Attack of the Europeans

Apologies for the lapse in posts. I've been too busy watching True Blood and getting my cuts infected.

Tonight I had an epic expat experience. Ultimate Frisbee on the impeccably groomed athletic field of the international school, where the site of the sunset over the surrounding trees hid the dust and the noise and the poverty that lay outside. Wish I had a picture, but I've also been very busy breaking my camera. The American guy who organized the venture had the booming voice of an ex-military man and the white mustache of a Southern plantation owner. Imagine Colonel Sanders in a cut-off t-shirt. Although the participants were of all levels, the action got fairly competitive, to the point where the women were mostly just running up and down without much acknowledgement from the men. I was stuck with guarding a feisty 12-year-old, so I took pity on his short stature and let him score a couple times. Didn't want to run the poor kid over and all that. I did have a sick defensive block that would have been even sicker if it hadn't been caught by the other team. I'm over it.

Last weekend I ventured down to Popenguine, a village south of Dakar with beautiful beach houses for rent. In addition to being a legitimate village, and not a beach resort town, Popenguine's claim to fame is that it is the site of an appearance of the Virgin Mary approximately a hundred years ago. People from all over now make pilgrimages to the village, including Pope John Paul II. Well, when he was alive. Let's not spread rumors! The paintings in the church depicted some hard-hitting truths: Jesus and his disciples were not white. They were Senegalese. Popenguine was also the sight of some potential French-German skirmishes during World War II, and the hills around the village still have concrete French bunkers built into them. Standing on the top of these hills, during the rainy season when nature is actually green and populated areas are few and far between, it was quite easy to imagine why explorers would hit upon this land and want to take it over. Meaning that they must have all landed between July and October. From November to June, all explorers reaching the Western coast of Africa and deciding to stay were clearly just running away from their in-laws.

Real Life

I know I haven't been posting more than once a week, but something happened today that is surprisingly more exciting than a pillowcase that opens sideways. I'll spare the details for the more squeamish audience members, but the short story is that I was poking around at what I thought was a fly bite, and I managed to pop out this bugger:

Yes, it was alive. Yes, it started wriggling and growing to about a centimeter once it was on the ground. Yes, it left a millimeter-sized hole above my right butt cheek. (Look at all these metric units! Soon I'll be measuring distances by actual distance instead of time, amirite?) After my initial yelp of fright, I started laughing out of pure shock, much like the time I got a $200 speeding ticket. However, I have since been having PTSD flashbacks of The Birth, and I will now have to sleep with a nightlight. Turns out these worms come from dogs and the beach, so as long as I stay away from sand during my entire year in this coastal city, I should be fine.

On the plus side, this incident has now brought me a new friend. I've now seen the same doctor three times in one week for green onion-induced heartburn, a leg infection from a spinning class gone wrong, and a baby blood-sucking parasite. When he left today, he said, "See you in 15 days." I expect a dinner invitation within the week.

Ripley's Believe it or Not

On Thursday I made a big purchase in my journey toward turning a bland apartment with a leaking roof into a comfortable living space. I went to Orca, the Dakar equivalent of Ikea, where I was greeted by a giant inflatable Orca whale that would have made a lovely stand-in for a garden gnome (which Orca also sold). Instead, I opted for a new pillow and pillowcase. But when I got home, I found that this pillowcase had something truly bizarre about it, something more bizarre than the hormone-driven mating rituals of the Lebanese gym community and that gave me a good 30 seconds of confusion. The pillowcase opened lengthwise. What?!

In other news, also on Thursday, a Senegalese telecom monopoly decided to shut off internet to the whole country. That's right. The Whole Country. Also all international phone calls. Miraculously the shutoff lasted less than 24 hours. But, this is on top of the fact that many West African countries have already suspended phone service to Senegal because of the high prices charged by the new telecom company owned by the president's son. Did I mention that no one is allowed to own more than 50% in any real estate venture that the president's son is involved in? And to think people are complaining about Sasha's expensive trip to Spain.