Free Fall

I have been in Senegal for less than 48 hours and it already feels like I've been here a week.  People who I only met four days ago feel like old friends, and slowly but surely routine is already setting in.  Yesterday was the big travel day.  I count yesterday and the day before as one day since I never really went to sleep for more than a few minutes.  Firstly South African Airways is the nicest airline I have ever traveled on.  The flight crew was nice and sociable and really helpful.  The plane was also quite new and impeccably clean.  I officially endorse this airline for all your African travel needs :-). 

Arrival in Dakar was overwhelming to say the least.  I knew that I was going to Africa, but I didn't really understand the level of poverty they have here.  To be fair its not that the people in Dakar live without anything.  The route we traveled is apparently not the best view of the city.  In any case though infrastructure seemed to be not very developed, although there was an encouraging amount of construction. We arrived at the training center, and after a brief breakfast of baguettes with jam and chocolate sauce, we hit the hay.  3 hours later it was time to get up and I begrudgingly got up and tried to figure out what was going on, which took a good 5 min. 

After lunch we had our first introduction session... which lasted a really long time for having not slept the night before.  With all the new information and being very tired I started to kinda freak out a little... I take that back, I was freaking out a lot.  Its hard to explain how homesick I was.  Here's a sample of my inner monologue: What the hell have I gotten myself into this isn't fun and I don't know if I can do this for the next two years everyone else is doing fine and I'm freaking out I want to go home but I shouldn't because I made a commitment but I miss Hannah and this is really hard and I don't like it!  Yeah that about sums it up.  Put that on repeat and play it in your head for a few hours and you'll feel pretty crappy too :-)

Ah the magic of some communication home and a good night's sleep.  I woke up to the sounds of a beautiful jungle.  Hundreds of birds chirping and singing in a quiet but spectacular symphony.  The morning was also cool, which is really a treat here.  I don't know if I've said this yet, but Senegal is hot and VERY humid.  The morning was great and the day turned out to be even better.  I found out that I'm actually a rural ag volunteer meaning that I'll be in a small village rather than a city.  This made me very happy.  I also got to interview to share my experience, and the APCD for agriculture said that I have a good French accent.  That put a little pep in my step.  Then that pep was squashed a little by my french test where I probably sounded like a 5 year old.  But that's fine.

The afternoon also included 2 more vaccines.  Apparently only 5 more... yay...  Mostly though the afternoon consisted of sitting around the disco hut and chatting, skyping, lounging, reading, or buying a cold drink from the guards.  It was wonderful :-).  Hard to believe how much we did today actually.  It feels like we've been here for a week.  The country director was here today chatting, we had a health seminar where we talked about inevitable diarrhea and got out ceramic water filters... oh and we had baked chicken with fried potatoes and ketchup.  Overall things are pretty good.  Inevitably that view will change once we start learning the languages and staying in the villages, but today was good.  Bird by bird.  Day by Day.  That's all we can do right?  Bon nuit tout le monde!

P.S.  I'll try to post some pictures tomorrow.  I need to do it when other people aren't taking up bandwidth.