Here's my story so far...
So I finally arrived Wednesday at 6:10am and it was already nice and toast warm here. Of course I was the one kid in the group who didn’t get all my luggage. They had lost my piece of luggage with all my clothing in it. Some really tall army looking guy pointed down this shady little hallway for Baggage Claims…and I don’t mean shady as in it had no sun. It was a super creepy hallway which led to a similarly creepy tiled room with a LOT of lost bags. It’s like a luggage graveyard. Prof Siamundele talked to the lone woman at the desk. She said it’d be here in the morning. My trip was off to a shitty start. Already I kinda felt like crying. I don’t know why because I’m not a person who is quick to cry. I just felt like it could only go downhill from there. And it kinda did for the day.
We arrived in the morning so lucky us with no sleep we got to have a WHOLLEEE day to do stuff. We ate breakfast at the hotel and they serve nice big trays with bread and coffee. Of course, the serving ladies were so busy I think they forgot they hadn’t served me. It wasn’t their fault because hey we are a huge group but it made me sad all over again. So I went to my room all upset and pissy only to find I needed to move back down a floor. Yup they had put me in the wrong room. No elevator folks. Lots of stairs, but I was glad it was just one floor down. After a shower, a bit of my own food and a nap I felt a bit better. At least I got the piece of luggage with all my nice smelling stuff. It’s freakin hot here though. Like 80 degrees all the time…
The first day was a nice orientation at what I think was Professor Sène’s house on his roof. We learned the traditional dress a bit and got to eating. Again here’s the shocker folks… no utensils! We ate with our hands. It was a bit tough at first and we made a total mess but it wasn’t bad. We discussed the handbook which contains a lot of Dos and DONTs for the area. Things like don’t use your left hand; that hand is reserved for body excrement. Yea that’s our replacement for toilet paper by the way. Your hand and a bucket of water is totally more sanitary than some good ol’ toilet paper. They have someone to wash your clothes but it’s not really acceptable to put your underwear in your laundry. HUGE insult to the poor woman who has to clean them. Instead you wash them in the shower, like when you were a teenage washing your first thong in the shower so your Mom wouldn’t see it and freak out. Just like that. There’s probably some other stuff in there but moving on….Oh! I almost forgot! We got to go to a nice beach… nice in the sense that it had the nice waves going and it was warm but breezy. The trash however was shocking. The trash is just unbelievable here. Just everywhere. It makes me realize how nice the places I live are.
Day two was supposed to start by me having my luggage. Awa called the airport and nope my luggage wasn’t to get here until that night…I was getting kinda worried that every time we called they would be like nope tomorrow day after day. I forgot at the time that the east coast in the U.S. was getting like a shit ton of snow so flights were delayed. So with the fear of having no clothing at the back of my mind, we packed up our stuff in the hotel and shipped out!
We got on the bus and made our way around the city. It was a quick tour of all the snazzy places. The President’s Palace, the Independence Place (city square type deal), a couple other cool places. We also exchanged our money at the bank. We needed our passports which was the strangest thing. I was afraid to carry my wallet without any backpack to the bank, but I was more afraid of losing my passport out of my backpack so I didn’t bring it with me. We had lunch at WARC (The West African Research Center), where I’ll be taking most of my classes. Then we were off to meet our host families. I was the 4th person of the bus I believe and I arrived to a quiet house in Ouakam residence of Dakar. The sister and the housekeeper greeted me and since I didn’t have anything to unpack, I promptly took a nap.
Okay I’ll update more later but that’s a lot for now. Wait until you hear about my experience with the speedy worm. Gross.
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