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!

Safari time

Whew, sorry it's been a long time since my last post but I've had some awesome adventures recently. For a while my posts have been a little dreary sounding, and to be honest with you that's how i've been feeling. Here in Saint-Louis life just kind flows along, but when classes are unstable we don't have too much to keep ourselves occuppied with. First semester is wrapping up, kind of; some of my classes have finished while those in the poli sci department are about two weeks longer than other departments. This makes for tricky scheduling because I'm not sure what poli sci will offer but the second semester for geography and sociology and other departments begins tomorrow...But back to the struggles of life on campus, as my classes end I'm trying to take care papers and final exams so that I will receive grades for my classes, obviously. There have been a few dips in the road though, like when we showed up for an exam and the professor told us to come back two days later, but things seem to be ok now. That exam was for a class that has kinda been a thorn in my side all semester, and when the exam actually happened my professor gave me five minutes to answer the question, "what is the economy?" not exactly my idea of a fair test. Thats an example of small elements of life we can't seem to get right here, and they were starting to weigh all of the Americans down. When you're already frustrated, it seems alot harder to bounce back from the little bouts of racism, homesickness, or professors asking you out on dates that happen everyday here. Consequently, when I found out two weeks ago we were going to voyage to southern Senegal I felt an overwhelming sense of excitement.

Less than a week after Baydallaye told us we were going to be traveling we ventured off to explore southern Senegal. The trip began Saturday evening at 3 am when we loaded up a 12 person Nissan van with luggage, a cooler of water, and 13 people. Unfortunately the cooler was lovingly given one of the seats, so the 11 students crammed into the seats and blocked out the discomfort with images of safari animals. Sunday evening around 6pm we rolled into our first hotel in Tambacounda to enjoy some needed rest in a pool and bed. During the drive Dr. Barry, the professor who accompanied us, recieved a fun little ticket for not wearing his seat belt so we spent a little extra time trying to pay that off. I think the ticket was the officer's revenge because Barry wouldn't pay him off to let us continue. Additionally, much of the road wasnt paved so we had a bumpy and incredibly dusty few hours. Upon arrival at the hotel I slipped into my makeshift bathing suit (I apparently missed the memo on the swimsuits) and proceeded to jump into the pool and smash my face into the bottom. All in all, that was not the best decision I've made in a long time, and when I surfaced Carlie went camp counselor on me and forced me out of the pool so I wouldnt bleed everywhere. As I headed into our hotel room to clean up after begging ice from the restaurant, I found Ariel locked in the bathroom and Carlie perched on the divider between the bath and bedrooms. It took three hotel workers to break the door open and then Carlie broke the chair in our room when she descended from the ledge. Hence, we broke in the first leg of our trip with a messed up room and face.

Monday morning we left the hotel at 6am to head out to Nokolokoba national park home to wildlife and poachers. It was a lengthy drive but well worth the damage done to our car, poor driver. After we got settled in our hotel inside the park, we headed out on a safari. The park is home to a fair amount of wildlife including wharthogs, antelope, gazelle, monkeys, leopards, and hippopatamus. On our safari we saw a few different rivers that cross the park, lots of animals, a frightening suspension bridge, and alot of burned landscape. Depressingly, the park struggles with loads of poachers who burn the forest to scare out the animals. Later that day we got to go out in a boat on the gambia river to some hippopatomus. In total I think we saw 7 hippopotamus, which was so cool, although understandably they were pretty wary of us. Plus, the landscape around the river was incredbly lush and beautiful, like something out of a movie. After dinner our safari guide led us to a little spot where you can supposedly see the hippotamus out of the water when they come to feed, but it was too dark to see anything. Plus, after I went to bed the other kids claim that the guide seemed kinda sketchy, like he was on drugs...

Tuesday we left the park to go to Kedougou another incredibly hot city in southern Senegal. When we arrived at the hotel we learned that we were staying at a hunting lodge housing several french man with ridiculously large guns and a dead wharthog in the back of their truck. It's funny how we all judge tourists as if we are native Senegalese and these guys come in and shoot up our wild life. Immediately after arriving we jumped into a car rapide vehicle = really uncomfortable for a three hour drive down a bumpy, dusty road to see a waterfall. We stopped at a small village for lunch and then continued on foot through the woods until we got to the awesome waterfall. I'd estimate that the fall was 5 stories tall slipping down beautiful rock and filling into a small little pool. Definitely the highlight of the trip was climbing around the rock ledge and jumping into the pool from under the falls. Plus the water was ridiculously cold, so refreshing! After some photos and swimming and hanging out with some goofball kids swimming there as well we hiked back the car and drove 3 hours home. I think all of the traveling was well worth it because of the awesome sights and just the really fun group of people we were with.

