Things Learned on Car Rapides

We ride a car rapide at least 6 days a week. It’s the cheapest form of public transportation—around the size of a van and packed to the gills with people. (For a review on the transportation options available to us go here.) Here are some of the things we learned as we rode…

New Things Can Be Scary!

When we started to take car rapides it was INTIMIDATING! Lots of people yelling what was to us incomprehensible nonsense. The places that they present as destination options are not the names as found on a map. They don’t stick around long enough to make detailed inquires. People are pushing to get on or off. We didn’t know how much we should pay or if we were getting ripped off. But eventually we started to get a feel for how it works, and now it seems pretty normal! We know the name of our route, how much it should cost and the general drill. (Note: the process being normal does not mean we feel any less squished while riding.)

Nancy is Scary!

No really! I mean terrifying! With how different everything is to us, imagine how strange we can look to little kids and babies! We have had babies hiding their faces from us and one boy absolutely refused to sit by Nancy! (And by ‘refused’, we mean actually throwing a fit in the middle of the car rapide from sheer terror.)

There’s Always Room for One More!

Nancy says this is the unofficial motto of West Africa! Supposedly there are limits by law on how many people they can have on a car rapide, but for the most part they fit at least 20 people sitting in the back (5 per bench—benches made to fit 4, of course). Often there will be another 4–6 people standing in the middle or hanging off the end.

Apprentis Have the Hardest Jobs.

These young men are in training (apprenti = apprentice). It’s their job to get passengers, collect fares, and signal to the driver when to stop and go. They jump on and off while it is still moving, hang on the end of the car rapide, and wade through traffic. While the car rapide is crashing over pot holes, swerving through traffic or pedestrians, and stopping suddenly to avoid an accident; they move through the car, collect money, and deal with people. If several car rapides are at the same stop each apprenti needs to yell louder and be a better go-getter than the others. Nancy’s had two fighting over her, pulling on her arms to get her as a passenger. We’ve also had an apprenti cross the busy road, ask where we were going, then help the kids across the road and stopped traffic so we could get on his car rapide.

Never Trust the Apprenti!

OK, so we have had some that were pretty decent. But there are also those who deliberately mess with the passengers—and not just us naïve foreigners. They will try to inflate the fare, or “forget” to give you your change. So we try to minimize our chances of being ripped off by giving exact change when we can or holding out a hand for change even if we don’t know the price!

Then there is the “I’ll tell you what I think you want to hear” phenomenon. We once asked the apprenti before we got on if he was going to the stop we wanted. “Get on, get on.” So we get on, we travel down the road, Michael pays for our stop, and the apprenti walks away. Then someone pipes up, “Did you want the this stop? This doesn’t go to there, it turns!” So we got off and had to get another car rapide. Live and learn!

Everyone Loves Kids!

We have seen many a person take a kid on their lap so they can sit somewhere. People are always willing to help the kids off and on the car rapide or even give up their seat so a mother can sit down with a baby. On a side note, kids are a great conversation starter! Many times stone faced strangers who show no interest in talking to us warm up when they see our kids.

Mini Adventures Can Be Fun!

There have been a few times when it is busy; all the car rapides are packed and people are grabbing the end as it drives away. We’ve been guilty of this! It can be quite the rush to jog up to a moving vehicle and jump on! Especially when many people are doing it at once. Also, we have had a few times where we have started to step off and then the driver decided to keep going. Overall the experiences we have had with public transportation end up being hassles that we are grateful for. We have had many chances to learn and experience the culture in ways that we would not have been able to by simply driving everywhere ourselves.

French is Not the End!

It is becoming ever clearer to us why we will need to learn a third language to communicate well here. Even if we could speak French fluently we still wouldn’t understand everything around us. Most of what is spoken on the car rapides (and elsewhere in town) is not French but Wolof. The greetings and conversations and arguments we hear around us are often in languages other than French! Even though the trade language is French and many people do not speak it fluently, it is not their heart language! (Note: it is still very good to know French as it is the language of communication for many countries here in West Africa, and our starting point for building relationships.)

