Blogs from Dakar, Cape Verde Peninsula, Senegal, Africa - page 17

I certainly didn’t miss out on Thanksgiving; I actually went to two. The first was for all the CIEE students and was hosted by our program director, Serigne. The other was in my neighborhood, Sacre-Coeur III, organized by the students. Thanksgiving at Serigne’s house was actually on Thanksgiving. He lives pretty close to us, so a group of us walked over at around 7:30. Unfortunately, we forgot the map. Our attempts to remember it weren’t very successful, and we ended up wandering around for a while. We remembered that the directions mentioned a pile of bricks, but there were an awful lot of piles of bricks. Eventually we ran into some other toubabs headed that way. We followed them all the way up the roof of the three story building. There were chairs set up along ... read more

November 4, 2005 Moving Day!!! It is like Christmas Eve in Senegal for two reasons: one, it is last day of Ramadan (the night before the big party where everyone eats all day) and two, we’re moving into the house tomorrow!! We’ve had an interesting couple of days…no French classes cause Gora (our teacher) has the runs, so we thought we’d be able to head our and discover some more of Dakar. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Magueye told us that there was a big party yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. He explained to us that some people celebrated on Thursday and some on Friday, it depended on the moon. Someone should alert NASA cause apparently there are two moons in Senegal….Anyway, Magueye and his family decided that they were going to celebrate the ... read more

November 1, 2005 John’s entry : Alex and I have been going to a local school to play basketball most of the days since we’ve been at Magueye’s house. We weren’t sure what to expect from the guys who would be playing there, especially since we’ve heard that basketball is a really big deal here. When we got to the court, there was a guy that was about 6’7” and another that was about 6’2”. They were both throwing the ball off the backboard and dunking it and doing reverse dunks. Alex was used to that kind of stuff, coming from the States, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to fit in. We’ve played a bunch of times since then, and seem to have gotten into the swing of things, including learning their rules ... read more

October 26, 2005 The last few days have been exciting and eventful. We’ve had some major planning sessions and are finally booked for all of our travel dates. We’re going to leave Senegal January 4, and head to South Africa immediately. We were going to try to go to Europe with Marian and Alex, but their budget’s already spread thin, and we should really do our original traveling before adding on extra destinations. If, after South Africa and the safari, we still have any money, we may spend some time in Europe. As for right now, we’re set for all our Africa travels. We’re really excited, especially since we just spent the afternoon looking at all the places we can stop at on the way from Cape Town to Johannesburg. They look stunning. It’s also really ... read more

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