Wednesday was a crazy foray into the nearby hills to a village who was celebrating the election of a new governmental official. During the clebration we saw several local village dance groups perfom, including the Basaryi tribe who are one of the only tribes in Senegal who have remain untouched from Islam and Christianity and still follow their animist beliefs. After the ceremony we had a fun traditional Senegalese lunch and then we visited the market to buy some fabric died with Indigo that comes from Guinea. After the markets we walked home and got ready to return to Saint-Louis at 5 the next morning.

Mardi Gras!

First of all, I'm sitting here in my lovely echoey hallways sharing my life story of the last week, and I've just noticed that the sun has set but there are no lights. Hence, I have a very cozy setting that makes for an interesting blogging mood. The last week has been kind of the same old same old (In an it was totally bizarre but the same as each week really) with regard to classes. Most of my classes were met and there were apparently strikes because students wanted a "study week" lol, but it didn't affect me because poli sci is a little behind the times and our exams aren't until later. I recently acquired a library card and have now checked out two books, one of them being a collection of tragic plays by a famous French author, haha, I panicked in the moment and grabbed it. We'll see if I read it but I have high hopes of reading more books in French.

Besides classes I have not yet returned to volleyball practice. I'm not sure if I will but I've been running quite a bit lately. While running I've had some lovely experiences involving security guards inviting themselves to my room and a semi-truck blowing out it's tire just as it came alongside me, i fell off the road because of that one. Friday night my roommate Juliette's mother came into town for a conference for the Catholic women of Senegal. She enlisted me to help retrieve her mother from the bus, and when we arrived at the school where many of the women were staying, I found probably 1000 Senegalese wandering around in the dark. It's hard to explain but it was a pretty hilarious sight, especially because Juliette's mom managed to be as far away from us as possible. When we got back to campus Juliette had choir rehearsal so I awkwardly helped her mom settle in/brought her food/ and then tried not to seem too awkward while I got ready for bed. She is a very nice woman and hopefully doesn't think I'm overly crazy.

Saturday I had a "youth group" meeting with the pastor of our church who came from Dakar to visit with us. Considering that the youth of our church is 4 people including two Americans, I wasn't sure that the visit was entirely necessary, but I enjoyed meeting the pastor. After the meeting I got to have hang out with my friend and choir director Noah. At one point he informed me that he likes me because I'm a little crazy...in a good way i hope. Sunday was as usual a nice Church service where I forgot most of the songs. After church Noah forced me to eat lunch with his family because he has realized that i'm not the busiest person in Senegal, and I enjoyed a nice fish sandwich, with the bones still in the fish. Eating here never really gets boring because you never know what you'll find in each bight.

The highlight of this week was Tuesday night, otherwise known as Mardi Gras. I'm not sure if I've talked too much about Catholics here in Senegal, but to me they seem a little more on the religious side than they do in the U.S. For example, for lent my roommate is fasting everyday until the evening. So far it seems to be taking a bit of a toll on her because she sleeps most of the day. But back to Mardi Gras, as the last hoorah before the fasting begins, the Catholic students on campus have a big costume party, and by costume I mean you dress as a member of the opposite sex. It was hilarious seeing how detailed people were in their costumes. Most of the men were wearing dresses, heals, make-up, and wigs, and the girls often times wore seats and stuffed their bellies with blankets. I didn't really dress up because I wasn't sure what was going on, but it was still great just to watch them all dancing and trying to impersonate the opposite gender.

Besides that not too much else is new, I went to my Bible study on Wednesday and had tea with our friend Ousmane. At the moment I'm thinking I might have a parasite. Don't worry though, i'm just experiencing a little bodily discomfort. Hope you all have a great weekend!

