I do believe this is my sixth post of anecdotes thus far

Staying home these past few days, I’ve realized just how frequently the power goes out. It was off Tuesday starting at 4:00 pm and only came on Wednesday morning at 5:00 am. Then it went out again Wednesday afternoon at 3:00 pm and only came back on again at 10:00 pm. My host father says that poorer neighborhoods of Dakar have power more often than middle-class ones like Sacre-Coeur 3, where I live, as the government is more worried that their inhabitants will strike. But I’ve heard from other people that the better-off the neighborhood, the less the power goes off. Fann, the neighborhood where WARC is located, almost never has power outages because there are tons of embassies and residences of diplomats and university professors. Whereas I’ve hearing stories from friends living in areas that seem less well off about not having power for several days at a time. I wonder what actually determines where Senelec cuts electricity and when.

Found out parts of Senegal still practice FGM. It was technically declared illegal twelve years ago (yes, only twelve) but 20-30% of girls in the country still undergo it every year. Saying I’m appalled doesn’t even begin to express my disgust.

Themes in my recent dreams (number of dreams on the subject): rape (2), kidnapping (1), loss of body parts (1), loss of passport (1), submarine crash (1). I have also had three dreams about returning to campus and being happy and two about seeing family and being happy. The happy ones are actually some of the worst, because I think my subconscious is trying to tell me it wants to go home.

I had a dream that was partially in German last night. I was on a train doing a jigsaw puzzle and then this German guy passed by and we started chatting in German about my grandparents. Then we went to the front of the train, where my dad was sitting, and looked out the window at 1879 arch, which was now near a river. The train had stopped, so we were looking out the window and I was telling the German guy (in English, now) about how I liked to do my homework by the riverbank and he was telling me how he was an engineer and had built the stretch of train tracks between Princeton Junction and Hamilton. Then he and my dad left to go to a bar and I went back to doing my jigsaw puzzle. And that was the end. The question is why, if I’m living in a (at least nominally) francophone country, am I dreaming in German and not French?

I have a new roommate. She (or he) is brown and furry and has a long, bald tail and likes to scamper underneath my bed. I’ve named her Smiles, because the French word for mouse ‘une souris’ is remarkably similar to that for smile ‘un sourire.’

Got into my first Dakar traffic accident. A motorcyclist randomly hit my taxi. My taxi driver stopped, got out, made sure the taxi wasn’t too badly damaged, and drove away. A bystander had to help the motorcyclist up.

Awa, who works at WARC, got me a taxi from Sacre-Coeur 3 to Plateau (downtown) to visit a doctor for 2,000 CFA. I’ve gotten taxis from Sacre-Coeur 3 to WARC for 800 CFA and WARC to Plateau for 1,000 CFA. Adding my two trips together, I paid approximately 35 cents less than did a Senegalese woman for a ride of equal distance. I am disproportionately impressed with my bargaining skills.

There is a middle-aged man who spends almost literally every day sitting in a plastic chair outside the house two doors down. Today he brought the three-year-old in my house home from nursery school. He later brought over a newspaper. Who is he?

Dama feebar

I’m sick. I’ve got pretty much every symptom I can think of: fever and chills, vomiting, diarrhea, headache, lightheadedness. I’m actually feeling a lot better now. Yesterday my fever was so high that I hallucinated a bit. Well, I’m not fully sure it counts as a legitimate hallucination, so maybe I’ll tell you about it and then take a poll. I was lying in bed awake but super feverish when this mute video-clip of Alice singing at a concert popped into my head. But it was a lucid hallucination so I decided that I wanted to star in it too, so suddenly I was up on stage as well, playing drums. And then I remembered that when people talk about what they’d want to do if they had lucid dreams, many say they’d want to fly. So then I flew for a bit, but then I got bored so I went skiing. And then the visual hallucination stopped. But later on I had auditory hallucinations. I could vaguely hear the goat baaing on the roof next door and suddenly it sounded like there was a goat baaing in my room, too, only it was baaing in my Senegalese grandfather’s voice. This happened several more times. I also heard traffic driving on and off through my room.

