Home Sweet Home

These are some of the sounds that routinely wake me up at night and in the wee hours of Saturday morning: cats in heat, babies crying, old men coughing up mucus, the 5 am call to prayer, metal banging on metal in the never-ending construction zone that is all of Dakar.

For those of you who were in the loop (i.e. my mother), my shower drain has now stopped spewing up sewage when I flush the toilet. However, my entire bathroom floor now floods when I take a shower.

Oh, and my internet is still barely functional.

You may be thinking, "Girl, you need to move!" If you were thinking that, you would be on to something. So what keeps me around? Location, location, location. Unlike 99.9% of the city, I live within the electricity grid of the presidential palace, so no power cuts! Thank you, national energy company, for being corrupt in a way that is beneficial to me.

Ten things that have happened to me

1. Today I discovered that the entire English language fiction section of the biggest bookstore in Dakar consists of Beckett's "Happy Days" and the second Lord of the Rings novel.

2. Several weeks ago I encountered the Senegalese version of Atlantic City, sort of. La Somone, a beach resort where chartered planes bring in tourists straight from France so that they can say they've been to the beaches of Africa. Meanwhile, they are directed like lemmings to daily activities by a loudspeaker and are fed at what is definitely the equivalent of an all-you-can-eat Atlantic City buffet.

3. Wyclef Jean in concert! 2.5 hours! In the VIP section that I was able to sneak into because I'm white!

4. Also saw Youssou N'dour in concert. He's super famous and has won a Grammy, but unfortunately he's not as well known as Akon, who is really only fake Senegalese.

5. Also saw Rihanna in concert, and it was the best day of my life. But then it turned out to be a dream.

6. My phone was run over by a taxi. Sorry, let's back up to the part where my phone and wallet were stolen at a concert in December. Then the part where I paid $25 for a knock-off Nokia that doesn't have T9 and doesn't record sent messages (but does have a flashlight!). Then the part where I paid $20 to get a five-year-old French phone to work. Now we're at the part where I dropped my phone, yelled "no no no no no!" and watched a taxi slow down and stop one inch after he had run it over. So now I'm back to having no T9 or sent messages.

7. I rode a camel in the desert. Not tons comfortable.

8. I saw the Senegalese national marching band at a Brazil v. Senegal under-20 soccer match. I really love marching bands. Soccer not as much.

9. A Lebanese man from my gym told me the following things: He hates Senegalese and Canadians. He thinks all Russians are Jews because that's what the movies told him. He's a terrorist and probably wouldn't be allowed in the US and am I afraid of him because he's Muslim? Just kidding! He was only trying to break the ice, but he hopes I'm not wearing a wire!

10. I'm going to Barcelona this weekend. Okay, that hasn't happened yet, but I needed ten things.

This is it

No longer will you have use for my prolific blogging, as this website explains anything you would ever need to know about my life here in Dakar:

Anything you would ever need to know about my life here in Dakar

Tomorrow is Tabaski, the Muslim holiday that commemorates Abraham's almost-sacrifice of Ishmael. In Senegal, Tabaski is celebrated by slaughtering moutons* in courtyards such that the blood runs out into the streets, then feasting with family and neighbors until there is no mouton left. I'm also told that the moutons are sometimes slaughtered on the beaches then washed in the ocean. After recreating the Red Sea, Senegalese bury pastel-colored mangoes in the sand in order to combine as many Biblical holidays as possible. Just kidding! Mango season is over.

*Senegalese use the word "mouton," which means sheep, for their goats. Possibly because they only have goats instead of rams, which Wikipedia tells me was the actual Biblical animal of choice. Changing the name of the animal seems to make it symbolically appropriate.

In the past week, the moutons have been out and about by the thousands in the streets of Dakar, and here in the big city they sell for up to $800. Or, if you're smart, you go outside the city, get a really nice mouton for $100, then load it in the bottom of a bus along with everyone's luggage and bring it back for your family.

(Five points to the person who can confirm that these are goats and not rams.)

There has been a mouton tied up across from my apartment for several months now, often being fed cardboard and garbage in order to fatten it up. This afternoon, three more moutons had appeared. Tonight, a mouton appeared in my courtyard, right outside my door. I'm really really hoping that this does not also mean that it will be slaughtered outside my door at 9 am tomorrow.

At least the owners gave it some water, right?

I will be celebrating Tabaski by traveling to an island that is technically closed with a guide who is supposed to stick around to make sure we don't burn down the place but who is instead going to leave in order to celebrate with the moutons. It's quite possible that either we will be forced to pay enough for 5 moutons in order to be allowed back in the boat, or our guide will not find it convenient to return at all, and we will be forced to call in UN air support to rescue us from our descent into Lord of the Flies, Act V: Ile de la Madeleine.

Wish me luck!

The Rumors are True

For those of you who have seen my latest Facebook status, it's true: This weekend I became a Senegalese television star. I was at Goree Island, a fifteen minute boat ride from Dakar, for the annual Goree Diaspora Festival. (Historical side note: Goree was the point of departure for much of the slave trading in West Africa, although the famed "Door of No Return" does not actually lead to a potential ship but to a cliff face.) When we arrived at Goree, we found not a festival celebrating--well, frankly, I didn't quite know what a Diaspora festival would celebrate--but a festival mostly celebrating the island nation of Cape Verde and various other island nations, such as Martinique. Not important that Goree is not an island nation. In any case, the President of Cape Verde showed up to shake hands with the Ambassador from Venezuela in front of a picture of Chavez, so a good time was had by all.

To prove to the country that not only is an island made famous by a horrible tragedy F-U-N FUN, but also that white, non-French tourists also find it fun, my friend Sergio and I were stopped by a TV crew asking us to give an interview, but only if we were Anglophones. We were asked to describe the festival in one word. I chose "colorful." Sergio chose "fun," followed by "warm" (hi, it's Africa). Can you tell which of the two of us really cared about reaching out to the Senegalese population to show our love for their (Cape Verde's) culture?

The best part was that our efforts at stardom paid off. Both of us were seen on TV by our colleagues, who practically fainted as we walked down the hallways of our respective UN agencies and blew kisses at the adoring fans.

I would upload a photo as proof of my celebrity, but my internet is so bad that I have to load Gmail in html. What is this, 2005?

(Update: Okay, so it is no longer 2005, and I found some better internet.)

Sorry

Yeah, I know, I'm bad at this whole blogging thing.

(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.

I made it Part III

I have just been informed that a certain reader, whose name starts with D and ends with !, has used my life and blog to convince a public policy grad student that he has just spent a year working with the World Food Programme in Dakar. Can I sue for that? Or should I just feel sorry that his life isn't interesting enough to talk about?

NB: ! actually has a very interesting life. He does physics research.