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.