Anyway, when I first came home from school yesterday around 1:00, the maid didn’t really understand I wasn’t feeling well (between my Wolof and her French, communication can be difficult) and so when she told me to come eat lunch and I asked for just plain while rice and she said sure, I ended up with rice with sauce and fish. Which I promptly threw up. (Fun fact: Asking for plain white rice actually worked Wednesday, although both the maid and my host father laughed at me for wanting to eat food that boring, but even though there was no sauce, the rice tasted remarkably fishy. My family must cook rice in the equivalent of fish bouillon cubes.) Upon hearing that I had a fever and had vomited, my host family promptly determined I had malaria and went and bought me anti-malaria medication (not the preventative type I already have, the type you take when you come down with malaria). The pills were made by Novartis, which is where my mom works, so that made me feel a bit closer to home, but I tried to explain to my host family that a few weeks before a guy in my group had similar symptoms and everyone assumed he had malaria because but he didn’t. My family just thought I was in denial, but I got out of taking the pills.

This morning I went to the doctor and he confirmed that I did not have malaria and gave me more medicine, so that I had one pill to take twice a day so that I wouldn’t have diarrhea and one to take half an hour before every meal so that I wouldn’t vomit and dissolving pellet to take every four hours to reduce my fever. Too many pills. Plus rather than tasting like nauseatingly fake lemon or orange as it would in the US, the dissolving pellet tastes incredibly strongly of salt. As in saltier than ocean water. So drinking that ever four hours is just delightful.

I am feeling considerably better today. But at about 2:30 this afternoon, I went to lie down for a bit, figuring I’d be feeling up for doing something after I rested. The next thing I knew, it was 9:30 and I had spent the entirety of the afternoon and evening just lying in my bed, not reading, not listening to music, not even sleeping, really, just lying there feeling exhausted. And whenever I got up I’d feel lightheaded and I actually fainted in front of Marie Sophie and Ibrahima when they knocked on my door to ask if I was feeling better, which I think terrified them. It’s funny, yesterday I was telling Alice how I faint every two years or so and started thinking about how the last time I fainted was January of 2009 and how I was due to faint sometime soon. And then I fainted the next day. 

I am just compiling anecdotes

A woman knocked on the front gate and said, "I'm hungry," and I said, "Oh. Who are you here to see?" and she said, "You’re supposed to give me food," and I said, "I'm going to talk to someone who lives here about this," and she said, "No, you just give me food," and I said, "I'm going to ask someone to give me food for you," and then knocked on my grandfather's door and said, "There's a woman at the front door who’s hungry and wants food. Is that normal?" and he said, "It is Friday," and I said, "This is something I’ve never experienced before," and he said, "On Friday, beggars go to the mosque and ask for food. I'm not sure how this woman got here, but give her some change and maybe some sugar," and I said "Oh, that makes sense," even though it didn’t (thinking about it now, nothing in this entire series of exchanges make sense, but at the time I was mainly perplexed by the part about the sugar) and then my grandfather went downstairs to talk to the woman outside the front door and presumably get her to depart (with or without her sugar).

The three-year-old (Khadijatou) was hitting the nine-year-old (Marie Sophie) while the family was watching Saturday morning cartoons. My host mother to Marie Sophie: “Hit her back. Avenge yourself.” I feel like that’s not usually how mothers intervene.

My host grandfather’s brother came to visit yesterday. I openend the door to him. He was wearing a boubous and fez and had a long beard. He looked like an ordinary elderly Senegalese gentleman. Later that afternoon, my grandfather, while laughing, asked if I had been worried I had opened the door to a member of al-Qaeda. Oh, the presumed paranoia of Americans.

It’s odd who can tell I’m American and who thinks I’m French. When my host mother told her sister I was American, the response was, “Yes, I can hear her accent.” But my host grandfather’s brother told me he thought I was French when we first met. Is the Senegalese French accent so different from French French ones that even though everyone hears my accent, they just can’t tell where to place it?

Alice and I were waiting for a bus Friday afternoon when my host family drove by on the way home from picking the kids up from school, waved frantically, pulled over, and let us squeeze into the backseat. Because five people squished into the backseat of a car is no big deal. And why wouldn’t my family drive past a bus stop on a random road in Dakar on the one day Alice and I decided to catch a bus there?

It’s been rumored the students at Université Cheikh Anta Diop will be going on strike this week. I’m so excited to see the fabled columns of smoke rising from burning tires (the embassy has been warning us to steer clear of them). I still have far too romantic a view of strikes. Hopefully actually experiencing a strike will cure me of that.

