My new home: St. Louis

Holy SHIT, a lot has happened!

So, it’s been quite a while since I’ve written, and a lot has happened, so much condensing will be done here.  First and most importantly: we have now moved to St. Louis, where we will be going to school at Université Gaston-Berger for the next 8 months.  I’m actually writing from Dakar because I’m here for a few days for Tabaski.. .more on that later.

Anyway, so we left for St. Louis about two weeks ago.  I was quite excited to leave and finally see the place where we would be spending most of our time in Senegal: UGB (Université Gaston-Berger).  So, the day of our departure, we all got on our big Toubab bus and hit the road. 

The journey went quite smoothly.  Outside of Dakar, Senegal is very undeveloped, so we got to see a lot of untouched natural areas.  Looking out the window of the van, I really got the sense that I was in Africa.  Tons of baobab and acacia trees (pictures to come), sandy fields with people cultivating millet and peanuts, and tiny villages where horse carts are the main form of transportation and agriculture is the only way of life.  It was quite an interesting sight, and definitely not like the US.  Once you get out of Dakar, there are very few people and even fewer tall buildings (excluding Thiès, a relatively large city on the way to St. Louis).       

As I was saying, the journey went quite smoothly… until we hit the pot holes… and then the sheep… and then the cows.  Yes, every form of domestic animal you can think of passed in front of our bus.  Most of them we almost hit.  But all survived, hooray!  And, oh the pot holes.  They came up all of a sudden.  For several hundred kilometers, the road was quite smooth, albeit small (only 2 lanes), until suddenly only half the road seemed to be there, and the rest was who knows where… probably in the piles of rock on the side of the road.  So, for about 50 km, the road was pretty bumpy.  My ass definitely hurt.

But then the road smoothed again.  And finally, after 5 hours (and only 260 km or so), we arrived on the outskirts of St. Louis.  So, we’re going along and along.  We sort of pass on the outside of the city and don’t see much, except for dumpy water and lots of trash… and then all of the sudden we stop and start turning left, and I see the tiniest sign that signs “Université Gaston-Berger.”  Our university literally appeared out of nowhere, completely in the middle of God-knows-where hot-ass village, Senegal.  My new home!