Today I started my new internship placement. My prior placement fell through, so I started today at SWAA (Society for Women against AIDS in Africa). They are an organization that does educational activities for people in the West Senegal area, including presentations on sanitation, HIV/AIDS testing, and Sexual Violence prevention. Im helping translate materials including websites and brochures from French to English.
To get to the internship I take a car rapide over the bridge and then walk through a smaller pretty neighborhood of Dakar. The people at the site are really nice and helpful. I spent about half an hour in one of my manager's office learning about the projects that the organization is involved in. Im helping set up data into graphs for one of their recent reports on the gender population breakdown of people living with HIV/AIDS. Its pretty cool for now, and im hoping to try designing or creating posters for future campains that SWAA supports. Although I do not have a deep interest in public health and HIV/AIDS research, I am able to find something about the organization that I can get excited about. Plus, there is always tons of things to learn from every experience that might not be obvious from the beginning of the experience. The workspace has a large table with laptops and a balcony/porch area. The supervisor's offices are upstairs, all equiped with fans as the building has no air-conditioning. Sometimes we lose power at the site, so there are a ton of batteries that the computers run off of.
Today was full of funny situations that made me laugh and everyone else laugh too. I was up in my supervisor's office, and he wanted me to take a look at a document that I was supposed to translate. He told me in French to go downstairs and look in the yellow folder for the document. So I went down to the lab and started hunting around for the yellow folder. I couldn't seem to find it even though I was looking in desk drawers and file cabinets. No yellow folders. So I trudged upstairs to tell my supervisor guy that I couldn't find the folder. He smiled and sent one of his helper people to assist in my search for the missing folder. The guy walked into the room, flipped open the laptop that was sitting on the table, and pointed to the yellow folder that had the same title as the one that the supervisor had specified. At that moment all I could was laugh, at myself and at the situation. Its just like in Zoolander when Hansel gets confused and says to himself, "Oh, the files . . . They're IN the computer". Yep, go me.
Wednesday, July 2
Monday, June 30
Sunday Lunch
As you can see from the photos, a group of us went to our Program Conversation Partner's house on Sunday for a lunch with her family. She wants to be a teacher when she finishes school, so she practices on us a lot. :-) She had us write down a list of items that we would need to make the meal, the amount that we would need, and how much it would cost. Then we went into the market to buy all the items for the meal that would feed 15 people. We bought vegetables, rice, onions, garlic, spices, and oil, as well as chicken. These chickens were not like the kind that you buy in the store at home though. Nope, at the market you buy the chickens when they are still running around in the pen. When you pick out the one that you like, you pay for it and come back about 20 minutes later to find a bag waiting for you to take home and prepare. We did not want to stay and watch the chicken get killed, although I know that these things must happen.
When we got back to the house, we began to prepare the meal. Everything is done in dishes or large pans on the floor. I was in charge of cleaning the meat because we had some vegetarians in my group who did not want to even touch the meat. I was fine with that. I helped the lady break open the ribs and pull out the organs and pieces that would not be eaten. I then helped clean the skin and stuff the meat with more wonderful spices for cooking. Everyone was helping except for the kids, who played near us and were so adorable.
The meal was wonderful, probably one of the best that I have ever eaten in my whole life. We scooped the rice into four large plates, then placed the grilled chicken in the middle. The Yassa sauce, made from onions, garlic, vinegar, and spices is spread around the meat. We added stewed tomatoes and a few hard boiled eggs to the presentation as well, which made for an excellent meal. I love eating with me hands, and Im getting pretty good at it too. For dessert we ate fresh sliced mangoes and drank Ataya, a sweet minty dessert tea.
After we helped clean up from the meal, we went into the market to buy fabric, which is something that I have been wanting to do now for a few days. I found two wonderful prints that i liked in a shop that had racks of fabric from the floor all the way to the ceiling. It was one of those moments where I walked into the shop and spotted th patterns right away because they caught my eye. Adema's friend is a tailor, so we went to visit him too. He took my measurements and helped me design a dress from each of the fabrics, which will be ready to wear next weekend. We are all invited to his house to have lunch and hang out. I absolutely love it here!
Sunday Lunch at Adema's House
Ok, so I will just label these photos from here. These were taken Sunday when we went to visit our friend Adema's house. She is the one in the picture above with the beige colored dress. She lives in Dakar with her family, and we made Yassa Poulet (chicken and onion sauce served over rice) for fifteen people. The photos show the courtyard where we made the meal, and pictures of Adema's family as well. It was seriously one of the best meals that I have had in my entire life!Sunday, June 29
My Birthday! J'ai 21 ans!
In the past, I have been asked on my birthday "Do you feel any older today?", and the answer is always an obvious "no" because it is just another day. Somehow, when i woke up on Friday, June 27, I DID feel older. I was half expecting my apartment-mates to be waiting outside my room to kidnap me and do something incredibly stupid/funny to me, but that was saved for later that night. We bought fresh eggs the day before, and i made eggs and toast for myself, which was so tasty after having bread and jam every morning for a week straight. I know, it's very American, but it was my birthday! Before Wolof class, everyone gathered together and sang "Joyeux Anniversaire" to me (event the teacher), and then again before our history/culture class as well. There is neither a "happy birthday" equivalent saying or song in Wolof, which I thought was interesting.
