Dakar

All is well in Dakar. The training we're leading is going well and the participants are very interested, and working hard on their communication strategies. We're making a lot of notes as to what's confusing for them and what can be improved the next time - much of it has to do with simple things like layout of the worksheets, and having shortcut icons for them to the web-based software we're using (oh, technology - a blessing and a curse!).

Last night we had a girls night out at the Dakar bowling alley, Red Bowl. Hot music videos on big screens above the lanes, a dark corner full of pool tables and very serious men, dark lounge atmosphere with fluorescent accent lighting and booming techno.



Kerri, an old friend from Gabon via Cameroon, now a fellow with the Congressional Hunger Center and CRS, joined us, and we discovered that Claudia had heard about her appendix removal from friends in Bamako, and that Andrea had heard about her malaria episode through mutual friends. Small world strikes again.

Afterwards we headed to a mysterious sushi buffet place, which turned out to be the same Korean restaurant that Andrea and I had tried earlier in the week (and which had no sushi on the menu). For a very reasonable price we got all we could eat nagiri, sashimi, shrimp tempura, bulgogi, various veggies, nems, dumplings, and scallion pancakes. The sushi was great and I stuffed myself.

It was a nice walk back to the hotel through the Place de l'Independence, which is still lit up from the New Year's celebrations.