What happens in the desert...

Hello,

it's been a while, but I hope you guys are staying busy like I am. Well, let's be real, some of it has been self-induced because I decided to read a 4 book series last week when I was aware that I would be taking some final exams this week. Fortunately, I finished my book and appeared to have done well on my exam, win win, win. On the other hand, my roommate is slightly paranoid that I'm trying to kill her because the series I read was the "Twilight" series (I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that) and it's about vampires. Plus, my roommate claims that I scare her all the time because I hide in the shower and then appear when she comes back to our room. Honestly, I don't do this on purpose, but she started a war last week when she snuck up on me and poked the back of my neck when I was trying to open the door. The night after Ariel and I hid in my room when we noticed my roommate was downstairs filling buckets of water, and we nearly scared Juliette to death. That poor girl, she has to live with me, put up with me scaring her, and is now paranoid that, because of my vampire series, I'm plotting to kill her. So, life is pretty much the same as if she was my roommate in the U.S.

Besides the usual avoidance of homework, I've had some fairly adventurous weekends lately. Two weeks ago, all six of the girls from Wisconsin ventured out into the desert. Admittedly, I thought this trip would be kind of roughing it under the stars, but it turns out that the travel agency's idea of roughing it is a tent with a bed, running water, and a toilet...in the desert! haha, it was really a great time, mostly because of the company of some of my closest friends. One of the slightly embarrassing features of our trip was the vehicle that transported us into the desert. Although the truck was well suited for traversing the dunes, it kind of left the passengers hanging outside on safari style benches. Hence, when we drove through the entire town of Saint-Louis staring out of our safari truck at all the people going about their daily lives, we received our fair share of strange looks. Part of me felt kind of ridiculous, as if we were on a people safari, and the other part of me embraced the fact that we were being tourists anyways so why not pretend like we think this is totally normal behavior.

Another interesting form of transportation, although one that seems to go hand in hand with the desert, that I enjoyed was camel back (do people say that? I think it's the brand name of my water bottle, so why not). Riding camels in the desert was really fun and slightly scary. Or maybe I was just nervous because we were one camel short, so I had the good fortune of riding on the camels butt with a makeshift saddle made out of a plastic bag. After a few minutes of paranoia that the camel behind me wanted to eat me, I relaxed enough to enjoy our trek. Although, the parts where the camel was running down hill and I was clinging to Emily was slightly unnerving. After the camel ride I tried to shake out my bow legs by sliding down some dunes, kind of like if I were sliding into second base, which apparently does not work very well in case anyone is interested in trying. All in all, the desert trip was a blast! We stayed in some awesome tents and had a campfire, no smores though, I think I need to introduce those to Senegal. On the way home our truck took a bit of an alternate route home...we drove down the beach along the coast. The drive was pretty cool, and impressive on the driver's part, but I do wonder from an environmental standpoint... Plus, after about two hours of intense ocean air/water spraying across your body you kind of don't think it's quite as cool, but now I can say I've done it.

Last weekend was quite an interesting weekend on campus because it was my village's weekend long party, and on top of that, my Bible study group hosted a basketball tournament. The weekend du village, as we call the party, started friday night with traditional dancing called sabar dancing. From what I've gathered, sabar refers to the drumming that was traditionally used in villages to alert people about significant events/meetings. Along with the drumming is some of the most intense dancing I've ever seen. At first it looks like the women are just kind of flailing their legs because the movements are so fast and not anything like your casual box step, but after a bit I realized just how perfectly timed and rhythmed their movements are. Plus, the dance is cool to watch because there's kind of a flirtation between the drummer and the dancer, and the drummer takes cues from the dancer about how fast to beat and when to stop. I watched a lot of dancing friday night, but I did not participate, that is definitely not my forte. Unfortunately, people love to remind me that the Americans always dance for the Sabar, but I guess I had to break up the tradition.

