Uh, because I hate the winter?? That's why.

So today I was sitting in the WARC computer room "working" on my history paper and Waly comes in to tell me that there was an interview crew at WARC and he was interviewing our director, but also wanted to interview some students-and since Zach and I were the only two there, we were chosen. They conducted the interview in French, English and tried (very unsuccussfully) to communicate to us in Wolof, but that didn't happen. Anyway, they kept asking us why we came here and expected a long heartfelt reason like 'I want to change the world' or something. I managed to sputter out something about the education system and how it's important to have an educated young population in order to grow as a society and that that was the reason why I was here, when in reality, I just wanted to see some sweet animals =/

Watch for me in the Dakar Times, which is in Paris, NYC and Dakar =)

In other news, my phonetics class was a joke and, as it turns out, should not be a really class! Let's hope UM shows some sympathy on us and gives us credit anyways (awkward finger bite).

See this photo? This is the reason I came here, haha!

Easter Time-Senegalese Style

Happy Paques ! Spending Easter in Senegal without my family was much, much more difficult than I thought it would be. I think what made it so hard was that I knew exactly what my family was doing and that they were all together while I was chilling in Senegal. However, this Easter was so COMPLETELY unlike every other Easter I’ve had before and (at the risk of sounding too cliché) it gave me a new perspective on traditions that I have always taken for granted.

Thursday Night-
Lindsay and I came home from WARC and discovered our kitchen in shambles. The eating table was missing (we later found out that Ben moved it upstairs by himself) and was replaced by our maman, our two sisters and about fifty tons of peanut-paste --which should not be confused with peanut butter. You would be in for some jafé jafés (ie: problems) if you do that. They were making Ngalax, which is a peanut stew that all of the Catholic families make and give out to their Muslim friends for Easter. To return the favor-for payback, if you will- the Muslim families make couscous for their Catholic friends for the Muslim New Year. I would argue, however, that the Catholics get the short end of this deal since 90 percent of the country is Muslim. Not only do we end up eating couscous for days and days, the Catholics also must make SOOOOO much Ngalax. According to maman, our family made enough to feed over two hundred people.
Anyway. Thursday night. Lindsay and I were invited to stay while we took pictures. Ngalax starts with HUGE bowls of Baobab fruit (the white stuff) and then a generous glob of peanut sauce is added. They then drown the stuff in water, cover it and then leave it for about 6 hours. They were finished with the drowning at about 11 pm, so they then woke up at 5 am (five freaking AM) to finish it. Lindsay and I were the designated photographers, so we got up too.

Friday Morning
We all got up at five in the morning (although Lindsay and I MIGHT, or might not have, stole an extra few minutes of sleep) and discovered that the baobab-fruit-peanut-paste mix turned into this sludgy mud looking goop. Sounds delicious, n’est-ce pas? Our maman and sisters then stir it up with their hands while our maid makes some millet in this GIANT pot. After the peanut stuff gets stirred up, they women then go through and sift it about four times (I’m guessing we had about twenty gallons of this stuff...it took HOURS to shift). It’s a bit hard to explain, especially since I was only half conscious. Lindsay and I took photos, although our mother did let us help pour some water from one pot to another while telling the other to take a photo. haha. I think she wanted to make sure we each had a photo of us helping, which was cute of her! Lindsay and I also helped open sugar packets, so we made QUITE a contribution to the Paques festivities. Then, at about seven thirty-ish, we passed out in our beds while the others continue to prepare the ngalax.
At about nine/ten-ish, I finally dragged my lazy butt out of bed and took a shower. In the kitchen, the women were done making the ngalax and they were bottling it up in the water bottles (the mystery of why they were collecting them was finally solved-yay!) while the boys and Astou were delivering them to the families. While I was taking my shower, maman gave Lindsay a nice large cup of ngalax which Lindsay GRACIOUSLY left for me to drink when I got out of the shower. The best way to describe ngalax is a very, VERY rich peanut butter that is a but more liquidy and mixed with millet. It tastes pretty good, but it’s so rich that I cannot drink much of it, so after the first sip or two I have to choke it down. But the taste is good =)
That night, Lindsay and I wanted to go out with our friends, although we were hesitant to leave because for the last few times, we’ve been getting locked out of our house for about a half our before we can get a hold of someone. Baxul. Well, we decided to take our chances and go out anyway. When we told Margot (our sister) she gave us a weird look and said no. We were like, ‘uh, no. We are going out, we’re just telling you’. The sisters were pretty adamant that we couldn’t got out because it was Friday night, which meant it was still Lent. Even our maid Astou whose Muslim was like ‘no, you can’t go out tonight. You have to wait until Saturday night after midnight’. Nobody is supposed to go out or drink during all of Lentt I guess since Lent is technically over on Sunday at midnight (Saturday night), EVERYONE goes out then. FYI, Muslims are technically never supposed to drink and Catholics aren’t supposed to drink during Lent, but there’s still a TON of alcohol being sold during Lent, so NOBODY pays attention to this rule. We thought it would make sense to explain that we were going to a Easter party. False. That caused more problems. I was trying to explain an Easter basket with candy and Marie-Thérèse was like “no, that’s Halloween. That’s October 31st.” and looked at me like I was stupid. In the end, we just left anyway.