Beaten and bruised

I thought that was a nice overly dramatic title of my post continuing from yesterdays post. To clarify, beaten and bruised refers to my arms, which took a bit of a hit the other day at volleyball practice. Last week I decided to check out the volleyball team, which we were told included both guys and girls. Unfortunately, the girls on the team seem to be invisible, so it was a few Americans and several very tall Senegalese men trying to hurt me with volleyballs for two hours. I went to torture, sorry I mean practice, two days in a row last week and decided I would take a few days off and give my bruises time to turn fun colors. Although it sounds like I didn't enjoy the practice, it was actually pretty fun and nice to be active and meeting some new people. I was originally hoping for some kind of team where I could meet some nice girls and keep active, but the teams with girls don't seem to really exist so I think I'll stick with volleyball. Practice itself is held either on an outdoor court next to my village, or in the gym, which is a fairly nice building with lots of space for karate/basketball/volleyball and free weights. The outdoor venue turned out to be a little trickier because of a nearby sewage leak that seemed to be a magnet for runaway volleyballs. Yeah, it's about as gross as it sounds...

Besides volleyball i've been having fun with my choir of two people, although last sunday was a little rough when I forgot how most of the songs went. Plus, I went to Bible study again this week where the boys decided we would follow a pre-planned study about relationships and sexuality, as if my life didn't already encompass enough awkward, but I'm sure it will be very interesting. One of the guys there decided that I'm going to be his new guitar teacher, not really sure how that will work out since I have no idea how to play guitar, but I didn't want to pass up the opportunity to make a friend so I volunteered Elise to teach him (she doesn't know yet, but when the Malaria's gone...) Life with my roommate Juliette is always interesting, she usually has lots to say about really random things. Last night she informed me that she has watched the movies, "I know what you did last summer (1 and 2), "scream" (1-3), and about 50 other horror films i've never heard of. She's definitely a unique character. Recently, she joined the Catholic students choir, which I think she loves because she sings even more than before, which was all the time.

That's a little bit of what I've been up to. Alot of the time I don't discuss is filled with stuff like reading, sitting on benches and people/donkey watching, going to town and mulling around, and just having random experiences. Talk to ya'll soon!

Keepin busy

Salut mes amis!

Sorry it's been a while, i've been trying to keep busy, although that is sometimes more of a psychological state of busy than a physical busy. Classes have been rolling along the last few weeks, with a minor hiccup on monday and tuesday of this week when students went on strike over scholarships. Fortunately, the scholarship problems were quickly resolved and I didn't really miss any classes besides Wolof because my professor planned to be absent on Tuesday anyways. Most of my classes are pretty laid back, where I can write a paper for most of my grade, but one of my classes is turning out to be a real thorn in my side. The class is socio-anthropology of the economy, which is a long title for a class that is basically about the fact that people aren't total selfish participants in the economy but a product of society. I know that doesn't sound too complicated but we turned in paper friday morning that alerted me to the fact that I had no clue as to what is going on in the class. Ok, I might be exaggerating a little because the paper itself was a bit of a fiasco. This is the same class in which I recently gave a presentation on the economic crisis, and we thought the paper wouldn't be too bad since our presentation went well. Unfortunately, one of the Americans with me got malaria about a week ago and on top of that, as we recently realized, some parasitic infection. Consequently, she was really down for the count and couldn't help too much with the paper. Plus, thursday night when were supposed to putting together the various sections of our paper, one of the other Americans a horrible nose bleed and had to go back to her room because she felt faint. Obviously, health wise were kinda in rough shape, but that left one other girl and I to put the entire 10 page paper together, and I enjoyed my first late night/early morning study party in Africa. To top it off, the printer decided to not work and place a strip of white in the middle of our paper on each side. Hence, I'm a little nervous about this class in which I have the exam next week...Oh, and the girl with malaria is doing much better now, practically good as new.

One more point of interest about my classes, in our Wolof class the teacher told us Friday that we were the farthest behind than any of his previous classes = we're the worst at Wolof. I have had several responses to that statement because from an academic standpoint, my grade in the class is fine so it's hard to judge by that. But I do understand what he means because my speaking ability is pretty weak. It's just kind of frustrating because he was voicing one of the thoughts constantly going through my head, "why am I so bad at Wolof/why don't i practice speaking it more often." He is also hitting on deeper issues like how we're finding it challenging to make friends, and my friendships are really coming slowly but surely but comments like that make it hard to keep morale up sometimes.