Apparently there have been riots in my neighborhood over power outages these past few weeks. According to my host father, there have even been burning tires (how fantastic!) on the roads. I haven’t noticed anything. I must be really unobservant.

Sprayed mosquito repellent on my face before going to bed. (I’ve been bitten four times on my face as I’ve slept.) Woke up this morning and hugged Teddy. She now smells like mosquito repellent.

I watched cross-eyed as a mosquito bit me on the nose.

A certain one of my professors who shall remain nameless picked his nose during the entirety of class last week. I’ll give you a hint: it wasn’t the History of Islam professor, because it’s been three weeks since we’ve had class.

I was having a conversation the other day hanging around WARC about how the first day it rains once I’m back in New Jersey, I’m going to run outside and dance around. Funny what you miss when you’re away from home. And I won’t see rain until I’m back in NJ, because Senegal’s rainy season doesn’t start until summer, and it literally never rains here except during the official rainy months.

My host mother wears vibrant, flowing boubous to work, tailored blazers and slacks when going out on the weekends, and black leggings with long sweaters when lounging around the house. How does she always manage to look beautiful no matter what style clothing she wears?

Things my host sisters have told me they will be naming Mégane: The dog they hope to get in March. The first snowman Khadijatou builds when she travels to a country where there’s snow. Marie Sophie’s first-born girl.

Fun Wolof phrases of the day: Megan ak Jessica, kan moo gën baax? Megan moo gën baax Jessica. Who is nicer: Megan or Jess? Megan is nicer than Jess. In future, dear Wolof professor, writing the names of two of your students on the board and then asking the class to vote on who’s nicer is not a particularly pleasant experience for anyone involved.

Here are some pictures of the sights of Dakar:

And here are some more (anecdotes, that is)

We had a power outage one (actually many, but for our purposes here, one) night during dinner, so I couldn't really see what I was eating, other than that there were gigantic bones. The next morning when I brought my tea mug to the rooftop spigot after breakfast, the communal dinner dish was still there with all the bones on top. Some of them had teeth. I ate something's face for dinner.

The three-year-old keeps telling me I look like her doll. Her doll is blonde. Marie Sophie tells me I look like Snow White. Oddly enough, the day after she first mentioned this, a vendor at Marche Sendaga called me ‘Blanche Neige’. I have a French storybook nickname too now, Alice!

My host mother asked Alice if she was Asian. Alice’s ancestors came from Poland and Wales.

History of Islam was cancelled again this past Tuesday, only this time we actually had advanced warning. We’ve now had officially only three of the fifteen course hours we’re supposed to have had thus far. All my classes were also cancelled Wednesday because of Muhammad’s birthday. So too was my UCAD course on Thursday because the university professors are on strike.

I’ve heard Shania Twain’s “You’re Still the One” four times since being here. The last time I heard that song before Dakar was art camp the summer before seventh grade.

I was in a corner market searching for peanut butter the other day when a song by Eros Ramazzotti came on the radio. It’s bizarre to think of an American girl listening to an Italian song in a Senegalese market.

The new maid in my household cannot be any older than fifteen. She’s shy and awkward and reminds me of me my first week here. She speaks no French and doesn’t understand when I butcher Wolof. When she does catch a word or two, she laughs at me.

Me, after Alice handed me toilet paper or something else equally vital: Danke.

Alice: Guten Tag.

My Senegalese phone’s spell check for texts does not recognize the world ‘when’ (it wants to replace it with ‘Wien’ – why would I be writing about Vienna in German?) but does recognize ‘fabric shopping’. Clearly it has its priorities.

Alice: I used to speak cat.

Me: I used to speak Elvish.

Alice: I used to speak Latin.

Discovered I can find stats on where people have been reading my blog. Someone’s been reading from Russia. Someone else has been reading from Singapore.

Also discovered the most common Google searches that have been leading people to my blog. Two of the top four involve the keyword 'topless'. My blog is a substitute for porn.

I was on the bus the other day when a ten-year-old boy blew me a kiss. Not a sweet one, a provocative one. Is there a term for reverse-pedophilia?

Why is it when you’re walking home alone and a guy you pass on the street tells you you’re pretty, it makes you feel ugly instead?

My friend Jess was mugged. She was in a crowd with her host family when a guy punched her in the stomach and stole her bag.

