You win, Africa. You win! (Part Two)

Ok so let's continue where I left off before...I had just come back from a village "experience in Toucar and would be given one day of rest (Monday) before heading out on another 5-day excursion. For the amount of physical activity we did NOT do our entire group was unusually tired. I guess those really long bus rides will come back to bite you. Little did we know that the longest bus ride was still ahead....

Our itinerary for our excursion was
Tuesday - leave for the Village of Gaya, the home town of the Senegalese Program Coordinator
Wednesday - chill in Gaya
Thursday - leave Gaya for St. Louis
Friday - hang out in St. Louis
Saturday - leave for Dakar
*Note: Do you notice that out of 5 days, 3 of them include traveling, which means bus time?

Tuesday rolled around and we left the school an hour late, as usual. I am warnin everyone at home right now that for the first month back home I will probably never be "on time", in fact the words "on time" hold no meaning for me now and are more of a theoretical concept than a reality (just a heads up!). Us students soon learned what it meant to have a full day and our Senegalese school director soon learned what it meant to have to deal with cranky American students. We were on the bus for, probably, 3 hours or so when we pulled off the road to visit the house of one of the leaders of the Tijuana (sp?) Muslim brotherhood. He proceeded to give us a 2 hour lecture about the origins of his grandfather, who was one of the main organizers and founders of the brotherhood. The house we were in was the nicest house I have seen in Senegal thus far, it was incredible! It was spacious, had leather furniture, was air-conditioned, and would have been an upper-class house in the states. However, all I could think about during the presentation was that the man giving the speech was only wealthy and powerful in within the brotherhood by birth. No one outside that family, no matter how capable, would have access to the resources, money, and power he controls. And so all I could think about were the begging children who we had met right outside his house and the poverty of the whole town.

Anyways, we got back on the bus around 2:30, starving, because we hadn't eaten anything since 8:30 that morning. Before getting lunch we made a detour at a random town where we could order traditional Senegalese shoes. Yes, I did order shoes when I was there, of course! We then stopped in St. Louis for lunch (at 5 pm) at the house of an author by the name of Louis Camarone. We would be spending a lot of time with Louis when we returned to St. Louis in two days, but for right then we were only getting lunch. We got back on the bus and drove until we reached a sugar planation and packaging factory around 8 pm, so after dark. Besides the fact that the air smelled like Willy Wonka's factory, the place was pretty basic and we didn't see much besides sugar being placed in boxes. We finally rolled into Gaya around 9 pm! We were on the bus for about 12 hours! Mind you, if we had just drove straight from Dakar to Gaya, it probably would have taken around 5 hours! Oh well, we were there and the village was REALLY cool.

The house that we would be staying in was the house of our Senegalese program director and when we arrived they have cushy mattresses and pillows set up for everyone in a large open-aired room. It's hard to describe but where we were sleeping was kind of like the equivalency of a sunroom in the U.S, it was part of the house but detached from it. While in Gaya we ate A LOT and sat around A LOT. Wednesday, we saw the town's water irrigation plant and then the only other thing planned was a cultural "soiree" late that evening, so to fill the time we were instructed to eat and eat and eat. Good grief, Senegalese hospitality was getting to become a little much. They wanted to treat us so well that it was difficult to handle. For example, we were served two meals that consisted of only meat that had been saturated in this oily onion sauce. Oh boy, we all knew that that was gonna hurt later! The soiree that was hosted in our honor that night was incredible! It featured Senegalese wrestling and I kind of felt like I was in a weight room due to the mass levels of testosterone that surrounded me. But let me tell you, I have never seen a village populated only with incredibly, athletically fit people!

We left Gaya the next day for St. Louis and already the stress and fatigue from traveling plus the food we had been eating was starting to make people sick with stomach bugs. When we arrived in St. Louis two people were down for the count. Between the time we arrived and the time we had dinner, which was about 7 hours later that number had risen to 5 people. The following morning 3 more people, including myself, had succumbed to sickness, making the total 8 out of 13 students who were sick to their stomachs. I don't have too much to say about St. Louis other than the hotel we stayed in was right on the beach and was SO nice! It was air-conditioned and had a pool and everything! We left St. Louis the next day and made good time in getting back to Dakar, no stops this time, where we have spent the past couple of days recovering from being ill.

And that is where the blog title comes from. Because Africa pretty much wiped out our entire student group this past week, however we are all doing much better now and have become even more aware of the American food we miss because I do not think we will be eating large, traditional Senegalese meals for at least a week!

What's to come in the following weeks is that classes will end here and most of the students will be heading back to the U.S. within a week or two. However, I will be here for an extra few weeks doing what I want to do, keeping up with my french, and living the Senegalese life. I'll keep ya posted!