First Day on the Job

Thursday, May 18, 2006

My work life in Dakar started today. It can be a scary place for someone not accustomed to its pace and style. Fortunately, I made it through my first day alive, yet slightly injured.

Steve, the volunteer I’m replacing, stopped by the house around 8:45 to get me. Over the next few weeks he is going to show me the ropes of Dakar, including the various ways to get around. We left the house and got on a car rapide to CDH (Horticulture Center). These car rapides are quite interesting and intense just themselves. They are “buses” that are often times packed with people and passengers literally jump on and off. The benefit of this mode of transportation is that they are cheap. A trip on one could cost 100 CFA (about 20 cents) versus a taxi costing 1000 CFA ($2).

At CDH, I did a lot greeting. Greeting here can take up a good portion of the day. There were a few people that I shook their hand more times in a span of 5 minutes, than I have shaken everyone over the course of a day in the States…different place, different, rules, different norms. I met up with my counterpart, and the three of us continued on our journey.

We headed to another one of my potential sites, the Sauve Garden. To get there, we took another mode of transportation called a clando. Like the car rapides, there are trade-offs to taking them. They are much cheaper than taxis because they are unmarked and might possibly be illegal (yet not enforced) yet aren’t typically as safe. Just based off the modes of transportation, if you aren’t a risk taker to some extent and don’t want the rush of feeling like you might have a brush with death sometime throughout the day, you might not survive here.

We got to the Sauve Garden and did a tour of it. It was on the grounds of a “technical school.” I met some some of the nicest people who were working on their portions of the garden. We talked to them a bit and stayed for about 45 minutes so I could get a feel for the place. I don’t know how much I will be at this garden in the future, but it was nice to see and know how to get there.

Following the Sauve Garden, we jumped onto a Car Rapide and rode for about 20 minutes or 3 or 4 miles down the road to the Citi Des National Unies Jarden. Apparently, it was one of the first gardens of its type in Dakar. From an aesthetic and marketable point of view, it has a lot of potential, but the method for development doesn’t always come easy here. Most of the women who work the garden were at CDH, so there was very little greeting.

Well, that was my day and it wasn’t even 1:30. I got back to my house and picked up a book to read a bit before we at lunch around 2:30. Following lunch, I got a nice 3 hour nap in…I don’t know if I needed it but it is what happened. I should have studied my Wolof and Ag stuff, but didn’t.

I woke up to the sound of my brother banging on my door asking if I wanted to play some basketball. While I have played basketball a few times here in Senegal, each time brought some sort of negative outcome (During my first days in country, I played in my Chacos and developed some bad blisters which took a month and a half to heal; then another time, I was playing with my brothers in Thies with some other folks and popped my air bubble in my shoes), I was not hesitant in playing.

As we were walking to the neighborhood court, we passed one of my Peace Corps doctors. It was kinda strange seeing someone I knew. We made it to the court and I was the only white guy in sight, actually, that is how most of my days are…it is an interesting feeling (I’m not saying this from a racial standpoint at all, but from the obvious observation of differing colors).

At the court, there were a decent number of people. There were some pretty tall folks as well as people playing barefooted or in flip-flops (I still haven’t mastered this popular technique). My brothers and I got involved in a half court game. I played alright. My team won, se we got to play again.

In the next game, I was playing defense, went for the ball, and I think I hit the other guy’s hand. I heard a pop and felt a rush of pain to my hand. I figured I had just jammed it, but the rest of the night, it just didn’t feel right.

We ended up playing a full-court game for about the next hour or so, into the darkness of night. The game got kinda confusing because in a sense it turned from a regular game of basketball into nothing…it just kinda fizzled out.

We headed home for dinner and called it a night. Friday is going to be another new day in the big city.