Tag: Kids

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New Friends in the Neighborhood

If you’ve followed along with our journey then you know that we have a heart for our neighborhood and long to connect with our neighbors, but have found this more difficult than we expected. Culturally it’s been hard to figure out how to connect, especially on a deeper level than brief conversations on the street.

This has been a huge prayer point since we moved here. Fast forward to last weekend when our neighbors had a party. Parties here go all day and late into the night and involve a big tent in the road, load music, drums and plenty of dancing. At one point the dancing was in the road right outside our house (see the video below) so we watched from the porch for a bit.

Some partygoers got a kick out of our kids dancing on the porch and it apparently drew the particular attention of some kids who were at the party. Funny enough this was actually our first security breach as Mia had been the last one in once we were done watching the dancing and I (Selina) had forgotten to double check that she had bolted the door securely. She had not. So you can imagine my surprise when, at 7:30pm, after one ring of the doorbell six or seven young girls in fancy dresses walked right into the house wondering if our daughter could come out to play with them! At this point our kids were already in bed so I told them to come back the next day. In all reality we didn’t think they actually would return, especially because we weren’t sure if they were from the neighborhood or had travelled to the area just for the party.

The next morning was a Sunday and we ended up staying home from church after Adam had had some really strange heartburn through the night and wasn’t feeling well (side note: he’s totally fine now!). Around 10am (a time we would have normally been at church) our doorbell rang and a little nine year old girl (we’ll call her G) from the neighborhood asked if she could play. At first I just had Mia and Des play on the porch with her, but eventually asked if she wanted to come play inside. She ended up spending five hours with us that day!

G came back the next day as well and even brought a friend at one point. We ended up being so grateful for those two days with her, especially after finding out that she was leaving for a month for a trip to a village outside of Dakar. We pray she comes back to visit when she returns!

We thought at that point that perhaps that would be the end of our visitors for awhile since G was clearly the most comfortable about coming in and hanging out with us, but apparently word got around and later in the week two more young girls stopped by asking to come play and one even brought her two year old brother! It has been so sweet to see our kids playing with these Senegalese children as this is something we have longed and prayed for, but have struggled to establish. We are prayerful that these friends will continue to come back to play, that our kids can build relationships with them and that we can also get to know their families. 

Three things of note:

  1. These opportunities have been plausible mainly on account of us homeschooling. We have the availability and the flexibility to grow these relationships, especially since we know our time with these kids will be more limited once October comes and their school starts back up. We had prayed that homeschooling would allow greater opportunities for ministry as a family and already God is answering this prayer in cool ways!
  2. Mia in particular has been very anxious about interacting with kids who don’t know any English. We think some of this anxiety may be connected to the year she spent in French school when she was unable to communicate at all. Even at our church she gets quite nervous to be around the Senegalese kids and has no desire to go to Sunday school since it’s either in French or Wolof. By God’s grace, and again in response to lots of prayer, she has had no hesitation at all being around these kids even though they only speak Wolof and a little bit of French.
  3. I was talking with a friend from Ghana who noted that the way these neighborhood kids (even the two year old) are comfortable being out and about and in our home is largely connected to the culture. In this we are so grateful to have found a way to open up our home to neighbors even though it is not something we would have thought up on our own!

Please pray with us over these relationships. For wisdom when interacting with the kids, opportunities to share the gospel and also for connections with their parents. This last point is a particularly interesting one as we’ve had four different kids over and have only met one parent so far, G’s mom. She was super nice, but only spoke Wolof so communicating was basically impossible past initial greetings. At least we gathered that she didn’t mind G being at our house, but we would love prayers on how to navigate this wisely.

-Selina

Dancing outside our front door around 6pm (the party had started in the morning).
The party still rolling at 11pm 🙂 Thankfully our kids are used to these noises and aren’t bothered!
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The Ups and Downs of Driving in Dakar

If you ever come visit us here in Dakar (and we hope you do!) one of the first things you are sure to notice is that the rules of the road are a little different here. With an overabundance of cars, motos and people on the roads combined with driving rules which are often treated as optional, driving here takes some extra attention. I like to say that you need a cautious aggressiveness to drive here. While there is a lot that could be said about that, I wanted to share a recent experience to give a glimpse into one aspect of driving here.

