The End of Homestay, Beginning of ISP

Hello, friends! Much has happened since my last update so I’d better get a-writin’!

Saturday, April 4th (this seems SO long ago!): Saturday was a great last day in Saint Louis: I did some walking around and a lot of lounging in friends’ rooms or outside on the deck and getting some work done and being lazy in general, very relaxing. I feel like there haven’t been enough lazy days here, the cities are just so busy; I’m hoping maybe living at a monastery for two weeks will calm my senses a little bit, but I guess we’ll see.

Sunday, April 5th: I sat on the deck over the water for my last morning in Saint Louis, dreading the return to Dakar and honking taxis, sidewalks covered in sand and trash, aggressive men, and classes. It was a good bus ride home—I’m starting to really love bus rides, where I can look out the window and see the ever-changing African landscapes and watch the action in passing markets, I can wave to the kids who flock the streets to see the bus full of toubabs, I can easily ignore the women who come knocking on our windows anytime we’re stuck in traffic, trying to sell us their fruits or beignets or crafts—it’s very relaxing to me to be able to experience all this without actually having to be a part of it. Bus rides have become my time and place for introspection.
We stopped on the way home at a baobab cemetery, in Bouna’s hometown to say hello to his family (he looks so much like his mom, by the way), and for lunch again in Thies, where, while we were inside eating lunch, apparently the bus got a flat tire. And we all thought this would be the one trip without one.
I got back and did some computer stuff for my Women’s Leadership Academy before going back to my homestay. I took a cab home with Bethany and, on the way home, realized I only had 5 days left in my home! I had mixed feelings about this, as anyone probably would making such a change in living situation in a foreign country, but most of all I was VERY excited that I’d be able to be on my own, come and go from my room as I pleased, decide for myself whether or not I wanted to eat out or at the house, whether or NOT I wanted to shower (haha), but most of all to not have to rely on others to do the simplest of tasks for me: heat water, put butter on a baguette, etc. Living in a Senegalese family is basically like jumping back 18 years of my life and becoming a small child again, as is going to a foreign country in general—a very humbling experience.
Anyway it seems I’ve gone off on a tangent. I greeted my family, which was surprisingly a little more “involved” than I expected—they showed some sort of emotion at seeing me! Granted, I’m not sure WHICH emotion it was (I’m guessing surprise at seeing me because they forgot the date I was coming home) but it was good to see SOMETHING, at least.

Monday, April 6th: I walked to school with Kenna, Bethany and Whitney, it was nice to have someone to walk with! Monday was the day for signing up for my fall classes at AU, it seems so weird that that’s happening already. I thought I was all set and prepared for signing up until I arrived at school and realized I had forgotten two of my favorite organizational acts having to do with classes: I forgot to see if the classes I wanted were even being offered that semester, and also to see if the classes I wanted fit together in any kind of feasible schedule (or if they were all at the same hour of the day). So it was a very stressful morning trying to do that in half an hour…but I eventually got it figured out and am now signed up for classes, I just missed an interesting lecture on the conflict in the Casamance (southern Senegal) because my mind was elsewhere.
After school I went with Abby to see the house I would move into on Saturday. It was beautiful!!! It’s a boarding house so there are three floors: the first for the family and the kitchen, the second with, I think, 7 or 8 individual rooms, and then the roof for 3 rooms and 10 goats and a laundry area. There is hot water in the bathroom on the roof, there are real toilets that flush, there is wireless internet, the woman who owns it is about 80 years old and one of the sweetest ladies I’ve ever met—it’s kind of like a little patch of heaven hidden in the depths of Dakar. I was excited to see the place and to talk a bit with Baye (the woman who owns the place), and on our way out we saw Amy, the Senegalese woman who organizes homestays for SIT, who apparently is a neighbor of this house and related to the people who own it. We got a little tour of her house and met her family, and then returned to SIT. I went with Bethany to a bookstore on the way home, another little patch of America hidden in Dakar, where I bought a sketchbook (I really should have brought my own from home, but at least I now have one and hopefully will start sketching a little bit during ISP). I feel like I have been journaling a lot and taking a lot of pictures but haven’t been doing a lot of art like I anticipated…and I’m not sure how I feel about that, I think mostly positively because that means I’m spending more time enjoying the moment rather than sketching a moment in which I could be participating.

Tuesday, April 7th: Honestly I don’t remember. Bad journal-keeping skills, Emily, BAD! This might have been the day that, after school, I went with Kenna and Bethany to the beach at the Mosqué de la Divinité, where a bunch of pirogues are kept and the fishers come and drop their fish off during the day. We sat and watched a bunch of men play soccer for a while, and then I hobbled home (I’m not sure if I mentioned my infected foot injury before…).

Wednesday, April 8th: No classes!!! I went with Kenna and Bethany to Marché HLM, the fabric market! We decided to walk there, and I had only been there once and it was in a taxi (they had never been there) so it was kind of a miracle but we made it easily. We walked around there for a while, I bought more than I meant to but am very happy with my purchases, and after lunch we took our fabric to a tailor (I’ve started spelling this “taylor” because in Wolof we spell it “tayër”) with little drawings we had done to get clothes made. We pick them up on Monday, I’m excited to see how they come out!
That night at around 11:30 Moussa decided he wanted to continue on my dreads, so I was up until around 2:30 doing that.

