(PiAf, if you're reading, you can get a blog post or a fellows' flyer submission. Not tons sure you will get both.
KIDDING! Ish.)
Just had my first no-water-at-the-apartment experience since I've been here. Sorry, meant to say no-water-at-the-apartment-after-I've-just-covered-myself-in-soap-in-the-shower experience. Serious soap. Loofah soap. I never realized how much water I use in the shower until I had to dump water bottles over my head to get clean.
New experience #2: The nicest bowling alley I have ever seen in my life just opened in Dakar, along side the swanky new mall and the swankier new Radisson. Purple lights, shiny logos, a DJ spinning top 40 hits, a fancy bar, an arcade, and lots of Lebanese teenagers. It was great. The new experience, though, was that I almost won a game of bowling. "Almost won" being loosely defined as I was winning for the first five frames and then came in third.
I'll end on a more serious note by describing my other new experience. A few weeks ago, as I was leaving a night club on my way to get a taxi, a man ran into me, then wouldn't let me pass. Next thing I new, he had ripped my necklace off and run away. Fortunately for me and unfortunately for the man, the necklace was fake gold and had cost about $2 at a thrift store. But, although I had heard about incidents like this, I was still extremely shocked that someone could be so desperate for money that he would resort to stealing something just because it was shiny. Contrast this with the extremely nice, respectful note that my housekeeper left me asking for support in buying her children's school supplies. (School supplies for one year for two children: $50.) I don't mean to make this into a "poor people in Africa" story; the same exact thing could have happened anywhere. And honestly, it would have been just as sad.
