Il pleut

It's the rainy season here in Senegal. There’s a couple of bouts a week at least where the sky goes from partly cloudy to dark velvet gray to oops I’m wet all over. I guess a bit like a distracted munchkin that wets its pants. That’s the sky in Senegal these days.

But that’s okay! It’s just more time to hang out with my host family or other students. Both of whom by the way are great. They’ve both got dynamics that are taking a lot of getting used to.

With the family, I’m the youngest and I think that’s probably much more of an adjustment than the cultural stuff. I mean, sure we eat on the floor – sometimes with our hands – don’t exactly use toilet paper, stay out regularly well past 3 or 4 in the am (everybody except me I promise, it’s been exhausting so far keeping up with conversation), and speak one of two languages that isn’t English. But I’m really quite used to there being someone younger than me. Other notes about the family… we live on this great neighborhood courtyard that appears after a stroll down a robo-sketchy alley (it develops the graffiti on the walls along the path was all done by my brother).

As for the other students, I’m one of two guys out of some 30 odd kids on the program and this hasn’t exactly been easy. I've always been interested in the way that groups work out some sort of organization to them. But some of these girls were really nasty to each other. Very quick to say things about people that they didn't even know. I think it's much more the type of cut-downs fashioned to build each other up than to really criticize folks' character, but it still makes me kinda shut down. It's okay, getting better as time goes on. It's such a small group that being exclusive is its own punishment.