We were given a fitting word of encouragement the other day as we were reminded that as much as our French study dominates our lives right now, it is not the end goal! We are here to build relationship, invest our lives in people, and eventually share with them the good news the Lord has given us. Stuck in the day to day grind of French sessions and endless listening review, it can be easy to lose sight of this! Keep us in your prayers that we would keep our eyes off of the hardships around us and on our Lord and the work He has called us to.

Prayer Requests

• Pray that we would continue to focus well during our time in French class.
• Pray that we would be able to find more ways to visit with those around us. We try to fit in French Class time, homework time, housework time, family time, errand time, etc. Figuring out how to schedule all that so that our free time (when we can visit) coordinates with when people are able to be visited can be challenging!
• Pray for health! Nancy just got over a bout of the flu mixed with giardia. We’ve still have a couple kids fighting some type of flu too.
• Pray for the legislative elections in Guinea set for sometime in June.
• Praise for the learning experiences that we and our kids have been able to have. As painful (or awkward!) as these can be in the moment, we are thankful to have these opportunities to grow.
• Praise that Isaac is FINALLY and officially out of diapers! (OK, it might seem small; but we are REALLY thankful!)
• Praise we can see progress in our French!
• Praise that Michael has moved on to his own language helper! He’s still doing each phase, just at an accelerated pace. He’s now in phase 3!

Hello all! We hope you had an enjoyable time celebrating the Resurrection!

Days of Rest

We’ve been blessed with a few days off lately—not because of sickness this time—and have taken advantage of them to catch up on family time, visiting with neighbors, and taking a few day trips. One day we enjoyed a local beach—the kids had a blast!

Then a few days later we headed to an island just off the mainland. Senegal has some great surfing areas and this island is one of the places to go!

We had a wonderful time with friends.

We even had a new experience: sea urchin. It was fresh from the ocean (still trying to crawl away in fact) when they threw it in the charcoal burner. The guys got 7 for about $1!

Adventures in French!

Life for us has been busy lately! We have been in French classes for 2 months now. We leave our house at 8am and get back between 1:30 and 2pm. Then we try to find time for homeschool, household tasks, spending time with the kids, visiting friends, and reviewing French.

I remember one of our instructors during the training reminding us that when God does something He does it to completion, so when He messed up the languages at the Tower of Babel, He did it VERY WELL! We are finding that to be true as we try to wrap our brains around another language.

One thing that can be strange is the way French uses specifying words. Most specifiers are put after the noun, but not all! We are still not sure if there is a rule for this, or if you just get to know how each one is used. For example, you would say “the big piece of paper red”, or “the glass of water half full”; but “the old book”. Another thing foreign to English speakers is the need to specify the gender of every word! This gets pretty important: ’la personne’ means ‘a person’ while just ‘personne’ means ‘nobody’! English speakers typically have a hard time distinguishing between the different nasal vowels in French, and hearing the difference between two very close ‘u’ sounds! Nancy had a hard time with the French for ‘on’ (sur) and ‘under’ (sous). When they are said fast, the main difference is that they have different ‘u’ sounds! We’re just not used to discerning between them! After about two hours of listening over and over, she was getting a handle on it.

Speaking of Nancy, she likes to talk! (You may have noticed.) Well, the other day while we were heading home from class on the public transport, we sat by a lady with a newborn baby. She motioned if she could hold the baby. Once she had the baby in her arms she wondered how old it was and, using the only number phrase she knew, asked “C’est combien?” Michael quickly spoke up, talking to the lady in French for a while. He said the baby was less than a month. Later he explained that Nancy asked how much her baby cost not how old it was! Yikes!

Prayer Requests

• Pray that we would be able to time manage, some days it seems like the list never ends.
• Pray for Nancy—sometime soon we will be splitting our class up into two groups, and the two of us will be in different groups.
• Pray that the kids would finish the school year well, they only have a few subjects left!
• Pray for Guinea, they have elections coming up in May.
• Pray for us as we work on planning for our move down there (most likely sometime in the summer or fall).
• Praise we continue to adjust to culture. We have been taking the public transportation (instead of taxis) for the last month. This is new to us, and a bit confusing; but we have been figuring it out! There is a major price difference, so that definitely helps! We take a ‘car rapide’ every day to class. The price for a week of transport cost less than a one way trip in the taxi!
• Praise that Nancy is noticing her French is growing, even though she is nowhere near proficient, her comprehension is growing!
• Praise that Michael’s French is coming back to him.

