Maa ngi dekk Mermoz Premiere Porte ci Dakar...

Thank you everyone for being so patient with this blog post. With a crazy but fun orientation schedule, I've had to adapt to WAIT (West African international time) in order to get to know Dakar, MSID staff, my fellow MSID'ers, and host family (in addition to thirty to forty of their family members, neighbors, and friends). It's amazing to be here, and I am surprised so far how comfortable I am with adapting the city and the culture and in French. It's still tough for me to get used to the pace here (including that of the wifi here at school) and also to answer to my Wolof name "Ngone."

First impressions of Dakar is that it is a city of contrasts. If you have ever watched the film "La petite vendeuse de soleil" it gives you a pretty good idea, glad I watched it before I came. On the same road, (fyi they usually are not paved and sidewalks are "par hazard") there are cars, lots of yellow renault taxis, clandos [regular cars used as taxis], car rapides, TATA buses, regular buses, and horse drawn carts. So far, I've only braved the yellow taxi twice and the car rapides once, I usually prefer walking with the group. A lot of the city is what I would describe as "half built" because I found out that buildings are renovated on an as-the-money-comes basis. The ocean is everywhere and very beautiful (the beach is fun too!), but there is also a lot of garbage in the city due to an interesting sanitation system.

 I can tell though that people take pride in their neighborhoods, and especially in their neighbors, who are like extensions of the family. All of the neighbors have been very friendly towards me. I talk with them in French, because my Wolof vocab consists of some greetings, counting to five, "I'm going to school/study", "I live in Mermoz Premiere Porte", "my (first/last) name is" and "I'm full, thank you." Definitely more to come since classes (including Wolof) start this week.

In and around my neigborhood, there is always a lot going on. Farm animal sounds (the Tabaski holiday is coming up, and it involves "moutons" (sheep/goats) so people keep them as well as chickens even though it's an urban area. For the most part, this doesn't bug me at all, except the rooster that thinks it is necessary to crow 15+ times in an hour. There are kids playing, babies crying, neighbors talking, and lots of airplanes because we are extremely close the airport, all of this again isn't bad but can be tough when you are trying to fall asleep. You can smell firewood burning in small charcoal burners which grill and heat water for Ataya (the tea), exhaust, the ocean breeze, and whatever people are cooking. It's been fun to observe and discover so far and I am looking forward to seeing even more.

During orientation, we took a small tour of the city and also went to Goree Island (picture and description to come). I still have yet to go to a market, although I have been a few times to the boutiques (think, corner store), what is called the "toubab store" to buy shampoo for my kind of hair, and a supermarche. Today, my host sisters are taking me, and the new American student that lives with us, to "Nice Cream" which is an ice cream shop in downtown.

I'm very glad in all of this that I have taken French, and have been pleasantly surprised how much I have been able to converse (although there were some important words I didn't know like "fan" for example). It's been a favorite game of the neighbors to guess where I'm from. The most popular answers are France and the UK, which was another surprise. One merchant at a boutique thought I was Spanish, which made me laugh (I totally confused the guy as to why I was laughing). So far, I haven't felt targeted for being an American per se, but the tough part is you can't hide skin color and all of the obvious stereotypes that go with it which is a good lesson for me to learn in person. It will be interesting to see how that goes as I meet and talk to more people.

Look forward to more updates soon :) Miss you all!