Ndank ndank mooy japp golo ci naay

Ndank ndank mooy japp golo ci naay ~ slowly, slowly one catches the monkey in the bush. This of course meaning step by step one accomplishes one's goal. I myself would like to catch a monkey, but I'm not so sure they have those around here. Lots of geckos and iguanas though. Not to mention the bats. Well, maybe I should mention the bats.

The bats are incredible! They're those great big fruit bats that you see on tv sometimes and every night just before the 4th call to prayer, they come to feed on the flowering baobab tree in our courtyard. Usually 4 or 5 at a time, they come in and fly away. Sometimes circling our roof-top patio that gives us such a great vantage point of their feeding. I still get a bit giddy when they come by every night - a bit like the german family (my parents hosted last spring) freaking out about all the squirrels in town. Once it starts to get closer to morning, they all fly back to their homes in the caves of the coastal cliffs.

As for the rest of my family beyond the bats, they're great too. My host dad here is a Wolof writer, editor and professor which is definitely coming in handy. We joke a lot since his English is only slightly better than my wolof - so we usually stick away from french just for kicks. The mom is great too. She's got such a fun attitude and can usually be found lounging around the house or joking with her oldest son. In total, they have 5 children, 4 guys and a lady ranging from 16 to mid-30s. Everyone lives at home of course.

Skip following paragraph if not interested in family details -
oldest son - Pape has lived in paris for the last 15 years or so working on his PhD in computer science so he's completely westernized. at meal times no one is supposed to talk, touch food with the left hand or look up, but the first night i ate with him he was chattin' it up, lookin around and passing food with the left hand. The rest of the siblings don't like him because he's given himself the authority to tell folks how to live even though he's never in town except for the rare vactation.
second oldest son - Cledor is a divorced, 32 year-old Baay fall. He has a daughter from that marriage that has only come to see him 3 times. As for being a Baay fall, this is a group within the Mauride brotherhood of Islam that are kinda like Rastas. I'll post something about them later, these guys are really interesting folks. He studied law, but teaches high school now because he doesn't want to be a judge since that's too serious of a gig.
daughter - Bijou didn't talk to me at first, but apparently that's a sign of respect? And I thought she might hate me because she and the third oldest son were screaming at each other and dropping my name a bit, but apparently my Wolof teacher thinks this means she likes me... Hmm... She has actually gotten nicer as time has passed... We'll just have to see.
third oldest son - Soer teaches munchkins in elementary school. He's a bit thugged out, but loves kids so it's clear that he's a good guy and has a taste for simplicity. We get along pretty well which is good since we probably hang out together the most. Judging from the direction a number of our conversations take, it seems that one of their main motivations for hosting a student was to show them that life is much harder in Africa than in the states... I'm not gonna say they're preaching to the choir, I'm just hoping they'll pick up some of my feelings about this stuff so they can see a bit more of the complexities that are in the layers of folks from the states.
youngest son - Makxo didn't really talk to me either at first but now we're buddies. This is good. He's the same age as boy and really likes video games.