Just One Week of Many: Midterms, dispensary, and malaria.

This last week midterms crept up on me. Who knew that “une devoir,” literally translated as “homework” or “a project,” would turn out to be a straight up in-class essay about the history of Islamic confreries in Senegal and their relationship to politics and the development of the modern state?! (If you’re curious about that, by the way, you know who to ask. ☺ ) Add to that a French grammar exam on Monday and you’ve got yourself a whole lot of studying going on this week for what seems like the first time this semester. It feels good to be busy in a productive way. Of course, that’s the American in me speaking out in preference of productivity from amidst a cloud of the slower-paced Senegalese life-style.
Today I went back to a health clinic dispensary that I had worked in the Friday before vacation. To sum it up in three pretty words: abscesses, worms, and screaming children. (Make that four words.) Lets just say that a lack of hands leads to even novices jumping straight into cleaning and bandaging wounds –and you haven’t seen a real wound until you’ve started working in a Dakar dispensary where awful skin infections are the least of it and only the straight up stitches are saved for the trained nurses. I brought my friend Andy and he actually fainted, which is not altogether surprising considering the combination of overwhelming smells, sights, and emotions coursing through that little white room on a muggy Friday morning. Somehow, all of us working there manage to keep up a relatively jaunty air in the reprieves between the cries and screams.
To complete an already full day of bandaging, I took part in the organizing of the CIPFEM study session this evening wherein we helped the girls with their homework and then started a Dreams and Goals Collage project that we’re going to finish next week. It went really well, but I’m surprised I’m not already conked out asleep because it was an exhausting day.
Well, this weekend is looking to be equally academic with a Wolof test coming up on Monday and a Society Culture and Society paper due on Thursday. But I’ll be balancing that out with a little visit to a local market with my friend Soraya on Saturday and some playground climbing on Sunday with my rockclimbing withdrawals buddy Megan and an on looking Senegalese friend, Hassane, who I’m sure will be laughing at us the whole time!
Megan, by the way, has just been diagnosed with malaria, which is not as serious as it sounds. She’ll just be taking some extra medications for a while so help her get over the chest pains and fever. Since she is the first person in her host family to have ever had malaria, we’re thinking of having a little celebratory cake with little mosquitoes drawn on it! Personally, I want to be part of the cake decorating committee!

I love you guys! Take care of yourselves!

Love and hugs,

Jocelyn