Beach Trip 2K6 (1)

Sunday, April 16, 2006

HAPPY EASTER!!! The countdown to leave for the beach started sometime ago. After much planning amongst myself and a few other trainees, reservations had been made for 30 at a hotel at Toubab Dialow. A allhum (in a sense, a charter bus, but not entirely) had been chartered to pick us up from the training center on Saturday and the hotel on Sunday.

The excitement was there. Those going to the beach, pretty much had the shakes all of Saturday. We ended up leaving right around 1:30 for the hour drive to the beach. The bottles of cheap Senegalese liquor floated freely throughout the bus.

When we got to the hotel, we all stood there in amazement. It was absolutely awesome. The beach was stunning as well. You can see pictures of it online. After dropping off our bags in rooms, most all of us decided to hit the beach. The water was pretty cold, but it’s a small price you have to pay when you are at the beach. I ended up staying in the water only shortly and played some bocce ball the rest of the time down on the beach. The afternoon was pretty much wasted away to some extent.

By the time night rolled around, after people did their own thing for dinner, the group got divided. Some people were gonna stay up pretty late, other people were going to try and get some sleep. I was in the later group, going to bed around 1:00. Normally I would be down for partying, but going a month without having a solid night of sleep, I wanted to try and see if I could get it at the beach, unfortunately, it didn’t work. I still woke up a few times.

When morning rolled around, waking up around 7:40, I decided to take a long stroll on the beach and take some pictures. I passed several kids along the way who kept saying "bonjour", so I started talking wolof to them instead of French because it was a wolof area, but either the only word in their vocabulary was "bonjour", or my wolof was far to advanced for their comprehension.

When I got back from my walk, I discovered that one of the trainees fell off a cliff the night before. He fell about 10 feet onto the sand, landing on is side. I ended up seeing him around 11:30 the next morning, and he was pretty sore.

After eating breakfast with a bunch of trainees at the hotel, I went down to the beach. I got in the water and it was even colder than the day before. I refused to stay in for more than 10 minutes, but the waves were awesome. The minute I got out, I looked and saw a trainee coming out of the water in great pain, holding here arm. She had dislocated her shoulder. It was not cool. The Peace Corps Medical Office in Dakar was called within minutes. Peace Corps was sending a vehicle to pick her up. During the next hour, Peace Corps Senegal, whether it was the medical staff or training center staff, they were in constant communication, it was quite amazing. The two injured volunteers were picked up about an hour after the call (Thies, where the vehicle came from, was about an hour away) and taken to the hospital.

The allhum wasn’t coming till 5, so after lunch, I sat down and did my wolof homework than laid down on a hammock and passed out. It was quite nice. The bus ride back was uneventful, some were hung over and others were tired. Overall, I had a good yet uncrazy time.