The New Boy Dakar

Hello everybody. I suppose I should do another blog post for your entertainment.  So what's happened since the last one? Ok... I finished training and moved out of my training site.  Then we spent a few days at the training center to have an end of training party and take our language and technical tests.  The party was great and I was able to bring my training mother and her granddaughter (the chubby baby in my Facebook picture).  After finishing all of that we then went to Dakar for our swearing-in ceremony.

The ceremony took place at the US Ambassador of Senegal's house.  It was lead by my Wolof teacher, with speeches from our PC Country Director, the US Ambassador, and others.  It was a nice ceremony and my group can now call ourselves volunteers instead of trainees which is nice.  Following the ceremony was an appetizer frenzy where we all shoved as many deviled eggs and mini pizzas in our faces as possible like we haven't eaten in weeks.  We all wore our traditional Senegalese clothes making for some very colorful photos of our training groups and sectors.

The day of the ceremony we went back to the Training Center to have a party to celebrate ourselves as new volunteers.  Over the next few days more and more people began installing to their permanent sites for the next two years.  It was definitely bittersweet, as these friends we've made over the two months of training are now scattered in all corners of Senegal.  Although in a couple months we will have an all volunteers conference and softball tournament where I'll get to see everybody again.

So other than that... I've spent the last week in Dakar trying to get to know the place.  I've ridden busses all over the place learning when to get off for my gardens and which busses go where.  My family here is awesome, and I'm really fortunate to be the 5th volunteer that has stayed with them.  They are very understanding of Western culture, letting me do my own thing if I want to.. or hanging out with me drinking tea and teaching me new Wolof phrases.  The language is definitely a bit different and more hip in the cities so I'm picking up some good sayings.  I've got a nice room separate from the main house, in which the person before me left some furniture and a bed so I really didn't need to pick anything up once I moved here.  I've really enjoyed my stay in Dakar so far, and everyday I find something new and exciting to try.  I've actually just started riding my bike around, which seems dangerous at first but really isn't too bad when you're going just as fast (slow) as all of the traffic around you.  Dakar definitely presents it's own challenges when it comes to working here.. but I'm really looking forward to knowing this city well.  I've started some work on my gardens already, and look forward to what the next two years will bring.