Greetings from Senegal! In case you have missed it, we have been doing a three part series, if you want to read those you can read “Things We Miss”, “Things That Are the Same, But Different”, and a few behind the scenes posts—just follow the links!
Today we are going to focus on “Things We Like Better Here in Africa”. This list may be little shorter, but we are still learning all about our new home and I am sure we will find many more in the weeks to come!

Things That Are Better!

Greetings from Senegal!

This is part two of a three part series. If you haven’t yet, read part one, “Things We Miss”. Today we will focus on:

Things That Are the Same

(Or Maybe Just a Little Different)

SPORTS FANS: A lot of people around the world have been glued to the TV lately watching football. Our friends in America were watching the Super Bowl…

BUT: Here anywhere we have gone over the past few weeks, if they had a TV it was tuned in a different kind of football (soccer to Americans). The Africa Cup just finished up and no matter where we went, the fruit guy, the corner store, your friends’ house they all were watching. We always knew when a game ended, you could here a cheer come up from all the neighbors! The other night when a semi-final match ended cheering went on until midnight!

SMELLS: Some things smell bad, like ‘fertilizer’ getting spread on fields (we lived in the country, after all), dirty diapers, sewage. Some things smell good, like freshly mowed grass, your neighbor BBQ, bacon!

BUT: Here things that smell bad are the meat/fish seller stalls (no refrigeration…), garbage heaps, the alley walls. Other things smell REALLY good like, fresh bread from the bakery (we found a new bakery the other day by following the smell) or our neighbor cooking a meal.

CHURCH: At our home church we share prayer request then we all take turns praying. The pastor preaches in English and we all understand it.

BUT: at our church here we share prayer request and then we all pray at the same time OUT LOUD (that takes a little getting used to!). One of the elders preaches in French, then another elder translates that in Jola (right now, another missionary has been translating into English for us).

FAST FOOD: I think we all know about fast food in the States! McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell, the list goes on!

BUT: Here we CAN get a few options for fast food:

Schawarma — think of it as a Middle Eastern taco, it has meat, fries, tahini, and veggies inside a pita. Also available, many other Middle Eastern fast foods.

Hamburger — these come on a BIG bun. They put on the patty, fries, a sauce that tastes a little like BBQ—and then they hollow out the top of the bun and put a hard boiled egg inside!

A Plate of Whatever is on the Menu — often there are little restaurants or stands that make traditional rice and sauces and you get a serving of whatever is cooked up for the day.

(Check out our blog for a few more fast food pictures and descriptions and a peek behind the scenes!)

BILL PAYING: We all pay bills—in the states the bill comes in the mail. You can pay online or (the really time consuming way) write out a check and send it through the mail.

BUT: Here we wait for the guy from the electric company to knock on our door (I don’t know what happens if you are not there when he comes), then we make sure we have enough cash on hand (typically we only deal with cash here, no credit cards or checks), then we need take our bill with us to the local bill pay office and pay in person.

Check in here for a glimpse at how buying things is different.

Stay tuned next week for the final part of the series, Things we like BETTER in West Africa!

Prayer Requests

• Praise for continued health!
• Pray for our classes starting on Friday—things are about to get a lot busier!

Here is a little extra info on something that is “The Same, But Different”. Our main update was getting a bit long, so we decided to separate this one out for you really dedicated people!

BUYING THINGS: We all have to buy things. You go in find what you want, pay for it and have maybe a little bit of small talk with the cashier, but more than likely not…

BUT: Here things work a little differently! The other day we found a ‘tourist’ shop around the corner from us. This is how our buying went:

We went in and greeted the man, “Hello, how are you?”

“Good, and you?”

“Good, and your family?”

“Good, and your family?” (Not a typo—there is a lot of repetition in the greetings here.)

