Dakar Weekend!

[Just to clarify…this refers to the weekend of October 3 & 4. I’m a little behind on writing, but I promise to catch everyone up to the present soon!]

After our defeat to the LCFs in soccer Friday night (October 2), we had to do some language classes the following morning and then we got the rest of the weekend free to do as we pleased. Hurrah! While some of the PCTs stayed at the training center in Thies, I decided that it was a good opportunity to check out more of Dakar (since all I’d seen so far was the airport). So Saturday afternoon about 16 of us hopped on an Alham and headed to the regional house for a couple of nights. This might not have been the responsible decision given how tired I was at this point, but hey…you only live once, right? Plus, I knew I had a whole week of village life and lots of sleep ahead of me in Tassete.

After being caught in the inevitable Dakar traffic for several hours, we arrived at the regional house…or Liberté 6 as we call it (because that is the name of the quartier where its located). Some people went out to a Korean BBQ place for dinner, but being both lazy and short on funds, I opted to go with the neighborhood egg sandwich vendor. After all, you can’t go wrong with a meal that only costs 300 CFA (roughly 75¢). I’ve never really been a fan of hard-boiled eggs (the yolks…YUCK), but that doesn’t seem to stop me from eating them here. Of course that’s not really surprise since most of the things I eat on a daily basis here, I refused to touch back in America. For example: fish, beans, potatoes, sweet potatoes, etc. are staples of my diet these days. I suppose it’s about time that I stopped being as picky as a three-year old with my food though, haha.

Anywho, after dinner everyone regrouped at the house for a couple of drinks and then we headed out to a party at the Oceanium, a club on the water. The first Saturday of every month they hold a big all night party, so naturally, when we heard that there was dancing and a good chance of awesomely-bad American music (this is Africa after all), we wanted to check it out. The party was a blast and it was nice to go dancing for the first time in a while.

On Sunday, a bunch more people from our stage came up from Thies and we headed to the Atlantic Club. The Atlantic Club (or American Club, as we call it) is pretty much exactly like a country club back in the States (minus the golf course) and its members are generally American ex-patriots or French nationals living in Dakar. And lucky for us the owners are fans of Peace Corps so they let us all come and use the pool/tennis courts/etc. for free! It’s a pretty sweet deal.

So we spent the day lounging around by the pool, eating American food (they have Snickers!) and chatting…just another typical day in the life of a hard-working Peace Corps volunteer. It was almost hard to go back to the daily village life after that…hanging out there, it’s really easy to forget that you’re still in Senegal, haha. Eventually though we had to face the music and everyone headed back to the regional house for the night.

Then on Monday, we all headed to the Peace Corps office in Dakar for a fun filled day of meetings. We started off with a briefing from the head of security at the U.S. Embassy, who did his best to put a little fear into us…particularly those living around the Mali/Mauritania/Guinea borders (don’t worry, that’s not me). I think he was a little more keyed up than usual having spent the whole weekend helping to coordinate the evacuation of Embassy personnel and other U.S. citizens from Guinea. So after he talked, Etienne (the head of security for PC Senegal) got up and calmed everyone down, haha. Have no fear…Etienne assures us that he’s not worried about anything and if there ever were a need to worry he’d definitely be the first to know.

After security, we had the requisite signing of papers slash talk on the process of obtaining a U.S. Visa from the director of U.S. Citizen Affairs at the Embassy. This was mostly just to prepare us for the inevitable barrage of questions we will be getting over the next two years from people wanting to move to the States. Oh, as well as the process of obtaining a Visa if we want to marry a host country national and bring them home with us. She assures us that there’s almost always someone in every stage that ends up wanting to do this. I for one am extremely curious to see who it’s going to be from our group, haha.

Next on the agenda was a brief bus tour of Dakar, followed by lunch in the city. I went to the French Cultural Center because I was told that they’ve got amazing burgers (man do I miss burgers!) and it definitely lived up to the billing. Delicious! After lunch we went back to the office to meet the administrative staff and talk about exciting things like money and vacation policies. Then it was a mad rush to see who’d get the bus with the A/C and who’d be stuck with the Alham for the ride back to Thies. I definitely made it a priority to get a spot with A/C, haha.

Ok, I realize that this entry is approaching the length of a book so I promise I’m almost done, but one other piece of news…our stage lost its first person that night :( We were all eating dinner in the refectoire when one of the girls from our stage got up and announced that she was early terminating (ET-ing) and heading back to America. She had been sick and stuck at the med hut in Dakar a lot, so while I don’t know if that factored into her decision, I can’t really say that I blame her. I’m not sure I’d still be here if I’d been having persistent health issues for the past two months. Thankfully though, I’ve been pretty healthy so far (KNOCK ON WOOD). I wasn’t particularly close to this girl, but it was still sad to see her go. Especially so close to swear-in…we were only a week and a half away from the whole stage making it through training! Oh well, such is life I suppose…

And on that slightly depressing note (sorry, but I figured I should share the news), I’ll end this post…bye!!