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I'm going to separate my personal posts from my posts in response to your questions/comments.

Senegalese people are definitely connected. Not everyone has a landline in their home, but everyone has a cell phone. All the universities in Senegal have internet access and the students take advantage of that. The school I'm primarily attending, the West African Research Center (WARC), has not had internet for the past 3 days, but the house I'm staying in is near a centre multimedia. The majority of the people I've seen at the cafe are Senegalese, and the time of day determines how many people are here. My house has a single internet line running to but others have wireless. I don't think they're as obsessed about it as Americans are, but they are aware of what is happening in the world outside Senegal; the youth use Facebook and Hotmail frequently.
They know more about the United States than people in the states know about Senegal.

The people of Senegal are extremely friendly. My roommate, Gilda, and I went to the Universite Cheick Anta Diop yesterday for a class and asked a million people for directions and every single person assisted us. There are a ton of little shops that all sell the same items (fruit, phone cards, beverages, etc)...we stopped at one of the shops on our way to the centre multimedia to ask if they sold cell phones. They don't sell them there, but they called five different people to find someone who sold them and arranged a time for us to come back to that same shop and they would have the phone delivered there.

Everyone says Ca va (how are you?) and is willing to talk to you and figure out what you're trying to communicate. They know pretty quickly that we're American, but I don't think that has an impact on the way they treat us. They are genuinely sincere and friendly. The people of Senegal are excited that a black man is President of the U.S. but beyond that they do not see how it will affect them on an individual level. If we pass by people who know we're American, they'll shout "Obama!" Even in the centre multimedia today, someone was listening to a newsreport of it on the radio. They know what's up. :)

Internet is not as readily available as it is in the states, but it's definitely here. We're looking into how much it would cost to get wireless at my host house; there are four of us living there, so we could split the cost. I think it's a generational thing, as well, whether or not a house has internet - it depends on who is living there.

I can answer these questions a bit more in depth later. I'm almost out of time on my computer. Hope this helped.

- Miranda