How I'm getting around Provo this summer.

It's going to be a great summer. :)

Sénégal: I should be extremely happy in your presence.

He who watches over all of Senegal. No, not God--Cheikh Amidou Bamba:

So with the summer officially started, Senegal officially over, I wanted to share some final thoughts about what I learned (in no particular order) this Spring from my little African adventure:

Peanuts. So good. My favorite is the sugar-coated ones. In Senegal, peanuts pretty much = life . It is their number 1 production, and they are the 3rd largest producers of peanuts in the world (#1-USA, #2-India). Ask anyone. Oh, also there is a very large amount of gratitude in my heart for the fact that my livelihood does not depend on peanuts.

Education. Sadly, not something that is very important in Senegal, especially for little girls. The biggest problem facing women in Senegal, and dare I say in Africa in general, is the lack of education available. Only 15% of the girls that actually start school will continue after elementary school. We were able to visit several primary schools, high schools, and universities, and were happy to see all these little girls there :)

I'm so grateful for the opportunities that we have to learn here in America, and it's definitely something that we take for granted. The literacy rate among men in Senegal is 50%, women 30%. That means that 70% of women in Senegal cannot read or write. Can you even imagine? Next time you read a book, or a street sign, or anything, think about that.

Poverty. Obviously, this is a big problem in Senegal. The saddest thing is seeing all the little boys, the "talibés," who have to go out and beg every day. These little boys wander around the streets of the city, dressed in little more than rags, carrying around little buckets to collect donations throughout the day. It's heartbreaking. And that's not to mention the adults who are forced to beg because of their disabilities or other random social obligations (for example, women who have twins have to beg afterward, because it's seen as some kind of bad omen to have twins).

 One thing that was often on my mind was how much I have been blessed with, none of which I really deserve. I am so grateful for my parents and their hard work, the opportunity I have to work and make money and be able to afford all that I can. I am also unbelievably grateful for a religion whose goal is to rid the world of poverty. Pay your fast offerings people!
Cleanliness. I'd say that Senegal is about 50% cleaner than Kenya, but still (see all the garbage in the background?). I'm also grateful for showers with hot AND cold water (how awful are we, that there were literally several days where we complained about not being able to have cold showers... ugly americans), clean cars and houses, and just the option of being away from dirt (I know, I know, Samba Diallo would be disappointed in my aversion to dirt and being close to the ground. Sorry, Samba).

Isn't nature beautiful? Even with us living around it, it's still unbelievable. One sensation that always makes me laugh at myself is when I get home and see the mountains and beautiful sunsets in Utah and I think, Wow, nature is still pretty, even when you're not in some foreign country. Those are the works of the Lord, folks. Appreciate it.
The importance of family. Like I didn't already know. But one thing I noticed was how much the people in Senegal value their families; it's something so important to them. Like this picture shows, I think we're never as happy as when we're with our family.

Another cool thing that maybe you didn't know about Senegal is that everyone has to memorize their genealogy. They have their family lines memorized up to several generations. Incredible! That will sure come in handy during the millennium :)

Life is simple and you really don't need much to be happy. Hard work, family, basic needs. Why do we have to complicate things?

Faith. Granted, you don't have to pray in the streets to show your faith, but one thing I love about Senegalese people is how much they trust in God.

"Teranga," which means hospitality. We saw so many examples of this wonderful way of welcoming people: Aminata Sow Fall and her generosity in inviting us into her home; the students in the school at the village who stood to greet us when we walked in with, "Bonjour Madame. Soyez la bienvenue"; students from the university who came with us to the markets and showed us all around, etc. Despite being sometimes a little aggressive and shouting "toubab" at us all the time, the people were so great and welcoming. There is definitely a lot of warmth in Senegal, and it doesn't all come from the sun.

Senegal, you were great. I'll see you again someday... Insha'Alla.

C'est la fin!

Alright, so the last few days in Senegal have been... fairly uneventful. We are all pretty tired, I'd say, and ready to come home! :) Here are some of the highlights from our last few days:

Spencer and I, being very bored at the Tunisian Ambassador's house. Not that it wasn't interesting, it just... wasn't. But, there was good fruit salad :)

Here he is, with Madame Thompson. Obviously I was trying to take these pictures sneakily, and it worked. I don't remember his name, but apparently he is running in the upcoming presidential elections for Tunisia. I said that I'd tell all my Tunisian friends to vote for him...

