Voyage à Kedougou

Tomorrow we embark on a 13 (?) hour journey to Kedougou (in the bottom right corner of Senegal, if you look on the map), to conduct our ethnic minority studies. I will be staying in a Djakhanke village. We'll be there for 8 full days of blissful hiking with grand baobabs, and real wildlife! It's still the rainy season there, so lions migrate elsewhere, but maybe we'll be able to catch a view of one! I'm excited, gotta go home and pack.

Douane.

Two Tuesdays ago (le 2 octobre), I received a call from DHL (during class) about my package arriving. Renata changed my ring tone, so I didn't realize that it was my phone ringing during Wolof class... Luckily Kéba (my teacher) thought it was funny. Besides, all the teachers' (and guest lecturers' for that matter) phones ring during class and they pick them up. Anyways they called during la petite pause and Souleye (the academic director) talked to them.

"Because of the nature of my package," I had to go down to their customs office located at the airport. I asked Papis (the go-to guy/'office manager') what times their office is open, wondering if I could go after class. He said that they close at like 5pm, so my only choice would be to go during lunch. Today was a good day to go because lunch was longer--2.5 hrs instead of 2. I thought that would be the perfect amount of time. I was so wrong...

Papis and I left SIT at around 12:37ish. Some guy came up to the taxi selling CDs and Papis bought like three recordings of Mouride chants. We got to the airport around 1:10ish? And the office was closed. We just missed them before they went to lunch. (Aren't they supposed to be fasting anyway?) So we found a nearby bench in the shade, where lots of people were sitting, I guess during their breaks too. A couple people came by trying to sell the pointy Moroccan slipper shoes, and some bootleg sneakers. They were 'New Balance' and 'Adidas' and 'Converse.' Could have fooled me--they're pretty real looking. Except the NB ones said 'Nando' on the back. Papis examined the shoes and determined that they're not rasta enough for him. He's a little shopper!

For waiting there for nearly an hour, it went by quick. Got to look at the music on Papis' ipod--learned a little about his gigantic family, and that he's had his dreadlocks for about 3 years. I love how he PRETENDS like he can't speak English--whenever you ask him something in English, he always responds in French, and so forth. I discovered that he can speak virtually perfect English! It's a scam... altough it's a good scam because we're forced to use our French--that's what we're here for, no?

Anyways, Germaine, the lady who called about my package--my glorious package! My computer!--called and said she was going to email the quote, but there was no need because we were right outside the door. 2pm finally arrived, and we went inside the DHL office, where they had my package and the customs fee I had to pay. They brought me the paper and my worst fears were realized--346,900 CFA?! (or something like that) Might as well buy a new computer. I explained that I'm a student, using it for school. It's a used laptop, not intended for resale. They said yeah yeah yeah, but the value on the sheet said $2,500--too much they said--but I said it's only for insurance purposes.

So they gave me a second option. I would buy those papers from them, so I could buy a ticket that said, "Please, customs people, re-evaluate my package." So I bought those stupid papers for 23,600 CFA. While they were processing my info, they were making friendly conversation... But friendly conversation here is just a little different than what we're used to. They straight up ask questions like, so, what religion are you? I always enjoy explaining to them that I'm not religious. "Animist? Athiest?" they ask. No. I think I've gotten a little better at explaining. I think the convo got started because I was eating some pretzels. "You're not fasting?" (You're not either! You ate lunch!)

So then we took the papers over to the customs office where a couple men approached us. Keep in mind, I had NO IDEA what was going on. I was still confused about why I had to buy those papers from DHL. So Papis talked to him (I thought they were friends?) and we walked to the waiting room, where the man with the nice shoes and pointy face explained what we had to do, where we had to go, who was who. I thought he was just being nice--he had his prayer beads in hand, after all. But then he took my papers and I understood what was going on (kind of). We had to wait again for the office to open up, where some man takes some money and writes a ticket that lets me get the customs guy to look at my package again. So we had to wait some more for some other guy to go back to his office so he could look at my papers again? ...more waiting...

