Day 62

Unfortunately the desert was the only excursion we went on in the month of June, but July promises to be much better in that regard, as we’ve already planned a weekend in Saint Louis and a weekend in Mbour. It’s been a great summer so far. Next week is the last week of school, and after that a lot of the kids will likely leave for the rest of the summer. Hopefully a good number of them stick around so as to make things more interesting around here. It rained last week – only once, and for less than an hour – but it still rained. It was the first time since I arrived here that it has rained, which is pretty cool. The people around here, adults and children alike, kind of freak out a bit when its raining, which was pretty amusing to witness. They’re just not used to it.

Heres a picture of all of the kids.

Another thing they aren’t used to is white people with beards. I’ve been asked on two different occasions why I colour (dye) my beard. I wasn’t asked whether I coloured my beard, because that, to them, is obviously the case. I just told them it’s natural. I wonder if they think I colour my eyes blue. Maybe I’ll tell them I do.

On the topic of things that people are and are not used to. This marks the first time in my life (I’m pretty sure) that I’m living in an area that had an army-enforced Curfew in place. Its a 9 0’clock kerfew, and its been going on since June 23^rd. This is because last week the president tried to change the constitution to allow him to stay on as president with only 25% of the vote in next year’s election. The Senegalese responded by burning cars and protesting, so the President said ‘’nevermind.’’ But a couple of days later more protests broke out. A jehovas witness church was burned down by hundreds of protesters, and also the Senelec building in Dakar was burned down. Senelec is the Electrical company. The protests were a response to the fact that in Senegal the electricity is only working for about 5 hours a day. Since then the electricity

has been pretty good. Cool. Hopefully things cool down now and people stop burning cars and buildings. I’m still sceptical about the motivation behind the protests though, I don’t think it’s merely a coincidence that these protests occur only a week after the Canucks lost the Stanley Cup. The day of seventh game of the finals, I heard more car horns being honked on the street than usual, and I’m pretty sure it was in anticipation of the big game.

So despite the Curfew, my coworkers and I actually went out the past two nights. We got invited to a wedding on Wednesday night. The connection is that the bride did the hair of one of the women I work with. So we went. It was cool to experience a Senegalese wedding reception, though we didn’t attend the actual ceremony. Last night we went to a nearby bar thats literally 64 meters away from the Daara. I had no idea it existed until we had two new volunteers come to the Daara that had been here the year before and said ‘’hey, lets go to the bar that’s 64 meters away.’’ or something like that. So we went and it was cheap and it was good times.

here's a picture with the bride. I do not know her.

Tomorrow we’re taking all the Daara kids out to Sendhou beach, which is outside of Dakar. It’s to celebrate the end of the school year. Should be a fun time for everyone and a good celebration for the end of the school year. These two kids, we'll call them Cheikh and Fallou, will probably be pretty excoted about it.