The One Month Update

I'm back from my little absence, which means that I have been busy!

Last Tuesday I met again with Aziz, the director of my old internship, and he gave me a few more people to contact, but not too surprisingly, I haven't heard anything yet. Tuesday night, Vieux (see last post) called me and said "What are you doing tomorrow? I don't work until the evening so we should go visit ASBEF (where I had my first internship, though since the youth center no longe exists, he was talking about the headquarters). Seeing as I had nothing else to do, I went. I felt a little hesitant about it because Aziz was telling me about how I shouldn't go back there and Vieux was telling me that I should. Vieux, Aziz and ASBAF have a strange history of conflict that I don't really understand. Vieux tried to explain it to me but the two sides of the story dont really match up. Basically Aziz says that ASBEF is not well run etc, etc. and Vieux says that it was Aziz who didn't run the youth center well and is responsible for it's closing. I don't really know.

They have a new director since the last time I was there (I hear the last directer of the headquarters also did a bad job of managing). I seems fine now and there are always many people. They do family planning, pre and post natal checkups, vaccinations, gynocology and pediatrics. So (and Kris is going to hate me for this!) I guess I'm back there, having no other options at this point! It's actually a very interesting place to be although I haven't gotten to do much yet. I like the fact that they have a clinical aspect because the other places I was looking at were purely office settings. It's not as interesting as the youth center was though because there were ALWAYS kids around and activities going on.

The other bad part about the internship, besides the fact that is boring at times, is the fact that I don't feel very invested in it. I won't be there for all that long because of some traveling that I have decided to do (more on that later) and there's not all that much I can actually do besides observe. Maybe by the end of the week they will have fiured out something productive that I can do for them.

In the area of travel, I will hopefully be leaving Dakar for about 9 days. Lamine really wants to visit one of his friends in Mbour, a fairly touristy beach/fishing town about 80 km down the coast from Dakar (yes, my life is in metric now) so I think that we are going there for the weekend. Then I want to travel on to Kaolack, the armpit of Senegal, where I had my first internship. It's not a very small town but it's definitely more rural than Dakar. It's SO SO dirty and not really a place that I would normally choose to spent any amount of time. I want to go back to see the family that I stayed with there since I left on the not the besr terms, having gone crazy from the Larium I was taking. I spent the whole morning before I left crying because I thought I was dying. I think I can make a better impression than that. I originally wanted to travel all the way to Kédougou in the SE corner of the country but that's really really far and I don't think that I will have time because the transport would take so long. I have compromised and am thinking of just traveling a bit south of Kaolack to the Sine Saloum Delta, which is actually quite green. There are a few national parks, lots of birds, and forest and boating tours.

However, the lost exciting excursion that I be taking is to Burkina Faso and Ghana with my friend Anne who is currently doing Peace Corps in Niger. We are going to meet in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (best city name ever)where we will get our visas for Ghana. I'm EXCITED. I hear good things about both countries and Ghana is so green and has beautiful beaches! The whole trip is going to last 2 weeks. Then a few days after I get back, Nicki will be arriving and then 2 weeks after that I will be leaving for Morocco. My how time flies! I shouldn't get too ahead of myself though because there is still quite a bit of time left to spend here.

In other news, I have actually been watching soccer! The Africa Cup of Nations is going on in Egypt at the moment, although I doubt there is really any US coverage of it. Senegal played so well but they just got eliminated in the semi-finals earlier today. Egypt won, which did NOT make us happy because we want someone from sub-Saharan Africa to win. The final is going to be Egypt against Cote d'Ivoire so there is still a chance!

The weather has started getting warmer already. It was cold one day and then the next day it was hot. I remember the weather changes being sudden here. I am very amused though because one day everyone was saying how cold it was (Lamine said he didn't want to cut his hair yet because he would get headaches from the cold ...what??) and the next day everyone was complaining about how hot it is. Whatever people.

Okay, that's all for now. Ciao.