Then he gave us some paper that said we could go back to the DHL "warehouse", get the customs office in DHL to get my package and loot at it again. There was some yelling at nice shoes man to not let him in, so Papis and I went into their warehouse room to find the Douane man, who was located at the far end of the warehouse and was dressed in traditional garb. He was discussing with two other similarly dressed men, one of whom was holding a copy of the Koran, we explained our presence and he stood up, revealing his enormous size. He seriously looked about 8 ft. tall. I remember wondering how they got clothes that big. His big dorky glasses made him less intimidating--more like a gentle giant, which a slow, kind of hunched over walk. He was nice. He sat behind a desk in front of the cage where packages are kept and instructed me to open it, where we explained my story and turned on my computer to prove it was used. He filled out some report and sent us with my laptop to the other customs guy.

So we went back to the office with my computer and waited for sme guy to look at it and verify that yes! it was used. But then we had to wait for some other guy who wasn't in his office, but we couldn't wait in his office because too many other people were waiting in there. So we stood in the hallway in front of his door, where Papis got mad at nice shoe man for demanding 20,000 CFA from me for his 'services' as 'gatekeeper' showing us where to go for what. By that time I had to quit trying to understand what was going on, my head hurt A LOT and I was pretty much just following them around blindly. Papis when on a rant about the country--where people accept bribes to easily--everyone is a 'businessman', no one knows what they're doing! everything is mal-organisé... I was d'accord because by then who knows how many circles we'd taken, how many government people weren't doing their job...

I seriously felt like I was going to pass out from waiting so long in the heat and I think my face must have started to show it because Papis insisted on buying me some water. It was well received--silly me, not bringing water because I thought it would only take an hour or two... I was grateful and drank most of it. Then Papis came to the dramatic realization that "Oh! You haven't eaten!" It's okay, I said, it was already 5pm, I could wait--I was more thirsty than anything.

We finally made our way into the air conditioned office and then finally into the head honcho's office. He was a young mand in a gigantic office with piles of paperwork in mounds surrounding him. It was almost as if he were sitting on mounds of paperwork on his gigantic leather swivel chair, since he seemed like a child in a monkey suit anyway. It just didn't quite 'suit' him... HA

Anyways, we went in and sat in the two chairs in front of his desk, and I felt like a little child peering up at the wizard, trying to see above the stack of papers. As he was talking to us, he was stamping papers so robotically that he didn't even look to see where his stamp and ink were--he didn't even look when he turned pages. He was dazzled by the idea that American students come to Sénégal to learn art & culture... and he finished his friendly conversation with, "This is the country of Teranga, you don't have to pay." And at that, I had to pay nothing for my computer. But if I could only enjoy the moment without a splitting headache...

We went back to the DHL warehouse where I got to repack my package (I gave Papis a packet of Twizzlers for being such a good sport) and signed some papers and we were off. Nice shoes man waiting outside, and I ended up giving him 5,000 CFA for his 'services,' as Papis suggested. And we finally returned to SIT, and it was after 6:30pm. I missed my afternoon class, but Sarah (my teacher) said that it was okay--I earned a blue stripe for going there, everything is a learning experience. I'm just thinking about the whole trying to find information on L'École des Otages in Saint-Louis, and it's impossibility... the circles you go through here...

Soirée pyjama!

Last night, we slept at school and had a slumber party with pizza and movies. It was just us students, plus Amadou the guard, who's here all the time anyway. I guess you could say we were feeling a little homesick. We watched 'The Departed', which still was as good as the first time I saw it, and then started to watch 'Clue'... It was nice sleeping piled on mats in the air-conditioned classroom! We also celebrated Mackenzie's birthday, which was on Monday, with a delicious, buttery, strawberry chocolate cake, donated by SIT. SIT is so nice about that! They bought a cake for Jenn's birthday too--they want us to feel at home.

We didn't see the crescent moon last night, so Korité (aka Eid-ul-Fitr, the Muslim holiday that marks the end of Ramadan--the end of fasting! return to a normal country! where things aren't slow and grumpy!), well, it is not today. The few that are fasting in the group got up today for the xeud (the morning 'meal' at around 5am, before the morning prayer, while it's still dark), and hopefully for the last time. They saw the moon in Nigeria, so Ramadan is over for them... But for us, it will (cross your fingers!) be tomorrow, or Sunday. I'm excited for the big hullabaloo either tomorrow or Sunday. I'm kind of sad though, because I wasn't able to have a Korité outfit made in time.

