Blogs from Cape Verde Peninsula, Senegal, Africa - page 19

Yesterday, I went over to N’Gor Island (readers from last year, you may remember this as the island facing opposite our house - inhabited by weekenders, vacationers, and a few wealthy eccentrics, and quite popular among Rastafarians and less purposeful potheads, and the younger abstaining Senegalese crowd who can rent rooms by the hour. winkwink.). I went with 2 american friends, both of whom are also living out their Senegal sequels. We treated ourselves to a very, very relaxed afternoon on the beach. While books and pads and pens were in our bags, we just vegetated. Enough so that I didn’t even have the energy to politely shoo away the many beach vendors…who offer ’good price’ on cloth bags, shell necklaces, imitation sunglasses. I even willingly struck up conversation with a woman as she knelt by ... read more

Thursday October 20, 2005 Well, since our last entry we’ve had our first major emergency...and it didn’t even involve any of us! After a relatively boring week of going to French classes and getting settled, we had a totally crazy afternoon. We were about to head out to downtown Dakar, and were just writing a note for Magueye, to let him know that we were going to be gone for dinner when Cheikh (the two year old) hit his head on the glass coffee table. We had been playing with him and tickling and stuff, and he was doing a little dance for us, when he reached down quickly to get something off the floor, and cracked his head off the side of the coffee table (NB this coffee table consists of a piece of glass ... read more

On Friday night, Papi and I went to the airport to pick up Luke, who came to visit me for Fall Break. Even though we got there later than I planned, we still had to wait around a while before he came out. I was bored and thinking about the kids I volunteer with, so I tried to get Papi to teach me some kid songs in Wolof or in French. To give him an example of what I was wanting, I sang the ABC’s. He got so embarrassed! I guess being with a singing white girl in the middle of a crowd is too much for a 12 year old. I felt like my mom. She loved to embarrass me when I was that age.. and still loves it, in fact. Finally I saw Luke ... read more

While admittedly not a soccer, excuse me ‘football’ fan, I was genuinely excited to go to a big match here at the main stadium - if only for the cultural experience…and to share a good afternoon out with my football-crazed friends. The game was the final qualifying match for Senegal to be in the World Cup (and hopefully to have the opportunity to kick the pants off France again…I just love when the colonized put the colonizers in their place.). Alas, though Senegal won the match against Mali that afternoon - the way the elimination works, they also needed Togo to lose their game against Congo that same afternoon, and it didn’t happen. So, off the Senegal lions go to the Africa Cup instead of the World. I, among swarms of silent others, left the stadium ... read more

“Our fan is broken!” I announced with exasperation to my host parents. After a month of jerry-rigging the contraption, I was fed up. In an effort to reduce its erratic noisemaking, I had taken the machine apart four times, woken up in the middle of countless nights to shove various objects (shirts, shoes, books, markers) under the wobbly leg, made a nightly ritual of tying a pair of dirty pants around the loose middle part, and used a needle and thread to reattach one part to another. True to my genes (my father is an engineer), I knew this fan inside and out. I knew that its problems were due to worn-out threads in the top rear section. I knew it was a hopeless case unless the axle could be replaced. On the evening of the ... read more