Enough about that kind of stuff because I've been up to alot of positive things lately. First of all, last weekend we visited a nature reserve about an hour and a half from campus which is home to hundreds of birds. If you know me well, you know that I was lacking enthusiasm for this specific trip because of my irrational fear of birds, but the trip turned out to be great. To be honest, the highlight of the trip for me was the vehicle we took out to the bird park, which was a car rapide that Ousmane hired for us. On the back of the car (more like van) there was a ladder and a ledge where someone usually stands calling out the route of the car and helping passengers on and off the car. Furthermore, because the road to the park was not paved and full of potholes the driver moved at a pace of about 5 miles an hour most of the time, which left me free to climb out on the back and enjoy the ride from a different perspective. I had a bunch of fun hanging off the back of the car, especially when I noticed Ousmane, his wife Aminata, and the driver pointing at me and shaking their heads like I was crazy. The only downside of the outdoor seating was that my entire body was coated with a thick layer of dust, including my contacts. I'll move onto the bird park itself because that's probably more interesting to you guys. The park is a small little river/marsh area with nicely constructed motor boats that take you out on about at 2 hour long tour of the body of water smack dab in the middle of nowhere. As far as the birds are concerned, I only saw about four different species, the majority of them being massive pelicans. I think there were probably a few thousand pelicans in all, which were pretty cool to watch scooping fish out of the water.

The trip to the bird park was pretty fun, and on the way home I was on the lookout for groups of monkeys because of a ridiculous story I heard about when Ariel and Elise previously visited the park. More specifically, during their journey to the park, their taxi driver made a wrong turn and started heading through the desert to Mauritania. Apparently, at one point they saw a group of monkeys running alongside their taxi, which I think is one of the most hilarious images I can think of and I was hoping to see some monkeys myself. As a side note, it's probably good that I didn't see any monkeys because that would have indicated that we were traveling the wrong direction, and because Ariel and Elise's previous trip included them screaming for the driver to stop because they were heading towards men with large guns guarding the border to Mauritania.

Sorry, I'm gonna run off to dinner now but I'll finish tomorrow.

Lekk nga sa xaalis? = are you eating your money

That's another one of those fun little greeting phrases that I don't know how to respond to. First of all, am I eating my money??? Second of all, I think it means are you doing well enough that you can eat well and be happy. Thirdly, I always feel weird when people ask me that, because when I say, "Yep, it's going good," I feel like people are thinking oh we know you rich American. But on the other hand, if I say, "I have no money," which is fairly truthful considering I have no job and am supported by my parents, people are thinking that I'm a liar. I guess it's a lose lose situation, but a good example of my social interaction here on campus where I spend a lot of my time just smiling and pretending I didn't understand the question.

Wow, ok, so that last paragraph just sounded a little emo/like I don't have any friends so let me fill you in on what i've been up to the last few days. At the moment, I'm trying to write a new blog entry, but there's a horde of what appears to be 5-10 year old children running around the room playing drums. They're pretty cute, but a little distracting. Last week I attended a few classes, which is always interesting here because you have to sometimes hover in the vicinity of the professor's office and follow him to the classroom because they often change the location of the class. This really isn't a problem for most of my classes, except for my French class, which really consists of me and two other American girls attending, mostly at random, as many of the classes taught by one professor as possible. A few weeks ago, he gave us a general test to see our level, and now we're attending almost all of his classes to get our credit hours, and then at the end he'll make another test for us. All in all, it's one of the more unorthodox classes I've ever had, and is sometimes more difficult than just taking a specific class. More specifically, last week this professor was gone, and he had another prof filling in for him. Unfortunately, we don't know what this new professor looks like, and he changed the classroom so we spent several hours wandering around campus trying to find our class and later his office.

In my socio-anthropology of the economy class, we gave a presentation on the economic crisis on Thursday during class. I thought the presentation went well, and our professor seemed to think we did well enough, but one of the students asked to borrow our paper and said we should have him edit it next time... I honestly don't think the professor expects us to be perfect, but we'll see. Besides the presentation, my other classes were fairly uneventful. I thought I made an appointment to see one of my professors in his office, but when I went there on Tuesday neither he nor his secretary were there. Fortunately, when I returned on Thursday, the man I made an appointment with was there, and I realized that he was not my professor, which was slightly awkward.