Marché Sandaga

Yesterday (le 19 septembre), Michelle, Pepsi, Emily and I ventured off into Marché Sandaga, on a quest for bijoux and Moroccan hand made sandals. We took a taxi to Place de l'Indépendence and walked to the marché from there. We were harassed by the usual barrage of people trying to sell us things, but continued on our way. We found the part of the market where the jewelry sellers are located, and began to browse. I felt the growing presence of men behind me, following me as I browsed the different vendors' jewelry. One of the men behind me pointed at things in the case, claiming he knew exactly what I liked—or rather, he could explain to the vendor better which ring I was actually pointing at. Each time I walked to another case, I felt the presence of another body behind me. I found nothing that struck my fancy, and Michelle, Pepsi, and Emily were all finished buying their bracelets and necklaces, so we decided to move on.

We continued to browse the market, with the same men tagging along. By that time, we had gathered an entourage of maybe five men. After a couple blocks of being followed, we decided to duck into the Palmeraie for a long lunch. We finished eating, and decided to browse some more, maybe look for Rue Mohammed V, where the Moroccan market is located. Along the way, we somehow acquired two the same men who were following us before.

At first, we tried to ward them off by just ignoring them. They kept following; we kept ignoring. One of the men, in a white shirt and brown cap, "artfully" splattered with white paint, started to call us racists for not speaking to them. Another man, in a maroon shirt, "defended" us, saying that no, we are not racists, "Elles sont gentilles."

I said repeatedly, "Laisse-moi! Laisse-moi! Nous voudrions chercher seul! Nous n'avons pas besoin d'un guide." When that didn't work, I walked faster. The man in the brown hat elbowed me to get my attention. No words came out of my mouth—I couldn't speak. He elbowed me again, pushing me into the street. I screamed, "Arr-rête!" He stopped harassing me for awhile and moved on to the other girls. When I told him to stop again, he grabbed my arm, right in the bicep, and gave it a good push.

After walking aimlessly as fast as we could in any promising-looking direction in order to escape, we happened upon a store Pepsi had wanted to go to. We felt safe in the sanctity of air conditioning and fixed prices. Pepsi bought a pillow and a towel and we developed our next plan of action. Pepsi and Emily would head back to SIT; Michelle and I would try to find some Moroccan sandals. We parted ways, and Michelle and I took a taxi to Rue Mohammed V and found ourselves at the very place that we had walked hurriedly past, in our quest to evade tailgaters. We found no Moroccan sandals in the Moroccan market, and hailed a taxi to go home.

We spaced out, basking in the tranquility of being alone in the backseat of a taxi. There was traffic, people trying to sell us phone cards, but we had a pane of glass separating us from them. Then we saw the same white shirt, brown capped man standing on the side of the street. We were stopped in traffic right before him. He yelled over the guard rail to us, saying that he would remember our faces from the market, we were American, and he would kill us.

A few pictures

The server is really slow, so uploading these pictures took foreverrr! Bear with me.


Gorée


Musée d'Esclavage


The door that opens straight to the ocean


View to the ocean on Gorée


At the Mouride mosque in Touba


A crab on the beach in Saint-Louis!


In the pirogue on the Sénégal River


Our pretty Hotel Sindoné in Saint-Louis

Basically, the past month

Time: It's a well known fact that the Senegalese concept of time is a little different from what we Americans are used to. Eating out for lunch can easily take a good 3 hours, even though you finish eating in about 10 minutes. People take their time walking the streets, the pace is much slower, even in such busy areas as the market. So yes, the Senegalese take their time... but in some cases they are ridiculously impatient!

At the Sénégal v. Burkina Faso football (soccer) game, on le 8 septembre, I had quite the adventure using the toilets at the stadium (twice). The toilets are for both men and women, and pretty much anywhere a man could pee, he peed. If there was a drain, he'd pee. There were stalls, but they didn't wait to use them. Men would cut in the line--just butt their way behind the man peeing in front of him, armed and ready to shoot for the bowl when the other was finished. The stall doors were never closed, unless of course a woman was fortunate enough to squeeze her way in, after previously being shoved out of the way several times.