After that, we set off for a scary walk in the dark to this really fancy Lebanese restaurant that Prof. Lee suggested. I don't know if you've ever eaten Lebanese food, but it's good. And they serve a lot of it. It was like humus and vegetables and salads and samosas and lots of strange other things with strong flavors. So... it was good, but it took forever because they bring out like one dish at a time, and we were all stuffed when they hadn't even gotten halfway through. But, we did secretly take some of the leftovers home in plastic bag. :) We didn't leave until about 11:30, but it was fun.

The rest of our time, we've spent having the last few classes, which we haven't really been paying attention to because we're all so tired; making last minute purchases; and eating lots of ice cream. I spent a lot of time at this little village, buying lots of cute earrings.

And then this morning, we all went to this market to look around and take pictures. The fruits and vegetables were cool but the meat was gross.

Especially this. Yes, those are hammerhead sharks there. Hungry?

We came back to the hotel and took our FINAL. Nice way to spend our last day, huh? Madame said it would take an hour; it took two. What a surprise. But at least it's over! After that, we went over to eat lunch at Aminata's house. She requested that we all wear our boubous, and we were happy to have another occasion to wear them.

We all ate together out of these giant dishes. It was good.

Came home and had a little meeting all together... some nice last reflections and thoughts. And then, of course, one last trip to Kayser to eat our last ice cream. It will be missed.

Tomorrow morning, we fly home! Phew. I can't believe it's already over, but I guess that's how time goes. Fast! So I'll try to recap what I've learned here in Senegal... in my next post. See you in Amercia!

Hot hot hot.

Wow! Yes, it has been a very very long week since I have not updated the blog. Blame it on Africa. We have literally been all over the country this week, seeing lots of cool things and sweating our brains out. Here's a little of what's been going on:

First of all, our trip to literally the other side of the country that took us 12 hours. We left Saint Louis at 5:30 in the morning and got to our other hotel at about 6:30, with only a few stops in between. Here's a picture of the bus that was our new best friend by the end of the trip for one magical reason: la CLIME (air conditioning)

So. Bored. What did we do during our life-shortening bus ride? Let's think... we ate a lot of pringles; talked to our neighbors about our love lives and what our goals for the future are (someone had this talk about finding your sweetheart or something that we passed around and every single person on the bus read it); we read (I read a book called Sous l'Orage (under the storm) about this girl whose parents are arranging a marriage for her, as the third wife; and tried to catch up on journal writing.

We finally made it to our destination, some national park (I'd take the time to look up the name, but you wouldn't really care anyways) where we spent the night in this wonderful case. We got (hobbled) off the bus and noticed right away how well the clime had been working. HOT. Yeah. So, we had like a little orientation that night with our tour guide, and luckily they turn la clime on at night so we were able to not suffocate from heat during the night, and all was well. I forgot to take a picture of the inside of the case, so I'll try to describe it. there's like a t-shaped wall on one side of the room, one side with the toilet, and one side with the shower, and then the head of the beds at touching that wall. Does that make sense? Let's see if I can draw it out using the keyboard (where are you when I need you, Gav?)

the toilet | the shower

---------------------------

Bed 1 Bed 2

It's a pretty great setup....

In the morning, we were greeted by lots of hungry monkies. We were warned to "surtout ne pas crier!" Don't scream... But when we got to our door, the air pressure made the sheet behind the door jump out so of course I screamed first thing. Chelsey, Sarah (in the picture below, trying not to scream), and I are the screamers of the group. We luckily weren't attacked by any monkies.

So we split up into two groups, one group in the cat-cat (this off roading truck here) and the other group in the pirogue (boat). We opted for the morning cat-cat ride.

It was a nice little mini-safari where we saw monkies, warthots, tons of different kinds of antelopes, beautiful blue birds, other not so beautiful birds, and we even got to get out and walk around and see a whole group of hippos hanging out in the water.

