M’Bam is a very large village. It has two primary schools, a private school (for students that didn’t pass a certain grade in a public school more than twice) and a junior high. During the school year students from surrounding villages either commute or board with a family. This causes the population to fluctuate drastically [...]

A Senegalese wedding is way more complex I’m sure than what I have observed but I will first describe the wedding I qttended between a volunteer and Senegalese person then at the end add what other tid bits I’ve been told and learned. In order to get engaged, a man brings the father of his [...]

I’m going to start posting on different themes of life here. This one will be about water. Peace Corps gave us a filter, they recommend putting three drops of bleach in each water bottle after filling it with filtered water.   To fill it I walk across the compound, go into another hut, and pour water [...]

Pardon the three month hiatus, I’m very indebted to anyone still reading this May – A month of travel. June – Week of girls camp and getting some quality time in with the village. July – Typing class for a group students and a woman. There are several projects I’m sinking my teeth into at [...]

Time keeps on flying by, it’s been two months since in-service training ended, a new group of volunteers arrived, and some projects have begun. As I sat down to type this a drumming troop leading a group of beautifully dressed women were walking down main road, I stepped out to look and some one explained [...]

In order to explain this story a bit of contextual background needs to be provided. The majority of people in Senegal are muslim and the way it is divided up is by brotherhood. Meaning that generations ago an influential religious person organized a group of people after having or perhaps claiming to have some divine experience. [...]

My hope was to update this weekly but I have very limited access to computers and the internet. The most frustrating part of going to an internet café is the French keyboard which slows my typing down and hides punctuation and symbols so that I don’t know where they are. The ideal way for me [...]

After receiving endless threatening emails and dropped hints I will formally apologize for not having updated my blog sooner. In order to prevent a repeat of such negligent behavior I will be changing up the format to shorter posts at a higher frequency which hopefully will include more photos and even some videos maybe. I [...]

Here’s my permanent address: David Jaglowski – PCV B.P. 59 Foundiougne, Senegal West Africa Feel free to send me letters and packages. Bottles of champagne are always welcome.

Mucho tiempo has passed since my last post, apologies for leaving you all in the dark, but events and training seemed to pick up speed and happen in rapid fire succession. Yesterday I was sworn in as a volunteer at the ambassador’s house in Dakar (it’s like a museum) and am leaving tomorrow to start [...]

Our training group went on volunteer visits last week. I was fortunate enough to be visiting my actual site, I got to the see the work done by the volunteer, meet my future family, and see the village where I will be living the next two years. The region I will be living in, Fatick, is [...]

I wrote this a week ago but didn’t get a chance to post it. Yesterday was a big day, our fourth official week in country, and we got our site announcement – where I will be living the next two years. Tomorrow all of us trainees will be disbursing across the country visiting volunteer and [...]

The mail system in Senegal seems to be quite reliable so please feel free to send me letters, photos, post cards (so people can see pictures of big cities in the US), packages, books, and whatever else you would like.  My address is: PCT, David Jaglowski Corps de la Paix B.P. 299 Thies, Senegal West Africa  I will be at this address [...]

I wanted to throw up a quick post before going for a language training immersion host stay but I never found the time. I’m glad I didn’t because I would have misrepresented this experience, country, and training.  The training center is an old French colonial military base insulating us from the real Senegalese day to [...]

Greetings all! I don’t have much to post for obvious reasons, but I wanted something to be posted since I’m sending the link. It’s bittersweet leaving, I’m excited and ready for this journey, but I’m going to miss so many people. It’s late, I’m tired and have a big day tomorrow so this is all [...]