We would do this with everyone in the room while shaking hands; good thing there was only one man this time! Then we proceeded to look around, to see what would strike our interest. Of course, the shop owner was also trying to get us interested in things!

“Sit down!”, he says. So, we sit, on his couch. “What are your names, the names of the kids?”

We start talking about Michael growing up in Guinea, so then of course he wants to know where, how long, does he speak any other languages from Guinea? Why are we in Senegal, how long will we be here, where do we live, where are we from? (Note: For safety reasons, we generally try to give pretty vague answers to some of these questions.) As you can imagine, quite a bit of time has passed by this point.

Now, onto business, how much does this cost, or this, or this…

”Boy, that seems expensive!” (Even if you don’t think so, it is important in the negotiating process to seem like you do! People here generally give you a higher rate, then we talk them down, until we can meet somewhere in the middle.)

Some more talking about life. Then we focus on what we want right then. We wanted to get 3 outfits for the boys, he told us a starting price of 11,000 CFA (about $22). So Michael offers 8,000CFA. He acts like, “How could you even ask such a small number!”

He says, “I already gave you a good price, you are from Guinea! How about 10,000CFA?”

Think about it some more, don’t make it too easy! It is all part of the process!

“OK, 10,000CFA.” Some more talk, he makes sure we don’t want anything else.

“It is all good, I gave you a good price. Are you sure you don’t want to get that for your wife, or an outfit for your girl?”

We start to leave. “Good bye! Thank you!”

He says, “Come back anytime, just to visit, I am here all the time. We could have tea.”

So now, not only do we know where to buy artifacts, we also are possibly on the way to making a friend.

Behind the Scenes

So when you are about to write an update talking about fast food options in Senegal and you find out that you have NO pictures of anything you are writing about, what do you do?

Well, I don’t know what you would do, but we buckled down, went the extra mile for you folks—and got some fast food. Just to take pictures of it, you understand. Well, of course we did have to eat it in the end—we can’t be wasteful now, can we? And well, yes, we did get a couple of soft drinks to go with it, now that you mention it…

Let’s just keep focused on the main thing, OK? We are here working hard to keep you informed in whatever ways we can! And French classes are starting on Friday, so we will have considerably less update time in our schedule, so it had to be soon!

We found out that they have a printed menu there, and we can call and have our order delivered for about 60¢! (Do we need to do an update for you on that? Cause I think we would be willing to investigate this further….Plus, look at all those menu items we haven’t tried yet!)

The one thing about fast food here is, well, it isn’t really very fast. We waited probably 20–30 minutes for every thing to be cooked, and by that time it was pretty dark. People eat later here than we are used to in the US, so it was probably 7:30 or 8 when we got back to our house. And we got everything set out on the table to take some lovely informative pictures when…

The power went out.

So we did our best to take pictures anyway! Titus held a battery powered LED light-strip and we snapped away. Learning flexibility and how to make do is a big part of adjusting to living here. We hope you enjoy seeing a bit more of our life here—at least as much as we enjoyed making (er, eating?) it.

The next three updates are going to be a three part series: things we miss or took for granted, things that are the same (maybe a little different), and finally, things we like better here in Africa.

Part One:

Things We Miss or Took for Granted in the US.

Prayer Requests

• Praise for better health. We seem to have gotten over our flu, and Isaac seems to have gotten over the fever he was fighting. Praise God that it wasn’t malaria!
• Pray about our continued adjusting to life here. Things are going well, but we are still very tired most days.

A Riddle of Little Things

A riddle to start your day—what do shampoo, a fork, and a hanger have in common? Keep reading and I will tell you—but first, some back stories…

I am not normally a person who cares about girly things; I don’t use makeup, I have a wash and wear hairstyle, etc. But one thing I like is Herbal Essence shampoo. You may not know this, but a few years ago they changed the formula and redid all the packaging; why they did this I have no idea, when a product works why mess it up! So over the past few years I have been shampoo hopping, I just can’t find what works for me. Coming to Senegal we knew that we could get soaps and things, but we knew the chances of getting ‘our brand’ were slim…

We knew that most of our household things we would need we would be able to borrow during our time in Dakar. That was great from a packing standpoint, but not so great from a “Now I have to leave all my possessions behind, all those possessions that I have grown used to using and are like my friends” standpoint. (I know, I need to get out more!)

