Assalamalekoum. I am now writing y'all from Africa.
On Saturday, September 20th, I gathered with 57 other people to stage in New York, and then ,we all loaded onto a direct flight from New York to Dakar, Senegal. We flew all night to reach a hot and humid airport in Dakar complete with many foreign sights, sounds, and smells, but we were welcomed with open arms by our country director and two buses to take us from the airport to the training center in Thies, Senegal where I am now.
The past week has been full of class room sessions, vaccinations, interviews about our desires and fears, intermittent down time with volunteers in hammocks, Attaya (tea), fiddle playing, guitar listening and back country bocce ball competitions. Although the sessions have been full of power points and workbooks, the excitement and necessity of the information has kept me on the edge of my seat. Most of the information up to today has been on general Senegal, but today we were given a small window into the future we will experience in the next 27 months; we received our language designations. I will be learning a dialect of Pular called Pular du Nord. My limited knowledge of the expanse of the Pular language and the people I have met here who are Pulars adds to the excitement of the clarification of my role here. My small group of two other trainees worked with our Language instructor, Oumar, to learn and practice some basic Pular du Norde in the short time we had to meet today, and I believe that our team will be motivated and assist one another in this almost daunting task.
I apologize to all as for the delay in my notification of safe arrival here in Senegal, but internet has been slow if present at all since I arrived here and our schedules have been very full. I believe that this is a good indication of things to come in the future of this blog as I am now in one of the largest cities in Senegal and I have poor service. I also will not be dedicating too much time to spending on a computer on the internet as I want to be present here.
That being said. I am wonderful here in Africa. The other trainees, the staff, and the current volunteers are all wonderful people that have very different backgrounds, motivations, and personalities. I have been overjoyed by the glimpses of current volunteer's experiences and photos which help for the excitement level to overshadow the enormous amount of work that will need to be done in the next three weeks to prepare me to be effective as a volunteer. My love to all of you.
Haa janngo jamma
Justin Feeman
Good morning, how are you?
ReplyDeleteMy name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys traveling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.
I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of used stamps because through them, you can see pictures about fauna, flora, monuments, landscapes etc. from all the countries. As every day is more and more difficult to get stamps, some years ago I started a new collection in order to get traditional letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately, it is impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are very small countries with very few population, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.
For all this, I would ask you one small favor:
Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from Senegal? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in Senegal in order to increase my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and an original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:
Emilio Fernandez Esteban
Calle Valencia, 39
28903 Getafe (Madrid)
Spain
If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.
Finally, I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.
Yours Sincerely