Kaffrine/First village visit

I made it to Kaffrine! I have been here for about 4 days now but I only spent a day in the city. This place is way different from Dakar. It has been around 110 degrees almost everyday and being raised in Washington my whole life did not prepare me for this! Here in Kaffrine I am living with 3 other apprentices in a Senegalese home and the living conditions here are a bit different to say the least. In Senegal there are power outages all the time and it is not like in the states where if the power goes out it is back on within a short amount of time, it can be off for a very long time. We shower here with a bucket and a thing called a settella, which is pretty much a big plastic teapot, our bathroom is a hole in the ground, and we eat with our hands for almost every meal. Even though there is a big change of the way I am living, I still love it here and cannot wait to dig deeper into this culture. I cannot tell you enough of how much I love these people! You greet everyone you see with a handshake and you tease anytime you get the chance. They say so many things here that us Americans would get very offended about if it was said in our own culture. For example, lines such as, you are so lazy and worthless, you like to eat a lot, your butt is big, and your name is no good are the more common ones. They love to also point out the obvious things to start conversations with people. They will say things like, you are sitting there, or you are standing there, or you are playing soccer, or you are working, etc. Some of the communication seems a little funny but I think it is great!

Now as for the first weekend in the village, I am going to say that nothing I say or show you through pictures will completely explain this experience. I will try my best to explain it though! We leave for the village every Friday afternoon and then come back to Kaffrine Monday evening. When we got to the village, we greeted everyone and I was shown the whole village. In the village I have a hut family, which is where my hut is, and I have a food family, which is the family that I eat with everyday. Walking around and greeting everyone, I felt like everyone was so excited to have me there and I immediately felt a part of their village. We do a lot of work in the village such as gardening, building huts, digging latrines, etc., but there is also a lot of sitting around and just having fun conversations. Going out to the village I was able to pick up a few more Wolof phrases and it taught me a lot more of the Wolof culture.

I adopted a new name, so I am now officially called Ablaye Ndao in Senegal. In this culture, you have to be extremely proud of your last name and you have to protect it. Everyone has people that they call their teasing cousins, which are pretty much anyone that does not have your last name in the village but it is common for a lot of people to have the same last name as you. Your teasing cousins are the people that you make fun of the most. The kids in the village are the funniest kids I have ever met! They always yell out my name when I walk by, they like to wrestle, they love their picture being taken, and I feel like they are always smiling and happy. I am excited to grow these relationships and to really reach out to these kids!

As you can imagine, soccer is a huge thing in Senegal. The coolest thing is that in Senegal they have a rainy season soccer tournament all over the country. Teams sign up and play teams from different villages and different cities and if you make it all the way to the final round you get to play in the soccer stadium in Dakar. I am super excited because I might have a chance to join the team in my village and participate in this tournament. In the village, Josiah and I set up soccer games for the kids every day we are there. Though there are a lot of ministry opportunities here, I feel like in the village, soccer will be the biggest way to connect with these guys. The guys that play soccer in the village know how to play, but they do not know a lot of the fundamentals of soccer. For example, we played a game of 5 vs. 5 and I tried to explain a formation that we can do so they would all have positions on the field. When I tried to explain, they all looked at me and did not move or understand what I meant. They pretty much just run around and play. We have some awesome plans to set up a soccer clinic with these guys to teach them more about the game and get them ready for the rainy season soccer tournament. As we run this soccer clinic, Josiah and I will get the chance to share our testimonies to these kids, do bible storying, and do development stuff (getting the youth to recognize and act on things that benefit the village). This will be such an awesome opportunity to share the Gospel with these kids and I am so excited for what God can do through this.

As I took this leap of faith into this journey, I was kind of wondering why Senegal, why Kaffrine, why SIM, why the Wolof culture, etc. As time has gone on, I know that the Lord has placed me here for several purposes and there is still a ton that I do not know of. All I know is that the Lord is good and faithful and I am so excited to see His grace and his works through this journey. I cannot thank you all enough for your support and prayers and I am so excited to keep sharing all that the Lord is doing on this trip. Thank you!