Christmas/New Year's 2009

2009 was definitely a year of firsts…first time in Africa, longest I’ve ever gone without seeing my family, and first Christmas on my own (to name just a few). Christmas is far and away my favorite holiday, but this year I mostly tried not to think about it too much. I heard from a lot of the year-in PCVs that no matter what your plans are, it just won’t feel like Christmas over here. Frankly, they were right. However, despite the lack of traditional Christmas festivities, we still had a good holiday…

Christmas came a little bit over 2 months after I first got to Nioro. So, my four closest friends here (Alyssa, Jackie, Katherine and Tamar) and I decided to plan a nice break from site in honor of the holiday. The idea was to spend Christmas and the following days at the PC regional house in Dakar, and then head north to Saint-Louis for New Year’s.

I arrived in Dakar on Christmas Eve and joined Tamar and Katherine for a nice Italian dinner (yay pizza!). Afterwards, we headed back to the house and marathoned some Christmas favorites…Love Actually, White Christmas, and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Good stuff. The next morning, Alyssa and Jackie arrived and, in a time honored Christmas tradition, we spent the rest of the day lying around. I also talked to family back home for a while, which was great, albeit a little bittersweet. I powered through the day though, pretending I wasn’t missing anything or anyone back home. [Denial is a very powerful weapon in the battle against homesickness.] Then we rounded out the day with a tradition followed by many Jewish families on Christmas…going to a Chinese restaurant for dinner! Overall, it was a nice relaxing day.

The girls and I spent the next few days exploring Dakar and getting our fill of delicious food. We took a trip out to Goree Island (a small island off the coast of Dakar used during the slave trade), shopped at the used clothes market (fukku jaay in Wolof), and hiked up to the lighthouse. We also checked out all of the restaurants we’d been dreaming of after several solid months of fish and rice everyday… Italian, the French Cultural Center, Indian, ice cream (yes, it counts as a meal), even fried chicken!! There was also a lot of movie watching and putting our (in my case limited) cooking skills to use at the regional house. Courtesy of Casino (the amazing, almost Western-quality supermarket in Dakar) and our lovely families in America we pulled together some spectacular feasts. We had a big pancake breakfast with real syrup, courtesy of my Mom (yay!). Made some delicious stovetop lasagna and green bean casserole (again, thanks Mom!). We even pulled off a Mexican feast with actual taco shells and salsa courtesy of Alyssa’s Mom. [Sorry if this is uninteresting, but as you can probably tell by now…Christmas for us this year was all about the food.]

After several days of seeing Dakar and eating way too much food, we packed our backpacks and hopped in a hot, crowded sept place for the trip to Saint-Louis. We arrived at the garage in Saint-Louis early afternoon and made our way to the hotel. We stayed at a cozy little hotel on the ocean a little ways outside of town where a bunch of people from our stage were already staying. After dropping our bags and changing out of our dusty travel clothes, we headed down the beach to a hotel with a pool to meet up with everyone else.

We spent the rest of the evening and most of the day on New Year’s Eve catching up with people and exploring Saint-Louis. During the French colonial period, Saint-Louis was the capital of Senegal. Now, the colonial architecture is beginning to crumble, but the city still has some of that sedate, old world feel and is beautifully situated right on the Atlantic Ocean. So we enjoyed ourselves wandering around the city, watched a street festival, and, in spite of the chilly 80º weather, got in some beach time. [No joke, 80º is borderline sweater weather for me these days.]

Later, in honor of New Year’s Eve, the girls and I got together with everyone else to prepare a barbeque feast. We had shrimp and beef kebabs, fish steaks, good cheese and lots of other delicious food. Kudos to all the people who helped cook! (My mediocre skills and I helped by staying out of everyone else’s way, haha) Then, we rang in a new year and a new decade standing on the beach, looking out at the Atlantic (cheesy, but picturesque) and celebrated by dancing until the early morning!

On New Year’s Day, the party was over and it was time to head out. So the other Kaolack-ers and I said our goodbye’s and headed home.

Sorry for the lateness of the update, I really am the world’s worst (or best?) procrastinator, haha. Happy belated 2010 to all of you on the other side of the Atlantic!!