Nearly Half Way

I've been back in Dakar for nearly two weeks now, and time has flown by. I leave to go to south eastern Senegal on Friday for another nine days. I'm unbelievably excited. I have mostly been dancing and adjusting to my new family members. My mom is finally back from Mecca, and I also have a new older brother. He has lived in Montreal and Richmond, Virginia for the past ten years and is in the process of moving back to Senegal. He has a half french canadian one year old named Halim who is so shy and adorable. My family all eats together now which is a really wonderful change. The food has also improved drastically since my mom came home, and I eat fruits and vegetables sometimes now. Nothing better than mango for dessert.

At school I've been having language classes in the morning and dance or music in the afternoon. Last week was dance and djembe, but this week I got to choose and I danced everyday. It is unbelievable how sweaty we all are dancing her. (see picture below for results). Djembe was really fun and my hands always felt bruised afterwards, but I fell in love with dance here. It's just this one family that comes every day- my teacher and her niece dance while her two brothers play drums. They are all so talented and intimidating. There was little to no spoken instruction as well as little to no rest for two hours. Dance here is athletic and fast. She even made us sing while we danced for one of the songs we learned. That was interesting. I'm really sad that it's over but I am so excited to go to Kedougou.

We're staying in villages again, but this time in groups of two per village. We will each be with a different ethnic minority in Senegal. I am staying in a village called Samacoutá, about 10k from the nearest town. All I know so far is that it is on the Gambian river and all of the laundry, bathing, dishes, fishing takes place there. This is the part where my trip will live up to everyone's African stereotypes. Yes, I will be staying in a mud hut, and yes, there are people with actual spears through their noses at this village. More importantly, for the rest of the week we will be hiking around the national park in Senegal where there are lions, giraffes, crocodiles, monkeys, leopards, hippos and gazelles.