Outside of classes I've been rehearsing with the Church choir = my friend Noah and I. We have rehearsal every Saturday at 4pm. It's really fun rehearsing and getting to know Noah. He's a pretty good singer, and I...am not. At one point he told me he wished he could brush my throat with oil; I'm not really sure what that meant, but he told me it had something to do with the fact that I can't hold a pitch. Sunday during church our choir debuted, but Noah's dad didn't realize that the point of the choir was to lead the hymns and such so he did it himself. That wasn't really a problem last week though because I forgot most of the songs anyways. Besides choir I found a small little Bible study group on campus that meets once a week. We've had two meetings so far, in which we covered the same material because most people didn't show up last week. They seem like a nice group, but a little light on the number of girls. When they asked me if I had any questions the only thing I could think of was, "are there other girls?" and they all laughed and then were kinda like, sometimes.

Saturday morning my roommate Juliette and I watched the movie fight club. For those of you who've seen it, it's kind of an intense/strange movie, but Juliette told me she likes complex and horror films, so I figured she's like it. I'm not really sure what she thought of the movie, but she's been a little strange since...not sure there's a correlation but if I see her beating up people more often than before I'll look into it.

Friday I went to a tailor to get some fun Senegalese clothes made, and a pair of linen pants, so when I go back this week we'll see how I look. Depending on the result I'll post pictures. I was inspired to get the clothes made because some of Juliette's friends kept asking me why I wasn't wearing a booboo on Friday, apparently everyone does. Not sure how I missed that memo. This week has just been kinda rollin by with classes and filling out forms about our classes for Madison. So far the hardest part about being here in Senegal besides missing family and friends has been trying to fit the University in Saint-Louis into an American credit system. I know it'll work out, but it's always a little crazy! Ba benen leen (next time guys)!

Yangiy nos = are you partying?

The last week has been a party, mainly because it was my second semi-consistent week of classes this semester. Although, I did have two classes where my professor didn't show, one of them being a class that we wrote a paper for and prepared a presentation. After that class the other Americans and I had a bit of a freak out because the Semester ends mid-February, so we stormed director of our program's office. Hopefully, our semester will be slightly sorted out and include us learning a little bit as well.

Besides classes, the week wasn't exceedingly eventful. All six of us Americans are going to be helping a local middle school with their English classes We met with a few teachers last week to decide when we'll come, so Carlie and I will be helping a class Wednesday mornings. I think we were all just looking for a way to get involved in the community and do something potentially fruitful.

Friday night we took two our friends Aminata and Ousmane out for dinner to celebrate their recent marriage. I really enjoyed being able to take them out and show them how much we appreciate their friendship and their efforts to make us feel welcome. Plus, it was really entertaining because we forgot how to get to the restaurant, and we walked about two blocks extra (which was not very far in the first place) and Aminata was going on about how we should have taken the taxi. When we found the restaurant, they both said "we are here at last" about 15 times. I'm not sure how they'd fare on a college campus in the states where you have more than a five minute walk to class, but I kind of want to see...

Saturday night was the new student integration for my dorm building, and to celebrate we had a costume party. I went, as my roommate put it, as an American, although I was hoping for more a basketball player image since I was wearing a basketball uniform. In general, it was hilarious to see all the girls dressed ridiculously, mostly as men, and then dancing while staying in character. Earlier in the day, when we were all standing outside, a building of guys ran up with buckets fool of water and started dousing the girls of my building. I'm pretty sure I got hit the hardest because I was a little slow to react. Unfortunately, one of the girls in my dorm took a video on her phone and it shows everyone running away except me...she then proceeded to ask me what I would have done if it was a monster coming towards us. That question is pretty legitimate I guess, you should always know what to do in case of a monster, especially in Senegal!

Sunday I went over to a family's house after church where they fed me a lovely meal of brushpig, otherwise known as warthog. It was pretty tasty, a little tough, but what can you expect? During the meal I was forced to relive my choir concert because they filmed it, and I noticed how few of the song lyrics I actually knew. Fortunately, I can still practice, because the small church of 8 people is starting a choir, and I will be one of two current members. Haha, poor people, they don't know what they'll be enduring.

This week has been off to a relatively good start, my professor came to class this morning and gave me a bibliography so I can go read some books on my own, sad. Have a good week!

