Day 2

Hmmm...day two...it was awesome. It is quite late here. I am beginning to think that I will leave the update emails to Travis...and I will just update this blog. Yes, that leaves a risk of overlapping information...but I'm sure no one will mind all that much. Day two, it didn't start too much earlier than day one. I believe we left our house at 10:30 or so...mabye 11:00. First, we went to Yoff. Yoff is where we stayed for the majority of our time here last year. Yoff is a...subdivision, if you will, of Dakar. There are several areas of Dakar, Yoff is one of them. Grand Yoff, where we are currently staying, is another. We split into about 4 different groups to prayerwalk Yoff. As we prayerwalked, the personnel here also taught us about the Lebou culture, and about Islam. We walked by several mosques as well as a very prominent religious figure's mausoleum. We prayerwalked the beach for a while...it was beautiful. Blue water...cool breeze...gulls calling...fresh ram skins and trash under your feet.... It was great. Ryan and I met a group of young girls. We were mutually amused. We did our best to communicate, and it went pretty well. The interesting time is always when the children don't understand that we don't speak their language and they just go on and on in Wolof...expecting you to understand. As I told Ryan, and as I soon showed him, it is these times in particular that I propose blabbering quickly back to them in English, to see what they think about that. This particular time, I chose to say to them, "I don't know what you're saying!!" I would repeat this as often as I had to...as often as they bursted out in Wolof. By about the third time...they had begun to mock me. It soon turned from slightly audible to a definite yell. By the fifth time, they were all shouting back at me, as soon as I had finished, "I dunnawatya sayin." It was definitely very cute, and Ryan got quite the kick out of it too. Later on, Ryan had his opportunity to promote the spread of English. He taught a young boy to say, "What's up, dog?" while shaking hands. Very Ryan...to do something like that. After prayerwalking, we made it to a compound in Yoff of a friend of the workers here, and we had lunch...this was at 2:00pm. It was pretty much the best meal ever. Most of our team agreed that it was literally one of the best things they had ever eaten. It was called "Yassa Poullet" or something of that nature. It was another common bowl meal, eaten with our hands again. It was some kind of chicken with a mustard and onion sauce. It was prepared, of course, on a bed of vegetables and rice. Pefect blend, it was indescribable. While at that compound, we also drank attaya...which is a quite regular occurrence. It is served in three rounds, each progressively sweeter. It is served hot and is quite tasty. They drink it all the time. We stayed at that same compound drinking attaya and visiting and playing with kids until probably close to 4:00. After that, Travis and I had some business stuff to take care of with one of the men here, so we did that. From what I hear, the next hour or two were spent, by the rest of the team, with the Talibe boys. That is where we found them when we returned. The Talibes are young boys who have been given to an Imam, and Islamic holy man, to learn the Quran. They are basically street beggars, made to live in poor conditions so as to attract more sympathy, and thus, more money from the people. Last year, they had scabies and sand fleas very bad while we were here. This year...they had the scabies pretty severely again a week or so ago....some of the workers here gave them one treatment of medications and asked the Imam to continue it daily, as they would be unable to return that often. Either he did or he didn't do as they had asked, but either way, they were mostly healed of the disease. There were a few that weren't doing so well, they are getting a trip to the hospital tomorrow. While visiting with the Talibes this afternoon, we talked and played some soccer, as well as bandaging some scrapes and cuts, and sharing some fruit. After we finished at the Talibe house, we came back to our house in Grand Yoff. As I may have already mentioned, the evenings, after dark, are fairly uneventful among the people...as far as our work is concerned. We spent the evening enjoying each other's company, and having some ham sandwiches for dinner...yes...regular ham sandwiches. Meg, Rachel, Andrew, Chris, Travis, and I played some whiffle ball for a while...it was fun. Lots of journaling took place, lots of early reclining took place, but most importantly, a fun and thought provoking conversation took place. It was nothing particularly profound, just a good, real, honest conversation...about whatever came up. Erin, Rachel, Meg, Brea, Frisbie, and I enjoyed this talk. Afterwards, I realized how late it was getting...and that I still wanted to update everyone back home before bed...so here I am...the only one awake...and I don't care. God is good. He is blessing us already in numerous ways. I hope that you are all doing half as well as we are...if you are...you are smiling. God bless. These are just a couple of boys we saw while we were prayerwalking While we were walking the beach, some fishermen were bringing their boat in...naturally, our team helped them out. That is me with some of the kids at the compound where we had our incredible Yassa This is Erin with one of teh girls there at the same compound...they are quite fond of playing with the hair of a "Toubab"...particularly the hair of blondes...it intrigues them...it is different. These are just a very small sample of the Talibe boys that we worked with this afternoon...they love "photo"s