Thank GOD, we found a car going to Kedougou to pick up someone else there, and are going in that. We do have to take a sept place to Toubab Diallo back....hope it's better than that one.
Thanks for the blog and pictures, we're headed for there tomorrow from Washington, D>C. Our daughter is in Peace Corp in the 'gou and is taking us to the waterfall there, although we're renting a car, but then again, we're old.
Spare An Animal Eat a Vegetable We're traveling to Senegal and The Gambia on 26 December and always arrange for vegan food. Getting animals off the menu expresses respect for them -- a view that can be embraced globally. Buying an animal's skin to beat a drum could have been skipped.
Priscilla Feral, President - Friends of Animals
Holly with a bucket on her head! Priceless! What an experience. This page is a bit more upbeat than the bathroom on the last page....YUCK!!! I can see why you would have mixed feelings about leaving. love you, mommy
I wish I had been around for the cool day all that crankiness was leading up to. Just for the geology footnote - Korite is also a mineral, and it's way cool.
Ammolite: (also known as Buffalo Stone, calcentine, or korite) is the fossilized shell of the ammonite, an ancient cephalopod. It can be used as a gemstone and is a gray, iridescent stone with flashes of blue, green, purple, red, or yellow. (Blues and purples are rare.) The color changes as the stone is viewed from different angles. It is only found in southern Alberta, Canada.
check this swank pic - http://www.korite.com/korite.htm
ramadan What a holiday! Do you think the Christians here would go for it? I have my doubts. Holly has on earrings!!!!! Wow!!!!! And they are shiny!!! And your blouse is too large but the color is just right ;) Hmmm....maybe it will fit me ;) j Love you bunches, Mommy
My friend I'm sitting with and I decided that that holiday would never fly in America. Can you imagine people like fasting all day? And the restaurants not being open until sundown and people having to work all night after being bitchy and not eating and stuff? Like, it would just not fly. That's cool though. Haha, way to take a note from my book and be all dramatic and make people laugh at you instead of getting mad. Hot dress, ps. <3.
This is really interesting to me. I didn't know that you were taking a gender and development class. You'll have to tell me all about what the NGOs in the area are doing.
thanksgiving hey holly. I wish i could have been there to share your thanksgiving celebration. it sounds wonderful....all but the cleaning up part...which sounds very moonshadowy! yuck. love you and looking forward to seeing you home. mommy
Le Petit Prince I still want a good picture of a giant baobab tree! That's all I want from Africa. Actually, I want a little one to plant in my back yard. You can get Luke to genetically alter it to grow in the climate of Tenneessee. Thanks Holly, you're the greatest.
Holly adventures Hi Holly, Finally, I am able to read your post. i have been trying but kept getting an error message. I am really enjoying reading about your adventures even though they do frighten me. I hope you gave money to the woman that had you hold her baby. I don't care if she was begging. I could not have said no. I was pleased as I reread some of your postings to find that your sengalese mom wrote a comment. That was cool. I am truly glad that you like her so much. She sounds like a very nice lady. Again, stay safe....and enjoy your birthday soon! Love you.
Pictures Holly, have i told you that I absolutely love looking at your pictures? It is still somewhat hard for me to imagine you actually being at all these places, but its good to hear that you are doing well. I'm looking forward to seeing you when you get back :)
Thanks, Holly, for the journal. It is so interesting, and I can understand your mom being glad she doesn't know about it until it's over. You have a lot of ability for excitement and do such interesting, tho maybe, scary things. Hope you have safety and lots more fun trips and experiences.
Prayers,
Mamaw Geiger
my shirt hey, did you get me the shirt???? i think i should get to keep it. .. although to start with i thought you had the wrong picture with the heading.. i want to see this infamous drum. also, i DON'T want to experience the bathroom. you know me, i would have fell in it and then dropped the belongings of my purse in behind me..
your messy mommy,
i love you,
mommy
Haha, I bet Luke is freaking out excited about having a drum that he got to get his hands dirty and be involved in making. Senegal is so beautiful, I'm so jealous. I don't think I could handle the heat though...or the spicy food! Can you tell them you are vegatarian? I decided that was a good excuse if I ever traveled again.
yikes! I think it's so awesome that you're getting to practice your French...you must be bordering on fluent now...