Mali continued

Wednesday morning was kind of a wild goose chase because we wanted to look into some other lodging that was less expensive. We found a hostel run by a convent, which was a couple of dollars cheaper and very nice, but we decided it would be awkward to leave our little apartment, and it was likely that my host mother would hurt me if we didn’t stay there. Just kidding, kind of… That afternoon we visited the Bamako museum where a very tall women, with curlers in her hair and eyebrows drawn on her face with makeup that started out normal and then nearly stretched to her ears, showed us around. The museum itself wasn’t much of anything, but it was fairly entertaining to see her grabbing the exhibits, such as a traditional booboo, and then telling us to feel the fabric. Plus, I got a special bonus experience out of the museum visit; I locked myself in the bathroom. To clarify, there was no door handle from the inside of the stall, and I had to call Carlie to come let me out; hence, it wasn’t totally my fault.

I almost forgot, the best part of the museum, the garden out front featuring decorative statues that were a little past there prime. I got a nice picture of a mermaid with half a head of hair, but I had to be sneaky because a sign said you had to pay 50 cents for a photo. The rest of the evening we wandered around the fabric market and informed several vendors that we were Senegalese, not French or American; I bet we fooled them. If I remember correctly, that night was New Years Eve, and we celebrated in style by going to bed early and listening to fireworks going off in the city. All in all, it was kind of a lame way to celebrate, but due to some poor choices we made involving tap water and drinking it, Maria and I weren’t in the best condition to party it up. Thursday was our token tubab day, mainly because we were in need of some a little rest, and the entire city of Bamako shut down for the holiday. Consequently, we trekked over to a French hotel and enjoyed a day at the pool. Since we were at a French hotel, we tried out some French cuisine, which turned out to be a little gross because I unknowingly ordered buckwheat crepe. To give you a sense of the flavor of this crepe, imagine a soggy sponge that has been sitting dirty water for a week; it was tasty.

Friday Carlie and I visited the national museum of Mali. Honestly, this museum was one of the coolest parts of our trip, but I feel kind of sad saying that because it is extremely out of place in the fourth poorest country in the world. The museum was recently renovated, and featured some really interesting exhibits on fabrics in Mali and African artwork. Plus, we had free admission to the outdoor prehistoric museum, which featured caves with dioramas that I elected not to view after a flock(?) of bats came shooting out of the ceiling. That afternoon, we went on a hunt for a flight home and a small shop that featured some pretty cool crafty things. After visiting a travel agency, it seemed like we would be busing back home again (which I was really hoping not to do) because the price to fly to Dakar any day before Wednesday was $500.00, ouch! To try and cope with the thought of 50 more hours on the bus, we ate dinner at a restaurant/bar that was said to bring in an interesting crowd including Peace Corps volunteers and South African gold miners. I’m not sure about the gold miners, but there were definitely more Americans than Africans in the restaurant, not including us, and I decided to order something crazy and went with lasagna. I know that you all don’t really care, but I’ll share anyways, the lasagna was pretty good, but I think they forgot to add the tomato sauce.

Saturday we decided to check into the airline prices one more time, and found out they dropped about $300.00; hence, I returned from Mali Sunday evening by plane. After purchasing our tickets, we spent the rest of the day trying to find some shops our guidebook suggested, and after a wild goose chase in a $5.00 taxi (that’s expensive here…) we found what we were looking for, and it was closed! Sunday was another adventurous day because we decided to explore Mali’s “mountainous” terrain because it is so different from the incredible flatness of Senegal. To get to the top of a rather large hill overlooking Bamako, we took a taxi resembling the sept place I take between Dakar and Saint-Louis, but in this taxi we fit 9 people instead of 7! On the way up a man from Morocco explained to me that the drivers of said taxis have to be skilled because the cars have no brakes, haha. The rest of the day we milled around some markets, and then headed off to the airport.

We arrived at the airport about two hours before our flight was supposed to leave, and the airport officials told us we couldn’t enter the airport yet and to go sit next to our “papa” who was the other white person in the vicinity. Eventually, after some interesting sights, including several people bribing airport officials for various problems like not have the correct documentation, we boarded the flight. I hate to say it, but the flight was incredibly enjoyable! We were served dinner and had strange in-flight entertainment of a video of people pulling pranks on New Yorkers. That night we crashed at the apartment that some other Americans had rented, and the next morning we headed back to Saint-Louis. All in all, I think Maria’s comment, “It’s been real Mali, a little too real,” was completely legitimate, but it was definitely a great trip.

