Dernière Partie

Day four began and continued to be a lazy day. After eating breakfast, I polished off “The Old Man and the Sea” (nothing like some tragic Hemingway to start the morning off right!). The only thing that was going on due to the national holiday for All Saint’s Day was the weekly market which attracted villagers from all over the delta region. This was actually a common theme throughout the week – several of our students lived outside of Samba Dia, and the school was getting ready to erect a “lunch hut” so that they could have a place to eat and rest while their classmates went home. Moreover, the fabric that the young ladies helped to dye is sold every Thursday and the profits are recycled back into the village. Jen was still in the clinic, and our host dad asked Jake and I to ask her some questions in English so that she didn’t have to translate while experiencing vertigo. Then, Jake and I set off with our host brothers, who needed to borrow a CD-rom for 8th grade mathematics. (Side note: the French version spelled it out as “cédérom”).

The market took up the village square and spilled off into a few alleyways, but was as lively as any other Senegalese market – vendors selling produce, fabric, playing cards, sunglasses out of little stalls. Jake bargained for some fabric and managed to reach a reasonable price, but one that seemed a bit high. Our host mother later explained that it had been brought from Dakar and the transport added at least 10% to everything sold in the village. Hannah and Tessah were able to have pants made by the tailor that day, but he was too swamped by the time we reached his atelier (workshop). Thus, we decided to meet Malang and some of his cooler friends for ataaya. As the week progressed, Malang became increasingly needy, calling Jake’s cell phone frequently to hang out. We headed home for lunch and just chilled out. Jen was feeling better and came out to sit on the veranda with us while we all shared stories about our families, our friends, etc. Hannah and Tessah went back into the village to purchase rice for our families, as a sign of thankfulness for all of the teranga (hospitality) we had experienced. While Tessah invited everyone to one of the many impromptu dance parties at her house, we just hung out with our host family and learned to play a game in the sand during a power outage (with generator!). Later, Jake and I helped our brothers with the mathematics CD-rom installation and exercises.

Friday morning came very fast, and we packed up into the bush bus after breakfast. Several of us were very sad to leave our wonderful host families to come back to noisy, polluted Dakar and schoolwork.