Hey again everyone!
I hope you all have been doing well! Laura and I have just gotten back from our latest trip to Casamance, the region in the South of Senegal, and the Gambia. It turns out that Casamance is pretty much the best part of Senegal, as they actually have trees there. Lots of them. We went down there with a group of five other people who are volunteers or students here and took the boat that goes in between Dakar and Ziguinchor, the main city in Casamance. The boat was an over night trip, but we had a cabin with bunk beds so it was lots of fun. That was also on the night before my birthday, and a lot of other people in the group had birthdays around the same time so we had a communal birthday cake to celebrate.
In Casamance we stayed the family of the best friend of the girl from Penn who was in Senegal last year. His name was Almamy and he was really great and showed us all around Ziguinchor. We stayed there for one night and after having a traditional Casamance dish at his house for lunch which all of our other friends were invited to as well, we headed to Cap Skirring, which is supposed to have some of the world's best beaches. Unsurprisingly, as it is Senegal, there are cows on the world's best beaches. We stayed there for two nights, then went to an island for one night, then to a little village where we were able to rent bikes. There was a French man named Claude who looked like Santa Clause who worked at our campement there and he met up with him to have oysters for lunch one day. They cut the roots of the mangroves that have the oysters on them and then they set fire to the whole pile and after a while you have oysters to eat. I tried a few, but I can't say I was a huge fan.
After that village Laura and I headed back to Ziguinchor with John, a british guy that we met in St. Louis who is travelling West Africa and kept appearing throughout the course of our trip. We went back to Almamy's house, and he convinced us to stay another day in Casamance with him instead of going on to Gambia the next day. That turned out to be a good thing, because the next day we heard from one of his friends in the military (Almamy is friends with everyone) that for the first time in over a year the separatist group in Casamace had fired at some military vehicles on the roads in the northern area. So then he decided that instead of us taking the road up to Gambia, he would put us on the military plane that his friend was the pilot of tomorrow and we would go to Dakar and approach Gambia from the other direction, so that was an adventure in and of itself.
We finally reached Gambia after a long drive and stayed for the most part in this touristy area along the coast that had amazing things like supermarkets. We stayed at the YMCA there, which we both found rather amusing. One night we did go to the South of the country to stay in a small village in a treehouse. The difficult thing about Gambia was that though it is an English speaking country, they are really bad at it. We have a much easier time communicating in French in Senegal than in English in Gambia. It was a nice place, but we are glad to be back in good old Senegal.
So now we are back at the University and going to spend most of the rest of our time here trying to get all the work done that we need to do before we leave in just about a month! Since most of our friends have already gone home, we'll have less distractions so hopefully we will manage to be productive. I think we might have a bit of trouble going back to Penn next semester where we actually have to do work, but I'm sure we'll manage.
I miss you all, but it would be very long till I see some of you!
Love,
Christiana
