IST- Back to Thies

Numu demee?

I have returned to the fine city of Thies for 3 weeks of In-Service Training. This place is incredible! You can get pizza, hamburgers, schwarmas, and more- it’s mindboggling! Haha, I can only imagine how my fellow volunteers who live in isolated villages view this relative material paradise. Their noticeably skinnier faces (remember we have only been at site for two months) tell me that their diets- as scant as rice/millet with sauce sometimes, not much meat, and rarely with vegetables- made them overjoyed to return to civilization. I refrain from telling them what I eat in my town for fear of proletariat uprising. J It has been great to see the returned diaspora of volunteers with whom I entered this fine country, seemingly so long ago (but really less than 6 mos. ago!?).

Language class has taken on a new purpose as I realize ‘Oh, I’ve been saying that wrong everyday; I’m glad no one in my town cared to tell me’. Every grammar rule and every word I learn gets me stoked because I know I will use them every day to communicate. I want to kidnap my language teacher and bring her to site with me.

We have talked a lot about teaching techniques for work. A significant part of my work will be teaching people business skills (how to write a business plan, marketing, accounting, etc.). Teaching people from another culture in another language is a huge challenge, especially if and when their business background is limited or nonexistent. But starting by teaching my peers familiar subject matter in French gives me confidence that the Wolofs can learn the importance of the 4 P’s of marketing too. Besides, as different as people are, they’re still all the same. You just have to get inside their heads (read: culture) to understand how they think and why they act the way they do. Nah mean? I don’t know if that makes sense or not, but that’s a conversation for another time. Also, I talk as if I have the Senegalese pegged, which is far from the case. Plus, knowing how they think about marketing and getting them to see my way of thinking about it (and whether it’s in their best interest to change) is another ballgame. But ndonk-ndonk rekk.
All that being said, training is still training. Being thrust back into a rigid schedule of waking up at 6:30 everyday and having a place to be most of the day is less than fun. There’s no time to just talk, and that is not right! After staying up to watch my Bears not win the Super Bowl, I have been too tired to do much outside of the classroom this week. Thankfully, the past couple days have been replete with sleep.

Super Bowl
I was fortunate enough to catch the Super Bowl live in a hotel in Thies with some other volunteers. Alternately explaining the game in broken Wolof to my Senegalese friend, screaming at Rex Grossman in English, laughing at how ridiculous the French language makes our great American pastime sound, and teaching my Senegalese friend how to talk smack to my friend from Indiana, I watched my hopes of another Super Bowl Shuffle fade. So goes my bizarro life…