I’ve lost count of days and weeks now, so if someone would care to do the maths..! We’ve now been in Joal for almost a month. We arrived in our new home town after an unnecessarily early start (seeing as, even though we arrived at 10am, our host family had planned to return from visiting family in the evening – slight miscommunication there!) and a 2 hour car journey along the coast, which Charlotte and I spent attempting to undo the worst of my plaits. On Tabaski, and the day after, some girls volunteered to give me a new Senegalese hairstyle. After 7 hours, it was complete. As cool as the style was, it wasn’t me, and we decided that it was probably not best for me to meet our new family looking, well, odd.
After putting up our pictures and emptying our suitcases into the wardrobe, our little bedroom felt like home, and we really started to settle into our lives here. The family are lovely. We now have 2 sisters, Marieme aged 6 and Khadesa aged 1, and a brother, Mohammed, aged 13! They’re all so funny, and have really made us feel like part of the family! As well as us, Aicha and Amadou and the children, we are joined in the house by 2 resident bats, who live under the stairs. We normally have a fairly good arrangement, which is the classic, we can walk around the house in the day while they sleep, and they, in turn, can fly around at night, when we’re asleep, our only encounters being any late night runs to the bathroom, or when rising several times during the night waiting for the water to turn back on. Last week however, one bat, whom we have named Stupid Sid, forgot he was nocturnal. We spent 2 days at war with Sid, as he decided that his new favourite ‘hang out spot’ was our shower. In our bathroom. We thought it was all over when, when home alone one afternoon, I stood behind the door to the ‘ bat room’ and Charlotte by the door to the bathroom, and, after shouting when Sid was incoming, we managed to trap him in his room. Whilst I showered however, he escaped, and was waiting for me to open the door. It took him several days to realise that he was in the wrong, and you’ll be glad to hear that we are now back to normal.
For our first two weeks in Joal, the bikes which we now use to get to the further parts of the town, including one of our schools, needed repairing, leaving us with no option but to take a ‘taxi’. For 100francs you can get a ‘taxi’ to anywhere in Joal from the ‘taxi rank,’ which is fab, until you realise the risks involved. (It’s not all that serious, don’t worry mum!) It’s hectic. Cars drive, it seems, on whatever side of the road they fancy, at any speed, taking corners as wide as they like and sometimes go off road altogether, randomly, regardless of what or who may be walking in that space. Charlotte and I live in constant fear of being run over by cars, donkeys, horses, lorries from the port, public buses, mini buses and children on mopeds. Once you get in the taxi itself, the risk level isn’t decreased by much! We’ve not been in a single car which has looked like it has ever even considered an MOT! Some cars have holes, some have seats with the springs showing, and one driver spent the whole journey sipping his coffee with one hand, whilst leaning his elbow out of the window so that he could hold the door shut!
Our first few weeks were spent attempting to get our timetables sorted! The pace of life is slow in Senegal, and it was then when we started to realise that this could ever be a frustrating thing. Everyone, pupils and teachers alike, have a very laid back approach to the start of term. As we are teaching in 3 schools, trying to a) get someone to give us a timetable and b) attempting to juggle them was a task. Now it’s all sorted, I am teaching a 4eme class for 3 hours a week (I’ve been asked to revise all of the tenses with them, so I’m not sure I’m their favourite person at the moment,) a 1ere class at the sixth form for 3 hours a week and co-teaching at a private school for 4 hours a week! Private schools here are not like private schools back home. The conditions are the same, if not worse than the state schools, and resources are limited. The class sizes are much smaller (about 15 instead of over 40, or 60 at the sixth form) but other than that, it’s hard to see a difference!
When we have not been teaching or lesson planning, we’ve been exploring the area. We are so lucky to be living in such a lovely area! Our side of town is the port end. The working end of town! We are constantly popping up the road for watermelons (we are getting better at haggling for them in Wolof) and have even established our own doughnut lady, who always gives us one extra for free (May be kindness, may be a maths problem!) Either way, we aren’t complaining! It’s exciting discovering what kind of things we can get for what prices! One weekend, we planned to make banana pancakes for everyone for breakfast. We went to our classic banana man, who pointed us in the direction of an egg man. After purchasing our ingredients, we hurried home and got cooking. On breaking an egg, I was confused to discover that the contents did not, in the classic manner, flop into the cup. We had bought 8 boiled eggs! It was beyond us why anyone would assume we wanted to buy 8 boiled eggs over 8 normal ones, but welcome to Senegal! At the other end of town is our regular market, which has everything, even a stall selling winter coats, which is also beyond me, as we spend our days in a constant sweat!
Fadiouth is beautiful. This little island is at the very far end of town, and we’ve already visited a number of times. It’s a much more touristy end of town, as the island of Fadiouth is home to the only graveyard where Christians and Muslims can be buried together, and visitors come from all over to see it. We have seen a lot more ‘Toubabs’ there!
You’ll all be pleased (or maybe nervous) to hear that I’ve been trying to help with the cooking! Okay, so it’s been very supervised, but I’ve learnt how to dice onions without a chopping board, so I’m regarding that as a fairly big achievement! Charlotte and I have also volunteered to cook for the family on a few occasions! It’s been tough, for someone who it would be easy to believe has never cooked a successful dish in their lives, to then have to cook without an oven and with both lacking and unusual ingredients, but it’s worked so far! Our – just whack it all in and see what happens, if they don’t like it simply exclaim ‘well, it’s what we eat in England, it’s not bad, it’s just different for you’ – approach, has been a good one!
Last night (the 4th November) was the Muslim festival of Tamkharit, which some have described to us as ‘our Halloween’ and others as ‘Islamic New Year.’ From what we could gauge of the evening, it was new year, celebrated like Halloween! The problem that we are having with Senegal at the moment is that we have to force explanations out of people, and that we spend most of the time wondering what on earth is going on! In the evening, Marieme came in and explained. Finally! During the evening, it is traditional for the boys to dress as girls and the girls to dress as boys, and go around the houses in the neighbourhood singing and dancing! Marieme told us to wear pretty dresses, so we put on our Boubous from Tabaski (swapping to keep it fresh of course) and headed out with the children! Everybody was so happy! We came across some wonderful groups of dancers and drummers, and some crazy cross dressing! When we visited our friends house, a woman from the village came in enthusiastically dressed as an old man, with a white face! We felt a little awkward, as she didn’t make eye contact with us, but carried on as normal! We laughed, as it could quite possibly have been that the one year she decided to dress up as a white person, there happened to be two real-life white people in the next house – what are the chances!
Overall, my initial impressions of Joal are fab. It’s really lovely, especially being on the coast, and we are already feeling really at home! It is exciting that things are really starting to pick up speed, and that soon we can continue with a fantastic project called FAS JOM, which Project Trust volunteers have set up and run brilliantly for the past two years. The project aims to educate girls who can’t go to school in basic French and Maths. We are so excited to get this started for this year. We are so glad to be finally settled in and are really looking forward to the rest of our time here!
I’ll try and keep you all updated a bit more often, so as to avoid you having to set aside a good hour to read it all!
Botchikanam (not spelt like that, means see you later!)
BV xxx
Beth's year in Senegal 