Bonjour!
So it’s been just about 3 full days for me here in Dakar,
and I feel as though I am beginning to settle in. One of (if not the) most
difficult parts has been not being able to speak French (the official language
here). Greetings are apparently very important in Senegal and it seems like you
cannot meet anyone without exchanging many pleasant hellos and how are yous. I
can respond enough to those but then when the next round of questions come, all
I can do is shake my head and try and communicate that I do not, indeed, speak
French.
Despite this lack of communicative skills, the last
few days have been pretty busy with meetings, and some walking around, getting
to know the neighborhood. We had our briefing of the seasonal forecast
yesterday at ANACIM (Agence Nationale
de l’Aviation Civile et de la Météorologie, or the National Agency for Civil
Aviation and Meteorology). As it is the beginning of the planting season, these
forecasts are being made monthly and will be communicated to farmers in the region.
What is difficult, however, is producing a meaningful forecast. For example,
based on the briefing we had yesterday about half of the climate models used
are indicating a drier than normal forecast, a bit less than half are
indicating a wetter forecast, and the last is indicating a “normal” forecast.
You can imagine how difficult and frustrating it is to have such a forecast and
try to explain it to farmers in a meaningful way. The main scientific question
I will be working on is trying to incorporate more data into some of these
models to see if we can produce “better” forecasts. We are actually heading to
one of these farms later this afternoon for my first experience in a climate
services workshop, so that should be really interesting.
As for the
less work related pieces, I can share that I stumbled upon a beach yesterday in
the neighborhood called Almadies. It was very pretty and the water (although
only dipping in my toes) was very refreshing, and much more pleasant than the
Atlantic was a few weeks ago when I went on Long Island! I’ve also enjoyed my
first taste of local cuisine-hibiscus juice (so good!) and a fried fish dish
(which, silly me, came out not like fish sticks but like an actual fish). I’m
sure I will be trying much more over the weekend!
That’s it
for now-I need to get ready for our trip. I’m looking forward to sharing more
when I get back.
Till then,
Catherine
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