Saturday the village ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner together. I only made it to two of the meals because breakfast was served around 1 pm, lunch at 7pm, and dinner at 4am...the Senegalese keep a bit of a later schedule than i do. Plus, during the afternoon Saturday and Sunday I was running around collecting water and chairs for our basketball tournament. I still am not really sure who won the tournament, which is kind of sad, but I'm used to being out of the loop. The definite highlight of the tournament was the grand prize, a ram! Whenever I asked what the winning team will be doing with said ram, people would just say, having a party of course! Poor sheep... Sunday the village went to the beach, I went to church/basketball, and then started to study. I had one exam this week (my professor came in specially for me because the students are on strike again) and I need to complete two more exams before I leave. Coming home is a scary and exciting concept at the moment, and I'm just trying to live in the moment.

hot hot hot cold

Well, the last few weeks have been kind of a blur, mainly because the weather has been so hot it melted my memories. Luckily, the last four days have done a 180 and now it's coldish. When the the weather is hot I spend most of the day trapped him my room, mainly because my roommate convinces me that it's too hot to leave until 4pm haha.

Lately though I've actually been pretty busy with school work, hence the lack of recent postings. It's really nearing in on my return home, and I have the usual mixed emotions about that. I have a feeling that i will have a different perspective on a lot of things, and I will really miss the people that I've gotten to know really well. More of what I've been up to though: last weekend was really crazy. The Catholic students put on basically a weekend long party full of concerts and food. I'm not really sure why they put on the party, but they apparently do so every two years. Luckily, my roommate was once again the head of the party planning committee, and our room turned into a battle field. Thursday while I was reading in my room, six men carrying giant sacs of I'm not really sure what burst into my room and left all this stuff on the floor. A few minutes later my roommate comes running in saying, "why did you let them bring the charcoal in our room?" I suppose her question is legitimate because I don't really care for charcoal to share my bedroom with me, but that was the kind of the interaction that I had with her all weekend. She would organize something crazy, lots of people would show up/never leave, and I would sit there slightly confused.

Friday was actually pretty fun because there was a relatively small group of girls in my room making the Senegalese version of donuts (quite tasty I might add). Hoping that the girls would accept my shallow act of friendship, I bought a big bottle of fanta to share, and they were all very nice to me afterwards. Juliette's friend Joe also kept turning up to "help" but I soon realized that he was really there to learn how to play the clarinet. It made me kind of sad to see that five minutes into the lesson he was practically as good as I am... Friday night I attended what turned out to be the Catholic variety show. The show featured three different choirs, a dance group, rappers, poets, and probably more acts after I left at 2 am. The dance group was led by my friend Jeff, and honestly, they were excellent dancers, but we all felt a little awkward because the girls in the dance group were dressed a little scandalously, even for American standards. Fortunately, there was a group of 5 nuns sitting front and center trying not to act like the girls were doing or wearing anything bizarre. Saturday the crew was back in my room all day making more donuts and other dishes. I kind of avoided the room as much as possible because there was just too much going on, and the people cutting onions were making my eyes burn. The festivities continued through Sunday evening because they put on some strange version of a carnival, which was mostly just everyone dancing and drinking. I find the Catholic culture strange here sometimes because the majority of the population is Muslim and does not drink alcohol.

The weekend before last was also slightly taken over by my roommate because of her choir concert. This was more of an official concert in town featuring the UGB choir and a choir from Dakar. Friday morning at 5am the choir from Dakar arrived and a really sweet Congolese student showed up in our room for the weekend. I spent that entire day at Ranch de bongo, aka the pool, trying to read a book but just getting sunburnt instead. That evening, Emily and I had dinner in town at this wonderful Moroccan restaurant that we frequent on kind of a sadly regular basis since we discovered it. After dinner we headed off to Juliette's awesome concert. The choir from our University was great, but the choir from Dakar was fantastic. Besides filling my time with my musically inclined friends, I've been working and hanging out. All of the girls from my program are finally back on campus together and it's been fun to be a group again. Tomorrow I have my final Wolof class with our oral final exam. Our teacher told us that if we don't get a 100% we can't go home so... Speaking of our Wolof teacher, I forgot to mention another reason why I've been so busy. Pape Laye the Wolof teacher recently completed an english/Wolof dictionary and I was editing it for him. Unfortunately, the editing process involved me italicizing by hand the 140 pages of his dictionary, two weeks later I am finished with that lovely task and slightly sick of the sight of my laptop.

