under the mango tree

Hello beautiful people!

Back in Thies after the longest stint of straight village time, 12 days in Mbour! After this, I’ll be back and forth every couple days from Thies to homestay family time. So where to even start on updates? First off, things are really really amazing! I’m loving it here. Every day with the host family was fun and enlightening, the children are my favorite! Every worry or frustration throughout the day is wiped away when the kids run to meet me with their hands in the air looking up with a sweet smile of hope on their faces. 

Its pretty awesome to learn new things from them and to see progression in the language day after day. Remembering back to the beginning of the month, how lost I felt the first few days to now being able to actually converse with locals, pick up on conversations they’re having with each other, and being able to joke around is so encouraging!

I’ve become really close with the volunteers in my village. They’re all ridiculously fun. Every chance we can to meet up and go to the market or sneak away to our rooms for snack and chit chatin is the highlight of my week.  

Almost every day consists of the same schedule. I'm woken up around 6 am to a variety of loud noises. The few hours of tossing and turning to the Muslim prayers over the mosque loud speaker mixed with the goats right outside my room (the loudest goat in the world) allows for me to drift in and out of sleep until 8 am. Finally I roll myself out of bed to the sweet smell of rice pudding or bread and butter for breakfast. Then off to language classes under the mango tree at Sharon's house. We have class for about 4 hours until lunch time then I hide in the shade to avoid the extreme heat of the afternoon.

Around 5:00 the volunteers meet back up at the local school to work on our gardening project. It’s coming along too!! Who knew you could actually grow anything in endless sand? After tending to the garden, we head back to our families and hang out until dinner which is around 9:00. In between, all I really do is study Fulakunda and practice conversations with my family members. Pretty exciting, I know ;)

Thankfully we were able to get away from the desert heat and escape to the beach twice!  We had a big group lunch outing for my friend Costa’s 25^th birthday last weekend.

We stumbled upon this little paradise restaurant that served delicious but really expensive French cuisine! I ordered a salad and pizza, some brews and lemon sorbet! It’s hilarious to me that speaking French is such a comfort compared to my broken Fulakunda skills. Never thought that would happen.

 The next weekend was our friend Katie’s birthday so we ventured back to the beachside for an even sweeter restaurant that provided us with a private room upstairs and a heavenly lookout to the ocean. I ordered a rum and mango drink, possibly the greatest thing I’ve ever tasted.

Those of us who were short on cash walked back to our friend Ian’s house for lunch. Rice and veggies (cebbujen) are the usual, but it’s great to taste different styles of cooking! Turns out he has a really beautiful homestay villa with electricity, mosaic tile flooring, a mango tree growing up through the middle, and an upstairs roof for some good chill time and a great view. Sooo jealous!

Arriving back in Thies, we celebrated the Senegalese Independence day by walking around downtown for some comforting American food!  Always wonderful to have a reason to blow our spending money on a nice meal with great friends I hadn’t seen in two weeks. We had some pretty hilarious stories to share with one another about all the mishaps of language confusion and cultural differences. At least I’m not alone in these perplexities. Barbeque pizza dinner is ready here at the center so I must go!  I’m in great health and great happiness but always thinking about you folks at home and always praying you’re healthy and happy as well! So so so grateful for those of you who want to send me care packages!! It’s so exciting to receive mail!! Thank you thank you thank you!!!!!

All my love from Africa,

chelsea