Senegal

I made it to Senegal. Thankfully I was greeted by other volunteers and
a Peace Corps representative at baggage. I suppose wearing an Obama
shirt helped identify me.

So far it is remarkable how organized and smooth the conference has
been. There was actually a representative waiting for me with my name
spelled correctly. We were only missing one bag and had short delay
before we made our way to the training site. We were given delicious
sandwiches and bottled water while we waited. The training site has
showers and toilets. It also has "real" beds with mosquito nets and
wireless internet.

The conference is meant to connect and train volunteers who are placed
all over Africa in strategic malaria prevention. I guess it is one of
the few times, if not the first time that Peace Corps has started a
continent-wide initiative involving major networking between current
volunteers. So, I guess I am little piece of Peace Corps history. Most
volunteers here seem to be either 3rd year volunteers or returned
volunteers who signed up for another term as a Response Volunteer.
After a volunteer has done a full service they can apply to
job-specific positions that typically have a shorter term. In Africa
there are a lot of these positions that are opening up that focus on
malaria. Unfortunately, Burkina didn't get one of these volunteers due
to a complication. I am a little disappointed because I was hoping to
have someone new who focuses on Malaria. I guess I will be picking up
some of that slack with the Community Health and AIDS Task Force.

So far where I am in Senegal doesn't look drastically different than
Burkina. There might be more trees. I haven't seen much since I
arrived at night. The training site is inland. If we were closer to
the beach it might seem a lot different than Burkina. We will be doing
some field trips which might reveal some of the major differences
between Senegal and Burkina as well.