Hopefully all is well back in the U.S., most of my friends are taking finals ha ha ha, just kidding!

Sama waa ker Amerig new nanu

As you probably figured out from the title of this post, my family (specifically my mom and sister) came to visit me for a week here in Senegal. We had an awesome time together and it was an interesting trip from my perspective because I got to see other people taking in the sights I've come to know for the first time. Those of you who have the opportunity to talk to my family about their experience will probably find that their versions of our adventures might be slightly different, but I'll share some of the details about their trip from my point of view.

Two weeks ago Thursday, I traveled down to Dakar via my usual transportation (a sept place) so that I could find a place to stay for the night and leave to pick up my mom and sister from the airport early the next morning. During the trip to Dakar I sat next to a strange man who spilled his meat sandwich on me (and proceeded to eat the meat after picking it off my clothes) and who also placed a hard case behind my head so that every time the car slowed down the case would slide forward into my neck. After a few hours next to this man my patience was starting to wear thin, so when he kept trying to speak to me in English I would respond in French. I sometimes do this because I meet a lot of people here who either think I don't speak French or speak to me in English because they want to do practice their English. The thing is, I want to learn French, so I generally respond in French unless it's someone I know (that could be kind of prideful of me, not really sure, but it's what I do). So anyways, the man would say things like, I want your phone (he really meant my ipod) and then I would reply in French that it's really expensive. After I would say something in French he would look at me kind of strangely and say, "I don't speak French." What threw me off is that I heard him speaking in Wolof with the other passengers. Consequently, after a little bit of pondering my "shrewd" deductive skills allowed me to realize that this man was from Gambia, the small country located inside of Senegal whose languages are English and Wolof instead of French and Wolof like in Senegal. I kind of felt like a jerk when he told me that was true and I made conversation for a while until he informed me that he wanted a tubab wife, and we parted ways soon after. I thought that story was a nice example of how once again you have to either be completely aware of all the perspectives concerning an issue, or you should proceed with caution... especially when abroad and representing your country.

Back to my mom and sister though, Thursday night I eventually rolled into our hotel around 8 pm looking very disheveled and carrying a huge hiking backpack. Upon entering the hotel I was extremely disoriented because I had stepped into an upscale place after I had just come from one of the more dysfunctional parts of Senegal, which is the "bus depot" for lack of a better translation. More specifically, I think I was experiencing a bit of culture shock but more along the lines of what it will be like when I go back to the U.S. The women behind the concierge desk seemed to notice as well because they brought me some juice in a champagne glass to make me feel less awkward? Fortunately, in a relatively short amount of time I was in our hotel room with hot, running water! A few hours later, at 4 am, the hotel shuttle and I arrived at the airport to try and find some lost looking Americans. The hotel turned out to be a pretty sweet deal because they had their own waiting room, but that meant that the very specific directions for the airport that I emailed to my mom wouldn't go according to plan. Consequently, I stood outside of the gated arrival area looking for them, and when they came out I had to scream my sister's name 10 times to get her to turn around because my mom took off at a run out the door of the airport. hahaha, it was so funny! A funny detail about our hotel in Dakar, the room was actually supposed to have two single beds and you could have them bring in a rollaway bed. As it turns out, two single beds actually means one really really big bed, so the three of us comfortably shared a bed.

Friday we visited Goree island, one of the islands off the coast of Dakar formerly used for slave trading. We walked all around the island, toured the slave house, and had a nice lunch of shrimp and local juices. Obviously my mom and sis were pretty tired so we spent the rest of the evening at the hotel and went to bed early. Apparently they didn't sleep too well because they were woken up by the call to prayer from the mosques, I remember those days... Saturday we toured the area were I lived with my host family and where the Baobab center is located. The tour also included a trip to our favorite little grocery store and lunch at the restaurant with hamburger complets and crepes filled with ice cream! Saturday afternoon was spent at the pool and then we dined at a really great restaurant featuring vietnamese food, kinda strange I know. Oh, and I forgot to mention that I left my cell phone at the restaurant where we had lunch, and after our time at the pool I dragged my mom and sister on a crazy adventure to find the lady who had found the phone. Our adventure included about an hour of driving, borrowed money from a nun, and me telling the hotel doorman that the taxi he called was too expensive. After all of that the hotel staff either liked me because I'm crazy or because I'm cheap, but we had an interesting time and made some new friends.

