On Wednesday, I visited Anne-Marie`s place of work and was very impressed with her OT kingdom. She actually has a Occupational Therapy room that is filled with therapeutic devices and that locks up! I loved spending the day with her and seeing her work. It was great to exchange professional experiences and discuss her cases. I gave her some good ideas and I gained many excellent ideas from her. I wish we could shadow fellow professionals in the same field more easily… Just because I have the diploma doesn`t mean I know everything; there is so much to learn by just watching someone else do the same work. Oh well. I can`t wait for her to come to my place of work :)

(Image left: MC and I on top of Ile Goree. Lots of arts & crafts souvenirs for sale. Very picturesque. Everyone kept on asking us if we were twins that day. In looking at this photo, I now understand why...we were dressed the same! - we are used to getting asked if we are sisters though...)

In the afternoon, MC and I visited Dakar`s most important tourist attraction: l’Île de Gorée. It is a small habitable island about a fifteen minute ferry ride from Dakar`s downtown port.

(Image right: me in front of a baobab tree. The fruit are called "pain de singe" = monkey bread)

The island was colonised by white people who were involved in the slavery trade. The architecture is totally different from the rest of Dakar – it is like being in Europe! They used the island as the launching point for slave-filled boats bound for the Americas:
- Senegal, Dakar and more specifically Gorée are geographically the most westward points in Africa
- Gorée being an island (and most Africans don`t know how to swim), escape was impossible
Men, women and even children from all over West Africa would be selected for their physical attributes (tall, fit, strong) and kidnapped by the colonisers.

(Image left: view of the island when approaching from Dakar)

They would be sent to launch points like Gorée (there are several of them along the coast but Gorée was one of the biggest) and “stored” in slave houses until sold (on average three months). Their cost was a pitence (man = rifle, women = jewelery, child = miror or button). The slaves were sold according to their weight. If they didn’t make the cut-off line (60 kg for a man), they would be kept at the slave house for a period of time and fattened up. If they didn't behave, they would be tortured. Those who died after torture or from illness were simply thrown in the water, to the sharks. Since the sharks had a steady feed, they hung around the island which decreased the incentive to escape for those who knew how to swim. We visited a slave house they converted into a museum.

(Image right: "La porte du non-retour" = the doorway of no return. This is the doorway the slaves would go through when embarking on the boat for shipping. It faces west.)

Back in the day though, there were many slave houses on the island and many have now been converted into houses or apartments. Visiting the slave house was very humbling. The island was extremely pictoresque; a must see indeed!

When I finally got around to checking my emails, I found out two great things: my brother Patrick and his fiancee Anne-Marie are pregnant with their first!!!! My friend Annie, who is currently doing an internship in Marocco, will be able to take time off while I`m there so we can visit the country together, upon my return home from Senegal!!! Speaking of emails, if you are reading this, I`d love to get news from you EVEN if you consider that nothing is new in your life….