My Internship Experience

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.

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!