Twitter and YouTube information

Per an excellent suggestion by one of my followers, you can follow the new MAJ Twitter account at: @MAJ_Senegal

or by clicking the link: www.twitter.com/MAJ_Senegal

We are also working to set up a YouTube channel to post videos of MAJ activities online. Follow us at MAJSenegal at www.youtube.com

Thank you!

The new computer for MAJ!

Here are some photos of the new arrivals! We ordered 2 desktops and 2 laptops with the collected funds and received everything yesterday and this morning. With a little help from the more technologically gifted people in the office, the new machines are up and running! We can now begin work on getting the MAJ website in place, as well as continuing to update the newly created Twitter and YouTube accounts. Thanks again to all of those who have made this project possible. 

Also, its getting to be that time of year again. We're three weeks out from Tabaski in Senegal, known in many parts of the world as Eid al-Adha; one of the biggest Muslim holidays of the year. A symbolic sacrifice of a male sheep is required by each father of the household, and so, about this time every year, thousands and thousands of sheep descend on the city. Its quite an experience. The picture below I took on my way to work. Its publicity for the Senegalese lottery, that instead of giving away money, gives away expensive sheep right before Tabaski. If you look closely, you can see the sheep on display! Look for more posts on Tabaski as we get closer. 

A blog post of mine wouldn't be complete without a food update. Here is the latest dish: "Moroccan stew" with the chicken from the market plus all local veggies of course - eggplant, carrot, white yams, potatoes, and lots of onion and garlic. Yum!

MAJ on Twitter!

Another quick update on the progress of my service project with YAM (or MAJ in French) - the youth organization connected to ASBEF that I'm working with here in Dakar. Computers are actually cheaper here than I expected, and so we are looking to buy a couple desktops and a couple laptops for YAM to store documents and better record and evaluate activities "in the field" (out in the neighborhoods). I am really excited about this step, because it will mean that MAJ can start saving all its documents onto a hard drive and not just have hand-written reports of activities that hopefully get handed-down year after year.

MAJ now has a Twitter, so if interested, please follow them at: @MAJ_Senegal, or for the full URL: www.twitter.com/MAJ_Senegal. We are also scaling-up other social media projects, especially with the International Conference on Family Planning coming to Dakar in November! I helping them to set up a Google+ account and a YouTube channel to better broadcast videos of their activities and reach more youth. Stay tuned for more updates! 

I think that this blog might quickly become a food blog...

I am quickly finding out that one of my favorite things to do here is to go shopping for food and then figuring out how to cook it. As many of you know, back at home, I am quite the foodie - I absolutely love to eat and try new things. The last couple times I was here the food was great, but I have to say, its even more fun when I get to go the market, pick out ingredients for myself (many of which I'm unfamiliar with) and then try to find ways to cook them.

Markets are one of the best things about Dakar, in my opinion. They are huge open spaces, sometimes kept with in converted giant buildings, but they always seem to sprawl out and around any enclosed spaces. And you can get anything at these markets, meaning that right next to where you can get really nice expensive jewlery in Marché Tilene (where I shop), you can also find 5 ft. long baracuda on ice. Its pretty cool, very inexpensive, and a great way to practice Wolof (and look like an idiot, I'm sure). So today I went, and braved buying a chicken - up to this point, I'd been a little bit nervous about the concept of buying a whole after it had been sitting out awhile, but I love chicken here, so I went crazy and bought a whole one for the equivalent of about $4. I also stood and waited for a friend to buy some fish, which in such a hot environment quickly led to me sweating like no other. Seriously, and I mean this with out any hyperbole, I left the market looking like I'd just jumped in the ocean. Some men selling fish thought it was pretty funny I was clearly so hot and started chatting with me in Wolof, all the while fanning me with these wonderfully effective oopaki (fan in Wolof) while I stood there sweating. How crazy I must have looked. Anyway, left feeling successful, only to find when I got home that "cleaned" chicken in Senegal means that they hide the feet inside the cavity of the meat. Startling, but now I know a bit more about cleaning chickens. Anyway, I was pretty happy with the end result:

This was a meal I made a couple nights ago. Fish are best cooked whole here - note the head and eyes to the left of the lime. :)

Here are some more pictures of my life here.

This is a picture about a two minute walk from my apartment. Its by a main road into the city that I usually catch public transportation from, and in the distance you can see the African Renaissance Monument (for more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Renaissance_Monument).

This is some graffiti right by my house. “Yen'an marre” ("We’re fed up" is a rogh translation from Wolof) has been the name public protestors have been calling themselves since protests began in June against President Wade, his attempts to modify the Senegalese constitution, and the powercuts that have been ongoing all summer in Dakar. As a result, graffiti like this is found everywhere in the city.

Last weekend I went to a friends house for a party, and quickly found out it was a Bollywood party of sorts. Bollwood music and Indian film culture has become huge in Senegal (for more information, see http://www.sify.com/news/never-say-no-to-bollywood-in-senegal-news-international-lcnp4gaccjf.html). Theres a school in the suburbs that teaches Bollywood dancing, and here are a couple pictures of some of the students. The dancing was amazing.

