each day here blends into the next and so its not surprising that this two week mark has come up on me completely by surprise—im not sure if this timelessness is a good or bad thing to be honest, but the volunteers here like to refer to our time in st louis as a parenthesis…a phrase set apart from the rest of the sentence of our life. ok, that sounds really sappy in english but it sounded pretty eloquent in french when the analogy was first discussed!
anyway, things keep chugging along. caro and i are trying to re-vamp how the primary school class time and set up to include more hands on learning for the kids and less direct repetition…as of now, the main form of teaching consists of the repetition ad nauseum of a specific phrase—for example, voici mes oreilles—accompanied by a gesture such as touching their ears. the problem is that the kids dont speak french really and so have no idea of what theyre actually saying. so anyway, were sort of brainstoming ways to maintain the repetition—since thats the only way the kids know how to learn so far—but to de-emphasize it and contexturalize the phrases.
things at the talibe center are going well as well—getting lots of experience with scabies infections and boils. neither is very fun to treat as we mostly lance the boils to release the puss and scrape off the scabs that cover scabies infections before we clean the wounds but at least im getting good at it… our doc here is a big fan of getting the blood to flow to clean the wound before we add antibiotics or clean with alcohol so thats basically the treatment each time. needless to say, doing these things hurts the kids a fair amount, so the biggest risk/challenge is that they are always moving and screaming. it leaves you pretty emotionally exhausted bc you just feel like youre constantly battling to get your job done and that in the process youre inflicting terrible pain. the kids find us on the streets later smetimes though and dont seem to hold a grudge at all, so maybe its not so bad. last wed we went to a dara—or however you spell it, the school/home of the talibes—that had several boys who had been very very badly burned by boiling water. im not sure i beleive the story that we were told about how they got the burns but they were pretty bad, pussing and scarring over in bad ways with skin sloughing off, so i got to learn a bit about burn care, which was pretty interesting.
the best part about working at the talibe center by far is hanging out with the senegalese volunteers after the day is over to have the traditional tea service and shoot the breeze. it takes about two hours in total to prepare and serve the two cups of tea to everyone (there are only three glasses which everyone shares as is custom—tea is passed around until each pot is emty. the first tea is a bittter green tea with very little sugar and the second is a very sweet mint tea. the hardest part about preparing tea, which i tried a few days ago, is to get a foam on the top of each cup poured. this is done by repeatedly pouring a small amount of tea between each of the glasses until an airy foam forms, then the actual tea to be drunk is poured on top and the glass is served.) so during these two hours you get to hang out and just decompress from the day. friday a volunteer brought a drum that she had bought and the guys started a phenomenal drum circle with bottles and tables and random containers supplementing the drum. i also learned a game kindof like checkers that was pretty fun.
other than that, lets see… OH the funniest thing happened on friday. so after the tea, i rushed home to take a shower before a dinner that the volunteers were having in town and as i jumped out of the cab, my cell fell onto the seat… i realized that my cell wasnt in my pocket as the cab was driving away and started to run after it immediately screaming for it to stop. basically, i ran the fastest ive ever run for about three our four blocks on the sand/dust that serves for a road outside of my house screaming at the cabdriver but he didnt notice me though i actually almost caught him twice—everyone else on the street were all laughing and yelling at me calling me a crazy toubab and basically asking what my problem was in a variety of languages. finally, someone pulled up beside me in the street on a motorbike and asked me what was going on. he managed to stop the cab for me and i actually got my cell back! it was the funniest experience—and thankfully i caught the guy—but mostly it was hillarious because i had to walk back the half a mile to my house past all of my neighbors and explain about 20 times why i made such a spectacle of myself!!
other than that, the weekend has been pretty chill. alot of kids went to a weekend excursion to the langue de barbarie (next post i promise ill do a little geography lesson) but i skipped out and went to the pool at a hotel instead to hang out with vanessa—an american— and caro—the belgian who teaches in the same school as me. it was pretty much paradise with its european style toilets, cold cokes and fresh fruit—all of which is hard to find in cite niack where i live. i also started guitar lessons with this phenomenal spanish guitar player—the classes are offered for free through a local church (there are three catholic churches in the city, this is the largest) and i have the feeling that its going to be awesome. cheryl, another volunteer, plays guitar and told me about the classes so im with her and one of the priests from the church and a few other senegalese that are also learning how to play. i think cheryls the best of all of us students but im actually not the worst so im pretty enthused about that. the teacher also likes to teach alot of music theory which is going to be really good i think but hard bc instead of calling chords A C D etc, they are Do Fa and Sol. so i need to change how i think about the names of things to really get the most out of the class—its also all in french so thats another challenge i guess.
this morning i did all of my laundry which took about three hours in total to do by hand—i still dont think i have the hang of it, but my clothes end up smelling good even if they dont actually get clean and for now thats all i really care about. haha. right after i finished, i looked up and saw about 80-90 pelicans swirling overhead—it was pretty amazing and has put me in a great mood. anyway, after that, i took the long way on foot into the city and then had fattayas at a little cafe before heading here to the cyber cafe to post. the fattayas are like a little bit of heaven on earth but super greasy as most things are here so i might try to find an orange later. i havent come across any food that i dislike yet—and havent been sick!—but i am dying for vegetables! i also just tried to post some pictures but i think i need to get on a newer computer to get them offmy camera… im currently on a compaq from 1998 so ill just have to search around for a more upscale joint before the pictures can come up haha.
ok, thats enough of my rambling. hope everyones doing well—miss you all terribly and if anyone wants to visit, please do! i can find you a great hotel for ten bucks a night and we can sit around on the beach drinking bissap and eating fruit from the baobab—both of which are awesome and almost worth the trip. haha
