salaam aleikum! that is how people greet each other here; the proper response is maleikum salaam. it has been an exhausting two days since i arrived, but i will try to sum up the most important bits.
i am living in the home of the program director, mr magueye sy. he has two wives (in islam, you can have up to 4), ndeye khady and absa, and between them they have four little kids: cheikh, who i havent met because he is staying with his grandparents for the summer, yacine, who is a 1 year old girl, idy, and, ousmane. the last two are babies, only a few months old.
magueye is one of the kindest people i have met. in 2002, he had just left law school at cheikh anta diop university when he decided he wanted to bring volunteers to his country and help them have a good experience here, so he founded senevolu. i think he pretty much runs everything himself. he has been taking me around downtown dakar; yesterday we saw some of the important government buildings and today we went to the markets, which were totally overwhelming. tomorrow we are going to ile de gorée, where many of the west african slave ships used to depart.
this keyboard is exhausting; the letters are all switched around and it is half in arabic. typing is tough!
i miss everyone very much; right now i am still feeling extremely overwhelmed and tired. i will post my photos next time!

first post

in 16 days, i will be leaving chicago for dakar, senegal, where i will be volunteering with an ngo called enfance et paix. the name means children and peace, and their motto is: "si la paix est or, que l'or soit pour les enfants."

if peace is golden, let the gold be for the children.

after babysitting for two awesome kids all summer, i wonder if maybe it's kids who are the gold. either way, i'm excited. i'll also be living with a senegalese family and trying not to get any of the terrifying mosquito-borne illnesses i keep finding on webmd.

until i leave, i don't think i'll be blogging too much, because it feels very weird. i'm not a compulsive sharer, at least not with people i don't know or can't see; but this blog is for the readers, not the writer. i'll probably keep my own personal journal.

here's the website of the organization i'm going through, if you want more info:
http://www.senevolu.mypage.org/