Sunday we traveled, in a little more style than I usually opt for, by private taxi to Saint-Louis. The drive was the usual five hours, and my mom and sister were fortunate enough to experience the wonders of Senegalese traffic, heat, angry taxi drivers, and random donkeys crossing the road. While in Saint-Louis we stayed at Hotel de la Poste, a hotel with a great location and known for it's sense of history. Back in the day when the postal service operated directly from Saint-Louis by private one person planes, the pilots would stay in hotel de la poste. I thought it would be fun to stay in the suite at the top of the hotel from which you have an awesome view of the city. Unfortunately, Hotel de la poste was maybe a little too authentic because our room had some hot water troubles and it was freezing at night, I don't think my guests were expecting cold weather in Senegal. After we unpacked, I arranged for a horse drawn cart tour of the city. The tour was actually pretty cool, I had to translate everything our guide said so I'm sure my mom and sis missed a lot of info, but they were able to see the many faces of Saint-Louis from the old crane that loaded cargo onto ships to the filthy area were they smoke and salt the fish they catch before apparently sending them to China.

Monday we ventured into the markets to get some fabric and then we hit up my tailor for some sweet outfits. After the tailor we visited the university campus and had a nice lunch of maafe, hopefully it was nice anyways, maafe is not my favorite Senegalese dish. Later that afternoon we checked out the hotel's pool, which seems to close down a bit during the cooler season because they placed a patio/dance floor over most of the pool. Tuesday we went on an excursion to the supposedly highly populated bird island just outside of Saint-Louis. It definitely was an excursion forcing my mother to climb through a traditional fishing boat for our tour. Strangely, our guide brought us to a small little hotel that was serving excellent spanish cuisine for lunch. As you can see, we didn't have too much Senegalese food, which was not by choice because ceebujen is great. Wednesday I was not a great hostess because I needed to take a test for my Wolof class, so I brought my mom and sister to our little hideaway called ranch de bango where they could spend the day at the pool. The catch about hanging our there was that we they had to eat lunch, which meant that they would have to order their food by themselves, in French! I arrived just as they got their food and I was extremely impressed to see how well they managed. For dinner that night most of the other girls on my program came to have dinner and desert with us (and to entertain my mom and sister with some of their wild stories). We also had to make a late night stop to the tailor because he hadn't finished the clothes earlier, so my mom and sister were able to watch them make their clothes on the spot. It sounds kinda sketchy but they did a good job.

Thursday we headed back to Dakar for their last days in Senegal. My mom enjoyed some shopping sprees in the artisan markets courtesy of a hilarious man who spoke English and wore a button with President Obama's face on it. Friday we toured a bit of Dakar's beaches, enjoyed some ceebujen, camped at the pool, and then dined at our vietnamese restaurant again. At 1 am we were back at the airport and they got into line behind some huge American shot putters who we had followed from our hotel, there was some strange athletics convention going on. I returned to Saint-Louis the next day to get back to business with my studies...and I've been here melting ever since. Have a great week!