Ate my first Senegalese orange, which was green and yellow on the outside and a pale, pale yellow within. After peeling, you bite in and suck out the orange’s lifeblood. I’d never realized how much I’d love to be a vampire.

Last weekend in 48 hours I consumed three brownies, two scoops of ice cream (dark chocolate and mango), and two chocolate desert pastries. And I haven’t had thieboudienne in a good two weeks. Life is good.

Iba, Alice’s host cousin, after I mentioned I go to Princeton: “So you’re kinda nerd?” Yes, Iba. I’m very nerd.

My Wolof professor asked me if I knew where a guy in my class lived (which I did) and then asked the guy if he knew where I lived (he did not). I expected my professor to make fun of the guy for not knowing where I lived. Instead, he mimed me stalking the guy home. Little does he know I actually have a history of stalking.

Fun Wolof phrase of the day: Am na ñett i etudiant yu ñuul ci kalaas bi. There are three black students in the class. This is considered a socially acceptable remark for a professor to make in Senegal.

A Malarone induced dream

Malarone, my anti-malarial medicine, costs $11 per little pink pill and so $11 a day. For the approximately 140 days I’m in Senegal. Don’t do the math. Its side effects include vivid dreams, hallucinations, and panic attacks, among other things. Fortunately I have as of yet only to experience the first. How do I know my dreams have been Malarone induced, you may well ask. Let me tell you, dear reader. I remember my dreams only exceedingly infrequently, as in on a time-scale of months. The last dream I could remember before arriving in Dakar happened in late November. In it, David and Liz got married in the Whitman Common Room. I’m not denying it was weird, but impromptu weddings in non-scenic locations have nothing on what I’ve been dreaming these past few weeks, sometimes multiple times per night. And those are only the ones I can remember…

The beginning of the dream I will be sharing in this entry is pretty normal. I’m walking down a corridor that looks vaguely like campus and very much like Hogwarts. Marian is with me and she’s telling me about how everyone’s job interviews and grad school applications are going. The corridor ends in an airport terminal because we’re flying to Minnesota to visit Marian’s family. We take out our tickets only to find that we’ve both been assigned the same seat. Half the seats are oriented in one direction with the other half perpendicular to them, so it turns out we both have seats, it’s just that the numbers in both sections are the same. We switch our seats so that we’re in the same section and almost sitting next to each other, with just a flight attendant in between us. All the seats, by the way, are in the middle of the terminal. There’s no plane. 

The dream then skips ahead, so that now the plane-less seats are flying over Lake Michigan and Marian’s getting very concerned about the water pressure. The seats are swooping low over the lake as though we’re in an IMAX film. There are red cliffs surrounding the water, and as the plane rises I realize we’re in Arches National Park, only Lake Michigan is still down below. But there’s Delicate Arch right up ahead. And there to my right is one shaped like a roller coaster.

The seats land in a snow-covered clearing at the top of the cliffs. The passengers disembark and begin to eat the snow, only it’s not snow, it’s actually icing. And the ground below is chocolate cake. Because we’re in Candy Land. So I’m scooping handfuls of chocolate cake from the ground and frolicking amongst giant lollipops and white rabbits and Christmas trees when I realize that I can’t feel anything. And then I realize that everyone is missing body parts. By this time I’ve wandered over to an area that looks remarkably like the Junior Slums where snow is actually snow and not icing and suddenly this intertitle appears in the dream with a list of all the passengers and the body parts each is missing. And it seems that some nefarious organization has masterminded all this and I hear evil laughter and wake up.

The one-month anniversary

Saturday morning (sometime around 6:00 am) was the one-month anniversary of my arrival in Dakar. Alice and I celebrated by cooking an American dinner. We went to a supermarket (yes, a supermarket, not just a back-alley market) in this mall built entirely of glass by the ocean that was so upscale that there were men to carry your bags (even your food shopping bags) all the way back through the mall and the parking lot. And they couldn’t even ask for our number because we could have reported them to their employers for harassment. I love laws. Especially when they’re enforced. We bought penne and searched for pesto, but the supermarket was out, so we bought spinach-ricotta sauce instead. We then bought fresh spinach to supplement to the sauce and eventually tomatoes and corn and, most excitingly of all, brownie mix. Yes, brownie mix can be purchased in Dakar. Knowing that, my life here is so much closer to complete.

