Language assignment

This morning we were given our language assignments. And mine is (drumroll please) ... Pulaar! While Pulaar is not the most widely spoken language in Senegal, it is the most widely spoken across western Africa, so that is exciting. Hopefully I can put it to good use for traveling. But I'm not going to jump the gun. I know that I have to actually learn the language first. Getting this assignment did give me a little bit of a clue as to where my final placement might actually be. It is mostly spoken in the north of the country (please see map above for reference), in the regions of Louga and Saint-Louis. There is also a chance that I might be placed in the region of Kaolack (directly above the Gambia), but through the grape-vine I have heard that there are only two open positions there right now, so chances are slim. 


Tomorrow I will be leaving the American paradise of the training center for my first homestay experience. I will be staying with a Pulaar family about 40 km south of Theis. They will be my family for all of PST (per-service training) and for the next nine weeks I will be going back and forth between them and the training center. It's really cool to think that as of tomorrow I will have a whole Senegalese family. Senegalese mom, Senegalese dad, Senegalese brothers and sisters, etc. I just hope they like me. 


To ensure that they like me, I went out to the market this afternoon to buy some "seriche" for them. Seriche are small gifts that one would bring as a show of thanks to the family hosting them. For 250 CFA (50¢) I bought a box of tea and a bag of sugar. That is apparently a very common ceriche to buy for someone. 


We leave tomorrow after lunch and will be away for 6 nights. I will not be bringing my laptop, so this may be the last post for a while. I'll try to take notes while I'm away so that I can type it all up when I get back. There are three other PCT going to the same village as me, they are all in my Pulaar language class, so I won't be a lonely PCT. We'll all have class together every day with our LCF (I don't know what that stands for, I better look it up on the acronym packet they gave us), and at the end of the 6 days we come back to the training center for 3 nights. From now until the end of PST, it's a lot of back and forth. 


Oh, and if you'd like to learn more about the Peace Corps program in Senegal, click here


So that's all for now, wish my luck at my homestay!


Asalaa maalekum,
Rachel