28 April 2007

Just some notes about living here in Senegal in general. Being with Mame Fatou is awesome, she is extremely warm and really helpful. It seems to me that she knows everyone because she is constantly introducing me to new people on the street. Most of whom are 'freres''soeurs' and 'cousins' but more so in the friendly type of way.Though I think she does in fact have a lot of cousins in Thies. Thies itself is pretty big, more than a million people, but I'm only really familiar with the quarter where we live. In fact, I'm really only familiar with the path to the boutique to buy bread and the path tothe cyber where I go and write tons of emails. Everyone is super friendly in the street and while they usually stare at me, they are quick to smile and ask me how its going. The millions of kids allover love to say 'Bonjour' to me since they think that I'm french, so I usually play along. Mame Fatou is an excellent cook and she alsohas Awa, a 19 year old girl from around the corner, around to help with the cooking and cleaning. We eat a lot of fish, rice andveggies. And tea. There's this excellent tea called dutay ... but thats in Wolof... that I drink every morning. I'm already a big tea drinker and now I've got a tea Senegalese. I've only been here for 10days, but so much has happened and so much happens every day that it feels quite longer.