Next up, the pirogue. We saw a few more hippos and some crocodiles too.

All the boys decided that they were going to the stache for our little sejour dans la brousse, so here's Andrew with his creepy pedi-stache, as we call it. Luckily he already has a wife!

The hippos! I can't find my good picture, but if you squint really hard you can make them out

Beloved bus and prof.

After that, we set off for another 3 hour long ride (where Chelsey and I tried not to be car sick for the first hour on a really horrible road), where we passed tons of really beautiful country side and lots of very picturesque african villages such as this:

Pringles are the snack food of choice on this trip. Until after the trip, when we all got really sick of them after eating so many.

My favorite picture ever.

So we FINALLY made it to the east side-- KEDOUGOU. And let me just say, HOT. Like you couldn't believe. And that wasn't the worst of it (okay, it really was, but there was more). We got there and Madame Thompson got out to check us in, and it became clear very quickly that this was not what she had in mind. They were in the middle of a coupure (power outage), meaning no lights, no clime. There was pretty much no organisation at all there (okay, really, we can't blame them for not doing anything and being kind of lazy, because if I lived there I would never get up because I would have melted). It took about an hour to find rooms for everyone. This is the case that Chelsey and I chose, obviously before finding out what it had been christened.

Luckily, the power came back on. So we did have la clime. Now, I use the term "clime" VERY lightly when talking about Kedougou, because normally it connotates cold air, but in this case, it's a very faint strain of warm-ish air, but at least it causes some air flow at all. And apparently, Case au playboy has more perks than the others because we had an extra fan in the room that we had going all night.

The second night, however, there was another coupure, meaning no clime. I went to bed at like 9:30, wearing as little as possible, and just laid there with my mouth open and sweating to death and thinking how I would never be cold again and that I'd never been so hot in my whole life. Chelsey and I didn't fall asleep until probably around 1, and luckily the clime came back on around midnight so that we were able to not drown in pools of our own sweat... but just barely.

The surprises just kept on coming in the morning when Madame Thomson's shower didn't work, and she found out that the truck we'd reserved had been given to someone else. No worries though, we found alternate transportation: le car rapide d'enfer = the fast bus from hell (as it would be later known as). We piled in, drove a little ways to the bus depot place, where our driver got out for a minute. While we were waiting there, unsuspectingly, this other guy gets in the driver seat and tried to drive us away. Luckily, our real driver got to him before he was able to kidnap us.

Classy. So during our three hour drive over rough, dirty, dusty african roads we sang every 90's song we could possibly think of, and tried not to inhale too much dust. We were filthy by the end.

We got to the village that we were going to visit, when we found literally the cutest little girl in Africa, Eliane. We would show her the pictures of herself, and she would make the cutest faces ever.

We went to this other village, where we used the toilets:

I got to see how the crush grains and rice up for their food. They are unbelievably fast at it, with four women at a time, and it's almost unimaginable to think about how different their lives are from ours.

Can you see how dirty we were at the end?

The next day found us at another village, with this beautiful view

And then a half hour hike to a very beautiful waterfall, which was totally worth the hike

We left Kedougou (early), and drove four hours to a midway point, Tambacounta, where we all got in our rooms, changed, and jumped into the pool

Sunday, we left that hotel and drove five more hours to la petite cote. Here's me and Stephanie, my bus buddy. I think we've spent more than 20 hours in the bus together by this point.

On Monday we went to this museum about the first president of Senegal, Senghor (here's the statue of him)

And then went over to this little island thing that is made completely of seashells, it's crazy.

La petite Cote, was beautiful. We stayed at this super nice hotel, right on the beach.

We got breakfast and dinner every day, including an amazing dessert bar.

Chelsey and I worked our butts off getting our projects finished by Tuesday morning, so we spent ALL of Tuesday afternoon here: (yes, those are pool chairs that we put in the kiddy part of the pool while we caught up on our journals)

Last night they had this little dance party at the hotel where we partied it up with some old French women, and then they had this little African spectacle thing where this guy ate fire... scary.

Today, we are back at the Hotel Nina in Dakar. And we are happy to have la clime again :) Stay tuned for our last couple of days...