We reached Kebemer and were welcomed by a hot wind accompanied with temperatures over 100 F. I tactfully applied sunscreen on the side of the road and invested in another 1.5 liters of bottled water. We spent about $1.50 for a dish of rice and mafé (peanut sauce drenched meat) and tried to hide from the heat. Then we took a bush taxi thirty minutes west toward the ocean in order to meet our 4x4 (sounds like cat cat in french) driver who drove us into the Lompoul desert, which was surprisingly like 20 degrees cooler than Kebemer.
We were greeted in the desert by Bedouin tents, sand dunes, and the sound of the waves hitting the shore in the distance. It was such a beautiful place!
The sand dune that towered over our tents beckoned us to climb it and get a better view of our surroundings. Once at the top, the only appropriate thing to do was to jump off!
After frolicking in the sand and watching a large French tour group settle into their tents from our perch at the summit of our sand dune, we slid down the hill to meet our evening ride, a train of camels, frothing at the mouth.
The camel ride was followed by dancing by starlight to a djembe band. The four of us knew what to do the minute we heard the mbalax rhythm start, however the French tour group just sat on their benches and watched the dancing from a distance. I've never danced so hard in my life. Our dinner of vegetable soup, couscous, meat, and watermelon was a welcoming feast and after dinner we retired to our tents and slept peacefully to the sound of the nearby ocean.
The next morning, we worked our way back out of the desert accompanied by two newly made Swedish friends and took a Sept Places from Kebemer to Thiès, where Emily and I spent the rest of the week.
Emily and I spent the rest of the week with a Missionary who has been working in Sénégal for over 30 years! She was a great host and treated us to American food, conversations in English, introduced us to a lot of people doing a lot of great work here, and answered our plethora of questions about what it is like to be a missionary in Sénégal.
We spent each morning working at a hospital run by a Sénégalese Missions organization and started by a local church as a clinic over ten years ago. I shadowed some of the doctors and nurses and aided in about fifteen gastroscopes that were only conducted under general anesthesia. There are a lot of differences between medicine here and in the U.S.!
Below is a picture of the doctor I spent most of my time shadowing. He is holding the scope that we used to image the inside of a patient's intestinal tract. I even helped him perform a biopsy of a tumor in the stomach. During another one of our intestinal explorations the power kept going on and off, making it quite difficult to correctly conduct the exam. This is the room I spent the most of my time working in, and despite the beckoning and taunting of the broken air-conditioning machine above the window, the room was boiling hot! I drank something like 3 liters of water every day and most of that water left my body through my forehead, which had drops of sweat blurring my vision every five seconds. 
Patients in Sénégal are very, well, patient! We would arrive every morning at the hospital around 8 and already there were people lining the hallways waiting to be seen by one of the doctors. The last day we were there the hospital was conducting a screening for a cleft lip/palate and the hospital was filled with mothers and their children who came from far and wide to be eligible for a free reparative surgery.
In the afternoons, Emily and I explored some of Thiès and the surrounding area. We spent one afternoon in Saly, a highly tourist town that sickened me by its screaming disparity between the rich, mostly French condo owners and their poor, exploited Sénégalese neighbors. All over new two story "huts" with air conditioning, full service maids, constant electricity, hot water, pools, and luscious gardens were being built. It seemed so fake and sad.
Another day Emily and I went to a market in Thiès with the tailor to buy fabric for some skirts. Three days later we were the proud owners of matching skirts that only cost $6 each thanks to our bargaining skills and the help of our host's 34 years of Wolof!
Finally, Emily and I headed back to Dakar to celebrate Easter with our families. I haven't looked at school work in over a week, and it feels like I haven't had class for a month. This past week was full of new adventures, feelings, and people, but I am definitely ready for classes to start tomorrow and to pick up my normal schedule.
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