More anecdotes, just for you!

Most exciting (and least Dakar related) news first: I have a summer internship at a translation agency in Paris! I am ecstatic! Can it please be summer now?

On March 8, I received a notice from the post office stating that a package from my parents had arrived. The parcel had been sitting there since February 28. When I went to pick it up, I was charged late fees. Oh, Senegal.

The most exciting items in the care package (in my opinion, not objectively) were six pairs of black socks. Now I have clean socks for the first time in eight weeks. Washing does not get rid of Dakar dust, at least not when socks are white.

I accidentally sprayed Teddy with mosquito repellent as I was spraying myself before bed three weeks ago. This week, she finally no longer smells of bug spray. Now I can cuddle with her again.

Alice (after I told her I enjoy hosting tea parties): Megan, you’re so cool!

This may officially be the first time in my life I have been told that I’m cool. Or at least the first time the person telling me wasn’t being sarcastic. (This is a pointed reference to you, Zach.)

My host parents have now twice discussed, in front of Alice and I, how I’m better at French but Alice is better at Wolof. And my host mother thinks Americans are indiscreet.

Alice left my house at 1:00 pm one Sunday. My host mother later asked me why she didn’t stay to eat with us at noon. Lunch is served on weekends at 3:30. Apparently whenever lunch is served is noon.

My host father got a promotion and a new car. The first day we drove the new car to work/school, the chauffer got us in a traffic accident. This has been my second traffic accident in a month.

Khadijatou picked her nose and then asked me if I wanted her to stick the booger on my forehead. No thank you.

Marie Sophie asked to borrow my phone. After she returned it, I tried to call a friend and was informed I had no credits. There had been 1,000 CFA of credits on there before. Marie Sophie used my phone to make seven calls.

The power was out on Saturday from 9:30 am to 11:00 pm except for half-an-hour of power from 8:45-9:15 pm. On Sunday, the power was out from 8:30 am to 5:45 pm, with forty-five minutes of power from 11:00-11:45 am. This is getting ridiculous.

There’s a shack down the road from WARC where a man makes delicious egg sandwiches with tomatoes and onions. I sitting in there the other day with nine Senegalese men, all of us waiting for our sandwiches, when one of them told me in Wolof that the egg sandwich man would make a good husband. I laughed it off, but as I was walking back to WARC, I realized that as my husband, he would make me superb egg sandwiches every morning. The offer just got a bit more tempting.

Marie Sophie’s thirty-year-old English teacher came over to the house and chatted me up for forty-five minutes. He asked for my number five times, so at the end I had him give me his. He wants me to call him to make plans to go out next weekend. What do I do?

While the English teacher and I were talking, the fact that I’ve never had a boyfriend came up. He told me he didn’t know it was possible for someone in college to have never dated. The point of college isn’t to study, he told me. The point of college is to date.

I asked the English teacher if it was possible for men and women in Senegal to be close friends without dating. He said yes. He had a close friend he had seen naked, but they had never dated. They had even slept in the same bed, but never been romantically involved. I’m curious about the context in which these events occurred.

Over a month ago now, I was walking home from WARC with a bunch of people when they starting spazing about a man we passed. I assumed he was a roadside urinator who didn’t have the decency to turn around and face away from the highway. Found out recently he was actually a roadside masturbator.

Mentioned the roadside masturbator to my friend Abbey. She asked if he was the one who stands next to the school across from the church. Maybe Dakar has two roadside masturbators.

The professor’s strike at UCAD (sort of) ended last week. My translation class met for the first time since mid-February. The professor gave us a midterm.

My African Lit class, normally twice a week, will meet only three times during the month of March because my professor has business trips to the US, France, and Germany, and then we have Spring Break.

Meanwhile, my Islam professor has decided to schedule make-up classes for all the sessions he’s randomly missed. What?

Our African Lit professor brought us presents when he returned from the US: five jars of peanut butter. His first morning back, he had the WARC office buy us baguettes so we could make peanut butter sandwiches. We finished the peanut butter by noon.

My African Cinema professor was explaining that the grandchildren of Frenchmen who settled in Senegal have darker skin than first-generation French expats because their grandparents’ acquired tans have been passed down genetically. That sounds suspiciously like Lamarckian inheritance. Has that come back in fashion?

Fun Wolof phrase of the day: Kan moo wax, “Waaw mën nanu”? Obama moo ko wax. Who said, “Yes we can”? Obama said it.