Today, we celebrate our first month on the roads. Indeed, we have left Brussels on the 8th of November, first to Lisboa, then to West Africa (starting with Senegal). Having visited 6 countries since our departure from Belgium, we have already switched languages 3 times: Portuguese, French, and English... almost 4 times if we count the Portuguese crioullou, which unfortunately we don't speak ... yet!
In Senegal, we have visited a school in Dakar, in the area of Niary Tally. We have worked with a class of CM1, which corresponds to the 4th year of primary school in the French system. We are first surprised by the number of pupils in the class: 58 children, with their age ranging from 10 to 11 years. We spend there almost 3 hours. Children haven't prepared yet the poetry or the drawings, so we do it altogether, explain the themes, show examples of other countries, to inspire them. Of course, as in every school we have visited, the most successful activity is the photography session! Although people in the streets dislike pictures (children as well as adults don't let us shooting them), children at school really enjoyed the photographic activity. They were as excited by the possibility to shoot by themselves with our camera, as by being shot! We also took pictures during the morning break, and almost all the children were around us, posing for us, inventing each time more creative attitudes to be photographed.
After the school, we go to the Academic Office which introduced us to the school, to meet the new Academic Officer. He explains us that our contact person in UNICEF-Dakar contacted him, because he is very keen on introducing more artistic activities within the educational programs. He then shows us some examples of the programs he intends to introduce. We even discover that he once sang with the internationally renowned Senegalese salsa singer: PAPE FALL! He even sings a capela one Cuban salsa song for us!
A few words about Dakar: it is a very big city, with all the inconvenients and defaults of such megapoles: noisy, polluted, and with a hell of a traffic! It also has expensive hotels: the lowest budget hotel we could find (and whose clients are in majority one hour clients), cost us 10.200 CFA per night (+-19 USD). This is very expensive, considering its lack of hygiene (shared toilets and bathrooms, that haven't seen cleaning services for ages, condoms and condom packages spread under the bed), and our room pals the cockroaches!