Sunday!!
Remember how I said that the traditions were completely different here? Well, the only thing that remained the same is that we went to church. Well, Lindsay and I went. The sisters went. I’m not sure about the others (I was a bit shocked that it wasn’t a large family event. Our house is like Jesusland.) After church, we kept our sisters and maman company while they made the meal. We had four types of meat-chicken, pork, beef and lamb-that was made on this little gas stove. Our mother told us that we could invite three of our friends who lived with Muslims over (and that number turned into five once our maman and Alice’s maman got involved...long story), so a little after noon, Lindsay collected our fellow toubabs-Baird, Sara, Ginger, Alex and Alice-from myshop while my family quizzed me on what type of alcohol everyone would want. When the Americans got here, we were ushered onto the balcony which was set up for us (yes, we were contained from the rest of the family). Margot then gave us beer, whisky and Pastis, or something spelled like that (an AMAZING alcohol from Marseilles that tastes like a black jelly bean...yum). I’ll just post photos of the food we ate because words can’t really describe how happy we were....except we were all very, VERY happy =) Then we were invited up to drink with our brothers. We went and had a really fun time and got some GREAT photos =)
When it was time for our toubabs to leave, I called my family at home to see what they were up to. Like usual, they had an Easter egg hunt with my youngest cousins and the neighbor kids (my mom had to take over my job of stuffing/hiding the eggs) and ate a ton of good food. I was SO happy to talk to them too (especially since my maman spent a good chunk of time telling me that I don’t understand Wolof). Later that night, our brother Edouard made Lindsay and I go upstairs with our brothers to take photos. We ended up dancing with our brothers and getting some SWEET photos of them. Then our sister Marie-Thérèse rescued us =)

Casamance me manque

I absolutely do not want to be back in Dakar. I went on Spring Break last week-Friday through Thursday- to the south of Senegal called Casamence with Leah, Ginger, Sara and Alice. Going on this trip made me 1) appreciate Senegal much more because I met so many genuinely nice people 2) realize how much I dislike living in the city because I miss the color green and 3) made me really, REALLY want to go back to the States.

We took a large boat from Dakar to Ziguinchor which took us about 14 hours in all. It was nice though because we shared an 8 person cabin, so we had plenty of room to lay down and spread out. We shared the cabin with three other Senegalese (I think) men and they were all pretty chill.

Okay, so here are a few stories from Spring Break:

Day two on the boat: It's Complete
The day before, we saw that the boat was serving breakfast from 6 to 7 AM, and being American, we decided that we absolutely MUST eat the breakfast. The four of us-Ginger, Leah, Sara and I- woke up at 6:12 and made our way to the restaurant (Alice opted to sleep instead...good choice). It turned out that the breakfast was offered from 6:30 until 9, but we couldn’t turn down the breakfast so we waited outside the door. While we were waiting, we were thinking about everything this breakfast could be: pancakes, waffles, maybe some eggs, really coffee perhaps? When the door opened, we joked that maybe it would be bread with chocopain and nescafé: our standard breakfast at home...but we were paying for this meal so it COULDN’T be that.
We sat down at a table with a basket of bread, Nutella and a nice assortment of fruit spread. We were then given orange juice, which later turned out to be tang. We were given café au lait, which then turned out to be nescafé (nescafé is a powdered coffee that you stir into the hot water, but you don’t filter it). We were pretty sad because we thought that MAYBE this was the entire breakfast. As we were eating, our waiter asked us if we would like the ‘complete breakfast’. This was the conversation (in French).
Waiter: Would you like to have the complete breakfast?
Ginger: What is it?
Waiter: It’s complete.
Ginger: Yes, but what is it.
Waiter (not understanding that breakfast could be ANYTHING but bread and nescafé):