Back at Alice’s house, the gas tank connected to her oven wasn’t working. (We selected Alice’s house for the celebratory feast because hers, unlike mine, has an oven. And a stove. Whereas cooking in my house happens on gas tanks on the roof with open flames where you balance pots.) We waited two hours for her mother to come home, at which point in time she diagnosed the problem as the tank being empty, so we went with Alice’s cousin to the market around the corner to exchange it for a full tank. But this one started to leak when connected to the oven. (Don’t you love gas leaks in the kitchen?) Alice’s mother fixed it after about twenty minutes of fiddling and smelling gas seep into the kitchen, so at about 8:00 we started to cook. And when the power went out shortly afterwards, my appreciation for freestanding gas tanks increased, because we could just keep on cooking in the dark.

The pasta and sauce both ended up tasting vaguely of school cafeteria because Alice’s mom (who was exceedingly helpful throughout the whole evening) was very concerned that we weren’t cooking them thoroughly enough and so made sure they stayed on the burner until the spinach had wilted to black. But it was still delightful to have pasta and vegetables that had recently been fresh. And the brownies were simply delicious. And Alice’s mom and dad and cousin ate with us and complemented us on our cooking, although they did find it rather bland, so that was sweet.

Afterwards, Alice and I watched a film and then went up onto her roof (it was about 12:30 at this point) to watch the people on the street below. A water line had burst just in front of her house, so it funny to watch cars pull up to the sudden pond in the road. And the stars were out and the big dipper seemed like it was just across the street and we were wrapped up in blankets because 65 at night with wind seems chilly when you’re used to the Senegalese sun. We went to bed around 2:00 (I slept over as Alice has an extra bed in her room) and at a bit after 6:00 I woke up because of prayers from the mosque across the street and thought about how I’d been here officially one month. But it was 6:00 am, so I couldn’t think anything too profound, and eventually I just fell back asleep.

Here are some pictures from a later culinary adventure, this time at my house, which apparently does have a working oven and stove. The girl in the first picture who isn't me is Abbey, not Alice. Alice took the pictures:

Because I am, after all, here to study abroad

I definitely owe you a rundown of the courses I’m taking, just to cure you of the impression that I’m sitting around here all day doing nothing but having odd experiences to write about on my blog. Though really, are my courses actually much more than that? That remains to be seen. So here, without further ado, are the blurbs:

Islam in Senegal, History and Sociology: I don’t really know what to say about this course, partially because it’s only met for 3 out of the 12 hours of instruction we’re supposed to have had by now. Our professor just doesn’t show up, or, when he does, leaves early due to prior engagements. One day the previous commitment was a lecture on Qur’anic schooling in England by a professor visiting from Cambridge that our professor decided to drag us along to as an impromptu excursion. The lecture probably would have been fascinating had it not been in Arabic.

Francophone African Literature: Definitely my favorite course as the professor is amazingly profound, at least when he’s not making blanket statements about African and Occidental cultures. Though he does have a tendency to pat me on the head when he sees me outside of class. And to speak so passionately that he spits on me if I sit next to him. He’s also the one who gave me 10,000 CFA ($20) for correctly answering a question.

Wolof: Ñaata beer nga naan ci week end bi? How many beers did you drink last weekend? The fact that I learned how to ask this in class is the best course summary I can provide.

African Cinema: So far every film we’ve seen for this class has been pretty boring and very racist. (The course is structured chronologically, so we’re currently studying films used to justify colonization.) Hopefully as we move closer to present day, the films will become less boring. If they don’t, at least they’ll probably become less racist.

Translation: My one course at the Univetsité Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar. While the rest are taught by UCAD professors (my Islam in Senegal professor is, for example, the head of the history department), they’re held at the West African Resource Center, which is off campus and where I loiter from 9:00-6:00 every weekday. People in my program generally don’t take official university courses because the UCAD semester ends sometime in February, with a new one starting up again at the end of the month, which is pretty incompatible with our schedule. Plus UCAD courses are practically never offered in the correct room at the correct time. Of the courses that people have attempted to attend over the past three weeks, maybe 10% have actually existed where and when they were supposed to. The translation course actually exists at a set time and place because it’s through the university’s Institut Français pour Étudiants Étrangers, although that means that unfortunately there are no Senegalese students in my class. Instead, there are a handful of middle-aged women married to diplomats.