It’s been a while since my last post, and I can’t truthfully say I’ve been busy, but I’ve been finding a few more ways to keep myself occupied. Classes have finally started, and I’m only slightly worried about how I will pass my final exams in less than a month. Although, I’ve heard a few rumors that they will extend the semester because of all of the strikes. I’m planning on taking economic geography (with an oral final exam, uh oh), socio-anthropology of the economy (I’m confused too), and French on top of Wolof and my research. Speaking of research, the professors from Madison in charge of our program came to visit. Their visit was really nice because they had advice to give us on all kinds of levels, and they took out to dinner… I’ve decided to write my research paper on Protestant Christians in Senegal, and I’ll be starting with the church I’ve been attending here in Saint-Louis and working my way outward. I’m pretty excited about the project because I just get to basically sit and talk with people about their lives. It’s so much better than reading a bunch of musty books and trying to come to some conclusion about them like I’ve done in Madison.

Besides classes and meeting with professors, I’ve been trying to make a few friends on campus. I went to a dance last Friday, which is always interesting because it’s fashionable to arrive after 1 am and stay until breakfast. I made it until 4, I guess I’m a slacker. Additionally, last Sunday I attended the Catholic mass for students on campus and their new student integration ceremony. In general, the mass and ceremony themselves were not very interesting because the church was too small for everyone to fit inside so I couldn’t see or hear what was going on. But, my roommate, who I’ve title head of the Catholic party planning committee, gave me some food, and I got to talk to my other roommate Khady for like 3 hours. I really enjoyed that, and I thought it was interesting just because she is Muslim and still wanted to come to the integration.

Well, that’s a fairly long update on what’s been happening here in Senegal. Hope all is well back home, shout out to the nouveau President!

"It's been real Mali, maybe a little too real..."

That’s what Maria, one of the girls who voyaged to Mali with me said as we boarded the plane to return to Senegal from Bamako, Mali. Truthfully, I was thinking the same thing at the time, but that was the end of the trip, and Mali really is a great country.

Our trip started on a bit of a strange note, because buying our bus tickets turned into a very shady exchange with a man working out of his car…We arrived at the train station the day before we were leaving to buy tickets, and we were slightly disappointed when the workers there told us that you can’t buy bus tickets there. But luckily, this man sitting next to his car in the parking lot sold us bus tickets for $50.00 and told us to return to the same place the next day at 9am. So, Saturday morning we arrive on time, and the man informs us that the bus is somewhere else, throws our bags in the trunk (it doesn’t close all the way), and tells us to get in. A few minutes later we arrive at the depot where we catch the taxis to go back and forth between Saint-Louis, and I have since decided that we could have skipped the middleman. Oh well, next time, haha.

Upon arrival at the “bus depot,” the bus departing to Bamako appeared to be nearly ready to go, so the timing seemed almost perfect. As it turns out, we were supposed to exchange the tickets for other ones; consequently, they didn’t let us board that bus and told us we had to wait for the next one. Five hours later, we hit the road; I guess it paid off to wait such a long time because the bus had so few passengers that we each had 2 seats to ourselves almost the entire trip. During the trip the rest of the day, we made a few stops, including a dinner break where we paid 30 cents to use a toilet that turned out to be a room with no hole in the floor (at least that I saw).

We made pretty good progress that night, and then during the day it was slow going because much of the road wasn’t paved, and we had frequent stops to pay of various police like officials. I’m not sure why we paid them, maybe because our bus didn’t have the appropriate papers? One particular instance had us worried when they told us to get off the bus and give our passports to some random man, but we quickly realized that we were at the Senegalese/Malien border and they needed to stamp my passport. A few hours later we crossed the border and arrived in Kai, a lovely town that suffered from and outbreak of dengue fever last month, where the bus driver informed us we would be spending the night and leaving the next day at 4 am. Theoretically, I would have been a little worried about this unknown stop, but after the previous few days I didn’t really think twice about it. Ok, I did think twice when I realized I would have to sleep outside on the floor of a gas station because the bus turned out to be at a sauna like temperature. Hence, my first night in Mali was a little bizarre, and with worries of dengue fever and spending a whole week in this country, I slept for about an hour.