Spring break continued

So I left off the story of my spring break adventures when we found our cute little apartments. After getting rid of our luggage, and my poor decisions in shoving too much junk into a duffle bag until the straps broke, we ventured out into the main part of town to see what was happening. As it turns out, the town of Saly where we stayed the next few days is incredibly touristy, and by touristy I mean that it caters to French tourists who come for an experience similar to that which we would have in Mexico I think. For example, as we meandered down the street and learned that Senegalese men refer to young women as "gazelles" to tell them they are attractive (more like to get them to buy something) we ran into a strip mall. It was like someone cut this thing out of France and pasted it onto a plot of land in Senegal. Included in this strip mall was a coffee shop, grass, and a carousel. At that moment I felt a little confused because this is not the Senegal I know and love, but some Senegal in some strange dimension. I know that tourism is good for the country because it brings in money and jobs and encourages growth in infrastructure, but sometimes it feels like the Senegalese have to sell their souls to get the tourists to come. That might be over dramatic because I don't really know what an all out tourist experience is, it could be infused with elements of Senegalese culture.

Wednesday we decided to venture off to a bird lagoon located in one of the nearby towns. When we arrived at the lagoon we realized that it was really just a pretty little inlet alongside the coast with a few birds and a overcrowded population of lagoon guides. As usual we avoided all of the guides because they're a little on the pushy side, and we walked up to the mouth of the lagoon, which featured some very chill and cute little shacks with some hammocks and menus arranged in the sand. After deciding that that was the place to spend the day, we had to figure out to cross the little bit of water with all our stuff. Fortunately, a man with a kayak appeared at the right moment to escort us across to his little restaurant. The day at the lagoon turned out really great, we had lunch with fresh prawns, swam, and I got to go ocean kayaking. Oh, and a fun side note, the name of our restaurant getaway was the vitamin, hahaha, I think it was implying that it is good for your health to spend time there, not really sure. That evening we enjoyed some great, relatively home cooked meals courtesy of an awesome local grocery store and Elise's mother who has sent her probably 40 bags of instant pasta dinners.

Thursday we followed the advice of the guidebook and visited a nearby island town about an hour and a half away from our apartment. The guidebook described the town as being made entirely out of shells, full of character, and home to the only shared Muslim and Christian cemetery in Senegal. Upon arrival we realized that made of shells was more of a metaphor for having shells on the ground, but the cemetery was interesting in kind of a morbid way. An hour later we had walked completely around the island and decided that there really wasn't that much to do, so we might as well head back to our lagoon. Fortunately, on the way out I caught a glimpse of a faded sign directing you to the hotel home to the dancing pelicans. Since we hadn't eaten lunch yet we decided to head over to the hotel restaurant and try and catch a matinee performance. When we walked in the owner informed us that "our generation" had freed the Pelicans and they had flown the coop. Apparently, the Pelicans were kept in cages, and I'm not sure how they were made to dance. (Random fact: I've heard tell of a Pelican named Akon who lives in Dakar and can be seen hanging out near a group of seafood restaurants showing off his extensive bling bling jewelry collection that he proudly wears on his feathers?) Since we were at the restaurant, we decided to have some ceebujen and support the owner who seemed to have fewer guests since the departure of the Pelicans. Lunch turned into a fiasco when the patron brought us one plate of ceebujen and two plates of yassa and then got really mad when we reminded him we had ordered ceebujen for three. I was planning on eating the yassa anyways when he grabbed the pan from us and proceeded to shove the food in his mouth at a table in the corner. He later rejected my tip. All in all, lunch was really a weird experience; I think there was a mix of cultural mixups and hurt pride. After lunch we returned to the lagoon for some more kayaking! and other fun. It turned out that the men there thought we would be spending the night at the lagoon with them... definitely not! Friday we left via taxi to Dakar to finish up our trip and spend some time with the host families.

