Day 3!

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