Monday evening around 7 we pulled into the Bamako (the capitol of Mali) “bus depot” and proceeded to collect our belongings. After the 54 hour voyage, our backpacks that they stored under the bus were completely covered in dust, more specifically, my backpack, which is a dark red, was bright orange when they removed it from the storage area. Once we got our stuff, we attempted for about 15 minutes to escape the throng of crazy men yelling at us about how they know a nice hotel and strange things. Finally, we found a telecenter because my sim card from Senegal apparently doesn’t work in Mali (who knew?) and we called the woman who we would be staying with. Amazingly, she arrived 5 minutes after we called her in a very nice car, and brought us to her apartment right in the heart of Bamako. We had our own room with three beds, and we shared a bathroom, with running water!, with the rest of her family. The woman renting us the room is the sister in-law of my host mother, so she gave us a good price (at least she told us, it was like $12.00 a person per night), and she runs a restaurant downstairs where they sell Senegalese cuisine. To clarify, when I say restaurant, I mean they have a table with benches and lots of bowls of food. Furthermore, I just wanted to point out the irony in the fact that I went to Mali and spent the week living with Senegalese people and eating Senegalese or French food.

The following day, Tuesday, we got up, enjoyed a nice change in our breakfast habits with croissants instead of baguettes, and then we learned that the woman hosting us, Sokhna, asked her friend to show us around the city. As a sidenote, it was nice having him help us out because he had a car and he spoke english, but we felt slightly awkward because we were afraid we would have to pay him like 50 dollars. Anyways, the first place he took us was the Bamako zoo, bet you weren't expecting that one. I wasn't either, but it was really fun since I haven't been to a zoo in years, and I got to experience an African zoo. The zoo was complete with camels, donkeys, wolves?, hyenas, lions, and an assortment of really freaky looking birds. Oh, and I shouldn't forget to explain how most of the animals were kept in cages/pens, but we had a few awkward runins with camels and donkeys charging down the path at us. After the zoo we had a nice driving tour of Bamako, which is fairly different from Dakar, for a city so near to Senegal and with similar French influences. First of all, the ground is a dark red color, which is strikingly different from the light sandy color in Senegal. Plus, the region surrounding Bamako is very hilly and looks alot like the rocky terrain of Arizona minus the cacti. Another stark difference is that Bamako seems to make an effort to clean up trash off the streets, and on the street running past most of the government buildings there are legitimate trash cans.

After a lovely Senegalese lunch of ceebujen, our friends younger brother who is an actual tourists guide, took us to the Niger river for man powered boat ride. Our captain paddled our small canoe with a long pole that he pushed off of the bottom of the river with, evidently the river is not very deep. In general, the boat ride was very nice, but after we negotiated a price for two hours, the boat driver was intent on holding us to the two hours. Consequently, when it started getting dark at 6:15, the mosquitoes came out in full force to punish us for wanting to enjoy the scenic beauty of Mali. By 6:45, we told the driver to take us in and we'd pay him for two hours anyways...moral of the story, bring bug spray? Mosquitoes were a frequent companion during our stay in Bamako, probably because the daily temperatures in the mid 90s and overnight lows in the 70s kept them very happy. In fact, at night they were so bad, that Sokhna would spray our room with some scary toxic chemical that we had two wait 5 minutes before even entering the room, and then we would play a fun game of run into the room as fast as possible so fewer mosquitoes could enter. It seems to me that the mosquitoes in Mali are just alot more courageous because I got several mosquito bites in the shower.

That second night was little rough because Carlie got a nasty bout of stomach problems that could have been from our bad choices of drinking tap water the night before or the various strange things we bought from vendors on the side of the road during the bus ride. My theory is, you gotta keep things interesting, so might as well eat the sketchy meat sandwich from the woman shouting in strange languages at you. Although Carlie did have a good point, that if we get in a bad situation and someone asks if we made some bad choices to get us in that position, we would have to say, "um,which one are you referring to?" Just kidding!

I'll continue our adventures in Mali in my next post, but at the moment I'm back at school in Saint-Louis awaiting my benevolent professors and hoping they will decide to grace us with their presence. Although, I heard that tomorrow is another holiday celebrating the Muslim new year, so who knows really.