Day 4: Being Tourist-y

Good news, no one got lost!  Darra and I left about an hour and a half early just to be sure, but we all found WARC okay.  We got an official tour of Dakar today.  We saw a museum of African art, which was really cool.  The tour was guided, which was nice, although I’m not sure that I understood what they were talking about all the time.  One of the more interesting exhibits was about the pollution in Senegal. It made the point that the newer, more materialistic materials were ruining our world with pollution.  Although wooden bowls and clay pots may seem ancient and rudimentary to us, they are much better for the earth.  It was an interesting perspective on modernization.  We also got to see the President’s house, as well as The African Renaissance Monument.  This is a large statue of a man, woman and child.  It points towards the western-most point of Africa, because it is supposed to represent bringing the African culture to those who have moved to the western world.  It was built in 2010, under the supervision of a president (not the current one) who cared a great deal for the diaspora, although not everyone here likes him.  We actually got to catch a glimpse of him our first day in Dakar, because he was getting into his car as we walked past his house.  The construction of the monument was very controversial, because it was built in a very poor neighborhood, which could not really afford the construction, and a lot of corruption occurred among the contractors.  Afterwards, we had the entire afternoon to work on our first projects of the class.  They are easy enough, just a creative reflection on our first impressions of the city (Sean and I wrote a poem called Jàam a Baax, which in Wolof means peace is good).  It seems as if this class will be mostly a cultural experience, with occasional papers reflecting on what we’ve learned.  Most people seem to love their host families, and it seems that I am not the only one that was surprised by the size of their family.  I think most of the families in Dakar are a mix of extended family living under one roof.  Some of the luckier students have other exchange students in their houses, not from our program but from others.  Many are from other parts of the United States, and I think someone has one from Japan.  The only person who is having difficulty adjusting to their host family as far as I know is Kenisha, and she actually loves the family, but she is having problems with flying cockroaches that are apparently very prevalent in her house.  Hopefully she’ll be able to work something out to overcome it.  So far the only thing I think I am struggling with in this country is their taste for fish.  I really hate seafood, and even though I will occasionally eat some of the more bland types of fish, I would never be able to scrape the meat off of the bones while I am eating the way they do here.  I find myself forcing myself to look away from other peoples’ plates because the fact that the fish on their plates are staring at me freaks me out.  I’m not sure I could ever become accustomed to eating meat that is more or less in its original form.