Arrival in the homestay

Orientation has ended, and we’re getting settled (relatively speaking) into our homestay families here. Moving from the air-conditioned luxury of the Auberge Good Rade to a home with just fans, if anything, has been a bit tough. Even at night, it’s still at least 80 degrees here, and humid. The first night was fairly difficult, especially due to being woken up before sunrise by the prayers of my family, but last night was a bit more comfortable (physically, anyway).

Thus far, my experience with my homestay family (the Thiam family) has been full of surprises, not all of them pleasant. By Senegalese standards, my family is very modern. They have a computer and wi-fi, which has been great. However, they all speak French very quickly, and it’s incredibly difficult to keep up with their conversations, particularly when there‘s so much background noise from the TV, a stereo, and the prayers coming from the mosque all at once. Furthermore, despite having been told that I would have to expect not to have any privacy, my family in general has been almost too respectful of my privacy. They don’t talk to me very much, so I’m working on putting forth more effort to engage myself in their existing conversations. This is proving difficult so far, as they often talk about both soccer and politics, two things for which I don’t yet have enough vocabulary to make meaningful conversation. In general, I feel very awkward, as if nobody can understand what I’m saying. I almost feel like I'm losing my ability to speak French, because it seems like every time I open my mouth, I have to try incredibly hard to help people understand what I'm trying to say. It's a real confidence killer.

Anyway, Ramadan ends this weekend, and we’ve been told to expect things to change drastically in the city. From what we’ve been told, Dakar has been fairly calm by comparison, so it’ll be interesting to see things really pick up in the city. Additionally, the rainy season is supposed to end soon, and I’m certain everyone in the group is excited for that. Today, it rained as hard as it ever has since we arrived here, which quite literally turned the streets into rivers. We were at lunch at the time, which made getting back to school a bit of an adventure.

Later, if I can get the image uploader to work, I'll put up some pictures from our visit to the artists’ village, which is where we’ll be doing either bronze sculpture, batik, ceramics or glass painting come October. Additionally, we had one of the top kora players in Senegal give us a demo at SIT, and I’ll post an mp3 of that once I get it converted from the useless audio format it’s in now.