It was so bizarre being in a public restroom with men. Is that how it is in the mens' room in the States? I guess they do have urinals... Anyways, I guess those are the two extremes of the general "time" table.

Construction: Dakar seems to be in a constant state of construction. The way I walk to school, I walk through a construction site--it seems to be a major pedestrian traffic route. First of all, in the States you would definitely not be able to just meander through a 'hard-hat area'. It would be fenced off and all sorts of safety precautions would be made. Otherwise, a lawsuit would just be waiting to happen. The constructions workers here don't wear hard hats--they wear flip flops, not steel-toed boots. It's always funny to see them barefoot and ankle deep in concrete. Cinder blocks, rocks, and sand sit in piles, taking over the sidewalk. I guess everything costs money, and money is precisely what's preventing them from finishing building. Waiting for money for building materials... waiting, waiting. So the piles of rocks wait too. Though when the construction workers are actually working, it's really fun to watch. Like a co-ordinated Target commercial, five men in perfect sync, heave their shovels into the pile of rocks on the sidewalk, flinging them onto the second level of the building. They're all singing, and the rocks make a popcorn sound when they hit the floor up above. The five men on the second level heave and gather the newly flung rocks, and the rocks continue to the third level of the building and crash. The men up top shovel the rocks into barrows of cement, and the cycle continues--if you can imagine, to the tune of, "I've been workin' on the railroad all the livelong day..."

The big street I cross before I walk through the construction site, has a median, where there is a giant dumpster (for the site I presume), rusty steel rods to support cement, and a tree. Under the shade of this tree, I can't remember if there's a bench or not, there are always men sitting. No matter what time of day. They seem to just talk to each other and people watch, watch cars go by... Some of them park their motorbikes there (permanently?) and sit on those instead. So I walk by, carefully creeping over the rusty rods, trying to bring as little attention to myself as possible. (As if it's possible--I'm pretty much always the only toubab (white person) crossing the street).

They always say something. Sometimes they "Tssst! Tssst!" or sometimes they say, "Bonjour! Ça va?" or sometimes even in English, "Hello? Hi! How are you? I am fine" and of course I've gotten the "Tu es jolie, uh?" a couple times. I never know if I should say something? Say "hi" back? I don't want to encourage them, but then again I don't want to be that unfriendly toubab who walks by every day.

Conjunctivitis: So a couple weekends ago (le 15 septembre), I contracted conjunctivitis (or pinkeye?) in my left eye. It just started itching one day, and when I woke up the next morning, there it was. First thing I thought was, "Oh great, an infection in my EYE while I'm in AFRICA. Not like I use my eye much."

At first, I waited to see if it would pass, but it just worse. Like it actually hurt. I was at the beach when I decided that I probably should go see a doctor and get some working medication. So instead of enjoying myself at this beautiful beach because it was too bright for my eye--I didn't even touch the water--I didn't leave my spot in the sand under the shade of the palm tree where I seemed to be receiving some sort of signal on my cell phone. After many phone calls, I got directions to the SOS Medecin office, where I went and waited for a doctor.

The receptionist was not particularly attentive--she was preoccupied with whoever she was talking to on her cell phone. The only information she took from me was my first name... no forms to fill out for allergies or anything. I communicated with the doctor in broken Franglais. Apparently in French, 'pink-eye' (or oeil rose) rings no bells. Conjunctivitis it is. He saw me all of 15 (?) minutes, flipped through his gigantic encyclopedia of medicine and prescribed me with some antiseptic eye wash and an antibiotic eye drop thing. Our whole 15 minutes spend together cost me about 20,000 CFA! MEH! I already feel guilty enough spending money in the States, here even more so because I don't I'm not working. I don't have a job to somehow make up for it. It didn't help that I felt a little uneasy about the whole thing. He didn't even look at my eye to see if I had scratched it or had some sort of shard stuck into it. He didn't so much as use his fingers to poke open my eyelids and get a better look. Nope. Simply peered at it from about 10 inches away, discovered that I had a slight temperature (probably just from being at the beach), and fiddled around in his giant encyclopedia trying to figure out what to prescribe me. Well, it's better now, so what he gave me obviously worked. Strange though, getting medicine in another country, figuring out the directions in another language...

