February 7, 2011
As soon as I arrived in Dakar, I immediately felt washed with relief. I’d traveled thousands of miles, was still several countries away from my Nigerien home, but somehow felt I was back on familiar ground. We deplaned directly onto the tarmac, but were forced to ride little, air-conditioned buses 50 yards to the airport entrance—same as Niamey and something I’d always found amusing. Same overwhelming heat. Same style of sign on top of the terminal announcing the airport’s name. At the door and though customs, I was blatantly cut and had to push to keep my spot in line. Yes. I am back in West Africa.
Getting to the Casablanca airport from Rabat is—in itself—another hilarious story. Somehow, in spite of the fact Peace Corps usually gets its volunteers to the airport tragically early, our car had departed nearly 40 minutes late from the hotel and we were under serious pressure to make our flight.
Team Senegal Leaving Morocco
The eight of us transferring to Senegal half-joked Sylvia would send us home for missing our flight. No one believed it, but after a week of her constantly reminding us we should consider our transfers purely speculative until she said so[1], I worried missing the flight might make things more annoyingly complicated.
We grew more and more tense as the drive continued. Sweaty hands gripped the velour seats as we peered into the darkness for helpful road signs. I asked for the time at increasingly shorter intervals. We strategized how to most efficiently maneuver through the airport. You know, the usual useless impatience…
The Moroccan chauffer, apparently, did not share our stress. After hitting then subsequently infuriating a Moroccan motorcyclist at the beginning of the drive (it was more of a tap really), he had continued at a vigilant, borderline inert pace. At a certain point in the drive, he took a turn so slowly my friend Hailey thought we had broken down. Since none of us spoke French, we debated at length how to ask the driver to go faster. Yeah…actually he spoke English too…
Our minivan pulled up to the airport curb approximately 15 minutes before check-in for our flight ended. In an attempt at stratigery, I was sent ahead to figure out where we were supposed to check-in while the rest of the team unloaded our inordinate amount of luggage. In the three minutes I spent running around the airport antechamber, I learned nothing. But, I did make it back to the doorway in time to see a flustered Minnie try and push her entire luggage cart (with baggage) through the mental detector. I apparently missed Shelby capsizing her cart when making a particularly sharp turn.
I’m not going to give you a play-by-play of the rest of our journey through the airport, but some of the highlights include:
- Eight Americans stampeding toward the check-in counter with their overburdened luggage carts.
- Eight Americans having to unpack and repack overweight bags, thereby fully monopolizing the area in front of our (and at least three other) check-in counters.
- A quick side trip to a completely different part of the airport to pay for our overweight baggage.
- Going through customs in French, in spite of the fact none of us actually speak French.
- A very stressful last push to make it to the gate in time.
- Sitting on-board the plane for an hour, waiting to take off.
So now I’m here. In Senegal. Learning French. Living with my fifth Peace Corps host family.
Here’s the plan: The other seven Niger transferees and I are going to go through four weeks of language training while staying in a homestay family. We are spread across three different villages, based on the language we are learning. Hailey, a third-year volunteer, and I are staying in Thies (pronounced Chez). After two weeks of French, we’re going to switch to learning Wolof—the principal local language in Senegal. We have class everyday in the morning and study time in the afternoon.
Our language trainer, Sakhir, is a rockstar, though slightly goofy and uncoordinated such that he always looks like he is walking in sand. He has worked for the Peace Corps for the past ten years and so is a total pro at accommodating Western learning styles (which makes things easier for everyone.) I asked him the other day how to tell someone nicely you think they are lying. His reply was, “You say they are telling the truth.” (In Niger there were one or two culturally appropriate ways to softly call someone out. Apparently, it is not the same in Senegal.) He also almost fell of his chair laughing when I told him the story of how I fell in my latrine.
Anyway, after arriving, I talked with the country director, a retired CEO from the Pacific Northwest, about my new post in Senegal and what work I will do. He laid out about seven options—all partnerships with NGOs—for Hailey and me to pick from. We told him what we were most interested in and he disappeared back to Dakar to get more detailed job descriptions. Right now I’m waiting for those before deciding where I want to go. All I can say for now is I am likely to be in either Dakar or St. Louis, both of which are major cities and have beaches. I will have an apartment and an amazing (AMAZING) job. I’m not even exaggerating my excitement as a way to cope with leaving Niger. I am genuinely overwhelmed with excitement for my new position.
We are going to finish with training February 26th and start work at our new sites in early March. Inshallah. Really, inshallah. Until then, I’m in Thies.
And Thies is good. It’s actually a pretty hopping town. In a bit of synchronicity…or irony…the hippest nightclub in Thies is called “The Dosso,” which I’m sure has more going on in it the entire city in Niger. I haven’t been yet. Full report later.
So, I know it’s deeply unfair and unwise to compare Senegal to Niger, but such thoughts come unprompted. Let’s see if I can do it in one sentence: Senegal is more developed, more westernized, more ethnically diverse, more filled with tourists, more shaped liked a pac-man; less conservative, less Muslim, less friendly, less landlocked; smaller, richer, wetter, mosquito-ier, prettier, yet equally overrun with trash. Also, there are pigs here. DAMN! Two sentences.
So, minus the pigs, which are huge and scare me, life here is pretty plush compared to Niger. In fact, I estimate that Senegal is ten times more developed than Niger. Here’s how I know: The other day a kid on the street asked me for a thousand francs. In Niger, they never asked for more than a hundred. Yeah! Take that Social Science. I live by Bruce Science, though the United Nations Index of Development may beg to differ.
There's A Beach!
But seriously, it is plain to the Niger-adjusted eye that Senegal is doing well for itself. Even in small village shops have storefronts and houses are made of concrete. Diarrhea isn’t the number one killer of children here, as in Niger, but rather Malaria, which suggests villages have better access to clean water. There are grocery stores outside the capital. Wireless is everywhere. People have health insurance! Hailey’s homestay family has a computer. …and I haven’t even seen Dakar, which is the most developed part of the country. Also, I spent last Sunday laying on the beach under a palm tree and swimming in the Atlantic. Niger was all sand and no beach, if you know what I’m saying.
Obviously it’s not fair to compare Senegal to Niger based on the one city I’ve spent time in, Thies. I’m fairly certain the analogy “Thies is to Dosso, as the Senegalese bush is to the Nigerien bush” doesn’t hold, which is to say small villages in Senegal probably struggle just as much as those in Niger. But, the urban centers of Senegal are leagues ahead of what Niger has to offer.
I’ll give you more toilet anecdotes and homestay insights later. I'm trying to make more frequent, shorter blog posts, which is possible now that I have regular access to Internet...
[1] (and she never said so)
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