Happy New Islamic Year!

This weekend I celebrated the Islamic New Year. For a little background information, the Islamic New Year is based on the cycles of the moon and is only 354 days long. It's celebrated on the first day of the first Islamic month, Muharram. A major part of the holiday is telling the story of Muhummad’s flight from Medina to Mecca. If you want the kids version of the story go to this website(it’s short and interesting, just copy and paste the site): http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/holidays/hegira.htm In Senegal the kids cross-dress and go around the neighbourhood dancing to the beat of little drums and asking for money, rice or basically anything anyone wants to offer. The best part of the holiday is that everyone eats lots of couscous with a really yummy sauce. I actually had dinner twice because I was invited to Awa Coli’s house but of course had to eat with the family too. That night I hung out with the neighbourhood posie and listened to the guys play the Djembe and sing the African songs they grew up to. All the kids gathered around and joined in the singing to. It’s not often that people spend the evening doing this in Dakar because it’s more urbanized than the rest of Senegal but Balakey explained to me that in the smaller villages this is what people do in the evenings. I’m thankful I got a small taste of it this weekend.

I hung out with a track buddy, Mor. I met his family and his friend who is a reggae singer in the group called School Afia. I watched his music video, which was pretty good and his music definitely makes you want to dance. He tried to get me to improvise with him (everyone here tries to make me do something half-way embarrassing) and I was wishing that you were here Suz to show him your singing talent. Mor and I went a beach that I had yet to discover. We ate cookies, and talked about relationships. This is something that seems to cause a lot of heartache here. After talking to quite a few of my friends, it seems like trust is a hard thing to come across. This partly ties in to the poverty here. People are looking for love, but also for a stable financial situation, so even when you’re with someone, the search for someone better off continues. Or at times parents arrange marriages regardless of the consent of their kids. And then there’s the factor of polygamy. I have the impression that it’s fairly complicated and a lot of people end up getting hurt. I’m thankful not to be involved with that type of drama.

This weekend I also went to a soirée with the track team. Every weekend they get together at someone’s house, dance, eat dinner and give praise to the person who hosted the evening. I attempted to learn the dance. I forget what it’s called… the Sambi, Samba?? I got the very basic part down, but once people throw in the random pelvic thrusts along with the high-energy chicken leg movements… I’m lost. Ok my description does not do the dance justice because it’s actually really impressive, but also very foreign to me.

This week at work everyone’s at a conference that I’m not a part of so I don’t really have anything to actually do relating to CRS. I feel like I should be learning about something about development work, but maybe it’s the fact that some sectors of this field of work involve a lot of administrative efforts. I think I’m more of hands on type of person. The greatest learning experience so far has been living here with a Senegalese family, meeting the people, observing life in a place that most people don’t give attention to, and seeing the reality that others live by with all its similarities and differences. I guess I can’t force the other stuff. That is all from me now. Enjoy the Monday off in the U.S.!