Animals: It's also hard not to notice all the stray animals on my walks to and from school. They break my heart every time. Skinny kittens drink out of muddy puddles. They scour piles of trash for any scrap of food. The dogs make beds in flattened foliage--or, they lie on cool tile in the shade. They're covered in flies, and their ears are covered in blood. They would all be good-looking animals in other circumstances. It's surprising that they're all so cute, considering that most of them are essentially just mutts. I have to resist the urge to pick up all the cute kittens, and take the skinny puppies home with me to nurse them to health. But then I remember that they're strays, and might give me rabies... or tuba flies...

Kër Sedaro (le 23 septembre): Yesterday at around 3pm, we arrived in the village--celebrity style. Plastic lawn chairs were arranged for us to sit, surrounded by the most children I've ever seen circled around me, to wait for our new families to called and take us home. I met my homestay sister, Ndack, who speaks French, and attends school (she's 20), and when we arrived at the house, (literally around the corner), we sat in a circle and talked. She's very curious-talkative. We had a good bond from the start. She immediately asked to see photos, and we looked at those while trying to construct a family tree. Instead, we made sort of a chart of who lives where on the compound so that I could keep them all straight. They also gave me my new village name--Aida Diop.

Then they taught me body parts (head, knees and toes, knees and toes-style) in Wolof, and how to count to ten. When it started to get dark, we sat on mats in the 'courtyard' and broke the fast, though I wasn't fasting anymore--that only lasted 5 days... Ndack asked me if I wanted Nescafé or café touba. I asked what café touba was, if it's made from real coffee beans. She said yes and I got REAL excited. (Real coffee!!!!) I made sure--clarified that Nescafé is "de poudre" and that café touba is "d'haricot." Yes, she assured. Yay! Except it isn't real coffee... I watched her make it and she first melts like a cup of sugar on the bottom and then there's some sort of spicy flavor in it. Maybe anise? Chili? Maybe? She was obsessed with getting me to take a picture of her making it:



When we were sitting, all the kids from the neighborhood, or so it seemed, touched my photographs, looked at them upside down... laughed at the freckles on my arms. They'd poke the freckles until they eventually got bored of it. Blake and Megan live on the same compound, though Blake spends night with Abdou (my uncle), and the cows. We three toubabs are cousins.


My mama, Ndeye Seck, and the Seck family cows.

Ndoggu consisted of French bread with a sort of onion resish, café touba, and the bisaap (juice made from dried hibiscus flower) that I bought in Thiès as a gift.

[I rather like Thiès--it's not as noisy, it's cleaner, people don't hassle you at the market! I like the market better too. Not only is it less stressful because people don't hassle as much, but I feel like there's more stuff that's easier to find as well.]

Back to ndoggu, we sat (lots of sitting went on in the village), ate, drank attaya (tea sénégalais--with lots of caffeine, served in shot glass cups), talked for a good while, the children napped, we ate mango. And that's mostly how my stay at the village went.

Our compound consisted of one large house, where Ndeye's brother and his two wives and twelve children live, a medium size house where Abdou, his wife and four kids live, and my house where Ndeye and her various four kids from different husbands live. All the men of the compound except for Abdou were off working (and living) elsewhere.


My siblings in the village.

[I'll post my village paper if you're interested in knowing more.]

Saint-Louis (le 1 octobre): This morning is my last breakfast in Saint-Louis (at least on this trip). Yesterday, we gave our presentations in the sweltering terrace room.

