Nogaye and I at her home in Pikine, cooking mutton grié
more photos from Korité on facebook: Pictures from Pikine
So Pikine was far and away more fun than my homestay. If you look at the facebook album you can see how chaotic Nogaye's home was and how friendly and silly her family was. Everyone was just very interested in engaging in conversation with me and patient with our language barriers. Her whole family only spoke wolof so there was a lot of pointing and laughing involved, but somehow I still made friends. One of Nogaye's friends named Osmene spoke french and we got to talk about Senegalese politics and the poverty of Pikine for awhile. My french vocabulary is improving quickly even if my grammar is still questionable. I was fed constantly over the weekend, so I learned lots of wolof vocabulary about food, eating, drinking. I "slept" on one mattress with three other girls and no fan and was woken each morning at 5am by chanting at the mosque across the street, but it was still wonderful. If you ask I might send you a picture of myself dressed up for Korité, but these photos are not for the public. I let Nogaye take complete control of my hair, makeup etc. and it's very dramatic.
The second night I went to Dakar to show my host mom's sister my Senegalese clothes and while Nogaye and I were there we picked up my friends Bailee and Raghav to come back to Pikine with us. We all just stayed up absurdly late talking and drinking ataya on the street. (a very strong, very caffeinated tea). We woke up to the loudest thunderstorm I have ever heard on Saturday morning. It probably rained for about 4 hours but the entire outdoor courtyard and all of the roads were flooded immediately. Men were up to their mid thigh walking up and down the street. Everyone came out of their houses to watch or start using sandbags. We thought we would be stuck there for days but the water receded a little bit and we waded to dry land to take a taxi back to Dakar later in the day.
Upon return I played card and colored with crayons and Bailee's house. Overall a wonderful weekend.
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