Here are two pictures taken at UCAD (that's my mom in the first one - it was taken when she came to visit):

Yet More Anecdotes

There were riots last week (but not in my neighborhood) after day-and-half long power outages. Apparently there were all the usual set pieces: road blockages, burning tires, stones for throwing, and policemen with tear gas grenades.

In my ride to school one day last week, the car twice spent over twenty seconds driving in the wrong lane. We also took a detour that led us to a trash and sand heap surrounded on 350 degrees by ditches. Drove out the one place we could. No biggie. Driver probably does this all the time.

Alice’s host family has given her a French nickname: ‘au pays’ as in ‘Alice au pays des merveilles’ or ‘Alice in Wonderland’. I’m jealous. Why aren’t there iconic books with ‘Megan’ in the title? Someone should write one. Someone’s who’s not me. Because that would be egocentric.

Here’s a link to Alice’s blog: http://dakardays.tumblr.com. Yes, our blogs basically have the same name. No, that was not planned. There’s simply a limited amount of (coherent) alliteration to be found when one of the words is ‘Dakar’.

On the topic of names, I’ve realizing that if I do end up living permanently in a French speaking country, my name will, for the rest of my live, be pronounced as Mégane, and everyone I meet will think that I’m named after a car. Alice’s host mother already makes car jokes each time she sees me. I’m not sure I could take a lifetime of that.

Saw my host sister topless (that’s officially everyone in the family) and my host mother topless, again. And my host brother completely naked, again. Not to mention many more public urinators. It’s remarkable how much nudity there is in this country considering that before leaving the US, I was told in my official study abroad handbook to stock up on capris and skirts that covered my knees to keep from exposing myself indecently.

As a foreigner in Dakar, there is no shame having a conversation with a roll of toilet paper in your hand because you are on your way to the bathroom.

Had lunch with two Princeton grads who are working in Dakar this year with the UN World Food Program. Told them I’d be taking a bus back to school that afternoon. They were horrified. They had a two-day safety orientation program before they started work in which they were told the two largest risks in Dakar were traffic accidents and public transportation. Apparently our host families are encouraging us to do local things that all expats are cautioned against. Interesting.

My host mother and sister berated my six-year-old brother for crying the other day because, as they mentioned several times, real boys don’t cry. Poor kid.

My host mother, laughing, to a friend of mine complaining about being harassed by Senegalese men who want her number: “Senegalese men love beautiful women.” Thanks, but please don’t tell me sexual harassment is supposed to make me feel good about myself.

I walked home by myself for the first time last week. It was an exercise in paranoia. Every man walking behind you suddenly seems to follow you, and every set of footsteps walks in time with yours.

Putting ‘in Africa’ after every sentence makes my life sound so much more exciting. This morning I cut my bangs for the first time ever. In Africa. I then ate some baguette with bissap jam and drank a cup of tea with powdered milk. In Africa. I’m now sitting at a table in the front courtyard, listening to chirping birds and procrastinating from doing my homework. In Africa.

I’m actually finding I really like doing schoolwork. Writing my JP (Junior Paper) makes me happier than does sitting around at WARC doing nothing and being bored. It’s not like this is an utterly new realization, but it’s something I forget too often on campus.

Got my first Senegal sunburn. I’m actually astounded I lasted three weeks without one. One of my friends is now so tan that instead of being called ‘tubab,’ the Wolof equivalent of ‘gringo,’ her host family now calls her ‘blonde,’ which apparently refers to a more North African complexion. Congratulations, Jess! Needless to say, I will not be making that jump any time soon.

Fun Wolof phrase of the day: Xam naa ni am nga weccit. Jox ma sama weccit. I know you have change. Give me my change.

Pink lizards and cold bucket showers

I love finding metaphors in my life, so I’m going to subject you to two recent occurrences that I will then overanalyze to extraordinary degrees.

