Yoff

Hey all, (from email sent June 6th)

I'll be updating a blog site a couple times a week, I hope, so I can keep
you all informed of my daily mishaps, like locking myself in the toilet Monday
afternoon by shutting the lock too far in the door after being warned
about the sticky lock. Yes, it was hot in there and there was a moment of
panic!! Oh, adventures I've seen!

Of course, blog style works such that each post that I make appears at the
top of the screen. If you want to see earlier posts, you scroll down the
page and start at the bottom. Since I'm not sure how often I'll be able to
write, it may be worth your while to check it only on a weekly basis or so.

You can access my blogspot at:

melissatoubab.blogspot.com

All goes well here; feeling a little lost with all the Wolof around me,
which is completely different from French. But many people are patiently
teaching me greetings and expressions, so there is hope for this toubab
(caucasian) yet!

My host family is great; I have about 10 brothers and sisters. My
bros are: Max, Ouzan, Hibou, Libas, Coday, and a cousin Abou. Hibou
lives with his wife, Fallmar, at the house too. My sis's are:
Maimona, Aisha, Mantou, and one who lives in Italy, and no one really
talks about. My host Mom is Fatou (a common female name) and my host
dad is Mamadou. Everyone is being so sweet to me as I learn basic
expressions. It turns out that almost everybody in the house speaks
French, but Wolof is the native language, so most of the time all
interactions are in Wolof. I try to greet people in Wolof and express
myself in French. Greetings here are long and are very important!

Monday, Max took Julia and me to Dakar for the morning. Julia is
another intern here to do finance. Dakar is a big, loud city, and we
quickly wanted to return to the peace and security of Yoff. Yoff
really is special. It is little and lots of people know each other.
It is clearly separated fro, Dakar by miles of expanse and shacks.
The houses in Yoff do not look like anything special from the outside.
Inside, though, they can be really beautiful and nice. Our house has
two floors and most of the bedrooms are upstairs in open air. By that
I mean that each room's door leads outside, to the roof. It's nice.

Max took me to the beach both of my first two days here and that was
really impressive. The whole community seems to come out and play in
the water. Boys play soccer along the beach. There are huts you can
rent for shade.

Yesterday, Monday night, I got very sick. The diarhea started! Not
only that, but I was up all night vomiting as well. I was really
scared, because I was paranoid that I had something much worse than
just the traveler's stomach ache. I spent all day in bed reading and
sleeping and making periodic, strained walks downstairs to the turkish
bath (by the way, I am learning to use water instead of toilet paper!)
while Max, Ouzan and Mantou all tended to me very sweetly all day. I
almost just wanted to be all alone in my misery, but having them burst
in my room and sit with me or stroke my hair did me lots of good.

Today I am weak from not eating, but I came to work at CRESP. I am
waiting for the director to talk with me. We have a nice cyber cafe
here and although the connections are slow, it is great to have some
free internet.

What else...well, I'll send this off now. I miss you all like crazy;
the past few days have been a huge culture shock for me, but I think
it's going to get better.

Much love from lovely Yoff,

Melissa