Bubacar, Fish, and Beyonce

I just got back to the training center from my home stay so please excuse me if this blog post sounds scatter brained, but there is so much running through my mind!!!

For the past five days I’ve been living in M’Bour, a larger beach town, with the Signaté family. I have a dad, mom, five sisters and a younger brother, and we all live in a four-bedroom house with electricity, but no running water. I’m sure you are all wondering what the bathroom is like and if I have to share a room with other people. Luckily I have my own bedroom and also a western style toilet! It doesn’t flush, but at least I don’t have to squat. I’ve already heard horror stories of money falling out of people’s pockets when using their squatty potty.  Within the first hour of meeting my family I was given the name Bubacar, pernounced boob-uh-car, which is my host mother’s father’s name.  It took a couple days for me to get used to my name and recognize when my name was being called, but I’m getting more and more comfortable with it each day.  My host family has been very welcoming to me and makes sure I am comfortable at all times of the day. I’m not going to lie, I’ve been pretty spoiled. My mom warms my bucket bath for me at night and my sisters do my laundry for me! I also sit at a table for my meals with the adults, while the kids sit on the floor to eat.  Speaking of eating, all I’ve been eating is FISH! Smoked fish, fish balls, grilled fish, fish rice, fish salad….GIVE ME SOME CHICKEN! Don’t get me wrong, the food isn’t bad, but I would appreciate some variety in my protein selection. Meals are normally served on a large communal platter, where the majority of the plate is rice, or some other sort of starch, and the fish and veggies are in the center for everyone to share. My first night we ate salad and it was the first time I had to eat with my hand! Luckily it wasn’t rice. 

Home life is really interesting too. The five girls do EVERYTHING. They fetch water in the morning, clean the bathroom, make lunch and dinner, and do the laundry.  It’s crazy how much responsibility they have at home, but in Senegalese culture this is normal.  At first I thought that my host mom was just really strict, but after talking with my peers I realized this wasn’t the case.  When the girls aren’t working they usually have friends come over and I can’t tell you how many weaves I’ve seen be put in!! I also don’t think I’ve ever watched so much TV. They watch everything from music videos, to Bollywood films that have been obviously dubbed over in French. I also found out my sisters love Beyonce and Rihanna, so we have a lot in common.  Communicating with my family has also been very interesting. I’ve been speaking a lot of French with them, even though the point of the home stays is to work on our local language skills. My family knows this and told me that I have to start using less and less French each day.

Other than adjusting to a new home life, I started to learn one of the local languages in Senegal called Jaxanke.  It’s spoken mostly in the southeast region of Senegal, so that will most likely be the region of my permanent site. I normally have language class for a few hours at my language coordinator’s home stay, which is conveniently located across the street from me. It’s just me and one other girl, Chrissie, in my language group so we get a lot of one on one time with our teacher.  That’s definitely helped with learning the language faster because if I forget something I am quickly called out. With all of these new changes, it’s definitely been a hard transition. They say that the first night at our home stay is the hardest and so I’m hoping that is true. I am only back at the training site for 48 hours, then I go back to M’Bour for 13 days…aka more fish and Bollywood films. I am hoping to post some pictures soon, but for some reason my camera isn’t transferring pictures to my laptop.  Until then, that is all I got.  I appreciate and I thank you all for the continual support from home.  Even though it’s only been two weeks since I arrived in Senegal, it seems as if I’ve been here for a month.  Your words of encouragement are really helping me get through this pre-service training that seems like it is going to go on forever. Seven more weeks to go!