And finally, a picture of me and the Dakar-Soleil Rotary Club President exchanging club banners with the rest of the group at last weeks meeting. Everyone was very, very nice and the meeting was in an air-conditioned room! 

ASBEF update

I'm having some trouble with the slideshow feature in Blogger, so for right now, one picture is all you get. If anyone knows anything about posting pictures up on Blogger, let me know! Thanks.

However, I do have a new update on my work with ASBEF. I met with the youth organization, the Youth Action Movement (YAM), this Sunday as part of their monthly group meeting. We talked more specifically about how the funds I collected could be put to use, and I how I could get involved with the organization. I am meeting with the Director of Information, Education, and Communication (IEC) along with the President of YAM on Friday to prepare a plan to present to the Executive Director of ASBEF next Monday. As the first part of the project, I am looking to help YAM create a website, create a Twitter account, and utilize other social media tools to better reach youth via the internet. I am also planning on organizing a training session for YAM to help members better understand how these tools can be used educate youth and inform them about upcoming YAM events and activities.

Also, the International Conference on Family Planning is being hosted this year in Dakar! ASBEF, as the member organization of IPPF in Senegal, is participating in the conference and has a large role in preparing the pre-conference ceremonies. For more information on the conference, please see the link: http://www.fpconference2011.org/

I hope to be involved in anyway I can! 

Rotary Gatherings and Blood Drive

Hi everyone!

I apologize for not posting anything sooner, but I hope to make up for this by posting twice now. It has been almost two weeks now since I arrived, and while, in many ways, I am still feeling like I am not always sure which way is up, I am also starting to feel very acclimated. The heat is still incredible, I guess I must have forgotten this from the last time I was here in October, but everyone has been assuring me that come November, it will start to cool down. Because it is so hot, the pace of everything is much slower (especially my brain), but this is something I am slowly getting used to.

I went to my first Dakar Rotary meeting last week. There are 6 Rotary Clubs in Dakar, and my host club is the Dakar-Doyen (the head club in Dakar). My host counselor has been a wonderful host so far, coming to pick me up for meetings and calling to check-in every now and then. The Dakar-Doyen club has also been incredibly generous in showing the famous Senegalese "Terranga" (roughly translates to "hospitality" in Wolof), making sure that I feel at home in the Rotary community here and helping me to plan my visits to other clubs in the city. The meeting was held at the Hotel Terranga downtown, a beautiful hotel in the center of the city, with air-conditioned (!) conference rooms. This first meeting gave me the chance to introduce myself to the club and find out a bit about the sort of projects that they are involved with in Dakar. I also presented the Kalamazoo Sunrise Rotary banner and received a Dakar-Doyen banner in return - and soon I will post a photo of this exchange. I found out that there are a number of American Rotarians visiting Dakar, and I look forward to the opportunity of using my English a bit and helping with translating, if need be. At this meeting, I also made contact with the local Rotaract Clubs, of which there are 3 in the city. This gave me a chance to talk a little with people my own age who are invested in the service work of Rotary. They told me about a blood drive they were hosting the following Saturday, and invited me to participate.

My host counselor also invited me to an Inter-Club Dinner the following Friday at a downtown hotel. This was a wonderful experience because it helped me see how large and connected the Rotary Clubs of Dakar are, and gave me the opportunity to meet many of the members. Additionally, the food was delicious. Through contacts made that evening, I have plans to attend the Dakar-Soleil club this evening, and attend a few more club's meetings next week. I am also planning on giving a more formal presentation on myself, my academic interests, and my home and sponsor club to the Dakar-Doyen Club in a few weeks.

The following Saturday I went to the Centre National de Transfusion Sanguine (National Blood Transfusion Center) to check-out the Rotaract blood drive. I took some photos that I will post in a slideshow that can be viewed by clicking on the icon on the right side of my blog page. The picture above is of me and the Rotaract-Doyen President at the blood drive. The drive was quite successful, Rotaract members told me - they estimated they had collected at least 30 pints of blood by the time I left. It was an interesting experience, and I hope to help out more with the next drive they have. I also plan on attending the Rotaract-Doyen meeting scheduled for this Friday.

In other news, I have successfully braved the giant open-air markets of Dakar armed only with my feeble vocabulary in Wolof to go grocery shopping. And it has been so much fun every time! I am getting a better sense of prices, what's in season, and to know what I can and cannot waxaalé for (the act of bargaining). And with the help of my Senegalese host sister, I have a much better sense of the Senegalese university system. School will not start likely until November, so in the meantime, I have decided to sign up for additional local language classes through the center where I took my classes in Dakar when I studied abroad. I am taking Pulaar (also known as Fulaani), a language spoken by the Peul who make up about 33% of the population. I am also taking more Wolof, and really would love to become as fluent as possible by the end of my trip. Pulaar, however, is new for me. For the time being, I have two phrases:

1. No mbadha-dhaa? (How are you?)

AND

2. Mi jangii pulaar hande. (I learned Pulaar today.)

Quite a vocabulary, I know.