picture post ii

One of the first days in the field...

The road in Nguéniène.

Matthew in the field.

Baobab.

The sun rising over a huge site that we found on survey.

Camel

Start of a work day.

The usual snack break, sitting on a trash pile outside a village. Not our best moment.

Survey survey survey.

Requisite research team band photo.

We ran into this man while mapping a site outside a village. He then began to give us peanuts, producing them endlessly from his pockets until we could hold no more.

Cheers to the end of a transect region.

Pirogues in Saly.

The house on L'Île de Gorée I would want to live in.

L'Île de Gorée.

project mascot

We've adopted a mascot for the project, in the form of a rather small kitten.






Its head is as big as its body and it likes to sleep in boots. No name as of yet, but rest assured we are feeding it a healthy dose of Nido (condensed milk) and fish leftovers. It's going to become a very fat toubab cat ("toubab" being the word for white person in Wolof).

In other, less exiting news, I got a nasty stomach bug and after a few days of that, became dehydrated, disgruntled, and generally pretty miserable. We headed off to Saly for the Urgent Care where they hooked me up to an IV (the nurses were horrified at how small my veins are) and I spent two hours staring at the ceiling of a lovely, renovated 1940s colonial residence as two bottles of fluids drained into me. A few days of cipro and I should be on the mend.

picture post i

Now that we're in Tataguine, the internet is a bit quicker, so here's a smattering of photos from the first four weeks of the project, with more to come in upcoming days.

Me at the most westerly point of Africa, the Almadies.


The Lighthouse of the Mamelles in Dakar.


A baobab tree laden with fruit.


Soccer on the sandbars at Fadiouth.


A street in Fadiouth, the island made of shells.

fadiouth

It’s been just over two weeks since we arrived in Senegal. With six full days of survey under our belts, we went to Fadiouth yesterday. A man-made island of shell, houses crowd together in a maze of alleys and white-washed walls. The sun was setting and we watched residents play soccer on the expansive sand bars between the mainland and the island. We had plans to go dancing that night, but work and strong sun had drained us and we sat on mats outside and drank Coca-Cola and Fanta instead.

The electricity is only ever on for a few hours a day so my ability to update may be inconsistent. I'm hoping the next town we stay in will have slightly better internet reception so I can upload some pictures of things so far. Stay tuned.

beginnings

We arrived in Nguéniène yesterday afternoon and life is starting to follow a loose but pleasant pattern. We'll begin fieldwork tomorrow, a welcome change from the lazy ways we've fallen into. The village is relaxed and life is slow. We befriended a neighbor yesterday and convinced him to climb a baobab tree and retrieve some of its fruit so Julia could try it. The flesh is chalky and dry but just the right amount of tart and sweet. Meals are eaten from very large plates, three or four of us crowded around one, eating the portion directly in front of you and working your way from the rim to the center. We sit on straw mats on the front porches of houses, the meal is as communal as possible. In the afternoon, the Senegalese students make an impossibly sweet tea, something akin to thin honey with a frothy head to it. We're looking forward to learning the town and getting down to work in the next few weeks.