Salam alekum from Dakar! After a year of fundraising, two weeks of training, countless injections and a heap of goodbyes, I’ve started my 11 months in Senegal. I’ll be teaching English and IT at Diapalante, an educational resource centre in Kaolack, with my partner, Zara and (hopefully) blogging to keep family and friends up to date. I can’t promise the fantastically written content on being a foreigner in a vastly different culture that my cousin Lucy provides (over at goeastmychild), but if you’re interested in egocentric ramblings, read on.

After teary goodbyes at Gatwick on Friday, the first excitement came when our flight to Lisbon was delayed by an hour and a half, leaving just 20 minutes from when we landed and when our Dakar flight was due to depart. As we stepped off the first plane, we were whisked into the back of a minibus which took us straight to the next. The Dakar flight, in turn, was delayed 20 minutes (we later heard this was because they had been waiting for us). The view out of the plane window as we landed in Dakar was a brilliant first impression of Senegal – the pictures don’t do justice to how fantastic the lights looked along the coast. After bumbling through buying our visas and a temperature check by a man checking for Ebola, miracle of miracles – all but one of our 12 total bags made it across the luggage Bermuda Triangle that is a delayed flight connection. Mr T (Project Trust’s Senegal Representative) met us at the airport and took all six of us to his home in Yoff on the outskirts of Dakar.

On the first night four of us stayed a few minutes away from Mr T’s in what I believe was a friend of Mr T’s flat, which had beautiful morning views over the buildings and the ocean. We’ve moved rooms every night as family members come and go, and it’ll be nice to settle into our project at Kaolack when we arrive, but Mr T’s hospitality is fantastic. On Saturday he took us to get phones with Senegalese SIMs (after the mandatory chorus of “toubab” from some very cute kids outside the apartment) and called a friend to exchange our Euros and Pounds to CFA in what seemed to be a totally legit transaction in his living room. He took us for a first walk along the (absolutely gorgeous) beach, which is, it seems, constantly lively with people playing football or selling things. In the afternoon Mr T’s cousin’s wife made us our first taste of ceebu gen (Senegal’s national dish – fish and rice) which was beyond delicious. We ate sat on the floor with 7 of us around the one huge dish, Beth and I struggling to hold spoons with our right hands (we’re both left handed, but here you only eat with your right). After food came bouye – juice made with fruit from the baobab tree which tasted a little bit like calpol, and was (there’s a theme emerging here) delicious. The six of us attempted to help with the washing up, although we might have got in the way more than we were useful, and after a while were told to leave the rest as she didn’t want us cutting our hands on the rough scourers. That afternoon we went in the sea; the currents are very strong and the waves can be a bit vicious, but there’s a lifeguarded area. The day was rounded off nicely by what I can safely say was the best mango I’ve ever eaten. The food is so good here that I’m tempted to scrap this whole writing malarkey and just post photos of my meals.

Sunday was overwhelming for Zara and I; we saw the other four off as Mr T took them to Yen where they’ll be staying for a few weeks, then headed into Dakar. Mr T had told us to take the number 8 bus or a taxi into the city, after a while asking locals where to get the bus and no luck, we took the taxi. Unsure of where exactly we wanted to go in Dakar, we asked for “centre ville”. This might not have been our best bet, as he dropped us in a square in what seemed to be a mixture of an industrial and residential area. Determined that we’d come across something interesting if only we walked in the right direction, we started our day in Dakar. We quickly came across huge areas of markets, where we definitely stood out as foreigners – lots of people came up to talk or show us what they were selling, they were mostly all very friendly although it was often difficult to move away without offending anyone. After a lot of walking and chatting and politely refusing various goods, we asked one of the people who came up to talk(Sidube) where the locals go to eat. I’m glad we asked as he showed us to his mother’s restaurant, which was a small unassuming building that we would never have picked out as a restaurant from the outside. She served us another fantastic ceebu gen, and Sidube explained why it’s important to eat from one plate of food here – if you share a plate, your hearts are connected, if not your thoughts will always be different (or something along those lines, he definitely explained it better…). Once we’d finished, he showed us to the bus stop; we saw lots more of Dakar on the way home, notably a huge amount of goats as people prepare for tabaski. That evening we went back to the beach where we talked to some more people and ogled the fish being grilled and sold. Later, Mr T called saying he’d be back around 11:30, so we decided to venture out solo for dinner. The locally owned shops selling food seemed to be closed for the night, so we found ourselves in a burger takeaway; the experience is much nicer than in the UK – there was proper table service! This did lead, however, to an awkward conversation with the waitress, asking in a roundabout and disjointed way if people tip in Senegal. Turns out they do; that, or she played us very well. We’re thinking of starting a toubab chart for all such awkward errors.

I’ll update again on today (Monday) and the next few days soon, but for now I hope this was at least mildly interesting to some of you. Keep in touch, we should have more regular access to internet by the time we get to Kaolack next week, although the date we go seems to get postponed every other day (more on this to come). Bye for now xx