Lac Rose/ Lac Retba

So this is what the internet says Lac Rose will look like

And this is what it actually looks like

It is still a really nice lake, it's just not always pink. My host mom explained (if I understood correctly) that the reason it's pink has to do with a certain type of algae that grows in the water. It is only pink with the right combination of sunlight and wind during the dry season, so it's kind of just luck whether it will be pink on any given day. It is also really salty, so you can float on the water like in the dead sea.  I didn't know that before going so we didn't try swimming, but it is apparently also pretty common to get infections or diseases in the water so it's probably just was well. My host mom also explained that there used to be no regulations on who could go and collect salt from the lake, so over the years people took a ton of salt, and this may be part of the reason why the pinkness has faded over the years. When my host mom visited years ago though, she said it really was the color of the google photos.

I bought a drum and the kids really like it :)

Also they don't know what a neck pillow is.

Baptism

Here are some picture's from my sister's baby's baptism! They named the baby Aisha Yvone. There was a huge party with probably about 70 people in our house, and everyone got all dressed up. The first picture is a pretty standard Senegalese meal, except usually it doesn't have eggs.

Toubab Djalo

Last weekend everyone in our trip went to Toubab Djalo, a fishing village on the coast of Senegal, south of Dakar.

I took drumming lessons

and Senegalese dance lessons

and made Batik, which is kind of like tie die except you make designs and then paint them with wax so that the die does not show up on that part of the cloth.

This was our hotel

There were several beach spots at our hotel. This one had nice rocks to climb.

Then we visited this other hotel, I'm not really sure why, but it had these really cool gazebo things like in this picture. If you stood on one end of the gazebo then when a person at the opposite end talks the sound travels in such a way that it sounds like their voice is coming from behind you, it's really freaky. Also if you stand in the middle and talk you sound like your speaking through a microphone, but you only sound like that to yourself, not to people standing in a different part of the gazebo. 

On our way back one of the buses got stuck and we had to push it out of a ditch.

Papa Sene!

Today I met the son of Samba Sene, the man who works at our apartment in New York. He is Senegalese, so in December I told him I was going to Senegal for the semester. He was really excited and gave me the number of his son, Papa Sene. Before coming here I thought it would be weird to just call a random stranger to come visit, but now that I've been here for a month I've realized the culture of hospitality and friendliness is so strong that it is completely normal to visit someone with even the smallest connection. After calling him on the phone I asked my host mom if he could come visit Saturday. She said "of course you don't need to ask for permission, this is your house you can invite whoever you want" which I thought was really nice!

So he came to visit today and I introduced him to my host family. I'm so used to be the guest in my house that it was fun to finally be the host bringing a guest home. We walked to the beach and then came back and ate lunch. He is really nice and invited me to visit his family in a few weeks so I'm looking forward to that.

New member of the family!

My sister had a baby yesterday (2/12/2014)! I went to see her at the hospital, she is adorable and seems quite healthy. As Muslim tradition she will be named at her Baptism 8 days after her birth, so I am not sure what she is named yet, but I will know in a week!

Parking here is kind of anything goes

This is the pedestrian bridge that no one ever uses.

 Cars go super fast here and rarely stop for people unless its a taxi hoping you'll want a ride. J-walking is a skill you pick up pretty quickly here.

Internship

Here are some photos from my internship! I work with an organization called Culture d'Enfance (Culture of Children) which works to promote the "rights" of children, such as the right to education, to good health, to cultural, to food, etc. They do different projects where they travel around Senegal and use art projects (like collages, photography, theater etc.) to teach kids a specific lesson. For example one of their past projects was to take photos or draw a picture of some part of Spanish culture that they learned about. Another project was to make a comic strip that informed people of the symptoms and preventions of Paludisme, a mosquito-caused disease. 

The project that we are currently doing in these pictures is at an orphanage. We are teaching the kids about hygene. Last Tuesday we went to their classroom and had each student think of a phrase, such as "wash your hands" or "brush your teeth." We would then write down the phrase in bubble letters so that they could color in the letters than cut them out and paste them onto a poster. So by the end there was a giant collage of phrases and other decorations that the kids made. 

The organization is great and I really like my supervisor. My main problem is that the kids only speak wolof, so my job is more about helping with the arts and crafts than interacting with the kids. Hopefully that will change as the program goes on and as I learn more Wolof phrases.

Wrestling

Wrestling is the number one sport in Senegal and there was a huge match on Jan 29^th. Everyone in my house gathered around the TV to watch and they were yelling and going crazy the whole time. The girl in the long dress is my sister and I have never seen her pray until just now in this picture during the match. The guy my family was voting for, Modou Lo (on the right in the picture), ended up winning and the whole house went crazy, it was so much fun to watch.

A water this big only costs about 2 US dollars, which is about how much a tiny water bottle costs in the US

My House

My room

Breakfast every morning – a fresh baguette with butter and jam.

We don’t have hot water so my host mom heats ups some water for me every morning for my bucket shower J

My house from the outside

Here are some pictures of me with my host family. On the top the older one is my brother Aladi, and then we’re holding Choupi and Aida is standing in front. On the bottom I’m holding Nogaye, the youngest, and Choupi is in the front. Also I have no idea if these names are spelled correctly.

I taught my sister how to take a selfie.

This is a HUGE statue built in 2010 (it took 3 years to build) to commemorate the African Renaissance. It was a big controversy because it cost over a million dollars to build despite the fact that most of the country is in poverty and half the population is unemployed, so the money could have been spent in more practical ways. There are also rumors that the statue is pointing to New York City because the president wanted Senegal to become more western, which also brought up some controversy. The president who built this statue, Abdoulaye Wade, was widely disliked for many of his political decisions, but most famously his attempt to change the constitution allowing him to serve an extra term than was normally allowed. Tons of people protested in the streets saying that he was trying to become a dictator, with signs that said things like “keep democracy alive.” Interestingly the leaders of this protest were mostly Senegalese rap artists. We watched a documentary that talked about “Le Joula,” a boat that sank in 2002. Over 2,000 people died, which is more than the Titanic, but the story was largely covered up, another reason many people did not like Wade as president. There were apparently no rescue boats sent and the boat was carrying three times its capacity. Also, the boat was broken before it left the dock – many people complained because Wade did not pay to fix it but he paid for his own private plane to be fixed just before hand.

This is some random Grafiti I found on the street of my town, Ouakam. Macky Sall is the current president who won majority vote against Wade in 2011.

Trip to Centre Ville

A church

The president's house

A train station. From the inside it does not look like it's still running but apparently it is.