Check! Another First Week of School Down

I just finished my first week of school. This year I’m teaching 15 energetic second graders. My day involves a lot of wiggly children, some tattling, enthusiastic learning, loud voices (I need to work on that one stat), and hugs all day long. The latter is a novelty for me because I’m used to teaching older kids – they usually don’t pass out affection for free. Anyway, my class is very diverse. I have students representing: Sierra Leone, Spain, The Congo, Germany, Belgium, Nigeria, The Gambia, Burundi, America, Japan, and Paraguay. Most of my students speak 2-3 languages, and they are quite the adorable bunch!

No Lights, No Action

We were told before coming to Dakar that the city experiences power outages. I guess you don’t realize until you are in a situation how often it occurs and how it feels. At my place, the power goes out every 2 to 3 days. Sometimes it simply flickers and comes back on… other times it is out for a mere 30 minutes. Usually it is out for a number of hours. Today, it was out for 7 hours.

So, you have some options here:
• A sweaty, hot nap
• Read a book and sweat
• Go to school and hope the power is on there
• Try and find a friend that has power or a generator running

Or...????? I’ll be working on building up my alternative plans. It appears that I'm going to need them.

Je Suis Désolé = I Am Sorry

I’m bordering on criminal! I’ve been driving my car around without license plates for the past week or so. (The Embassy helps us secure plates, but it takes awhile.) I’m not sure when I’ll get them, and I didn’t feel like leaving my car sitting in the school parking lot for another month or so. Anyway, this is a common problem for new, incoming people that purchase cars. You wait around until all the paperwork is final (and in your name) to legally drive, or you take a gamble and drive before you technically should. Anyway, the key word in the previous sentence is GAMBLE.

I was driving down the street the other day and there was a cop standing in the middle of the road. He made eye contact with me and waved me over to the side of the road due to my lack of plates. To say the least, I was freaking out!! He asked for my papers. Je suis désolé…I don’t have any. He asked for my license…Je suis désolé again. (We’ve been told not to give them the originals because they’ll keep them. Some people even make fake IDs or keep photocopies in the car.) Anyway, he kept asking and asking, and I kept saying, “Je suis désolé, je suis désolé…” And let me tell you, I truly was!

Finally, he made me turn my car around and pull in next to his police car. He whipped out an official looking pad of paper (for a ticket?) and that’s when I tried sliding some CFAs his way. A crisp 5,000 CFA bill ($10) would do the trick...or so I thought. He immediately wrote 20,000 ($40) CFA’s down on his pad of paper. This went back and forth for awhile - me claiming that I only had the 5,000 CFAs, and he demanding that he wanted more. In the end, he did take my bribe money and quickly slid it under the 'ticket' pad and waved me off. I'm still shaking in my boots.

Random Pictures from Senegal