Friday, September 24, 2010

Too busy...

..living and loving Africa to tell you about it.

Updates will come soon - I promise - but not until I have good reason to sit in one place (with electricity and internet) for more than a day. I spent the week in El Hadji Mbaye, one of the project villages, and am off in the morning for a 48 hour sejour to Gambia to tour some agricultural facilities with a small delegation of Canadian farmers. Back to Kaolack early in the week, photos and updates sometime after that?!?!

But first, here's an assignment. Translate from Wolof to English:

Everyone I met in the village, every man I meet on the street: Am nga jekar?
Me: Amuma jekar, buguma jekar!

In Gambia and Senegal, greetings are very, very important and, so, I greet people as often and as many times as possible, lest I be a rude toubab. There's a pretty standard list of greetings -- "How are you?", "How is your family?", "How did you sleep?", "How is your work?", "How is your morning?", etc. -- and the above line is now part of my standard repertoire! It is always met with lots and lots of laughter and exclamations of "Deega nga Wolof!"

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