Life here in
Senegal has been very different than our lives in the United States. We knew that our lives would change but
didn’t realize necessarily how many things would be different. In some ways, we have learned a whole new way
of life here. Most things just take
longer here so patience is an absolute must.
We wanted to share some of the things that have become part of our lives
since we have been here.
Water
As you can see,
the drinking water here is not clean.
Fortunately we do have a water filter.
We never drink water from the tap, but use a pitcher to put the water in
the filter.
Unfortunately most people
here do have to drink the water as they don’t have any other option. Thus it allows different sorts of disease
causing bacteria to get into their systems and proves to sometimes be fatal for
them without money to pay for access to medical treatment.
Eating Senegalese
Style
In Senegal, many families eat
using a bowl with about 6-8 people around it.
You are supposed to eat from the section in front of you in a pie shaped
piece. If there are things in your
section that you don’t want, then you can put it in the center of the bowl
where anyone can take food from. When we
have been to different villages, they have been kind enough to provide us with
spoons to use to eat with but many families eat just using their hands. Also your left hand is considered “dirty”
here so we have to eat with our right hand.
Needless to say since Bekah is left handed, she doesn’t usually eat very fast or get very much to
eat when we eat Senegalese style.
When we buy meat
here, we have to package it on our own. We
can’t just walk into Meijer and buy a pound of ground beef or chicken
breasts. We buy our beef from a guy in
town at the main market. He charges an
extra 200 francs (about $0.40) to ground
it up for us so we have opted for that option.
Meat is more expensive here by about $1.50 a pound for beef. 
Once we get the meet home, Bekah weighs it
out and packages it to put in the freezer. When we buy chickens, we have to buy them whole and de-gut them ourselves. Then we divide the chicken into meal size portions to freeze.
Fortunately probably for your sake, we seem to have lost the pictures of
Lucas de-gutting the chicken.
Traffic here is a
difficult one to explain. The best way to describe it comes from Captain Jack Sparrow, "They are more like guidelines than rules." People here
don’t follow the rules, and they basically look out for themselves and don’t
worry about other people. At times,
people here can drive very aggressively.
On the other hand, other times if there are two lanes on the road, they
manage to take up both and seem to not have a care in the world.
Movie Stars
Many times we feel like movie stars here. We get stared at pretty much everywhere we go because we are "toubabs" or white person. Most of the time when there is a group of kids, they yell toubab at us as we walk by. It sometimes is a disrespectful thing for the kids to do, depending on their attitude when they say it. However on the other hand, some kids are just really excited to see a white person. Especially when we are in villages, the kids get so excited to see a toubab.
Our favorite time when we have gotten called a toubab was when we were walking home from the John Huffman School one day. There was a little boy standing at the community water well in our neighborhood, and he was screaming and crying at the top of his lungs. As soon as he saw us, his crying took a screeching halt and he gasped and said in a faint whisper, "toubab." And he just watched in amazement as we walked by.