[For the 5 days we spent in Saint-Louis, I worked with Megan and Courtney, researching l'ancien L'Ecole des Otages ('School of Hostages'), and we presented our findings on the last day. There is little information about L'Ecole in 'libraries' (if you can call them that--ancient books collecting dust) and 'archives' (piles of paper on a desk in an office where a man has like 5 non-working telephones), and found that a lot of people didn't even know what L'Ecole was. During colonial times, Saint-Louis was the capital of Sénégal, until independence, when the capital was moved to Dakar. Saint-Louis has a lot of colonial architecture--L'Ecole is just one example--a very beautiful example! Anyways, L'Ecole was established in the 1800s under governor Faidherbe, to educate and train Senegalese to be interpreters for the French. Students lived and learned there and weren't 'allowed' to leave. Today, it's an elementary school, and during our quest for information we talked to some of the teachers there and had a look around. We ended up finding most of our information out from an interview we conducted with one of our guest lecturers, a history professor in Saint-Louis. Conducting research in a developing country is a daunting task. We are spoiled in the US with so much information at our fingertips. If anything, this assignment was a lesson on what lengths one must take just to find information on something that would take two seconds to find in Bird Library or on JSTOR. The information is just not recorded, or preserved. You have to physically go out and interview and dig dig dig to find the information you're searching for.]


L'Ecole des Otages

This trip has been great for me in a lot of ways. I thought the village stay was a big eye opener for me, and just the right length of stay there. A day longer, I may have left hating the experience, a day shorter, I may have not wanted to leave. It was nice to have the buffer in Thiès before we came to Saint-Louis.

I love the pace here--a city on the water is truly beautiful--it would be prettier if there weren't trash everywhere, but just the feeling of water surrounding you is so peaceful, clear. The beach is so W I D E--the widest beaches I've ever been to. The water is the warmest I've ever been in too. It's a salty green color, not much different than the Atlantic in Rehoboth. I guess I may have expected a clear crystal blue--almost like in the Keys--but it's not. It's still beautiful though. There was a storm yesterday. We were at the beach when the hugest black storm cloud I have ever seen started to approach us. The water started doing crazy things. The water here is pretty shallow until you go very far into the ocean. There, the waves are bigger, but not scary. When the storm came, waves became more frequent, they sprayed and misted, and waves even seemed to be going backwards, crashing into each other. I felt so small, although the clouds made the sky seem so close that I could maybe touch it. Looking back at the ocean and seeing everyone jumping/running out of the water with the clouds black and ominous, was so surreal.

Our trip on the pirogue I wish I could have enjoyed more, but I was scared for my life--or the life of my earthly belongings, mainly my digital camera. There were so many people stuffed in the boat for the Langue de Barbarie tour, and the water kept building up at my feet; I was sure we would capsize. I was too preoccupied with the thought of the water gathering at my feet that I got nothing from what our guide was saying about the birds. Then we finally stopped at the sand bar/island and stepped out of the boat in the river, traversed the sandbar, and reached the ocean on the other side. I wish that we could have spend a whole afternoon at the beach. It was so remote, and so beautiful. I felt like I was in AFRICA.

[A note about pirogues--the small fishing boats: many young Senegalese men will pile into these boats and head for the Spanish Canary Islands, with no way of navigation, just so that they can start a new (better, they think) life, as Spanish citizens. Hundreds and hundreds of young men have been lost, trying to get to the Canary Islands. Those boats are no match for the open sea--all however many km it is to get there. Another reason these men want to 'quitter' Sénégal is because there just are no more fish to fish. Not knowing the repercussions of signing an agreement with Europe to allow their huge boats to fish on the Senegalese coast, they are left with no fish. It's sad!]

Catch-up

A picture of my room in Dakar!

So a lot has gone on the past 2 (?) weeks. I went to l'Ile de Gorée, then Thiès, then to my homestay in a village outside of Thiès, called Kër Sedaro (kër in Wolof means 'family'), then back to Thiès, then a visit to the mosque in Touba, then to Saint-Louis and back to Dakar again. I realize that I have hardly spoken about my life here in Dakar, but I seem to be constantly trying to play catch up!

Last week I spent most of my time working on a paper that explored an aspect of our stay in the village. I chose to examine the different expressions of wealth/economic indicators that I observed. My computer definitely came in handy for that... I was overjoyed when Pepsi, Courtney, and I looked up 24h pâtisseries/cafés in the Lonely Planet guide and found one, Pâtisserie La Médine, and then went there to do some work. We gorged ourselves on quiche, croque-monsieurs, exquisite pastries, and café au lait. AND THEN! We found a wireless signal, and thanks to someone named Philip, we enjoyed some internet. What I'd give for a coffee shop with a hi-speed wireless connection! Then we had classes at Village des Arts/Theatre Daniel Serano. I chose to take djembe, which was awesomeee. I got to spend 3 afternoons drumming away, learning different drum sequences. Others chose to take kora or Senegalese dance lessons. We all took dance and djembe at Village des Arts a couple weeks ago, so we all kind of knew what's up.