The weekend with my host family was great. I wish Saint-Louis was closer to Dakar so I could visit more often, but those sept place rides to Dakar are just not fun if you're only staying for a weekend. Everyone was around: Nathalie, Isaa, Habib (Isaa's dad), my host mom, and my host dad. My host mom was mad at me because I don't call enough, which is legit since I don't like talking on the phone in French, it's hard to understand. On the other hand, she never calls me so yeah... Isaa has gotten bigger and pretty much speaks coherently. He mostly talks in Wolof, but it's hilarious to hear him use phrases that only adults say. Friday evening I snuck away for a few hours to hear some Americans who live and work in Senegal speak about what it's like having careers abroad. It was pretty cool to hear what they had to say, and we got to hear from the U.S. ambassador to Senegal who is an awesome lady. Saturday I spent the morning watching the Senegalese Independence day parade on T.V. with my host family. It was almost more entertaining listening to their commentary about the parade than actually watching the parade because they knew so much about each group that marched by and were extremely critical about the synchronization of the marchers. For some reason a whole bunch of schools in Dakar were featured in the parade, and the students were forced to march with their arms swinging in unison. It was kind of an unorthodox marching style and reminded me of another similar marching style... Saturday evening I hung out with some other Americans in the more upscale part of Dakar where we enjoyed a nice ocean side table and seafood featuring muscles and live urchins. Just so you know, I did not order the urchins, and their living condition was too much for all of us to handle. Sunday I returned to Saint-Louis to start my second semester classes and get things in order for my visitors arriving Friday morning!

In my next post I'll share about my adventures with my mom and sister and their trip to Senegal, we had a blast, but I am still wiped out, or it could be the heat, wow!

Spring Break 09!

Hey ya'll,

It's been a while and I've got lots to catch up on. I think I left off about two weeks ago while I was finishing up my first semester here in Saint-Louis. I still have a few classes just kind of dragging along here from the last semester but I'm ok with that because I kind of created the courses for myself so it seems to be working out fine. We had one minor scare with regard to my history of Africa class because the grade for the class is based solely on a paper we wrote, but because the last few weeks were review and exam weeks for the political science classes, our history of Africa class never actually met. As Ariel and I were pondering how to turn our papers for the class in, one of the other girls on our program returned form her trip to southern Senegal to inform us that our Professor had moved to a different city, very far away, two days before and would not be returning. For the next 24hours I had some minor panic attacks until I stumbled across the solution to my problem in the form of said Professor walking down the hallway towards me. Haha, I was obviously in control of the situation, and our professor had obviously not moved to Timbuktou.

That weekend I wasnt really up to much, and Sunday I spent the day once again at Noa's house where I had the pleasure of trying pigeon. Unfortunately, my phobia of birds seems to extend to eating those varieties outside of the chicken and turkey families, so the pigeon was not my favorite meal so far. Noa's family was as entertaining as ever, and I got to meet a really cool girl studying applied math. At the moment, she's researching Malaria treatments and why/how certain medications that are working well suddenly stop helping. She had some fascinating things to share with me, and I told her that I thought her research was great because so much Malaria research goes on outside of the the regions that actually suffer from it, and I think that those living in the regions afflicted by Malaria have access to alot of useful information and they know the disease because they have suffered from it. Monday we packed up and headed out on our spring break adventure to the petite cote, a grouping of towns along the coast that are known for their beaches and tourists, or so I've decided.

My spring break trip was a huge learning experience for me. I'm not sure why it took so long for me to understand some of these things, but I think it had to do with not being so surprised by things anymore, and looking at them from a perspective of doing them from a more Senegalese view point. For example, traveling to each city was possible by various modes of transportation, ranging from private taxis to buses crowded full of people heading off to unknown final destinations. I learned quickly that if I said, "I want to go to this place," my options would be a taxi ride for $20, but if I said, "How do I get to this place?" then I could take a variety of vehicles for different prices. It took me the whole year to get the hang of it, but now I understand how to travel in Senegal without having to pretend to get in a fight with taxi drivers because they wont give me a good price, hooray!

Back to the begginning of the trip, we took a minibus down to Thies, a city outside of Dakar (where I spent my first month) with hopes of finding some other form of transportation to our final destination: Tubab Diallo. Learning experience number one occurred on the bus, be careful what you say, just because you're foreign doesn't mean people dont understand you. Sidenote, this seems incredibly obviuos to me, especially because almost everyday I encounter people who think that I dont understand what they're saying about me in French or Wolof, and they are wrong...But anyways, I still needed to learn this little lesson. I was sitting in the front row of four rows in this minibus formerly known as a van. Luckily, the two other girls I was traveling with, Ariel and Elise, got placed in the fourth row, so in order to communicate with them I had to call them on my cellphone. As I was making sure they were situated alright, I explained to Ariel that I was in the front row with three other people and two very young girls who happened to be eating bananas and then spitting the banana on me. About ten seconds after I hung up the phone, the women next to me said, "m'am, m"am, excuse me, where are you from?" We proceeded to have a great conversation through which I learned that she is Mauritanian but has spent the last eight years in Colorado and speaks english very well. Secretly though, I was wondering the whole time how she felt about me proclaiming to two random girls that her children were spitting bananas on me. Moral of the story, well theres a few of them, but mainly, dont give your kids bananas on a minibus, I would recommend oranges.