After class, i came back to the apartment to get ready for the evening. All of our Senegalese conversation partners came over to hang out, eat snacks, and talk. I had my hair braided by Timi, a girl in our group, and by Adema, one of our Senegalese friends. It looked awesome. The big deal for the night was that the events were supposed to be a surprise for me, so I knew nothing at all about what was going to happen. Everyone dressed up in nice clothes, and we headed over to the main house around 7:00 where a chocolate/vanilla cake with coconut frosting was waiting for me. Written across the top was "Joyeux Anniveraire Adriane" in chocolate icing. The candles were lit and everyone sang to me once again in English and in French. It was wonderful. Afterwards, I opened up a bottle of Moroccan wine that I had purchased by myself that afternoon. Yay, my first legal drink! I have no idea what the drinking age is here in Senegal, but all of you who are reading this at home owe me a drink when I get back to the states! After much celebrating and toasting and eating, one of our Senegalese contacts arrived at the house around 11:30 to tell me that we were all going out to a popular nightclub in Dakar. I was really excited because I absolutely love dancing! So, we all packed ourselves into taxis and drove out to what looked like the middle of the desert. It reminded me strangely of Las Vegas because the night club was covered in crazy blinking lights and loud music was coming from inside. After entering, we discovered that although the music was loud and the bar was lit, there were no people out on the dance floor or in the booths. I laughed to myself and made a joke that they rented out the whole nightclub for our group of Toubabs! The actual dance room was two story, with a dance floor and booths below and more private booths above. The DJ was at the back of the club, while a stage was positioned at the front. Two hours later we were still dancing and enjoying ourselves to a mix of techno, 90's pop, and Senegalese Mbalax music. (go check it out on youtube.com: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwGFPgQIQ9E&feature=user)
Around 2:00 in the morning, there was an intermission which included a kind of variety show.
We enjoyed a comedy show, featured "karaoke stars", and hip-hop dance groups. My favorite was the group who did a medley of Michael Jackson songs . . . thee good ones. And could they dance! The guys were needless to say dressed for the part, and were synchronized and totally together on their moves. Moonwalks, floor convulsions, pop-and-lock, and of course pelvic thrusts a-la MJ himself. They performed snip-its of "Smooth Criminal", "Billy Jean", "Dangerous", and "Bad". It was awesome!
We caught a taxi at around 3:30 in the morning, and made it back to the campus about twenty minutes later. By then everyone was very tired and very silly, so probably were not very quite. As I walked to my apartment, everyone surrounded me and gave me the biggest group hug that I have had in a long time. I felt very loved.
After class, i came back to the apartment to get ready for the evening. All of our Senegalese conversation partners came over to hang out, eat snacks, and talk. I had my hair braided by Timi, a girl in our group, and by Adema, one of our Senegalese friends. It looked awesome. The big deal for the night was that the events were supposed to be a surprise for me, so I knew nothing at all about what was going to happen. Everyone dressed up in nice clothes, and we headed over to the main house around 7:00 where a chocolate/vanilla cake with coconut frosting was waiting for me. Written across the top was "Joyeux Anniveraire Adriane" in chocolate icing. The candles were lit and everyone sang to me once again in English and in French. It was wonderful. Afterwards, I opened up a bottle of Moroccan wine that I had purchased by myself that afternoon. Yay, my first legal drink! I have no idea what the drinking age is here in Senegal, but all of you who are reading this at home owe me a drink when I get back to the states! After much celebrating and toasting and eating, one of our Senegalese contacts arrived at the house around 11:30 to tell me that we were all going out to a popular nightclub in Dakar. I was really excited because I absolutely love dancing! So, we all packed ourselves into taxis and drove out to what looked like the middle of the desert. It reminded me strangely of Las Vegas because the night club was covered in crazy blinking lights and loud music was coming from inside. After entering, we discovered that although the music was loud and the bar was lit, there were no people out on the dance floor or in the booths. I laughed to myself and made a joke that they rented out the whole nightclub for our group of Toubabs! The actual dance room was two story, with a dance floor and booths below and more private booths above. The DJ was at the back of the club, while a stage was positioned at the front. Two hours later we were still dancing and enjoying ourselves to a mix of techno, 90's pop, and Senegalese Mbalax music. (go check it out on youtube.com: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwGFPgQIQ9E&feature=user)
Around 2:00 in the morning, there was an intermission which included a kind of variety show.
We enjoyed a comedy show, featured "karaoke stars", and hip-hop dance groups. My favorite was the group who did a medley of Michael Jackson songs . . . thee good ones. And could they dance! The guys were needless to say dressed for the part, and were synchronized and totally together on their moves. Moonwalks, floor convulsions, pop-and-lock, and of course pelvic thrusts a-la MJ himself. They performed snip-its of "Smooth Criminal", "Billy Jean", "Dangerous", and "Bad". It was awesome!
We caught a taxi at around 3:30 in the morning, and made it back to the campus about twenty minutes later. By then everyone was very tired and very silly, so probably were not very quite. As I walked to my apartment, everyone surrounded me and gave me the biggest group hug that I have had in a long time. I felt very loved.
How BIG is Africa?
When I saw this poster, it literally blew me away by the size of the continent on which I am living at the moment. And all those countries that are layed over the outline do not even acocunt for the actual entire mass. I hope that this puts the countinent into more of a perspective for people to follow. It is frusterating to hear people refering to Africa as one giant country when, in fact, it is made up of 56 countries that are very different and unique in their own ways. Also, the lines that determine countries were arbitrarily assinged at the Berlin Conference in the late 1800's when Western Europeans divided up Africa into "bite-sized chunks" that made sense to them, but did not make any sense at all regarding the actual establishment of the regional Kingdoms. Anyway, enjoy the map and all the information that it has to offer.
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