This past weekend (on Saturday) I went downtown to Marché Sandaga, because Pharmacie Guigot located there, I found out, sells contact lens supplies. Yup, I conveniently forgot my contact case at the hotel in Saint-Louis. Probably because our bathroom smelled like rotting mangoes and every time I went in there I started to gag, so when it was time to pack, I just quick! grabbed what was in sight. Ehhh, oh well.

So it turns out you have to buy this intense box of contact solutions which costs 13,000 CFA (about $25) in order to get the contact case. I thought to myself, I am NOT spending 25 bucks on a contact case that would be free at the optometrist's in the US, so I decided to make due with my glasses until my care package arrives from Steve. (yay!)

I figured that while I'm there, I'd take a stroll in Marché Sandaga, and that since I'm alone, I won't be hassled/HARASSED as much. Boy was I wrong. I bought some sandals from un vendeur (which I probably was ripped off for, even though I still got the price down to half of what he was asking) and after that, tout les vendeurs start their tailgating.

This one man would not leave me alone, "Tu es belle, uh? Tu es sexy! Je t'aime! Americaine? Ou bien, française? Belge?" AGGGHH! LAISSE-MOI TRANQUILLE! [I will have to copy one of my papers in here, to explain my other horrible experience at Marché Sandaga.] So after that, I vowed NEVER to go downtown (or at least Place de l'Indépendence/Sandaga) EVER again. Then I took a taxi home and read for the rest of the day.

Then Sunday, I decided to check out Marché HLM, to get some fabric for a nouvelle robe pour Korité (la fête après Ramadan). Oh my gosh, I went crazy! Soooo many amazing fabrics to choose from. I think I must have stood at each vendor's 'shop' for about 45 minutes trying to decide. I'm so bad at deciding. Especially when I like everything offered! I didn't get hassled at all, or even ripped off, but it was packed. Everyone and their mother was at the market buying fabric for Korité. It's tradition that everyone wears a new outfit for Korité, so you can imagine how well fabric vendors and tailors are doing right about now. La couturière across the street opens up again after ndoggu (breaking of the fast) and dinner, and stays up until the wee hours of the night. From my bedroom window I can hear the whir of the sewing machine (they still use those old fashioned Singer sewing machines with the cast iron tables) and the clinking/shwishing of scissors cutting fabric as I'm falling asleep.

I finished reading my book for French class in two days! I read "Un chant écarlate" by Mariama Bâ, and I didn't think I would be able to finish it, but I ended up not being able to put it down. It is SO SAD. I think I spend the rest of the evening being depressed. Basically it's about a Senegalese teenager (Ousmane) coming from a poor poor family, who falls in love with the daughter of a French ambassador (Mirièlle) while they are classmates at school. Of course the parents of both parties do not approve of their relationship, and when the ambassador finds out about it, he sends Mirièlle back to France.

-flash forward-

They graduate from university and are both professors. They've kept in touch all these years through letters, and they decide to marry. Ousmane flies to France and they decide to marry at a mosque outside Paris. Mirèlle converts to Islam and they move to Sénégal. Then all their troubles start and then Ousmane cheats on her and takes a second wife and then Mirèlle finds out and is stricken with grief and then kills their baby and tries to kill Ousmane. It just made me so mad! And sad! Poor Mirièlle! And everything that Bâ brings up about Senegalese society. Humph.

Family life goes well here in Dakar. Saliew is working in Touba, so he hasn't been home for a couple weeks. Yvonne and Mouhammet started school today, and we got two new maids. Ndièye and Fatou left, and now we have Khady and another, also named Fanta Dabo. I really like the first Fanta. She speaks little French, mostly Wolof, but I like the way she talks--she talks slowly, and kind of walks the same way. Her voice is raspy and she always smiles saying, "Ah, Saaara. Ça va?"