When I describe my time here in Thienaba I think it as living in two worlds
at the same time. I have my first and main world, which is the one when I’m
awake and fulfilling all my daily activities. My second world is once I get
under my mosquito net in my room and I go to sleep.
Once a week I need to take a pill of Mefloquine which is medicine to
prevent malaria. This medicine has some interesting side effects (some not
as pleasant as others) but the main good side effect is the weird dreams
and the frequency of them, this is why I describe my time as two separate
worlds. During the day sometimes is I look forward to the night as I know
i’ll have a dream that will blow my mind in the night. The interesting part
of me dreaming is that i kind of have the power to control them, when I
wake up in the middle of the dreams I can go back to sleep and finish the
storyline of the dream, as well as think a little on what would I like to
happen next (I know is very weird).
Another interesting thing about dreaming so much, is the big amount of
ideas i get form it. I needed to make a “country presentation” (basically
analyse something in my community) to later present to the Senegal cohort.
The topic I chose for mine was “religion in Senegal” and I chose this topic
because I dreamed that someone said to me that I needed to make my
presentation on that. As soon as I woke up I had decided to make such
project about religion.
Normally things I dream are related to things that had happen the day
before. One day I was watching some videos about divers, the next thing
,that night I dreamed I was a diver at the olympics. One day I watched a
french movies with some of my host brothers (as not everyone was in the
house), and I say to my other host siblings I was going to watch that movie
with them the next day. That night I dreamed I had a fight with my host
sister because I haven’t show them the movie yet. A family member back home
went to work in Pakistan for a couple of weeks, I dreamed my best friend
was getting a traditional Pakistani wedding in Pakistan. Ando so on and so
on… Dreams are all related to things are going on in my daily life (Thats
how both of my worlds convine together).
As I mention I also have weird dreams, which are the best because every
time I wake up to them I just can’t believe that myself in the subcontinent
have created such storyline. This category includes: A dream that a hotel
had a service that sells “wolof injections” giving the ability to speak
wolof to whoever takes it. In my dreams I often laugh, I wake up with joy,
I wake up nervous and sometimes I even cry in my sleep. Also something
worth mentioning is that I’ve been dreaming in Spanish, English and
sometimes Wolof
My routine and my strategy to be able to remember all my different dreams
is that as soon as I fully wake up in the morning, I grab my phone and I
record whatever I had dreamed.
