First week of training

It's been less than a week since our staging group met in DC, but it seems like forever ago. So much has changed, not only geographically, but in terms of relationships with these people and my mindset towards the next two years.
Staging in DC on Monday was really just a means of organizing and "meeting" half of the group, nothing significant in terms of things we haven't heard before from Peace Corps. We flew out Tuesday at 5:40 pm and landed in Dakar, Senegal at 6:10 am the next day. Between 2 time changes within a few days, I didn't sleep at all and was pretty delirious upon arrival. We took a PC bus to our training center in Thies, about 2 hours away from Dakar. As we pull into the training center, a group of locals is dancing in the courtyard, welcoming us. The first day is a bit of a blur, I snuck a few naps in but was mostly dozing during our sessions. The next few days were more Safety and Security sessions, technical information, language and med interviews, Survival Wolof (the main language in Senegal), etc. The most exciting thing we did didn’t happen until Saturday, when they finally let us out of the training compound and into the city. We were all ready to get out and explore after 3 full days in the center, but I’m sure trying to let out a group of 60 government ‘agents’ without full Safety and Security briefing must be a bureaucratic nightmare. We were supervised by current volunteers, which was a good introduction to get a feel for the city. It was my first time in a developing country/city, and I didn’t have anything specific in mind, but it was definitely still a bit of a shock. Most obvious: so much trash! Everywhere. My first instinct was to just start picking it up, cleaning.. but it was everywhere. It was also a bit jarring to be stared at, yelled ‘toubab’ (foreigner), and have kids run up to you with outstretched hands (they assume all white people are rich). However, I am pretty excited to get used to this and become a part of it.

As far as training goes otherwise, we have sessions all day from 8:15 to 5:30, with lunch and breaks throughout the day. Lunch is a traditional bowl meal, where 4-6 of us sit around a large bowl of traditional Senegalese food. Mainly rice with veggies and some sort of meat or beans. I really enjoy it, and it’s a great experience to share a large bowl of food with many others. Dinner is generally more “American” with salad, fries and meat or bean type dishes. Also very good, though it’s hard to adjust to eating around 8pm.

We’re starting our “Community-Based Training” (CBT) on Wednesday, where we starting living with our training home-stay families. I just found out I’ll be learning Pulaar du Nord, so I’ll be living with a family that speaks that dialect of Pulaar and try to learn the language and culture through experience, in addition to the language classes we’ll have throughout the day. I’m pretty excited to be learning Pulaar du Nord, while it is a specific dialect, I’m told if you know one dialect you can understand all of the others of Pulaar. And Pulaar is used through many West African countries, providing me an excellent linguistic foundation if I do chose to do further work in Africa in the future. Also, it gives me a better idea of where I’ll be, geographically, for my 2-year site. I’ll definitely be in the northern region of the country, which while that still leaves a huge possibility of where I’ll be, is a bit more specific than those who are learning Wolof.

Overall, everything is going well and flying by. I can’t believe it’ll be almost a week soon, yet I can barely place myself back in the US as well. I’ll write again soon, once I’ve finished my first homestay experience in a week or so, where I’ll have some legit cultural experiences to report back about.

-A