While I was packing I had a pile of hangers that I was hoping to fit in a suitcase at some point…well, that point never came, they just didn’t make it. A life or death problem it is not, however I knew that we had a LOT of dress clothes (since that is our main wardrobe). I just figured we would fold them all somehow, and deal with the wrinkles.

Now for the kicker—when we got to our apartment for the first time it was about 6am, still dark—the power wasn’t working. We were shown the layout by candle light, and would you know one of the first things I noticed by that candle light were some HANGERS laying on the dresser!

Later that day we were finding things to eat with, plates etc. and Michael says, “Hey look! OUR FORKS!” Yep, we have several forks, spoons and knives that are the exact same pattern as the ones we left packed up in boxes in Michigan!

The next morning we were headed out to our ‘grocery store’. The open air market across the street, as were greeting everyone, and meeting all the shopkeepers I was trying to assess what each one sold. As I looked up in one little shop what did I see, the OLD HERBAL ESSENCE bottles! The same shampoo that I could no longer find in the US!

So back to the riddle—what do shampoo, a fork and a hanger have in common? They are just little reminders to me that GOD LOVES ME! HE knew my needs even when I did not! God is in control! HE puts me in a house with all I need, HE puts me in a place across the street from a shop that carries the shampoo that I love, even though it has been out of production in the US for years! What an awesome God we serve!

Today, look for the little things, the things that show that God knows not only your deepest needs and desires, but also how to show His love in the day to day life! We would love to hear about them!

Nancy for the Dore Family

A New Year

The Lord has blessed us with another year—even if we didn’t manage to stay awake long enough to see it in. We did make it all the way to 10:30! (OK, so we are officially old now, I guess.) Pray with us that we would see the Lord cause us to grow and learn and serve in new and different ways in the year to come. Pray that we would become closer as a family and in our marriage. Pray that we would open ourselves up to the people around us and be humble in our attitudes toward them.

A New Place

This new year finds us updating you (full of excitement and tiredness) from Senegal! We have come here at a great time of the year, the weather is very mild—only in the 70’s! We are slowly catching up on our sleep as we recover from the jet lag—and from being woken up with unfamiliar noises several times during the night. We are getting used to the sounds of Africa (the call to prayer, the drums and music) as well as the sounds of a city (traffic, horns, a general buzz of people.) Waking up at one in the morning to blaring horns, the shouting of hundreds of people, accompanied by a couple of loud explosions just down the street from us is slightly disconcerting (that is an understatement!)—until you find out that people are celebrating a win for the local soccer team by cheering, honking and setting off fireworks!

We are here in Senegal to do our 5–6 months of French study, which will be a very intensive time as we try to get to as high a level as possible in our time here. During that time of formal language study (4 hours of classroom time each day, as well as homework), we will also be balancing homeschooling and family time as well as trying to be working on relationships in our community. Pray that the Lord would give us strength and grace to live out His love through the stress and busy-ness.

The kids are doing pretty well so far! This is an answer to prayer as they have been able to make some friends, play on their own, and go to Sunday School at the Senegalese church. Pray for them as they adjust to all the new things (like the heat, the mosquito nets, the fact that they cannot talk to people easily). Pray that they would be able to pick up some French quickly so that they can get along better with the people that they meet here. They are already doing well with greeting people in French (Bonjour, ça va?) and smiling and shaking hands.

We are all fighting some colds, so you can also be praying that we would get over them quickly—it is just an extra thing to drain us of our energy right now.

We also thank the Lord for the many people who have made us welcome in so many ways!

We will try to get some pictures out soon!

Prayer Requests

• Praise for a safe trip—all our luggage made it and we had no real hassles on any leg of the trip!
• Praise for a good few days so far.
• Pray about our health and rest as we try to adjust to the time and new conditions.
• Pray for wisdom as we work at learning so much!

Thanks for praying—Nancy’s wisdom teeth extraction went really well. She is now trying to take it easy for a few days while she heals.

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