After some 30+ hours of travel and 4 flights, IHP Cities has arrived in Dakar, Senegal! We've spent the past week getting acquainted with out new city, meeting the people, seeing the sites, and tasting this country's delicious food.
With warm weather, fresh air, and a constant, refreshing sea breeze, there's a lot to love about Dakar, but my favorite element so far has been the Senegalese attention to people. One of the first things our country coordinator told us is that Senegal has a people-centric, people-first culture, and that has been continuously reinforced in the classroom and my home-stay.
This week, we've learned how to greet people we meet, an act that is extremely important here. To not greet a person is to not acknowledge his humanity and so to ask someone to do something for you without greeting him first is one of the biggest offenses in the book. That must be why the Senegalese greet in not one, not two, but three different languages before getting down to what they wanted to discuss. So in the past week, I've learned how to say, "Hey, how are you?" in Arabic, French, and Wolof, the most prominent ethnic language.
Sometimes, this attention to the person means that things take longer than they would in our time-centric Western society. People are often late to meetings because they stopped to talk to a friend on the sidewalk or were busy checking in on their family. Our Senegalese country facilitator has joked that this loose attention to time is called WAIT, or West African Internal Time. Time here is all about giving people the time of day.
In my home-stay I've also seen manifestations of the people-centric culture. Random family members and neighbors are constantly wandering into each other's homes and spending the night or the afternoon. Each house is home to a large extended family. I'm pretty sure that my household consists of about 12 people from three generations, though I'm still very unclear of who actually lives here and who simply spends their time here. Even more confusing is who is the child of whom and who is married to whom. The whole family gathers around the same tray for dinner every night, but we always seem to be adding new members.
Speaking of food, my home-stay roommate and I helped the women of the family prepare a huge feast today for their monthly family meeting. Every month, all of the people of the same age within the family meet to talk and spend time together. Our house, which is usually bustling with about 20 people at any given time had about 40 people this afternoon. We spent the whole afternoon cooking for the event, but cleanup was super easy with so many hands to help out!