Thursday, April 9th: On Friday I pretty much finished preparations for my ISP!!! I talked to a griot, Fa Cissokho, who will give me Kora lessons starting Monday, and heard back from the last of the monks I was waiting to hear from at Keur Moussa! Yay! I still don’t have all the details worked out but it was great to know everyone knows my plans and is alright with them. I also got my dreads finished that night; it was certainly the most intense of the dreading periods and the least enjoyable, which is too bad since it was the last. Moussa had invited his cousin from Mbour (about 2 hours away) to come and help him finish my hair, but Moussa was in a really bad mood…and it just was not an enjoyable dreading session, to say the least. My hair got done, but I wasn’t happy to be leaving the family in 2 days if it was on such a bad note; I don’t like goodbyes in general but knowing that there are no emotions, or worse negative emotions, involved in the goodbye is a little unsettling to me.

Friday, April 10th: We had the afternoon free after our LAST MORNING OF CLASSES!!!! Kenna, Bethany and I planned on going to a market, but ended up just walking around for a very long time trying to find a bookstore downtown. It was a nice walk but was a little frustrating in that we never found the bookstore…oh but I bought running shoes so I was ecstatic.
I went back to school afterwards to make some CDs of my music that I’d been planning on making for Moussa for quite a while, but I figured maybe they could help to solve the dilemma we had the night before, and maybe he’d “forgive” me…so I made him 10 CDs and gave them to him with a note saying how much I appreciated spending time with him and how valuable that time spent together was to me…but nothing changed, and I ended up leaving on a bad note. I guess I can’t be too upset about it because of my limited emotional connections to this family, but at the same time, I spent the last 2 months of my life trying my darndest to get close to this family and to connect with them—it was just tough to see all that go down the drain and know that my efforts weren’t reciprocated, possibly not even appreciated. C’est la vie quoi.

Saturday, April 11th: I moved out of my homestay!!!! I said my goodbyes and breathed my last breath there with a smile on my face as I closed the door. It was so refreshing to know I wouldn’t have to come back there every night; it really wasn’t as hard of a situation as it probably sounds, but just knowing this experience of “the homestay,” this large section of the SIT program was over—just kind of a moment of realization, I guess. I’m more than 2/3 of the way done with my time in Senegal!
I spent some time at school getting my life together before taking a taxi with Courtney, the other student who’s renting a room in the same boarding house as me, and we headed off to our new home.
I did my laundry on the roof in the beautiful sunshine and met Becky, an SIT student from Spring 2007 who’s back in Senegal now after 5 months of studying in India and is renting one of the rooms on the roof.
Later I picked up a kora from SIT, the true beginning of my ISP! And that evening, after playing a bit and remembering the 3 songs I had learned, I went with Erin to the lighthouse in Mamelles (near Ouakam, where I lived as of that morning). It was beautiful and relaxing and just so nice to spend a little time talking with a friend. I love really being a part of the Senegalese culture and am getting such a rich experience by doing so, but once in a while it’s just SO nice to take a little time to get out of it, reflect on it, talk about it with someone who’s having a similar experience, and then come back in.

Sunday, April 12th: Happy Easter!!! Joyeux Pacques! This morning I decided to go to a church service with some other students to see how the Senegalese celebrate Easter. We were going to a church Alex had been to before, but somehow got very lost in a neighborhood called Yoff. Personally I prefer exploring a new neighborhood to going to church, so it was fine with me! We (me, Alex, Ali and Erin) wandered for over an hour and were directed to many other churches before finally finding the church we were looking for. The service lasted from 10AM until 2PM, it involved a lot of singing, a very long sermon in French and Wolof, more singing, us new people having to introduce ourselves and then everyone singing a song to us while waving their arms towards us…it was very interesting! Afterwards I stayed with Erin, who was there to ask about sewing classes for her ISP on traditional Senegalese clothing. That went really well for her and we returned to SIT both feeling very excited about our ISP planning working out! We made lunch and then I went with other students to their new house about a 5 minute walk from SIT—there are 6 students renting this really cute house with an outdoor living area where we had a little Easter party with French Toast, eggs, carrot cake, jelly beans…it was cute ☺ Their house was nice but I really can’t imagine living with a group of Americans when I’m here in Senegal for this short of a time; it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience and I feel like living with Americans would just make it SO different and would take away from that experience. I can live with a group of Americans in America, but could I live in a Senegalese Benedictine monastery and take kora lessons with these people who make the most complicated/expensive kora in the whole country? Um, I think not.
Anyway now it is Sunday night and Courtney and I are planning on going to see Edouard Manga, my old kora teacher, play with his band around midnight. I’ll be very very tired tomorrow for my French and Wolof oral exams (eek!) but I really feel like I should see a kora performance while I’m here.

So, until next time, thanks for reading! If you have any comments about my writing, by the way (e.g., I want to hear more reflection and less of a list of everything you’re doing; I want to hear more about _______; You should be careful about writing about ________; etc.) let me know, I’d be glad to hear how you feel about this blog. I’ve never kept a blog before so I’m not really sure how it’s supposed to work…but I hope you’re enjoying!

Ba Beneen Yoon, Inchalla!