It's complete?
Sara (jumping in to help Ginger): But it’s what.
Waiter (thinking he finally understood): It’s two thousand cfa.
Sara: But what IS it.
Waiter: Two thousand cfa.
Sara (breakthrough!): what does it include?
Waiter (pointing at the table): bread, Nutella, fruitspread, ‘coffee’ and orange juice.
Ginger: That’s all?
Waiter (confused); Yes. It’s complete.

So it was basically everything we were already eating. We paid 4 dollars for stuff that we get free every single day. It was a sad morning. FYI: Alice was satisfied that she stayed sleeping.

Clothing Optional?

We were all a bit disappointed that we couldn't go skinning dipping in Cap Skirring, so we decided to go in the hotel's pool. I'm not sure if you can tell from the photograph, but all of the rooms in the hotel faced the pool, so it was a bit risky. At midnight, the five of us crept out of our rooms-in towels- and went to the pool. The front desk was open all night long which added to the risk, but we figured the worst they could do is throw us out. And besides, French women go topless in the pool, so there wasn't THAT big of a difference. Alice and Sara were the first to jump in (Sara already went early that night) while the rest of us stayed hidden behind the palm tree to see what would happen. Sure enough, the front desk worker (who happened to be male) came over to the pool and hushed us. He didn't make us get out though. Once he went back inside, Leah, Ginger and I got in the pool. We swam around the pool for about 10 minutes, jumped back out, then hurried into our hotel room.

My new 'about me' for ice breakers will be that I went skinny dipping in Africa.

Last night in Ziguinchor: Is this...porn?

Let me just start by saying the French are crazy. Around one in the morning, after our skinny dipping adventure, Alice , Sara and I laid in bed watching the satellite TV. They showed eleven ads in a row for sex hotlines. Ridiculous. Then, a show came on. It started out with the camera panning a library and the director talking about the books while the credits said the show was inspired by some play wright. Alice assumed that it going to be like 'Storytime with Pierre' and he was going to read a play. Wrong. Oh so wrong. It started out pretty normal medieval program, and then the main char actor (he liked like a frog IMHO) winked at some girl and it was all downhill from there. It turned out to be medieval French porn-don't worry, they didn't show much. The three of us were dying of laughter because It's ON TV. Who the heck would make this? It was so ridiculous. The only word I could use to describe it is QUOI-which means 'what' in French, but it just fits this situation perfectly. Leah ran over from her room next door-she must have heard us laughing-and was like 'are you guys watching this too!?!'. Ginger and Leah joined us watching this TERRIBLE excuse for a show.

In case any of you are concerned, they didn't show much of anything, so don't worry!!

Never trust a German to give you directions to an American Diner...jafé jafé

While we were on the boat, we were complaining to our friend, who happened to be German, about our breakfasts that we have been eating, which all consisted of bread and some form of spread. She had been living in Dakar for quite a while and she told us about this 'real' American diner. She has been to America before, so we believed her and got our hopes up about this place. She told us that they actually had REAL coffee and everything an American diner should have. So Leah, Ginger, Sara and I went- Alice opted out again (she knew better). As you can see from the photo, this place looked very much like an American diner, but looks are deceiving. The first thing we saw was a chalkboard that said "Cookie Crepe", which we immediatly knew we had to have, even though it was seven dollars. We got the menu and we were quite disappointed. There WAS real coffee-three dollars, but the only real food was omelet. In Dakar, Omletes are EVERYWHERE, so those weren't that exciting. Story made quick, we spend fifty USD on a breakfast consisting of omelets, coffee and frapachinos (which were great) and a cookie crepe-which was literally a crepe with a single little cookie on top.

All in all, I LOVED Casamance so much and am a bit disapointed that we had to come back to Dakar. Oh well.

XOXO

Tif

Begguma...

