Fishing and CIEE Students Visit

Every six months or so volunteers get asked if they are interested in hosting one or two American study abroad students who are studying in Dakar for the semester. Last November I hosted two, I am sure I prolly blogged about it, I should check, but it was full of things like peanut shelling and staying up all night in my hut listening to the bbc on my shortwave to hear about the election results.

In the spring I think I had stuff going on or meetings or something and I wasnt free to host anyone for that whole week. And then when I saw the email about them wanting volunteer volunteers to host, well I didnt see the email till the thurs before the monday they would come, so I decided not to make a big deal out of it, they probably had enough other sites and hosts and I wouldnt change my plans.

That Sunday I left to Popenguine for some fishing with the volunteer there, Ankith. It is a really nice beach town and when I got there I played a little bocce ball before we went and got drinks at this bar that is right near his house and then we had a huge amazing chicken dinner. We then slept on his roof where it was actually nice and cool and in the morning we all woke up dewy. Yay, changing seasons!

Then we went out to the beach. There was a nice little group of us. Jen my close neighbor was also there with her friend from the states, the new volunteer from Mbour, Alex came too.

Oh, I never announced this. Mbour Has A New Volunteer! My "site mate" has been given a real site mate!! :( But, seriously, he is cool, he lives on the other side of town from Jen and has connections to an amazing campement on the beach. I guessit doesnt really change too much for me but I have more neighbors, the petit cote is full of beach side volunteers and i am the only silly inlander.


Anyway, also a couple extending volunteers were down from Dakar and another volunteer from the sand-locked land of Linguere. So the eight of us got taken out in a pirogue by two Senegalese fishermen, we went out a few kms from shore and fished all morning. There are pictures on facebook, (i didnt bring my camera, i know, i am brilliant), we used fishing line with two hooks and a sinker tied around random bits of wood. The fish that we used for bait, yep, you guessed it, the very fish that is the only fish that we see in my village. Awesome.

So the fishing was cool. Pretty different in some ways and similar in some ways to the first time that I went sea fishing years and years ago. On this little boat though, i did become unexpectantly minorly sea sick. I didnt think I would, but i am not often on rocking boats out in the ocean like that. It wasnt so bad that I would throw up but it was annoying that I couldnt really enjoy myself that much and on top of that I didnt catch anything. Plenty of fish got some nice chunks of my bait though.

After all that and a great lunch I went back to site. My host dad had called and said there was a toubab there or something. I figured it was just some micro-finance person or, more likely, another WWOOF volunteer that needed my help translating.

Oh, I should probably explain that WWOOF thing, see there are so many things that happen here that I dont get to blog about. Ok, i will write something on that soon, I swear.

So anyway, big surprise when I get home to see there are two young women at my house and they are CIEE exchange students from Dakar that got placed in my village anyway, regardless if I responded to them or not. They were very laid back and said they could follow me around or just do their own thing for the week they would spend in Louly. I did have a couple things planned to do that I still needed to get done but there was no reason that they couldnt follow me around and I could accompany them out for field work stuff and help translate. Also, cause I thought it would be simpler for everyone, I told them they could stay in my hut and use my douche instead of trying to work out a thing with my oft crazy family. We also shared breakfast and ate lunch together and dinner with my dad.

It was unexpected but it was a good week. The first day we walked 5km to Sandiara, my nearest town to talk to the English teachers there. I think some things that I was doing for my work was pretty boring for them but they were really cool about it. Also as often happens when around English speakers, I suffer from a kind of verbal vomiting, I just talk and talk about everything and nothing, just happy to be talking with ease and being understood. I think I talked way more that week than I have in a long time and more than is probably good for anyone. Later in the week we also went to the kindergarten for a little and worked in various segments of the peanut harvest. We beat the peanut piles with sticks to get them off the plants and get the plants broken into smallish pieces, we sifted the peanuts from the plants, we shelled peanuts, we ate peanuts, roasted peanuts and had them in sauces.

I think they had a pretty decent week. My family and neighbors liked them. My three year old brother Abdou was offered as husband to one of them, Victoria, who was from New York and had been at school in Vermont. My equally toddlering cousin Bass was offered to Jocelyn, a student from California. Most of my pictures and most of the week felt like it was spent sifting peanuts. It really is amazing how much work goes into those little things, and I couldnt help thinking how there was probably a single complex machine that does all that we did that whole week in a few seconds in America.

Thanks for coming over you two, come back anytime! And anyone else who wants to visit, come on over! I have sorghum couscous!