Hello from the House of Hope in Dakar! It's good to be back, and amongst the boys and staff that I got to know last summer. It's exciting to see the changes that have occured in the ten months since I was last here but also refreshing to see that the joy, energy, and character of the boys and atmosphere here has remained the same. One other change is literally refreshing: it's cooler here than before! This is thanks to the fact that I arrived over a month earlier this time, June 2nd rather than July 4th. I actually shut my fan off and curled up with a sheet last night for a little warmth!
It's fun - and waaay less exhausting - to be able to better communicate this summer. While 8 months of teaching English in France has not made me fluent as I had hoped, it has certainly made a huge difference in my ability to carry on a reasonable conversation. And unlike last summer, I have no doubts when the conversation here switches from French to Wolof. However, it has been a little tricky adjusting to hearing French in something other than a French accent. But within a week or two my ears should adjust. I'm looking forward to being able to get to know these boys even better this summer.
My specific duties for the next two months are a little up in the air at the moment as the couple that heads the Maison d'Espoir has one week left on their sabbatical. Once they come back, I will know more specifically what I'll be up to. For now, I'll be staying with the older boys all day...and all night. I have a room on one wing of the house to call my own, complete with the requisite mosquito net. It's the same living arrangement that I had last summer. Though there will be times when I just want to escape for a little while to find some peace and quiet, it's really a pleasure to live under the same roof as the boys and get a good sense for the rhythm of the day.
I better post this before we lose power - we've only lost it once today for a couple of hours, so we're due for another outage. When I remarked this afternoon at 2pm that we hadn't yet had a power cut, I was told that Senelec, the power company, had announced that because of the soccer game featuring the national team, there would be no power outages until after the match. Which kind of makes you wonder, if they have the ability to provide power to everyone for a day, why don't they do it all the time...? I'll see if I can get to the bottom of that one.
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