Palm Sunday

Sunday, April 9, 2006

Today, another volunteer and I decided to go to church for Palm Sunday. While nearly 90% of the population of Senegal is Muslim I believe, there are Protestant and Catholic Churches in Senegal. The service started at 10:00 am, so I left my house at 9:00 am and walked to the Place de France. That was a mistake. According to my brothers, I walk fast and it still took me 45 minutes, so it wasn’t a short walk by myself in the streets of Thies. I should have taken a taxi for several reasons, but I didn’t. I ended up getting to the Place de France to meet the other volunteer, but neither one of us knew where the church actually was. After asking a few people we found it a couple of blocks away.

There were about 70 to 100 people there, once it got started. Any visitor had to stand up and say who they were, which was intimidating, cause I had to introduce myself in French. The service was very laid back. There was a lot of singing in French. Basically, over the course of 2 hours, I understood about 3 words. Actually, I’m not going to lie, I started to lose interest after a bit because I didn’t get the jokes being told. The congregation was laughing, but I wasn’t. The other volunteer felt the same way. It was kind of weird though, seeing it was Palm Sunday, but from my recollection, their was no reference to Palm Sunday. It was interesting.

I believe some of the churches and cathedrals, if not all, have services in Wolof. The church I went to had a Wolof hymnal, which I looked at and understood some, but not much. It was pretty nice because we don’t have any real Wolof books at the Training Center, so it was cool to see written Wolof being used.

Afterwards, I continued with my stubbornness and walked back to my house. I don’t know why I didn’t take a cab, but I really didn’t have much else to do. But I got home to face a large bowl of rice and fish.

I'm starting to discover the things that remind me of home here. I think everybody has to some extent. I found a place that sells the gummi bears I like, good pizza, and so on. Its going to take some getting used to, the withdraws of things I enjoyed at home and can't here, and things that just remind me of home. Don't take this the wrong way, but inorder to keep the sanity up, every once in a while, you need a Coke.