Villages

Hey all,

It's been a while since I've written anything here, but I just thought I'd throw out a little update.

I got back from the village of Mouit on the 2nd (?) of October. We spend 3 days in the village in a homestay family and then spent 3 days in beautiful, air-conditioned hotel rooms in Saint-Louis. Needless to say, the drastic switch-over was a little unsettling.

Mouit was wonderful though. It is a concrete-constructed village--I had my own room with a nice comfy bed, we at bread and butter from breakfast, and people had cell phones. However, things were far different than in Dakar. I showered from a bucket, I walked to my host dad's boat to retrieve fish, and I offended people if my knees showed when I sat down. The people in the village were very, very welcoming. They held us toubabs a sabar dance, which means we all dressed up and danced around like fools, and then our host sister and mother took the floor and showed us up. YouTube search "guana dance" and that's what we tried to look like.

Saint-Louis was, like I said, very different. It felt much more like a vacation--we had chocolate croissants for breakfast, delicious vegetable-filled dinners, and all the air-conditioning we could dream of. We looked at some historic sites, but mostly did a lot of vacationing...

Tomorrow, I am off on another "excursion". We are driving all day long to reach the town of Kedougou in southeastern Senegal. The town is nearly in Guinea. There, we are staying in a campment and hiking to some cool waterfalls and up some mountains. Or so we were told they were mountains. After a few days in Kedougou, we are headed off to our respective villages. Me and a classmate will be in the Bedik village of Etchwar. It will literally be grass huts, porridge, and workin' in the fields: http://www.google.sn/imgres?imgurl=http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2165/3002686659_38cf1cd3db_m.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.flickr.com/photos/32097021%40N03/&usg=__hgDiUiuBRrXLYDNgQmKPRwvQccw=&h=180&w=240&sz=22&hl=fr&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=gvahxaFOKBKrbM:&tbnh=106&tbnw=133&prev=/images%3Fq%3Detchwar,%2Bsenegal%26um%3D1%26hl%3Dfr%26sa%3DN%26biw%3D1024%26bih%3D485%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=705&vpy=213&dur=650&hovh=144&hovw=192&tx=117&ty=110&ei=R762TOulBcb84AaYpdiwCQ&oei=R762TOulBcb84AaYpdiwCQ&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:10,s:0

I will be out of Internet range, so check back in about 10 days, and hopefully there will be a load of interesting photos!