I'm so glad that Luke made it out to visit you, and I think that you two are so brave to have gotten in the parasite-infested water (or maybe stupid is the word I'm looking for...either way...;-). What would you have done if they'd invaded? One of my friends was telling me before about how, in the jungle, to get rid of this one parasite that has burried inside of your skin, you cover up the lump with duct tape until it suffocates or crawls out for air. Would your situation have been the same thing?
Anyway, keep up the posting...it's entertaining. :)
Good Grief Hey Sweetie,
As if the last post didn't make me cringe...how many new gray hairs do you plan to give me???? I am glad you weren't able to post this stuff until you were already back from your "little excursion" with luke or i would be having a heart attack...i wonder if you planned it that way??? oh well, i love you and miss you....and WORRY ABOUT YOU!!
take care and stay safe, mommy
geologization The rock up there is what's called a Columnar basalt. Basalt is a rock that forms when you cool lava - it has a lot of iron and magnesium in it, and it's heavy. There are two basic ways you can get columnar basalt, and they're both possible given Holly's description of the place as well as the fact that the Cap Vert peninsula where Dakar sits is loaded with volcanoes. When lava comes out of a volcano it makes a big mess of a spill called a floe. This floe isn't just like pouring water out on the ground, it can be really thick because lava is kind of like molasses or silly putty sometimes. As it cools and crystallizes to form the basalt, the whole thing contracts. But by the time it starts to contract, it has become cool enough to be brittle, so some pieces are shrinking faster than others and pull away from each other making vertical cracks called joints. They always form perpendicular to the surface of cooling. It's a lot like the cracks that you see on the bottom of a dried out mud puddle since drying mud contracts in the same way. Columnar basalts are always hexagonal. No one knows why. It looks like a honeycomb from the top. It could also be what's left of a place inside the volcano where the magma (that's what you call lava when it's underground) is stored (the magma chamber). If the volcano stops spewing stuff, that magma slowly cools and you get the same effect. Since basalt is pretty hard, the rest of the volcano can get eroded away and you're left with just the columns. Some other really well known columnar basalts are in England around what's called Fingal's Cave.
http://www.ukwildflowers.com/Web_photos/scenery/fingals_cave.jpg
And Devil's tower in wyoming is a place where the magma chamber hardened and the volcano eroded.
http://www.gdargaud.net/Climbing/Wyoming/DevilTowerSouthFace.jpg
Hi Holly Holly, I just wanted to say that I'm really enjoying reading your travelblogs...this one was especially entertaining. But I just had a strange thought, when you are at the ocean and so am I, we are conceivably looking at each other without even knowing it!...:) Just a thought. Hope you are having a lovely week. -Grace
blowing in eye hey baby, i miss you. i giggled at the bathroom (or lack of) story, but i busted a gut with your contact-eye story. i can just imagine you trying to remain calm! for anyone reading this who doesn't know holly, i used to get mad at her and use her hairbrush (brush my hair) out of meanness. for punishment when she fought with her sister, i made them hug each other to make up. much worse for holly than a spanking!!!! lol. i love you!!!!!
All the buildings look like works of art. So much color and spirit, certainly not your every day boring building. Do you have to be very careful about the food, even the fresh fruit? Has anyone gotten sick from the food yet? I could do without the bedbugs, but everything else sounds great. Hope you continue to have a terrific time.
so cool Those buildings really are some of the coolest things I've ever seen! They are the sort of things I'd imagine you doodling on your schoolbooks, not actually encountering in real life! The bugs and the water pressure (or lack thereof) seem to steal a bit of the glamour, but still...how very neat!
P.S. Random comment -- Janie Meredith got married...one by one our class falls away.
Too Cool You are right! The buildings do remind me of the commune place. I love it. If I get to visit, can we go there??? I want to see the building. Did you ask anything about the building techniques?? Is there more of this type of architecture? How about the other buildings in the area...are they similar??? Love you and miss you, Mommy
I'm studying abroad in Dakar, Senegal this semester. Read about my adventures by clicking below. You can choose to start with the first entry or skip to the latest.... full info
Wheeler
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Thank GOD, we found a car going to Kedougou to pick up someone else there, and are going in that. We do have to take a sept place to Toubab Diallo back....hope it's better than that one.