Last week as I was returning home from work, I came up to a divided road that has a large median and bus route dissecting it down the middle. I needed to go left but in order to do that I first needed to turn right and then make a U-turn at the next intersection (a Michigan Left right here in Dakar 😀 ). I made the needed right turn, but as I was approaching the next intersection, I saw there was a “No Left Turn” sign. This, however, was the left turn I wanted to make and also what Google Maps was telling me to do at this intersection. Google Maps is not always a trustworthy source of direction here in Dakar, but neither are street signs.

For example, on the autoroute on the way to the airport they have signs warning you to watch your speed because there are radar cameras. These cameras don’t actually exist and I don’t think they ever enforce speed limits. But even in the city there are also many street signs and even traffic lights that no one follows. So my rule of thumb when in a situation like this is to always do as those around me are doing. I figure my best way to not draw attention to myself is to do as others are doing. Usually this works well for me, but unfortunately not in this instance.

Many cars were doing the same thing I wanted to do, including the car directly in front of me. So I made my left, crossed the median and then made another left to get back on the same road but in the direction I needed. However, as soon as I did this a cop on the side of the road signaled me to pull over. He came over to me and after exchanging some greetings he asked me why I turned left when it is not allowed. I said that I was following all of the other cars that did the same thing. He again asked me if I had seen the sign that said no left turn. After telling him that often signs are not followed here in Dakar, which he agreed with, he said that I needed to follow this sign because if I had caused an accident I would be at fault. He took my documents and walked away from my car. While he did this I sat there and watched some 10-15 other cars make the same turn I had just made. When he returned, I mentioned this to him but he just repeated that I needed to follow the street sign. So, as is the process here, he took my driver’s license and gave me a little yellow slip of paper so that I could go downtown the next day, pay a fee and get my license back. The police officer was firm, but not unkind, nor did he ask for any payment to get out of the ticket which is quite common here.

The tickets are not expensive (about $5), but you do have to go downtown and wait at the police office to be seen. The other stressor is just hoping they don’t lose my U.S. driver’s license. Needless to say, I was somewhat frustrated with all of this.

So the next day, I went downtown to the police station but I brought my secret weapon: two kids! So the three of us walked into this outdoor courtyard which had probably 20-30 guys sitting around in it, all with the same little yellow slip of paper that I had. I was the only white person in the room and the only one with kids. As I walked in I started asking around for who was currently last in line. I learned from the last time I got a ticket that this is the official system for determining order :D. So, after finding who was last in line, the kids and I went and sat down on the ground. After waiting for just a couple of minutes an officer walked by and, seeing the kids, asked why I was there. I gave him my ticket and he told me that because this happened just the day before we’d need to go upstairs (the previous time I had gone in an office on the 1st floor).

So we went upstairs and asked another officer what office I would need. He pointed to some chairs and told the kids to sit down and that he would find out for us. He came back about a minute later and escorted us into the office of the person who would have my license. We had been there for maybe five minutes at this point. This officer greeted the kids and made sure they had a spot to sit down in the office which was packed with probably another ten people. He then looked through a list on his desk but couldn’t find my name on it. So he called the officer who had given me the ticket and found out that he hadn’t brought my license to the station yet. He told me the officer was going to the Mosque to pray soon (it was almost 2pm on a Friday which is the biggest prayer time of the week) but that after he would bring it over.

So the kids and I went back downstairs to wait. We were sitting on the ground in the shade and another officer came out of her office and brought a chair for the kids to sit on. A few minutes later yet another officer came by to see if we had been helped yet. After about 30 minutes someone came down and escorted us back to the 2nd floor office. When we got there, sure enough the officer who gave me the ticket the day before was there with my license. However, on this day he greeted me very warmly and with a big smile as if we were old friends. He then gave me my license back and told me that my infraction had been forgiven because of my kids and that I didn’t need to pay! So after being at the station for just a little over a half hour, we were on our way home again with my license and for only the cost of parking.

It was a bit of a rollercoaster of an experience. Because of the system here, or perhaps more so the lack of a consistent system, it is hard to know how things are going to play out. Sometimes this is to your benefit and sometimes it isn’t. But I’ve learned that when in doubt, bring your kids with you!

-Adam