Ku Munn, Muun

In Wolof, loosely translated this means ‘Laugh it off’ or ‘He who accepts will smile.’ This phrase describes this country perfectly. Now that I’ve had time to spend time with my family I’ve realized how important this is. More on this later…On Thursday night we went to Just 4 U for the first time. It was a local band playing traditional Senegalese music, which I really enjoyed. The drinks have European prices since it’s a tourist attraction so we weren’t too tempted to go overboard. We spent a few hours dancing and listening to music, but it was an early night because we’re so exhausted from orientation and had our cultural orientation the next day. This was great because we got to learn about a lot of the important practices before meeting our host families. We had traditional thieboudienne (rice and fish) for lunch that we ate sitting on the floor with our hands. It is much more than just rice and fish, it has a variety of spices, cassava root, bitter tomatoes, and carrots. We also tried a bunch of the juices they make here, including bissap, baobab, and ginger. Bissap juice is made from sugar, hibiscus, and water and has a deep purple color. It has a minty-fruity taste, but it’s unlike anything I’ve tasted before. We learned more about the Senegalese lifestyle, as well. It’s so hard for us to understand and adapt to right now. They are very laid back. We moved in with our host family and began to better understand this. For the past two days with our families we have mostly witnessed them sitting around, but it’s not really out of laziness it’s really just a slower pace of life. They are on vacation right now because they are teachers and Ramadan starts today. All of us were a bit surprised to find that our host families had not planned to take us around and show us the neighborhood or any other activities for our first day so we mostly just explored our neighborhoods. Since none of us have cell phones we were happy to stumble across each other while we were walking around our respective neighborhoods. We also went to Just 4 U again (I’m spending most of my ‘food’ stipend there intended to round out our diets with some fruits and vegetables. But no worries, fruit is dirt cheap at the road stands and bananas have a thick skin so they’re safe.) The Orchestra Baobab was playing and they’re going on world tour after this weekend. We were lucky to catch them; the music is hard to describe since I know very little about music but we enjoyed ourselves. It’s available in the states if you want to take a listen.