Week 1 The Compound.

We all arrived in Washington DC on August 29th. Many of us had been communicating through facebook and making plans to share rides from the airport to the hotel. The situation became more complicated because the hurricane shut down several of the airports and so everything seemed quite chaotic. I was pretty lucky that my flight had not been canceled from Laguardia so I made it in on time. When I landed I got a phone call from Missy saying that a group of them had arrived at the airport and were at baggage claim. I met up with Missy, Jubal, and Adrian. When we got to the hotel there were many people already there. Everyone was introducing themselves to everyone else. It was a Peace Corps frenzy.

We went through “staging” in D.C., as it is called, which basically included speeches by people who work at the Peace Corps D.C. Headquarters, activities where we would discuss our fears and aspirations about going, and most importantly a lot of Stagier bonding. Before we even left D.C. we knew it would be a good group. We only stayed one night in D.C. But it felt like a week! In the morning we all checked out of our rooms and split into our groups and drove in two buses to the health clinic where we all got our yellow fever shots.... there was a lot of walking around D.C., more bonding and then our uneventful journey to the airport where all 55 checked in, ate our last U.S. Meal for 2 years, and then boarded the South African Airlines airplane.

The plane was scheduled to land at 5:45AM. We got off our flight in the capital of Senegal in Dakar. As soon as I got to customs, I already had to deal with what we now discuss as, “unwanted attention”. The customs official gave me some compliments that were both flattering and creepy at the same time. When I got through customs, I was immediately approached by a porter who wanted money from me to take my luggage to wherever we were going. I told him no and was then greeted warmly by a tall blond man named Chris Hedrick. He is the Peace Corps Senegal program director. At 6AM we all loaded our stuff into a large truck and then ourselves into two peace corps buses and drove for about an hour and a half to the training center compound.

So far, I can tell you am am LOVING this place. I was welcomed by the mosquitos and the Peace Corps staff members. We arrived here on the Muslim holiday called Korite... (from what I understand is the end of Ramadan) so all the staff members except for the Peace Corps Staging coordinator (Mike) were on vacation. There were other 3rd year volunteers here though to help Mike out with everything that needed to be done.

Over the last few days we have been getting to know each other and we have had many survival Wolof lessons and we have begun our cultural and technical training. All the Peace Corps trainees have had interviews with the staff members to determine where we will ultimately be placed and we will find out our “permanent site” languages on Monday. While Wolof and French are the national languages, most of us will be placed in rural areas where we will learn smaller local dialects (but of course we are currently taking survival Wolof lessons because most of the country still knows Wolof). My Wolof is already getting pretty good but I keep mixing it up with Tibetan... strangely enough. The other volunteers and I like to practice our Wolof with each other and with the Senegalese staff members. One of my favorite expressions is "Amulsolo" which means, "ne pas de probleme". It turns out we won't be getting training in French at all but the little that I know will probably come in handy.

On Tuesday, once we know which language we will be learning ultimately, we will be going to our training villages. We will each have our own host family who speaks our language and there will be 4-8 volunteers in each training village. We will be living with these families for 2 months and 90% of our training is going to be mastering the language. The other 10% is going to be agriculture and cultural training. We are all so excited for Monday to find out what languages we will be learning which will also give us a general idea of which region we will be in.

Tomorrow we are going to leave the compound for the first time. It is not a very big compound so our entertainment is somewhat limited but we've been having fun just hanging out, training and learning, talking with the Senegalese staff, having jam sessions, playing frisbee or volleyball, observing the stars and wildlife etc. It has been a blast. Speaking of, the wildlife here, even just in the compound is so fantastic. We have doves that fly around everywhere and nest in the roof of the gazebo which we call the disco hut (which amusingly enough actually has a disco ball). At night we like to hang out in the gazebo and there are some bats that come to visit us and hang from the rafters. Giant flocks of bats fly over us every single evening and it's so amazing to watch. Of course, I also enjoy looking at the lizards and giant caterpillars that infest this place. http://a6.idata.over-blog.com/500x375/3/04/96/63/s-n-gal-avril-mai-2009-868.jpg This guy is my favorite kind. Tomorrow the staff and the 3rd year volunteers will FINALLY be taking us all on a tour of Thies so we will be let out of our very cushy prison.