Our first week in Dakar

We've been in Dakar for over a week now and things are finally starting to settle down.  My apologies for not posting sooner, between the jet lag and the lack of a working cell phone, I didn't take many pictures.  In my head, I didn't want to post until I had some pictures and I was stuck in an unending loop of no pictures=no blogging.  In the first few days, I got out of the habit of carrying my cell phone everywhere because I couldn't use it without a new SIM card and that wasn't as high on the priority list as sleeping.  Even after I got the new SIM card, I didn't want to use my prepaid time on the Dakar network and so I had my phone for phone calls and rarely if ever pulled it out for anything else.  Kind of novel and a little freeing.  However, again, I haven't taken as many pictures as I wold like.  I will remedy that this week and flog myself with a fresh pastry as a demonstration of my remorse.

Our arrival in Dakar was uneventful.  We arrived around 11am and the Embassy had sent over a lovely woman that expedited us right through the airport and customs.  Which was a good thing as the 3 hours of sleep I got on the plane made me incapable of forming a coherent sentence in English, much less French and since I seem to have the most French of the group *cough, cough Keegan cough cough  2 years of French cough cough*, it was nice to have someone there to help us.

David's new boss was waiting outside in a large van.  He had seen my pictures of our luggage and had envisioned Imelda Marcos and her shoe collection, no doubt, but the reality is that our bags aren't terribly big, just numerous.

Only 12, sheesh!

They drove us to our new house where our fabulous sponsors were waiting to welcome us with a fridge full of groceries and some CFAs (the local currency).  I can't even begin to describe the relief at knowing we didn't have to try grocery shopping or ordering food or even leaving the house.  Our sponsor and David's boss happen to be neighbors and great friends, so we all went to dinner together at a fantastic restaurant on the beach. 

We came home exhausted and discovered that we also didn't have hot water in the bathrooms.  While the water is never "cold" per se, it certainly wasn't warm.  So brisk showers were taken and we had the beginnings of our list of things to call housing about the next day :)

Our other water issue is that we can't drink out of the faucets.  All the drinking water has to be distilled.  We have a distiller and water bottles in the fridge, but old habits die hard.  Sure enough on our 3rd night here, I lined up 2 glasses of water and 2 cups of herbal tea for us to take our anti-malarial meds.  After the girls and I had each taken our meds and I handed David his cup, Keegan said, "Is this water from the distiller?"  Of course it wasn't, I had filled up all the cups at the faucet.  I had a moment of panic, actually several moments, where I envisioned the rest of our weekend spent in the bathroom or at the as-yet-to-be discovered hospital. There wasn't much we could do at that point.  We would either get sick or we wouldn't.  The girls assured me that it was ok and they knew I hadn't done it on purpose.  So they grabbed some bowls from the cupboard to sleep with and we said the only family prayer I've ever heard with the phrase, "Dear Heavenly Father, Please help us not get the trots." and went to bed.  We were indeed blessed and nobody got sick, but I haven't touched the faucet since.  Lesson learned!

Our house is beautiful and spacious enough for all our things and more.  I would post pictures, but I'm waiting for our Household goods (HHE) to arrive.  The pictures that housing sent to us left something to be desired.  (As much as I'm sure you're dying to see what it looks like, I'm sure you'd rather wait for my pics than to see the picture of the dining room table being moved by a gentleman with his pants coming down.)

The bugs.  Well, fortunately bugs don't bother me much, but that doesn't mean I want to share living space with them.  So far ants have been our major pest, but there have been a couple of tiny roaches and mostly little beetles.  Hardly an infestation, except the ants.  We had been hypervigilant about not leaving food out until we discovered that our ants aren't attracted to human food, they are cannibals of the highest order.  David killed a couple of bugs right before bed and rather than clean up the carcasses, he left them.  The next morning the hallway was swarming with the little barbarians, hauling away bug bits through my closet, to hole in the wall behind our bed. 

Yes that is a snail and yes it could eat her toes in one bite.

We did have a very fun trip to N'Gor (EN-gore) Island with a group from the Embassy.  Quite the adventure on a very full motor boat of about 50 of my new best friends and our life jackets that were mostly just for show and off we went for a short 2 minute ride to the island.  We got a couple of great pictures of Dakar and the ocean from the island, as well as a delicious Italian meal on the beach.  It even has a little walled in area of the ocean that forms a little pool where the kids can play after they eat.

We are having a great time settling in.  More pictures and stories next week!