Asalaam-maalekum

Everything has been great so far. They call this the honeymoon phase of studying/living abroad when everything is new. The next phases on the list are hostility and humor. Hmm...

Mangos are in season here and are quite fresh and juicy. Some of the most fun and messy fruit I've ever eaten :-)

We started Wolof classes today and have our french placement test this afternoon before we start sometime next week I think. Wolof is a lot of fun the way it bounces out of the mouth. Lots of r, n, g and k sounds and with all of that together it's kinda like saying spring a lot. Plus the direct translations are all a treat. Greetings have a huge process to them going through "where/how are you," "I am here only," "where is your family," "they are there only," "is anybody sick," "no, god be praised," "did your evening pass with peace," "peace only," "are you working," "yes, god be praised." etc. etc. etc. It's quite a trip because the teacher doesn't really speak english, only french but luckily that's come back very quickly. It's still a bit like throwing my head in a blender, which actually is quite fun and refreshing. I haven't been stimulated this much in a long time, kinda like clearing out cobwebs in the brain.

My roommate is fantastic - good thing since he's the only other guy on the program. All the girls are pretty cool too, a good mix of interests and folks that have or haven't travelled. Everyone on the streets loves talking to Americans since we aren't french and the teachers are some of the most fun and engaging profs i've had in a while. Very refreshing.

My main story for today is one that kinda haunts me a bit. Last night a guy approached us that was diabetic and had a high sugar level. It'd be one thing for this to happen in the states because it's easier to brush these guys off or get insulin from the hospital. But here there's somehting of an insulin shortage and it's really pricey. Like $100 per pack of doses. Folks with diabetes are supposedly not given visas to come because of this issue.

Anyway, he had all of the equipment and took his blood sugar level right in front of us and showed us the book that goes with his equipment and it was clearly ridiculously, well dangerously high. I have pretty limited knowledge of diabetes, but it sounded like it was pretty pressing, and he was clearly very distressed. He had been to two hospitals and a diabetes clinic and there wasn't any free insulin available like there is from time to time (didn't realize the lion's club did neat things like give insulin to folks here). But we walked with him to the pharmacy to see what we could do but this was before we knew how much it was going to cost. It wasn't until we had spent half an hour with this guy that it was apparent we didn't have anywhere near enough money.

So then we were really pressed ourselves. He clearly had a problem, and we were clearly much better off than he was. The easiest solution would have been to walk back to the dorms and talk to folks about splitting the cost. But it was really psychologically and emotionally grinding to talk with this guy since he was in such a bad way and we weren't up for shoving that on the other kids in the program. So we talked to a couple of kids that were in an internet cafe and rounded up some cash - roughly %70 of what he needed and wished him luck and went to dinner. Relief set in so quickly after walking away from him - it was surprisingly easy to forget about him and make ourselves feel like we'd done all that we could even though we hadn't and if he didn't get the insluin soon he was gonna be in a bad way.

Then once we got back and eating dinner, he was outside again looking for the other %30 from the other kids. He understood that we didn't feel comfortable asking everyone else but he really needed that other bit of cash. Well, we eventually got the cash since everyone else was already worried about him and were going to walk back to the pharmacy with him since he insisted on injecting the stuff in front of us to proove he wasn't using it for something else, but we figured out the pharmacy was closed. Now what? Well we talked with some of the folks around and they mentioned there's a pharmacy just down the road, so after insisting that we really did trust him at this point and didn't feel like taking a ride on the bus and he really didn't have to leave something for collatoral so he would have to come back and thank us, we said our farewells and bon chances and sent him on his way.

It's tough to make yourself help someone like that. He was well dressed but it's so impossible to trust anyone that it took an hour for us to really see what a mess he was in. It's not like he was gonna be getting off on insulin, and he was clearly in pain. But in spite of these obvious signals it felt more normal to give the money to an organization to redistribute the funds instead of a direct gift - one that wouldn't have the loss of administrative cost. More of how removed we are from tough choices in the states. We hide our garbage, homeless and sick. Hopefully this kind of thing won't happen all the time.