Arrived in Africa

I'm finally here! Internet access at La Citronelle, the hotel where I am staying for the first few days of orientation is pretty spotty at best (especially for me, for some reason). Combine that with frequent power outages, and I am trying to write things to post in advance. I'm currently relaxing in the room, trying to kill some time during the longest day ever.

The flight from Washington was pretty uneventful. South African Airways was really quite nice - especially the bizarre in-flight safety cartoon - and the flight went quickly. When we approached Dakar, it was still dark, so that only a grid of orange lights, interupted by their reflections on the ocean inlets could be seen. It looked much like any other city, except I was struck by how dark it was, especially when approaching the airport

The twenty or so CIEE students on the flight were basically the only passengers on the jet that actually disembarked in Dakar, while most of the others were remaining for another 10 hour flight to Johannesburg. I cannot imagine looking forward to a flight that was even longer than the first leg. Even after immigration and customs and baggage claim - kind of a joke compared to the super security of Dulles - it was still dark when we met the CIEE staff who would taKe us to the hotel. The airport was a little overwhelming after a long flight, but it was an interesting first look at the chaos of Dakar. It was a relatively short drive on the bus - a rented Japanese tour bus with elaborate curtains - but it was a good look at the outer areas of Dakar. I was struck most strongly about how Dakar is a city in transition - something I knew, but didn't really understand the scale of it until I saw it in person. You get the sense that things are always changing, but that it is unclear whether the city is growing or degressing.

We are currently staying in a hotel cross the street from the study center and the pleasant cafe where we eat all our meals this week. La Citronelle is quite nice, not fancy by any means, but immaculately clean. I am staying on the top floor with two other girls in a nice room with a tiny balcony and a bathroom. It's styled as a little residence with a nonworking kitchen, a living area (that is converted into a sleeping area) with television, and another bedroom and bathroom. We also have airconditioning (again, dependent on whether the power is on) which is a real luxury. We have been here since 6am, so we got a nice breakfast of croissants and juices and Nescafe, and a lunch of beef and vegetables with French bread and bissap juice (that's for you, Amy!).

Then a group of us went to explore Mermoz, the little neighborhood that could actually be where our host families are, and to figure out how ATMs worked. I like it here so far - after getting adjusted to the amount of goats, cows, stray dogs and cats and garbage around - it's actually an extremely lively neighborhood with lots of shops and marketplaces, a mosque that projects some sort of readings all the time, and a large boulangerie that smells strongly of bread dough. There is so much activity here. I like watching the extremely well-dressed women leave the car rapides, the brightly painted busses they have been crammed into without even being wrinkled, and seeing fancy imported cars and a horse and wagon on the same street. I also noticed the sheer amount of people outside sitting or standing around and talking when it's too hot to be outside on a Sunday; there are lots of groups of white plastic chairs in circles outside of homes that are filled with ten or fifteen people debating and discussing things. I think that in this neighborhood where students are at so much of the time, we aren't a target of scams or begging as much as we were in the airport. We made a friend ("un frere senegalais") who was a genuinely nice security guard at the bank who taught us how to say some Wolof words and told us which of us had names that sounded like they could be Senegalese (Abbey was one of the best, he said).

There are so many impressions in the hours I've been here, and I haven't even seen the ocean yet; it's about a mile walk. It's hard to believe that I'm actually in Africa, and yet it is very clearly Africa - no replication of Europe here. We have dinner later tonight and orientation starts tomorrow morning.