We escaped our minibus in Thies without real knowledge of how to continue along our journey, but we evenutally found a taxi who would takeus for $10 to our hotel a ways away. The taxi worked out really smoothly for me because it was a long drive out there, but the Taxi driver seemed to have given us a good price in hopes of wooing Ariel, so she was a little uncomfortable. Monday night we stayed in a great little hotel, one of the few in Senegal where you can share a room with four people, which I think is very interesting. Besides that, the hotel appears to be owned by a very sweet French women who makes a lot of effort to employ locals and use local resources. For example, next to the toilet was a sign that explained that the toilets are made locally so could we please dispose of our toilet paper in the trash can so as not to clog them. Apparently Tubab Diallo is not the
Kohler of Senegal, but they'll work on it. Later that evening Emily came to join us after her travels in Morocco, and we had dinner and hung out at the hotel.

- as an addendum to my stay in Tubab Diallo, Tubab is the Wolof word for a white person, and I was told Tuesday morning by a random man following me on the beach that Diallo is portuguese. Senegal was originally colonized by the Portuguese, and it appears that Tubab Diallo was a Portuguese tourist hot spot during the 17th century.

Tuesday morning we decided to move onto a different town because Tubab Diallo, although very cute and calm, was just a little too cute and calm. We hiked about a mile with our luggage after refusing an overpriced ride from the hotel driver, and found a taxi willing to take us to the next vehicule en route to the town of Somone. After the taxi we boarded a large van contraption that took us to another taxi station, who finally helped us get to Somone. According the guidebook, the things to check out in Somone are the bird lagoon along the coast and a creole restaurant. Unfortunately, the restaurant informed us that they are closed tuesdays (not normal) and we decided to first find a place to stay before touring the lagoon. The hunt for a place to stay turned into a strange adventure with the man from our pizza restaurant and a bunch of Senegalese people leading us through their homes and showing us random places we could stay. Eventually, we escaped our overly forceful tour guides and headed off to the heighboring town called Saly. In Saly, some very nice bartenders at the cheapest hotel listed in the guidebook informed us of a less expensive place to stay where we wouldn't be obliged to share twin beds. The place turned out pretty great, we had two person apartments with kitchens, air conditioned bedrooms, hot water, and living rooms for about $26 a night per room.
Saly housed us for the next three nights and gave us a perfect location to explore the rest of the towns that make up the petite cote.

Scatterbrained in Senegal

Hey ya'll, so you might be thinking what now? More specifically, after I've shamelessly recounted my moments of klumsiness and poor decision making you might think to yourself, she's probably learned her lesson by now. Well, not yet, but that's the great thing about Senegal, I learn something new everyday. Unfortunately, last Monday I accidentally left my wallet at the dining hall after breakfast. An hour later when I realized my mistake and returned to grab it someone had "borrowed" my wallet from it's lovely place on the table. Later that day I talked to about 10 different people who had interacted with my wallet and had eventually passed it to my roommate. Fortunately, no one stole any of my identity cards or important stuff, but they did grab a hefty sum of money, which hurt a bit to find out. Lessons I learned, but kind of already knew: 1. don't carry that much money around with you, duh! 2. Be careful with your possessions, knew that... 3. Money is useful and I want to be wise with how I use it, but I don't need much to get by: I lived off of $2.50 between monday and friday last week.

