Day 2: Getting to Know the People and the City

Today we were paired with students who attend the university here and are studying English.  I believe they are all part of the English Club.  Me and another girl were paired with two girls from Dakar, and the students from both groups were led on a tour of some of the university’s more interesting, in particular those associated with marine biology and chemistry.   Their facilities do not appear to be as high-tech as those in the United States, but they get the job done, and they seem to be studying some pretty interesting things.  (Not that I understood any of it, my brain was not built for science.)  After we were given a small amount of money and permitted to go out with our partners, so that they could show us some of their favorite places around the university.  The school is much bigger than I had initially realized.  According to Dr. Thiam approximately 80,000 students attend the university.  We got along very well with the girls we were paired with.  Turns out, girls have the same interests everywhere in the world.  We mostly talked about dancing and boys.  We taught them the meaning of the words ‘cougar,’ and ‘summer fling,’ and they started planning a party they want to throw while we are still in the country.  We learned that Senegalese women also believe in wearing heels which are much too high to ever be comfortable in the name of fashion and then praising God when they are finally permitted to take them off.  The one thing they couldn’t wrap their minds around was that not all women in the United States want to have children.  I think children are too important to the culture here for a woman to not plan on getting married and having a family.  One of our partners came from a family of ten, and she hopes to have five children.  During our free time, we Americans also decided to take the time to explore the beach across from the university.  Apparently it’s one of the most polluted beaches in Senegal, so no one really swims there, although we did find one person snorkeling just off the coast.  It was still a very pretty shoreline though, and the water was very clear.  I was surprised to find out from our Dakarian partners though that many of them can’t swim.  It seems dangerous not to have that skill set when you live in a city surrounded by water.  I suppose it’s possible that most of them don’t have much reason to go into the water though.  Most of the water seems to be fairly shallow close to the shore.  I don’t think pools are a thing here, which amazes me since the weather is so hot.  I guess that would be considered a waste of water though, which is somewhat of a precious resource here.  The water from the tap isn’t drinkable at all, our professor has informed us that we will almost certainly get sick if we drink it, so we have to buy water to do things such as brush our teeth.  The locals supposedly drink some sort of filtered water, but our professor has forbidden us from consuming anything but the bottled variety.  We aren’t even allowed to drink juice that isn’t bottled in case it has been made with the local water.  With that said, the juices here are fantastic – I will be going out of my way when I get back to the states to find someplace which sells La Gazelle’s pineapple juice.