is made with peanuts, dried fish, onion and some sort of beefy meat (i never really ask—its rude first off and also sometimes im sure i dont want to know…) but yea it was amazing. in general the food here is phenomenal—havent had any alimentary issues yet thank goodness, but i do really miss fruits and vegetables at least vegetales other than potatoes and onions. anyway, then on sunday we went to the beach and sat out all day—the beach is really pretty but the current is strong so we dont go in the water so much. the area that the volunteers go to is near a really nice hotel, the mermoz or something like that, so there are even toilets with toilet paper and showers with tepid water! its kindof like heaven. but anyway as you can tell from the title of this post, i totally burned myself on the back and the backs of my legs—mom, before you yell at me, i put sunscreen on twice! but there was so much wind that none of us felt the heat until we got home and so most of us got really badly burned. i also spent a bit of time on sunday with my coteacher mamadou sy planning lessons. at the moment the kids are learning their letters from a to f and numbers from 1 to 5—theyre doing pretty well but its hard bc they are learning the names of things in french at the same times as they are learning the shapes of the letters and numbers so they sometimes get confused. although its kindof good for me because i learn some wolof from them, especially words like “stop hitting”, ”sit down”, ”be quiet”, and “come here”. theyve clearly got problems with discipline…haha. i also tried to teach them 1 through 5 in english but they couldnt grasp the meaning of the words, though they parroted the sounds pretty well. theyre super cute, with the exception of a few trouble makers, and its really hard not to just want to play and teach them little songs and games all day—but the director of the school is very strict and wants us to be firm with them. its kindof funny bc though we try, they still dont really listen to me so much because i dont hit them with the ruler and mamadou is such a smiley guy that they dont exactly take him seriously either. today the kids started to call me tata toubab, which means white teacher, which was kindof funny—normally im tata emilia. toubab isnt something that is meant to be disrespectful but i am a bit tired of hearing it yelled everywhere i go because usually it is accompanied by a request for money and as im pretty broke i dont hand anything out very often except for food. anyway, hm, lets see… today i took the afternoon off to come into town and hop on the internet for a bit and to exchange some money. they keep giving me 10 000 CFA bills which is about 20 bucks and i can never change them anywhere. very few vendors will take higher than 2 000 CFA so the volunteers end up going to bars alot—or hotels, wherever there are toubabs—to break our bills. its a bit annoying. tonight we have drinks and then tomorrow we have a quizzo sort of thing that all the volunteers go to as well. later on i have to meet with some people to write the questions—usually its the team that lost the previous quiz that prepares them but the team that lost last time is all francophone so i have to translate the questions for them. in general its a pretty nice little group we`ve got and we go out pretty often in the city.
ok, thats all for now—yay for internet by the hour! at least its only $0.60 each time…
