Theis, Sunday, September 7, 2008

We planned last night for Julien to come and get us at 9:00. Fatime was going to get Patti and Don at 7:30 to go to church. At 7:30 I started knowing on doors to make sure everyone else was awake (we had the only alarm clock). I first knock on Chris and Jerry's door only to have Chris open the door to tell me Jerry has been up sick all night. They decide they are going to stay at the hotel all day to see if Jerry will get to feeling better. Chris says sitting in an air conditioned room sounds a whole lot better than sitting in the heat all day. I understand that! Then, I go to knock on Lyn's door and she is already up. I let her know about Chris and Jerry. Lyn decides to call Aaron to let him know what's up. So, she gets her little French phrase book and heads downstairs. She was really proud of herself that she was able to communicate to the concierge what she needed and reached Aaron. Jeanne and Aaron show up about 9:00, with Julien, as they are concerned about Jerry. Its then that we find out that apparently Don is ill too. They had gotten up to go to church, got to church, and then had to leave the service as Don was not feeling well. Aaron offers to take both to the hospital to see if there is something they both have that could be treated with medicine. Aaron says it would only cost about $30-$40, but both of them refuse and decide to stay at the hotel to see if they will just get better on their own. Patti decides to come with us, so we all leave to walk to Jeanne's house. Today consists of sitting around, basically experiencing a typical day that the family has. It was a lot quieter today with a lot fewer people.

Aaron took us to show us Alfonse's house. Alfonse and his family were Aaron's host family when he first came to Africa with the Peace Corp. He showed us what was his room and gave us an idea of his daily schedule, from training at the Peace Corp center to studying in the courtyard. Aaron told us he was studying in the courtyard one day early in his new "career" when he met Jeanne for the first time.
We sat and visited with Alfonse awhile and he showed us some pictures of himself as a sergeant in the French Army when he was a young man. During this time, Rosa, his daughter, had been busy making "yassef poulet." and they asked us to join them for lunch. Yassef poulet is one of Senegal's traditional dishes It was very, very good. We all enjoyed it a lot and Aaron tells us Rosa makes the best yassef poulet around. We don't have anything to compare it to, but it tastes wonderful to us and I can't imagine anyone making it any better.



















Hanging on the wall of Alfonse's living room are pictures of Rosa and her brothers, including Julien, that Aaron had taken 10 years ago. Everyone was much younger then. Alfonse had four sons, one, Louis Patrice, who Aaron was closest to when he first lived here. He, along with one of the other brothers have passed away. I remember Aaron telling us about Louis Patrice and when he learned he had died. It was pretty sad.

After lunch we just hung around outside sitting and talking. We have made plans to take a walk to the Peace Corp training facility when it gets a little cooler, say around 5:00 p.m. Aaron says our walk to the PC center will take about 15-20 minutes to get there and then about the same to get back. The timing of the walk there is about right. Its Lyn, Fatime, Patti, Si, and I on the walk with Aaron. You realize how simply the people of Thies live as we make our journey thru the streets. They, obviously, need a whole lot less to be happy than most Americans.

We see lots of goats and lambs running loose. But Aaron tells us the animals are marked in some way, so everyone knows who the animals belong to. We encounter a lot of little children along our walk. They are so polite. They are taught to shake hands with all adults, so many approach us to do so. The "handshake" is more just a quick touch but that is how it is done, and nevertheless, we are quite impressed with their friendliness and respect. The whole walk is interesting, eye-opening, and very unique

At the Peace Corp center, Aaron shows us around, giving us a general idea how the training went for new volunteers. He told us after three weeks with his host family, he had the opportunity to move to the center to continue training (as a number of the other volunteers did), but he chose to stay where he was.

Our walk back to the house took a little longer, as we went back a different way. At one point, Lyn asked Aaron if he knew where we were. His reply, "I have a general idea." We ended up coming back to the main road near our hotel which was completely past where we had started out from. Oh well. You just kind of learn to "go with the flow" here. No one seems to be in much of a hurry here and no one seems to get very upset when plans change or things just don't go as planned. Aaron has adjusted, or I should say, assimilated completely to this culture.

Watermelons for sale...........

Peanuts roasting...........

We get back to the house and shortly thereafter, dinner is brought out. It was just chicken and vegetables, but filling enough. We didn't stay too much longer after that as we all wanted to get to bed early and get an early start in the morning to head for Saly and the beach house. Oh yeah, deciding on when to leave and everything involved in that was a major discussion. We made a grocery list of everything we are going to need in the way of food and drinks for the time we are at the beach house. And we have to plan that time, going to the grocery store in the morning, into our schedule for tomorrow. Aaron says we have to come to Jeanne's house for breakfast and to say good bye to everyone before we leave. We're thinking, ok, breakfast, 8:30, maybe 9:00. Yeah, right. Breakfast isn't usually that early. And Aaron wants us to stay for lunch, but we figured that wouldn't be till 2 or 3, so we managed to talk him out of that. So, we all finally agree that they'll come get us about 9:30. We'll load up the luggage, go have breakfast, then head out.

Tonight, I remember to have Si spray the bug repellent around the bottom of the door.

To be continued............