So it has been brought to my attention that people are worried something is wrong because I’m not blogging. In reality, I’ve just kinda forgotten to update folks because I spent so much type skyping last week with friends and family. What has happened since Marche Sandaga? We’ll start with my trip to Keur Moussa Monastery and Lac Rose. Oh and a Senegalese man. I suppose I should start at the beginning. After Thursday of Marche Sandaga, I was waiting for the bus to go to school Friday morning. At the bus stop a Senegalese guy/man/boy my age started talking to me. What a shock right?... It turns out he was really nice and is a university student who is fairly good at speaking English. WEEEELLLL because I’m speaking English with him, when he asked if I had a cell phone I was like SURE I have a cell phone…crap. This was the first of many problems. English made me stupid so we exchanged numbers. Turns out we returned home the same time that day too…oh how freakin romantic. Fml. Anyways, he says how he’ll text me that night (insert sound of disgust) and all that. He actually does text me and then he asks if we can hang out over the weekend. I luckily have an excuse. We have our trip to the Monastery and Lac Rose to help me out. What do you know he’s at My Shop when I get dropped off. I must have THE shitty-est luck in the whole wide world to be in the same place at the same time as him after being gone ALL DAY! Monday rolls around and in class I get 7 phone calls from him. I clearly ignored every call (two of which were from numbers I didn’t recognize but were probably his friend’s phones) and didn’t text or call him that night…this comes back to haunt me but I’ll explain that later.
Keur Moussa Monastery and Lac Rose made for a great trip. I started my Saturday morning at the ungodly hour of 6:05 although I had a restful night seeing as the mosque near my house stopped playing that awful music out of its crappy speakers. This music is not music that would lull you into a nice sleep…no this sounds like a monster gargling mouthwash in your backyard. Anyways, I hopped on the bus and BAM what do you know the bus is the fullest I’ve ever seen it. It’s a flippin Saturday morning people…sleep should be your number one priority. Just sayin. I only had a 1000 CFA bill (about $2 US) and the bus cost 150 CFA. The guy hands me a ticket with 850 written on the back. Why he couldn’t just give me my change right then and there I have no clue. So dumb American that I am, I strode off the bus wondering how I was going to get my change. Maybe I just hand the ticket to another bus dude. Nope, wrong. I was supposed to get my change before getting off. Cool. Now I’m out some serious Senegalese money for a stinking bus ride. That was the bad part of my trip. We load up at WARC and VIOLA breakfast for everyone! Yogurt and three deeeelicious pastries thanks to Awa and Waly! That made my day almost instantly.
Our first stop was Keur Moussa Monestary. This is a Monestary …Africa style I suppose. It was really tranquil and they had baby pigs! And big pigs. I mean I don’t know what to say really. It is a beautiful place with lots more green than you’ll see anywhere else in Dakar. Now I say Dakar, but really it’s like our version of a county. This is about 2 hours away…I think. Their specialty as lovely monks, besides serving God, is to make some lovely jazz out of grapefruits. And they have the most enormous grapefruits I’ve ever seen in my life. Awa and Waly also bought us a bag of grapefruits! Another awesome edible treat for the day. We also got to attend Mass which was similar to the Mass you’d see anywhere else but the music is very unique. I really liked the musical instruments they had. Many of the instruments were drums but they had a lot of intriguing string instruments as well. One of the string instruments was a sort of standing guitar with 20 strings. Super cool. I’ll have a video up on facebook soon. There are some pictures up already too. In the end a Monastery is just a cool place but it’s nothing extraordinary. Pink Lake was supposed to fill that category.
Pink Lake was sort of a giant disappointment as I should have guessed. The lake was not really pink. Rather it was a maroon poo colored thing. Yes I mean poo as in poopish colored. Like if you ate some beats or drank too much Kool-Aid poo. The salt piles around the lake were really nifty and we did get to see some Camels. Cool fact about the lake: no part of the lake is deeper than a meter and a half. You could walk through the whole thing! That’s really all there is to say about the lake…the roads around it are absolute shit. I guess that’s another important piece of info.
The whole trip was pretty awesome. The ride back was terrifying. Our little bus thingy had an awkward center row made of fold down seats. I switched with someone to sit in the front middle seat on the ride back. Worst idea ever not because it was uncomfortable but because I saw my life flash in front of my eyes about a million different times. How our bus didn’t wreck or get wrecked is totally beyond me. Just terrifying. No sleep for Sammy on that bus ride. We finally got back to the city and got dropped off at My Shop in the center of town because that was easiest. I step off the bus only to find that me and my admirer, his name is Aliou btw, are in the same place at the same time for like the 4th time in 2 days. Stupid. Just absolutely stupid. So here I am tired and ready to go home and he’s trying to ask me to see a sport. He also thought I mumbled something about a husband and he texted me later that night asking about it. I should have said yes. Instead I took it down a notch and said I have a boyfriend. No deterrent for Senegalese men. After ignoring him on Monday he stopped texting and calling. I was so thrilled. That was short-lived too however. But we’ll get to that later.
The rest of my weekend was pretty tranquil. I went to Le Regal with Jess. The pasta at Le Regal is disappointing. I mean it’s pasta…but it’s not good pasta. Like I say though small favors when it comes to Africa. Then my Dad called so that made my day even better even though I had to haul Mohammed out of my room while talking to him. Someday I’ll never have to deal with that 4 year old menace ever again…until that day I will continue the weekend battles. He almost broke my lock when I locked him out of my room so I’m seriously considering just duct taping him to a wall.
Remember that pretty fabric from Marche Sandaga?! Yea well since I can’t work some magic on it I have to bring it to a tailor. I figured my tailor would be a bit of a walk but he is literally just around the corner. It’s a hole in the wall which was concerning, but I got all sized up and he told me to come back Friday. It turns out I didn’t get my tunic/shirt until Saturday but hey he did a great job on it! Pictures coming soon.
Monday, following the weekend at the Lake and Monastery, was the day for our Conflict Resolution teacher to lose his shit. He thinks our class is stupid and can’t understand, but there is a blank look on our faces because we are so bored not because we are stupid. He simply sucks at teaching. I could read a textbook and reread it to a class JUST like him. It was pretty ridiculous. Then lunch was crazy on campus.
The World Social Forum 2011 hit Dakar like a freight train. There were SOOO many people on campus it was insane. Every day of the week that week was insane. There were people from all over and a huge market set up and there were forums/talks no one could find. Mainly just a clusterf*** of people who want to make a difference but decided to try and be organized in the most unorganized place on earth. I enjoyed seeing the people and shopping around a bit though. I later spent my Monday night at My Shop and when I returned home at the oh so late hour of 8:30 I got grilled by my host mom about where I was. It’s not like I missed dinner or anything. We don’t eat dinner until like 9 or 9:30 anyways. I’m just cranky that it was cause for interrogation like I did something wrong. I may be a woman in Senegal but I can hold my own at 8:30pm. Jeez.
More to come soon! Lots more to tell…nothing crazy exciting though so don’t wait in anticipation.
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