Day 9 - Just Chilling

This morning we had our second lecture in Wolof.  It was much better than the first, in my opinion.  We quickly reviewed the alphabet and then learned some basic phrases in the language, as well as how to count.  It’s interesting, their method of counting is similar to a spoken version of Roman numerals, they count to five and then the word for six is the combination for the words for five and one, and so on.  That way they only need new words for ten, one hundred, one thousand, and so on.  The professor was confused by the English method of counting, he did not understand why we write ten as a 1 and a 0.  I’m not sure he really understood when we tried to explain it to him.  So far the only Wolof phrases I’ve really caught on to are (not spelled at all like this): ‘Nangadeff,’ (How are you) ‘Mangifi,’ (the response) and ‘Jaam a baax’ (peace is good).  I’m going to have to study if I want to pick up on the other words we’ve been learning, because they are definitely not coming naturally.  We had the afternoon free, so our Senegalese partners met us at WARC and the entire walked down to beach to spend a few hours hanging out.  It’s crazy how many people work out on the beaches here.  I don’t think they really have gyms, so I guess the beach is the next best thing for them (they even have outdoor exercise equipment on most beaches) but it’s still kind of overwhelming to have approximately 95% of the people at the beach running laps, playing soccer, doing pushups or boxing against an imaginary opponent.  I guess they don’t consider the beach to be a place for relaxing the way Americans do.  The dogs in the streets here are breaking my heart.  They are so friendly, I just want to adopt them.  I think the Senegalese just view them as pests though.  We’ve had several decide to join our group on our way to school, and they will just trot amongst us for several blocks.  I think if I ever decide to return I am going to tame one of them and bring it home with me.  It is interesting though that they all appear to be the same.  They are all roughly the same size, with a sand-colored coat.  It’s as if someone turned a litter out into the streets once and they grew to populate the entire city.