This week we finished up two weeks of travel and visiting with students at their service locations. Our visiting took us south to within five miles of the Mali boarder and north to within three miles of the Mauritanian boarder. Everyone is doing well. We have a wonderful group of SSTers here – mature, engaged, and a pleasure to spend time with. You can check out our travels and a rough sense of our SSTers location at this Google map. We began our travels with a visit to Aaron and Ian. They live in a small village called Denn Guèye…

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After three days of bustle, all the students have left Thiès and have safely arrived at their service placements. Early Saturday morning Ali, Kate, Laurel, and Rebekah left for a two day trip to the south east of the country where they will be living in a little village called Segou. Later that morning Amanda, Jess, and John left for Saint-Louis and were accompanied by Lydia and Maddie who are staying further north than Saint-Louis on the Senegal/Mauritanian border in a town called Richard Toll. Soon after, a car left for Dakar carrying Erin, Lynn, and Matt. They were accompanied…

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We went to the Bandia Game Reserve and saw a variety of animals. We ate lunch by the crocodile pond and in the company of a troop of monkeys. We ended the day with a final story time before we head out for service.  

For our last Wednesday night dinner together at Chez Goshen we had pancakes and French toast and everyone dressed in their Senegalese finest.

We spent three days in and around the town of Joal-Fadiouth. Joal is the boyhood home of Léopold Sédar Senghor, the first president of Senegal. Senghor was not only the first president but also a poet and intellectual whose notion of “négritude” helped define post-colonial Senegalese and African identity.  We started off the weekend with a visit to his father’s home. From Senghor’s home, we embarked on a bumpy dusty drive in search of the Sacred Baobab, purported to be the largest baobab in Senegal. The baobab is the national tree of Senegal and, until Senghor abolished it, they were…

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What was billed as a friendly match between the Goshen toubabs and a Thiés club team turned into a competitive competition when some Senegalese all stars stepped on the court.

Over the weekend, we traveled north to the Saint-Louis Jazz Festival. Saint-Louis is located in the northwest of Senegal where the mouth of the Senegal River meets the Atlantic Ocean. It sprawls over a number of small islands and served as an important trading post and eventually the capital of the French colony of Senegal until 1902 when the capital moved to Dakar. Narrow streets and colonial construction define the main island and tourism is a key element of the local economy. We came in particular to participate in the Jazz Festival, which was started in the early 1990s and…

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We spent Thursday afternoon at the Village Artisanal, a collection of artists, woodcarvers, musicians, weavers, and leatherworkers. The main attraction was djembe lessons!

We started off the 4th week with a field trip to the Beer-Sheba Project. The Project is a vision of a small team of SIL language workers assigned to the Serer-Sine area in Senegal and is part of their strategy to promote the use of the newly translated Bible among the young Serer Church, which is mainly comprised of farmers. The Beer-Sheba Project combines a sustainable agro-forestry program with holistic training and an agricultural resource center for young Senegalese farmers. The students got a tour of the project in the morning and then helped to till a field before lunch….

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