I went jogging this morning. I think jogging in my neighborhood outside Dakar may summarize what it’s been like to live here over the past four or five days.

I leave the dorms of Suffolk University, where we are staying for the moment, with Natasha and Anna around 7:30 a.m. There is a strong breeze coming off the ocean so it is remarkably cool. Much different than how it normally feels to walk around outside. Think: walking through sand in downtown Houston in the middle of July with a wool sweater around your mouth.

The director of our program told us to jog to the post office and take a right and head down the road that goes along the beach, la Corniche. We start out. Taxis are honking every time they pass, trying to give a ride to the only white people on the street, assuming they can rip us off because we don’t know French or Wolof and we have lots of money to toss around. Nothing unusual. I enjoy the scenery (concrete buildings, palm trees, orange flower trees, small baobab trees, fruit stands, women in beautiful dresses with head wraps, men in long Arabic-looking robes) because I have to watch my feet and step over chunks of concrete, piles of trash, mounds of dirt, around small begging children, and broken down cars. Many times our 20 feet of blissful, paved sidewalk erodes and we are pinned between the broken cars and traffic so we have to jog/carefully walk in a single file line. The road smells like a combination of trash and the go-kart ring at a putt-putt golf course. That cheap, leaky kind of gasoline.

LA POSTE! Finally we turn off that crazy road (Cheick Anti Diop or Route d’Ouwakam) and jog down a more quite road lined with evenly-spaced trees. Each home has a large, concrete wall surrounding it and a security guard in front at all times. (Most homes are like this, but these in particular are ambassador homes.) We greet all the security guards; in case one day we are jogging and we get into trouble, the guards will help if they know who we are:

Assalamalekum!

Malekum salam.

Nanga nga def?

Maangi fi rekk.

Ana wa ker ga?

Nunga fa.

Ba beneen.

Ba suba.

A greeting less than that long is considered rude. Finally we turn down la Corniche and see the ocean crashing against black rocks. In the distance, we see cliffs bordering the ocean, topped with mosques.

That is beautiful—but there is giant wall of aluminum separating our view from the ocean. And lots of seemingly-freshly-razed land for construction. Everything is under construction.

So we run and I blink sand out of my eyes and think about yesterday and how hard it was. We learned about many values of the Senegalese at this eight hour orientation, which I would have thought would have made me really excited.

You see, I also thought standing on top of a mountain would make me really excited. But I have this feeling that, above the tree line, if trees can’t survive I shouldn’t be able to either.

Yesterday I realized there are so many beliefs that clash with the Western way of life. It is so easy offend someone here, unintentionally and unconsciously.

This is the most surprising thing. Traditional Senegalese religion has a belief in these spirits called the jenni that are always listening to what people say in the mortal world. They are interested in destroying what is good and beautiful. So if they here you tell someone that there child is smart or beautiful, they may come after that child. But they can only do so by invading the body of the person that said the compliment, and separating the soul from the body, making them a demm. A demm is like a witch who has a third eye and can see into people’s souls and move the powers of nature to do evil. Say the next day the child fails the test at school. The mother may remember that you said their child was beautiful and whisper to others that you are a demm. It while take a while for them to accuse you to your face, but they will go around whispering and you’ll gather a bad reputation. The only way to get the demon out of you is for them to call a marabout that is a healer/traditional medicine doctor and exorcise the demon out of you. Of course every family in Senegal is different, but many people are still accused of being demms. It’s just about the worst thing you can accuse someone of being, because demms are thought to be inherited and it will be a big shame to the rest of your family.

So when I go to live with my host family, I can’t compliment anything physical (the home, their looks, their clothes), quantify or qualify anything, esp when it comes to babies or pregnant women, or count people or animals. Counting calls the attention of the jenni. So no asking how many brothers someone has.

Getting to know my host family, then, will be much different than in America, where getting acquainted involved asking lots of personal questions. But for all those differences, I know I’ll get used to them and there are so many beautiful traditions we learned about:

Teranga (hospitality to guests and foreigners), kersa (the balance of respect for yourself and for others), garabam (a person’s remedy is another person), and the importance of greeting everyone you meet.

But there are other things that will take more time, like eating the traditional Senegalese meal: you sit on mats around a bowl of rice, fish, meat, and vegetables. Everyone dips in with their right hand, gets a handful of rice and meat, squeezes out the fish juice to form a ball of rice, then eats it. It’s so hard to form a ball of rice, and is a really uncomfortable position to sit in for a long time, especially in the long skirts women have to wear before eating.

I guess it’s just bizarre to be so aware of my identity. Learning Wolof will really help me to negotiate with people. I’m taking a class in it and my host family will surely help me. And I love speaking Wolof. I’m moving in with my host family tomorrow. All I know is that my host mother’s name is Madame Sow and she lives in a residential neighborhood about 30 min walking distance from the school, called Sacre Coeur.

As we finished our jog, we waved at a two and three-year-old who waved back, alternating between that slow, bewildered toddler-wave and turning their hand over to cup it, as a beggar does.