watch out village, here comes amy (part one)...

Don't worry, folks, I am still alive and well. Though lacking pretty seriously in the areas of time, internet, and electricity. But I am back and want to crank out some blog entries for you, because in a week and a half's time I will be on my way to another part of the country. As far as I know I will be entering a vast void of grass huts, sheep neighbors, and no internet. Who knows really...

To bring you up to speed a little bit, we've been taking classes all this time, and are rapidly approaching the end of the classroom phase. My weeks are spent at WARC, and weekends spent doing things like visiting markets, friends' houses, and the other normal galavanting of an American student in Africa. Two weekends ago, was the grand field trip for MSID Senegal. The whole lot of us, 17 MSIDers, one independent student researcher (yay Paulina! *side note* Paulina is a Mexican student studying at Colorado College, who has come to Senegal for a month to work on research. She stumbled upon our group on day at WARC, and has since spent almost every waking moment with us, eating, field tripping, walking, etc. I have to mention her because she has been my walking buddy every day since we discovered our close living proximity to each other... *end side note*), 4 program staff, two cooks, and one driver set off to go to Toubacouta, a village located south and minorly east of Dakar.

This story must be told in multiple parts, for the sole reason that I do not have the time nor the stamina to type it all out right now...

We were scheduled to leave at 7:00 Saturday morning, and so Friday night was spent getting ready and packing. The next morning I woke up somewhere around 6:00, to a sunless world (not even the crows were up yet! I swear everyone sleeps late here...). This was a little inconvenient, considering the electricity was out (again), and I had to finish packing and get dressed. Trying to be as quiet as possible, so as not to wake the fam, I lugged my duffle down the stairs and through the narrow hallway to the door. Now, I have learned the hard way, many times over, that the front door of my house is very finicky and won't just let anyone out when it's locked. My plan to be as quiet as I could was soon thwarted by the door, and the next thing I hear is my mom grunting sleepily through the window to see who it was. I whispered that it was Amy and that I was just leaving. Sounding a little confused, she let me off with out any of the regular "be safe and don't get mugged" lectures. As I walked down the dark street, it was a scene very reminiscent of the fleeing one in Sound of Music. You know, the one where the family is fleeing the Nazis in the dead of night, and they try to push the car down the driveway...Yeah well, it may not have been the middle of the night, and I don't think I was fleeing the Nazis, but it was a little weird to be walking down an empty street with a duffle bag and no lights. I met Paulina on our regular corner and we started walking in the right direction before finding a taxi to hail and take us the rest of the way.

Once assembled at WARC, we all piled onto one of our favorite buses as our luggage was being piled on top of the bus. The voyage that followed was one filled with lots of bumpiness, very little sleep, and lots of bizzare random occurences. We were stopped on an occasion or two to tell a police officer where the bus of toubabs (toubab=white person) was going. We passed through Kaolack, a city that looks like a garbage dump and had a man standing on the side of the road butt naked. We actually spent more time than expected in Kaolack because the road we were supposed to be going on was blocked or something, I don't really know. Actually, rarely did we know what was going on that whole weekend. We were a herd of toubab sheep being led around to do different things in different places with out being the wiser. C'est pas grave, we've sort of gotten used to it. Our bus was stopped at different points in Kaolack, and we were constantly being bombarded with kids begging for money or people wanting to sell us things. ayeayeaye. But then we were on our way again, and unfortunately, we hadn't yet learned the definition of bumpy roads. The road from Kaolack to Toubacouta was utterly indescribably. We're talking potholes the size of a Honda Civic, scattered over what used to be a paved road, so that the bus had to slow down to a turtle's pace and weave all over the place. And those of us in the back definitely got some air at some points.

The last rest stop before our final destination consisted of a rundown gas station in a village with a market that we were going to be visiting. The toilet was one of the squat pot variety, with a door that barely closed at all. For me, it was just like home sweet home, but for others in the group it was a first time experience. And after being offered a ditch as the other option, everyone turned out to be good sports, and there was a communal bottle of Purell being passed around after. We walked around the market for a couple of minutes to see all of the local products being sold. But after being harrassed by kids and women selling peanuts and men driving by on mopeds offering us rides, we were ready to get back on the bus. Finally, we were arrived in Toubacouta approximately seven hours after departure. We were met by a group of Senegalese guys, all standing along the side of the road where we pulled over just outside the village. Dazed and slightly confused about the presence of these 15 odd Senegalese, we piled off the bus and stood awkwardly awaiting further instruction....

Stay tuned for Part Two to find out who the strangers were and how we survived the Plague of Bugs.