toubab! toubab! toubab!

I've been in Dakar, Senegal for 3 days now and I am loving it. Since everything I'm seeing and experiencing is completely new, it's a sensory overload that is overwhelming, exciting, exhausting, exhilirating, all at once. Even over such a short time, so many things have happened that I feel like I can't remember them all or make sense of them, but I guess that will come with time. Since all my experiences are jumbled in my head, all I can give right now are slices of the random observations I've had over the past (only?) 3 days:

-Palm trees, sand lining the streets, ridiculous traffic, people everywhere.

-The little boys that come up to us and beg on the streets.

-All the really tall and gorgeous people in beautiful, brightly-colored wraps and dresses and robes.

-The forty-some other Americans in the program, mostly really cool people, whose names I've been learning along with everything else.

-Being woken up in the mornings around dawn by the eerie and beautiful call to prayer that you can hear all over the city

-The fact that everyone is extremely friendly and welcoming

-A million street vendors who call out greetings to us in Wolof (the major native language thqt we'll be learning) to see if the toubabs (foreigners) have learned anything yet. Nanga def? (how are you?) They're really happy, and we're really proud of ourselves, when we remember and call out the right response in time. Mangi fi! (I'm here/I'm fine)

-The fact that we're usually failures when it comes to Wolof, and slip out words that sound great but are completely wrong. (monkey feet? baba ghanoush?)

-All the people who come up and try to sell us stuff, and are sometimes hard to shake off

-Watching the inauguration on CNN in a dorm, the American students together with the African students from the college where we'll have our classes. Everyone seemed equally excited.

-The amazing, breezy, not-too-hot but not-too-cold, sunny weather

-The neighborhood of Dakar I fell in love with where I'll be living starting next week, Ouakam (Wakam), with all the people and little cute kids and vendors and sand and goats running around and a boulangerie and a guy who rents out a foosball table on the street

-The fish I ate that still looked like a fish, with its head and tail still on and the eyes kind of staring at me

-Seeing the other side of the Atlantic

-The public transport mini buses called car rapides (I could not think of a more appropriate name), which I'll be taking to class every day from Ouakam, that pull off to the side of the road without warning but don't fully stop, and are so crowded that they often have people hanging out of them.

-The hundreds of army men that suddenly started running past us in the street, in their uniforms and running shoes, and carrying their guns. Except one of them must have forgotten his uniform so he was wearing a bright blue jogging suit, and carrying his gun.

-The fact that I'll be carrying around 10,000 franc notes


-The fact that you can spot white people a mile away. And when you pass one, you expect him to smile at you, because you're like, hey, I'm white, you're white! When he doesn't, you're kind of offended, and you decide he might be French.

-The adorable 3-year old in Ouakam in a little dress and braids who tugged on her mom's hand when she saw us, pointed at us and yelled excitedly, "Toubab! toubab! toubab!" She was my favorite.


We've been having orientation all this week. At the end of the week we move in with our host families, which I'm really excited about, and next week we start classes. I'll let you know how everything's going once I settle in, but for now, I am just really really excited to be here.

A la prochaine!