moving in with a family

I want to tell you a little more about my stay with a PCV. We had such a great time and I learned so much. We went to the beach and met up with some other volunteers. It was so nice to meet people who have gone through the same things that I am going through now. I feel more calm about being here and am again excited to stay. On my visit with the PCV, I also learned that Senegal is a very social country and it is very important to greet everyone and ask them how they are and how their family is, their goat etc. As you can imagine this makes it very hard to get anywhere in a hurry but I suppose this is just a reflection of life here, everything goes much slower. It is too hot to do anything at the height of the day so everyone takes a nap after lunch. Although right now it is a different situation.

It is Ramadan so most of the people are fasting. In the heat this is hard to do so it seems even slower to me right now. It has been very interesting to see this custom and their practices within the faith. I am allowed to eat and drink but it is disrespectful to do so in the presense of someone fasting. They still feed us in the training center but tomorrow I will be with my host family all day. I have some food that I will eat in my room. Around 7pm or when the sun goes down we break the fast. It is a big deal. They basically eat 3 meals after sunset. We have tea and bread, then yesterday we had peanuts, then dinner of rice, some kind of meat and sauce. The negatives to this system are that you eat a lot and you dont end up eating dinner until late because they space out the three courses. By dinner I am exausted. And they are ready to go all night long. Yay for ear plugs.

I have been a part of this tratition because I moved in with a host family. I have one Mom (some people have multiple moms) a dad, a couple of teenage boys who are on vacation so I havent met them, a couple of sisters(one is my age and has at least one kid), there are some little kids around too. It is confusing who belongs to who. I will figure it out soon. my mom speaks french and wolof so there is a bit of a communication barrier but not too bad. She is teaching me some wolof too. They gave me a Senegalese name; Mami Awa and my last name is Cissé. It is nice being with a family. I have my own room, but I can go into the living room and hang with the fam. they cook and do my laundry too. Last night they invited me into the kitchen and I saw them prepare our dinner. I imagine I will start to help out around the house more and more.

Aside from getting my host family yesterday we were also assigned a language to learn. I am going to learn Wolof. My french somehow was good enough to get to live with a family where no one speaks english. Some trainees are learning smaller native languages so I am happy that I am learning one national language. Ok well my time is up here so I am going to run. Send me some emails and let me know what you all are up to! talk to you soon!