You know what they say, a new year a new adventure and a new blog post! The morning began with the sweet smell of freshly herbed eggs and pineapple juice poured straight from the carton of course. Despite a mild case of being locked out of my room and not being able to see due to my glasses being stuck inside my room, the lovely SIT crew managed to unlock my suite door allowing my roommates and I were able to comfortably continue our adventure as planned.
Forget a zoo, have you ever been on a safari? As soon as we get off the bus, not even in the park yet, curious little monkeys ran around the parking lot- and i’m not talking about us! We boarded the open game-viewing vehicle and I could hardly sit down I was beyond excited. We slowly drove through the nature reserve carefully looking out for any animals and listening to the amazing safari guide give details on each individual animal. I have to express how amazing safari guides are, this good man knew even the exact age, gender and preferred location of every animal we saw- I can hardly remember my brother’s age! To list a couple of the animals we saw on the safari: we saw wild warthogs, horse antelope, senegalese antelope, green monkeys, red monkeys, hyenas, crocodiles, impalas, Zebras, Giraffes, and ostriches! Did you know ostriches lay their eggs in a circle and they sit in the middle of them? It looked like some sort of sacrificial ritual, but of course it’s just ostrich things. The safari guide took notice of my excitement towards the animal droppings, so he began to point them out every time we ran into them, however I must defend myself and say that when I saw the droppings I knew there would be an animal nearby! So after several animals, “ooh”s and “aah”s, we bid a last farewell to the excitement of the park and drove to the just as exciting primary school Waranka.
The staff at Waranka have seemed to adopt all 13 of us students and now it feels as if we are one of them. For example today we arrived to the school and immediately upon arrival they brought out the most famous and most delicious thiebou dienne we have tasted since monday. I am not just saying this because those at Waranka might be reading this, or because the professor told us it was the best, there is simply no denying that this thiebou dienne in particular was significantly tastier. After lunch we were all invited to take a peek into the lives our Waranka leaders’. We were able to see the typical layout of the homes in Guinaw Rail which embody a very welcoming feeling. To begin, each home’s door never closes during the day, incentivising surprise visits which in turn leads to overall inclusiveness in the community. Each different room was divided by a curtain instead of a door because again having a closed door means closing the door on others. While we were visiting homes, the traditional Senegalese tea was being prepared for our return. The tea was in a tiny glass which frankly made a lot of sense. While it was a normal (perhaps green) tea, the ratio of sugar was much higher than the tea ratio. Which was not my cup of tea (ba dum tss). Despite my preferences on sugar in tea, It was still a wonderful drink and I was thankful to be able to drink it. As soon as we gulped the tea down we were off to finish out glass paintings. This part might have been the most stressful yet somehow relaxing part of the trip. For the glass painting, one must be extremely skilled in coloring inside the lines, which I can now confirm is not my strong suit. Nonetheless, my painting turned out beautiful of course because beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Our adventure came to an end when all five of us girls who were painting finished just as the other students were finishing up playing games with the children back at the School. A new adventure awaits tomorrow morning as we take on another day at fun Waranka! Happy New Years fellow readers!
-Samantha G.
Senegal: Culture and Service 