I'm going to interrupt my ramble about losing money to share the fact that as I was sitting here typing that last paragraph a truck drove into the building I'm currently sitting in. Our computer room is on the second floor of the library and I when I looked out the window to see what made an incredibly loud and crashlike noise, I noticed a large truck lodged in the side of the building directly below me. I'm not sure what the driver was thinking, but having had some incidents while driving myself I feel his pain. More importantly, I got a nice photo of the view from our window using the camera on the top of my laptop.

Besides all the usual hullabaloo of trucks hitting buildings and stuff I've been keeping a pretty low profile lately. That sounds kind of shady, what I meant is that since I have less money I've been keeping to campus and hanging out with my roommate, reading lots of books, and writing various papers. Classes are really confusing at the moment because the political science department is taking "exams," but then we have exams again in June for the same classes or something, and all the other departments are starting their second semester. As usual I feel a little lost in it all, plus we're trying to plan what to take next year at Madison. Spring break is theoretically next week, and a few of us were hoping to visit southern Senegal, but I seem to have a class scheduled during the break so I'm not sure how that will work out. Hopefully the professor will realize that you don't have classes during spring break! Another reason for the low profile is because Sunday was election day in Senegal. When I tried to figure out what offices were on the ballot I was told that they were voting for every mayor in Senegal. Hmm, I think there was probably more to it than that, but I can't be sure. From what I saw, most of the campaigning involved people driving around in cars with pictures of the candidates taped to the side and men sitting on top of the cars screaming things through a megaphone. Plus, last weekend the President travelled all around the country and I heard the crowds were a little rowdy. Our friend and shepherd Ousmane told us not to go into town this past Saturday and Sunday because it wasn't safe. Even though Senegal is a fairly functioning democracy, you never really know what can happen because of how unstable the surrounding countries are. It appears that the in the election the President's party lost in every province, which I assume will leave him as a bit of a lame duck. In Wolof class our teacher shared that he thinks the President should step down from power since he no longer has the support of the people; plus he told us that the President lost because he wanted to appoint his son the office after him.

This weekend I got to hang out with some Senegalese friends that are really great. One of my friends goes by the name, Afrika, I think because he is very pro-African rights, but his real name is Daodad. Afrika generously whipped my butt in scrabble, which I need to look into because I was never aware of these things called "scrabble words" that are two/three letter words that don't really exist. Sunday after church I spent the day with Noa and his family who invited me for lunch. Although Noa is a little crazy it was a lot of fun and I feel total comfortable around his family. Oh, and I feasted on warthog again, yummy!

That's a bit of what's new over here in the desert! My roommate Juliette is as wonderful as ever. Especially Sunday night when I got home around 10 and noticed that we had an infestation of fruit flies. After cleansing the room of various fruit items I learned that Juliette has a severe phobia of insects and she proceeded to walk around our room covering her face. Yesterday I spent a nice chunk of the morning spraying toxic chemicals throughout our room and cleaning up the mess! Have a great week :)

Returning to Saint-Louis

Before I continue along my journey home from Southern Senegal I would like to highlight another of my shining moments during the village festival we were invited to. As we were watching the dancing I decided to stand on my chair to catch a better view of the action and random attire (such as leaves of lettuce). Unfortunately, when I decided to return to the ground I tipped over my chair into the three men in front of me taking them out and managing to land with my chair on top of me. It was a lovely graceful moment in which several got to see the spandex shorts under my skirt. Anyways, we left for home Thursday morning bright and early and made a few pit stops along the way. One of the pit stops included a visit to a man who works for the telephone company here in Senegal who generously slaughtered a ram for our arrival. The gesture was extremely nice but I haven't really been able to stomach meat since Tabaski. We also stopped at Touba on the way home so the newbies could visit the grand mosque. It was actually really cool to see the mosque again, and this time at night. Unfortunately none of us brought appropriate clothing to cover ourselves so we dressed in sheets of fabric we bought in the market the day before. As usual, the Americans looked very colorful and completely out of place!

Since arriving back in Saint-Louis I've been attempting to work on some papers (we'll see if I ever finish)...and just bumming around campus. We're theoretically transition from first semester to second semester so we'll see how it goes. Have a good week friends!