So since there is no power, I’ll write about my awesome weekend and what’s up this week in my world. Friday night I don’t recall doing anything spectacular. I’m pretty sure I just came home. But Saturday night! Whew now that was fun. First, we had a special dinner with Professor Siamundele because his flight was leaving at 1am but let me just say pepperoni pizza is not pizza with lots of olives and the occasional pepperoni. I was not okay with that. After pizza, we got explore Hannah’s house in Liberté 3. She lives with a cool Christian family with a dog! I was so excited she had a dog but said dog ended up being old and mean anyways so I didn’t touch him/her/it. Anyways, a group of us walked back to the houses to get ready for the night and it was fun to meet Hannah’s family and her family of spiders. You’ll have to check out her blog for those details but it’s essentially a mommy and daddy spider. Ick. Then we returned to My Shop and took over a corner for our massive group of people. Around midnight we decided to go to a club in Les Almadies called Diamonds. It’s a total toubab place but Karla’s friend got us in for free so it was really cool. This was like my first weekend to test my boundaries with the family about staying out. I stayed out too late and my host mom gave me a little speech, but it’s all good. It’s not like I’m the clubbing partying type anyways. It was just fun once. Although there is a concert that many of the students bought tickets for. It’s Friday at 9. Youssou Ndour is his name and apparently he is a huge star around here. I’m excited to see some live music. I saw a little bit of live music today on the street with Jess walking home. There was a group playing the drums and some women dancing. It looked really fun.
Now to continue with my story about Saturday, I almost forgot the amazing beach we found in Mamelles…I think that’s how you spell it. Either way, Jess Alison and I walked up to the light house and passed the Statue de Renaissance on the way. It’s a really nice place just North of Ouakam. Low and behold we found a beach at the end of a creepy, pee-scented goat path! The waves were a bit strong, but it was a beautiful hot day and there was hardly any trash on the beach. I hadn’t been to the beach yet besides Ile de Goree (where I refused to swim in trash) so it was an awesome first experience…besides the tidbit of sunburn. My ears peeled…how gross is that? But I bet it’s not as bad as Rachael’s sunburn will be from her trip with Ryan to Florida. J
Sunday was an entirely different day compared to all the others. Apparently, de temps en temps, Muhammad, a rowdy 4 year old from Jess’s home, likes to stay with other people on the weekends. This weekend was our weekend. Hence how my status on Facebook ended up being what it was. I found out how hard it is to entertain a four year old without TV or any sports equipment (such as a soccer ball). Instead, he ended up smelling like every scent I own - lotion and sprays and deodorant (yep he put deodorant under his arms but not under his shirt…I hope it didn’t do any harm to his clothing). He then found the two writing utensils I own that are colorful, my green and blue highlighters. The next problem was what to write on. For that I used some course descriptions and my schedule. He didn’t want a nap in the middle of the day but I sure did. So when he wasn’t sleeping, I kicked him out of my room. I felt bad but we had some communication problems because he only speaks Wolof and I speak French. And if you remember, it’s hard enough to understand a four year old in your first language. It’s 10x harder when you barely know any Wolof and he understands nothing in French. Despite the brick wall of language, it was pretty entertaining and it reminds me not to take life too seriously when I take out my schedule and read it through green scribbles.
This past week hasn’t been the best. Two days in a row I was terrified my wireless was broken on my laptop but it turns out we just have really shitty wireless at WARC because of the power outages. I was almost in tears twice because I just wanted to be home. Turns out Dad had the same problem in good ol’ Vermont. I’m just upset because I couldn’t Skype with Kaylin or my mom or anyone really. Dad called me on my cell phone which really made my day just to hear someone from home. So thanks Dad! However, a solid good note in my week would be the food I discovered on the University campus. There is this amazing thing called a Fautai…(pronounced FuuThai…thai like the food/country). It’s this amazing triangle bread (sometimes other bread) with meat, onions, lettuce, egg if I want, ketchup and French fries. I wasn’t so sure about these sandwiches but they are amazing and only 400 CFA which is less than a dollar for those of you trying to translate in your head. 500 CFA is a dollar. This sandwich even costs as much or less than a soda. It’s amazing.
