Our day started early – with a 6:30 sunrise service at Dakar Academy. I’ve always hated getting up for sunrise services, but I have always loved them once I’m there! It’s so wonderful to hear the birds singing and feel the cool air of the morning (yes, even here it was cool – many people had blankets! Not me, of course – I keep waiting to adapt to this climate…) as you’re singing “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.” The school choir sang (it was the first time we saw Will perform in it – he only joined the choir this semester), the drama group performed, and there was lots of singing. Very moving and special.
After church we went back to the house for several hours. The sunrise service was the only one DA had – it lasted an hour and a half – and we weren’t due at Dorcas’ house until 1:00. Dorcas is the young woman who works for us several days a week, and she had invited us to share the Easter meal with her family. Her own parents died years ago, and she was adopted by a pastor and his wife. She is the oldest child in the family, and helps to support them. While we waited to go to Dorcas’ house, I worked in the kitchen and Anna decorated the cake. She continues to love drawing and this is the second year she has made a picture with candy on the Easter cake. Mom and Dad sent us lots of yummy American candy, and Bruce’s sisters brought some Easter candy with them on their recent visit to Dakar as well, so Anna even had real M&M’s to decorate with!
This was the first time we had been to Dorcas’ house. She lives in the same neighborhood as the center where Julie and I are working – it is a highly populated and poor area. We had to walk through someone else’s living space to get to the stairs leading up to where Dorcas’ family lived. We walked into the common space, like a long, wide hallway. Along one of the walls there were two doors leading to small bedrooms, and across from that there was just a half-wall which was open to the outdoors on the top half. You could climb another flight of stairs and be on the roof, with a wall surrounding it. And that was pretty much the extent of the place. I don’t think there was running water, and I never saw the bathroom. I didn’t see a kitchen, either, and I imagine they do their cooking like many do – over a small tank of gas. (These look about the size of propane tanks we use with our gas grills, with a circular rim on top that you can put a pan on. The flame comes right out of the tank and you can cook on it.) It was sobering to see how Dorcas lives. Even here, in Africa, where we feel we are living a simple life (and it is simple, relative to how we lived before), we still have no idea what it is like to live with almost nothing.
There was another American couple there who attend the church where Dorcas’ adoptive father preaches. We sat with them, the pastor, Dorcas, and Dorcas’ brother in one of the bedrooms in kind of a crowded circle. The power was out the whole time we were there, there were no windows in the room, and a curtain hung in the doorway, so it got quite hot! Still, we enjoyed visiting with Dorcas’ relatives, in a mixture of French, Wolof, and even a little English. (The other Americans are focusing on Wolof and haven’t had too much French, and we know almost no Wolof, so we all made do with whatever worked.)
Eventually Dorcas brought in the meal. I have to admit I was not feeling good about it at first sight! 
Normally, when you eat a Senegalese meal, it is served in a large common bowl over a bed of rice. There might be meat or fish or chicken on the rice, and usually a variety of vegetables. Almost always potatoes and carrots, sometimes beans or cabbage. Our friend Ibou once told us that on holidays, they replace rice with another starch – potatoes or bread – because that makes the meal special. (They eat rice on all the other days of the year – it’s too common for holidays.) All this to say that, even on holidays, there’s always been a starch involved in every meal I’ve had here, and I know that the kids can fill up on rice or potatoes even if they can’t eat anything else. Our kids are not the pickiest eaters on the planet but they also are not overly-adventurous, so when I saw Dorcas coming with a large tray of what looked like either pea soup or refried beans, and nothing else, I was quite nervous. And I was thinking – I know you always eat with your hands here but how in the world are we supposed to eat that with our hands?! But, I was pleasantly surprised that not only did Dorcas give us all spoons, but that all of us really enjoyed the meal! (A bowl of baguette pieces did make its way to us after a time, so after trying the peas, Anna stuck to bread.) There were some pieces of mutton and potatoes in the peas, and the sauce was very spicy and really delicious. We finished the meal with Anna’s cake and soda that we had brought at Dorcas’ request, so while we weren’t as full as we usually are after our traditional Easter ham dinner, we felt well-fed.
After eating, we visited for another hour or so. Dorcas has a new baby sister, only a month old, so she was passed all around. They opened the baby blanket we had brought as a gift, and we handed out some plastic eggs with candy inside them which were a huge hit! The family asked me to take pictures and I took many. I’ve posted all our Easter pictures on our Shutterfly photo sharing site – although my Mom says she was not able to gain access to it without the aid of the Shutterfly help team. I’m hoping to get that site linked up with this one, so that you can easily see pictures, so if you can’t see the Easter pictures just yet, hopefully you will be able to soon.
We left Dorcas’ and headed over to the Adamson’s house for their annual candy hunt. There were probably about 10 or 15 missionary families there with their kids, and it was fun to hang out together for a few hours. Every family brought candy-filled plastic eggs and the dads hid them in the yard. Later we all came inside for finger sandwiches and other snacks. It was a busy day, but very enjoyable! Hope you all had a great Easter. He is Risen Indeed!
Dorcas (seated) and her family
Anna with baby Françoise
Anna counts her eggs to make sure she doesn't have more than 10!
PS – this is totally unrelated to Easter – but my friend Jenni just sent a link to some articles on the Focus on the Family “Plugged In” website that I thought some of you might be interested in reading. They are written by a woman returning to the US after several years overseas and her struggle with reverse culture-shock. I think the author does a great job combining good-natured humor with her observations. There are going to be three parts to this series, this link takes you to the first two. http://www.pluggedinonline.com/read/read/a0004580.cfm
