the school and los mujeriegos

I am volunteering at a local school in the Camberene village, just outside of Dakar. During the summer, they have a sort of summer camp and the volunteers are the camp counselors. We aren't asked to take attendance and the number of kids varies every day, from 5 to 40. For the past few days, due to the rain, we've had only 5 kids.

They are redoing the roof of the school, and therefore neither of the two classrooms are usable. Furthermore, we were supposed to teach the kids how to use computers, but in the nearby shack where they have "une salle d'informatique", the two computers don't work. The director of the school told me he needed "un technicien" to come in and take a look, which means I will probably have left Sénégal by the time they are fixed.

That is OK. I definately empathize with technical difficulties! What shocks me more however, is the general lack of resources and concern from the school officials. When we got there the first day, we walked into the main office to find two men seated behind desks with headphones on. We stood there for a little bit, and nothing. I practically had to get in their faces for them to look up perplexed, and slowly remove their headphones.
The conversation that followed went (shortened)something like this:
"Oui, bonjour?"
"Salaam alekoum. Que voulez vous?"
"Nous sommes les volontaires"
"Ah oui. Les enfants sont dehors"
He put his headphones back on and continued to do some kind of accounting work by hand: long division, multiplication and all...
So we went outside, gathered whatever kids were out there and did a few introductory rounds.
We were now ready to start playing and doing all sorts of activities!
Well, long story short, there was nothing for us to do. No paper to draw, no ball to throw around, no books to read (there were two textbooks, but we didn't think ten year olds wanted to learn Biology and Chemistry during their summer break). No games, nothing. We asked the school officials but they said they were busy and couldn't help us right now, but they directed us to a store down the street that sold soccer balls.
Thank goodness we were creative: leap frog, duck duck goose, miss mary mack...
And then it started to rain.
All of us crammed back into the main office (probably about the size of my dorm room) and waited for it to pass...

That was the first day. We've gradually found fun things to do with the little we have. One day I taught them yoga. Other times we just sit around and chat. The guys love to act and play "gentlemen". They get their inspiration from watching "les désirs de Lorenzo" and other soap operas, which play non-stop on TV here. My host father is a big fan.
The boys show us how to treat a lady, and what to do to gain a woman's respect. I was even asked out on a date by a young boy named Cheikh. The date was to occur at his house where his mom (Mamadou) was going to make me poulet yassa (a traditional Senegalese dish). We have yet to set a specific day/time though :-)

About Senegalese food: lots of fish and meat, rice, millet, manioc (from the potato family) and tons of spices. They put hot peppers in everything. Meals are eaten from a communal dish. We all sit around it and eat whatever is on our side (I tried to get a carrot from my neighbors territory and I soon found out how impolite that was). You have to wait for the father of the house to throw a bit of whatever is in the plate into your area, and then you can eat it. We eat with spoons though traditionally you eat with your hands.
For breakfast its bread and butter and some coffee with powdered milk (because the electricity goes off so often...)
Its manageable but definately hard to get used to.