There is a festival named "Magal Touba", which is a Muslim festival on the 28th of October. Touba is the name of a region in Senegal that is a holy place for Muslims. On the holiday, people from all over Senegal gather at a large mosque in…

I gave a class of math to first-year students. Recently I've been going to two elementary schools, teaching mainly to first-year and second-year students. The theme this time was, "Big and Small." In the middle of the lesson, I said, "Let'…

The official language is French in Senegal. All public documents are written in French. Despite this, there are many Senegalese who cannot speak French. Especially, most women usually speak in the local language "Wolof". I rarely meet wome…

An elementary school I go has about 60 children in a classroom. At the most, 70 children are packed tightly into a small classroom. In Japan, the maximum number of students per class is 40, so the difference in numbers is obvious. Teaching…

Physical punishment still remains in Senegalese schools. In Japan, these kind of punishment by teachers are immediately in the news nowadays. Recently I started teaching math and have been to several classes in elementary schoos. I can und…

When I looked at the list of the first grade in an elementary school, the youngest was 5 years old and the oldest was 8 years old in the same room. When I asked the tallest boy in the second grade how old he was, he told me he was 11. In S…

Finger snap. I have one of my memories about finger snap when I was a child in the elementary school. I remember that when I practiced for about an hour to make a big sound with finger snap, the skin of the finger was peeled off. It was so…

I'm going to elementary schools this week. Children are just reviewing previous contents of subjects last year and haven't started learning new contents yet. I was wondering about the children's clothes. Just like in April in Japan（New se…

There was a strange scenery on the first day I went to an elementary school. They were probably children of first grade, and they were riding to school in a taxi. There were four children in the passenger seat of a normal taxi in which the…

For the first three months, July, August, and September, since I came to Senegale, elementary schools were on summer vacation. Now in October, elementary schools finally began. I'm working at the"Teacher Training Center", but I'm also a vo…

Japanese are "rare foreigners" in the rural town of Louga. This is oposite thing that there are few African in Japan. When I walk around in town, I can feel everyone's eyes on me. I can very easily. Whenever I pass by someone, eyes always …

When phone calls are gotten even in the middle of conversations, Senegalese will quickly answer the phone without saying a word and suddenly start a conversation saying "Allô!". Allô means "Hello".In Japan, people would say, "May I take th…

October has arrived. The rainy season is turning into the dry season. Will it really stop heavy raining? I feel a little sad. The weather forecast still shows 40 degrees Celsius, so I think it is time to start feeling the difference of the…

I generally take the day off on weekends. The market is almost closed on Sundays. Looking down on the market from the second floor of the building. The market is made up of stores and stores crowded together. It looks as if there are no pa…