I’m still trying to nail down my classes so this week wasn’t the best. I did join Professor Sène’s African Lit class which will be a lot of fun I believe. Unfortunately, it’s my only class on Thursdays from 4-6pm…lame to have to travel to WARC just for that. At least on Tuesdays I have class prior to African Lit. I also want to try and get an internship. The folks at WARC are apparently very helpful and since there are so many embassies around I’m hoping I could work with an embassy or even just an NGO. It would be awesome to have that experience. I though an internship might be a lot but I have a lot of free time so far and classes don’t seem as difficult as Wells classes. The French part makes me tired, translating all day, but I think an internship where I speak French all day would be helpful working on my fluidity.
Today was my worst encounter with a Senegalese man to date. So the long story starts this morning. Remember those tickets for Youssou Ndour? Yea well Zoey and Andrea worked hard yesterday on tracking down the tickets for like 8 or 9 of us. This morning when Zoey handed me my ticket I realized the date was for Thursday not Friday. This was a problem for me. I had tested my limits this weekend with showing up late and although I was extraordinarily late on Saturday I wasn’t going to show up home at midnight on a weeknight either. I also have some classes Friday I think… I’ve had a hankering to go downtown all week and I decided since I was done at 11 today and have no class that I should go. This was perfect because I could exchange all the tickets. I recruited Abbey for moral support because going downtown alone is intimidating. It’s not dangerous in the day but definitely intimidating since I hadn’t been. I thought I might buy a little change purse thing that can hold my money and cell phone and perhaps some clothes.
Instead, after a bit of waiting at l’Institut Francais for our tickets, Abbey and I were followed by a strange old man trying to lead us to a factory. Now he spoke English and clearly wanted some practice with the Americans. I wish Abbey hadn’t shook his hand because otherwise I would have just ignored him and walked buy. So…we kinda try to dodge him a bit and Abbey spots some really nice change purse type things. He follows us and tells me that I’m getting a good price which I know it wasn’t but I wasn’t about to bargain with this asshole over my shoulder. And Abbey was trying to tell me not to show him how much money I had but I had to break a 10000 CFA. We finally decide we are tired and this guy is being creepy and I wasn’t going to find any fabric or clothing here. As we try and leave he starts whining which then progressed to yelling. Earlier, he had given me a small necklace as a present or good luck charm or whatever. I didn’t expect it for free but I also didn’t expect him to wait about half an hour to start freaking out about it. So I tried to give him some money because “Hey what the heck I can give it to someone when I return home”. I gave him 250 CFA and then he says 1000 and that’s bullshit. That’s $2 US for a shitty necklace a Muhammad could have made. So I handed him back the necklace. He continues yelling like a dumbass and this is why I don’t talk to people in Senegal. Its people like him that ruin what could be nice daily conversations with folks around here because despite my lack of stories about the nice conversations I have with random people it does happen a lot here. It kinda ruined my day because I slept like shit last night and this was on top of an already difficult day with the wireless. If I had had pepper spray, I probably would have just sprayed him because he was an asshole. Thank God no one gave me pepper spray.
Yesterday also stunk because Hannah left for the U.S. I figured I’d add that note last because it’s important. It’s hard to be part of such a small group in a new country because you get to know people and when someone leaves it feels very strange. But! It was best for her to go home so I hope she is enjoying her real mattress, warm showers, and electricity. Also, if Hannah reads this, pet your horse for me. I’m jealous lol.
As a grand finale, I will say despite my bad day I have high hopes for the rest of the week. I figured out how to have my laundry washed, I found good cheap food at the University, and I’m almost done deciding classes. I miss home but each day is a new adventure here whether it be good or bad. Hopefully I sleep better tonight…without strange dreams and waking up at 6am.
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