I was in the bathroom when a pink lizard fell from the ceiling. I think that makes a pretty excellent summary of my time spent in Senegal. Because there are three possible responses to something like that, and I go through these in different contexts essentially every single day. One reaction is to realize you’ve never seen anything even remotely like that before, which is pretty aweseome. I mean, I didn’t even know lizards could be pink. And first experiences generally make great stories, so now I have something to talk about to different people for the next hour. And to write about on my blog. So hooray life. But backing up a bit, when you’re sitting on a toilet and a blur suddenly plummets past down to the tile floor beside you, it’s actually kind of scary until you realize that it’s this cute little lizard. And even though it’s pretty cuddly, had it fallen a foot to the right, it would have landed on my head. Definitely sketchy. So there’s some low level anxiety added to the mix. And then there’s just confusion, because did a pink lizard actually just fall from the bathroom ceiling? Because really, is that possible? And is there any explanation for how that may have happened? Better throw in a dash of utter bewilderment. As a post script, tragically, the lizard did not survive the fall. I hope there’s nothing to read into that.

The next event to be overanalyzed is my daily cold bucket shower. I’m beginning to think my opinions towards them mirror my feelings towards Senegal im Allegemeinen. (I miss German.) Some mornings I really feel like I’m starting to get accustomed to them. Not completely used to them – please, I’m not that intense – but they definitely don’t feel as cold as did that first one in the hotel just after landing in Dakar at 6:00 am on January 12. And so I get hopeful that soon (or soon-ish, since I have been doing this for three weeks already without particularly earth-shattering improvement), I’ll be completely used to them. But then other days bucket showering is frigid and has me shivering by the time I’m done washing my hair and I think that I’ll never get used to it, that it’s just something I’ll have to deal with every day I’m here. But those days aren’t nearly as frequent anymore. Which is positive, right?

Anecdotes, Round Two

A man rang the doorbell asking for Monsieur Badianne and, when I said he wasn’t here, he asked for Madame Badianne, and, when I said she wasn’t here, he decided that I’d do and handed me a bag of twenty whole (head, tail, eyes, and all) thawing fish.

My Wolof professor was fired from the Peace Corps (he used to be a language instructor there) for smoking pot with his students. He also played drinking games with them. That never got him fired. It did get another professor fired when, while playing ‘Never Have I Ever’, it came out that he had kissed a student.

Alice: “This morning your father was wearing a nice shiny muumuu.” Alice, there is a difference between a muumuu and a boubou.

Odd things you see here seem to go in weeklong fads. Last week was the week of public urination. This week is the week of people walking dogs on leashes. Imagine people putting leashes on dogs and taking them for walks as though they were pets or something instead of the scruffy, undernourished hounds that roam the highways, curl up on sidewalks, and probably live off trash.

This is obscenely old news, but the guy in my group who was thought to have malaria does not actually have malaria. The second hospital he went to told him that. The first gave the false positive. I love having no faith in a country’s medical system.

Speaking of which, I hate hearing ambulance sirens here, because at certain times of day there’s so much traffic that the person is virtually guaranteed to die before he or she reaches a hospital.

Some guy I was buying phone credit from the other day thought I was French. Earlier that same morning, some other guy asked if I were British. I guess the Americanized French accent is not widely recognized here.

Today my African Lit professor gave me 10,000 CFA ($20) for correctly answering a question in class.

Last Sunday I saw my six-year-old host brother completely naked as he headed to the shower. I have now officially seen my host mother topless, the maid topless, and the three-year-old and six-year-olds completely naked. The only people left are the nine-year-old and my host father. And I’ve already seen the father wearing only a towel.

Took a bus downtown last weekend and, about twenty minutes into the ride, spotted two of my friends out of the window. On the ride home, I bumped into Alice’s host mother, who was seated across the aisle. As mentioned before, there are one million people in the city. Why do I keep running into the thirty I know?

Discovered a delicious looking patisserie downtown. Tarts topped with strawberries and whipped cream cost $1.80. Must sample soon. Would have sampled then, but had just finished two scoops of amazing ice cream. I think food is probably my favorite part of most days. Or maybe catching glimpses of the ocean.

Saw a woman in a headscarf on her motorcycle. Love.

My host mother is under the impression that I don’t like milk. The only person I have ever met who does not like milk it Nitin, who thinks it smells like cows.

Fun Wolof phrase of the day: Bëgg uma joxe sama numero. I don’t want to give you my number.

Here are some pictures from a day-trip to the monastery Kër Mussa (the instrument the monk is playing is a kora) and a man-made sand dune for tourists who don't have time to visit Mali or Mauritania: