Jan. 30, 2011
I arrived in senegal this morning a 6.00am. As I exited the plane to board the shuttle to the terminal by two young airport employees who welcomed me in french and actually took the time to check off my name on a list of passengers. The effect was quite charming although, as I was soon to discover, it gave an exaggerated impression of the organizational standards of Senegal. In customs, there were no signs telling us where to go and no officials to offer us assistance in finding and filling out our landing cards which we did by ourselves anyway. When we turned over our passports to get stamped some officials asked a long series of detailed questions while others barely glanced at the passports before stamping them violently. An SIT representative met us in baggage claims and checked our names off a list before leading us to the luggage security scanner. As I placed my bag on the conveyor belt destined for the X-ray scanner I noticed that most people were walked through the checkpoint without processing their luggage. Then I realized that there were no attendants, no guards, and certainly no incentives to obey security protocol.
Outside, our guide led us to a bus sequestered by SIT to take us to a hotel where we would be staying the week. On the way we were accosted by a horde of young local dudes offering to carry our bags to their cabs so they could overcharge us and drive us to the wrong place. At the bus we met our program director Souleye Diallo and our program assistant Bouna Fall, both charming men who speak about 10 languages each. Bouna tells us that we should get some sleep at the hotel but he'll be back in about 6 hours to take us to lunch.
Right now its 11:00am. We got in to the hotel somewhere around 7:00am but the sun was still down. I met my room mate Jon as he stumbled out of bed to unlock to the door. After I settled my things he went back to sleep (he was still exhausted from yesterday's travel) and I met briefly with my group to get briefed on the hotel and some basic Wolof.
When I got back to room I found Jon still awake. He admitted that he couldn't sleep. I wasn't in the mood to sleep either so we struck up a conversation. It wasn't long before we realized that all hope of sleeping that morning had vanished so we got dressed and went to breakfast to continue our conversation which concluded with a significant levellevel of comfort for both parties. This led me to assume two things:
A.) going through high school and college programs has made us quite adept at befriending new room mates, and
B.) a study abroad program in Senegal tends to attract similarly minded people
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