To top off my week of awkardness, Lindsay and I came home last night from the cyber café at around eight o’clock and did the routine speech of ‘saalam malakum’ ‘malakum saalam. naga def?’ ‘maangi fi. cava?’ ‘cava?’ to our host mother and her guest. Normally, my host family and their visitors LOVE me because I’m Catholic (my host family is very Catholic). Not today. Maman’s friend asked Maman something in Wolof, and then Maman asked me if I was fasting and I was like ‘No! Why on earth would I do that?’ Apparently, Catholics here fast during Lent (minus ten points for Tiffany). After a quick exchange between the two in Wolof (meaning I was helpless to defend myself), the visitor kept staring at my skirt and saying ‘don’t want’ in Wolof and ‘Catholic’ a few times...minus another ten points for me. The two keep exchanging Wolof words and then the visitor looks away from me in COMPLETE disgust. QUOI?!? I asked my Maman what was wrong and she quickly said “It’s not important...how was your day”, and then changed the subject. Her and Lindsay chatted for a few minutes while I salked in self-pity for a few minutes before we escaped the salon and hurried ourselves to our room. All in all, that was an epic fail.





On sadder subject, my puppy died...that is, my nine year old puppy Wagner)= I just wanted to thank my papa semi-publically for taking such good care of him for the last few years. Thank you so, so much =)

I love you and miss you all


Tiffany

I'm no longer a Dakar-Virgin

Last weekend, I went to St. Louis...no, not St. Louis in the States (as my mom thought), but St. Louis Senegal. St. Louis is about a 5-6 hour bus trip from Dakar, but the ride to get there is SO beautiful. Since I’ve been here, I have been living in Dakar and only in Dakar, so I have not experienced the scenery of Senegal that many people think of as ‘traditional Africa’. I have been living in Dakar where the most interesting thing that I see on a day to day basis are the peanut sellers on the side of the street. But on the way photo of spooky chips with prof. Sene to St. Louis, ALL you could see was desert dotted by tiny shrubs and baobab trees. Along the way, we saw ‘real’ villages consisting of actual huts (sorry to disappoint you all, but I’m living in a house, not a hut). The entire scenery was GORGEOUS.

Anyway, about half way to St. Louis, we realized that we HAD to pee. In Senegal, there are no continently placed rest stations on our one highway...however, there are plenty of bushes =) Picture this: a large tour bus is pulled over on a dirt road that is surrounded by desert as far as the eye can see. There are maybe a few Senegalese wondering about in said desert. Outside the bus, there’s a handful of people smoking. In the bus, a handful of Americans singing 90s pop songs. From the bus, out comes about seven or eight femme-bobs (white women), armed with a roll or two of pink toilet paper marching toward the nearest row of shrubs. Fortunately, most of us have had plenty of preparation for peeing in this kind of situation thanks to our squat toilets at home (although I still managed to pee on my foot...comme d’hab).

Back on the bus. For the rest of the trip, the MSU group sang 90s pop songs: NSYNC, Backstreet, Spice Girls, Britney, a bit of Aaron Carter...then switched to some 60s as we pulled into our ‘hotels’. We stayed at the residences of the University of St. Louis. They were quite deceiving. They look very nice on the outside and everyone’s first thought was “OH MY GOD, I’M GETTING A HOT SHOWER”. Wrong. Oh so wrong. There’s no water in either house except for the spigot on the outside....but more about that adventure later.

After lunch of Cheb-o-jen (I totally slaughtered that name, FYI), which is white rice and fish, our directors took us on THE most awkward tour that I have ever been on. Honestly, this tour was on a level of awkwardness all by itself. We went into the city of St. Louis and went directly from our large tour bus to horse carriages (picture the ones in Fmuth) to begin our tour. Yes. All thirty of us. It truly was a Toubob-parade.

Photo of the Toubob parade

The beginning of the tour wasn’t too awkward (borderline semi-comfortable even). We toured the downtown area of St. Louis. The architecture was colonial French. It was SO beautiful (I will eventually learn a new adjective to use and I’ll stop repeating the same one...eventually, but not now). THEN someone thought it would be a good idea to take us to the poorest part of the town. Okay, it’s NOT that I’m against going into this part of the city by any means-I did not feel in danger and I think it is important to see that the majority people in Senegal do NOT live the way our host-families live here. HOWEVER, imagine a parade of 4 horses all loaded with 6 Americans, all of whom have a purse and a camera, with nothing to do but LOOK at people. It just felt so wrong. It felt like someone took us there to “look at the poor Senegalese people”. A new level of awkwardness that I never experienced.

We also stopped in the local fish market. It was interesting and as much as it smelled of rotting fish, I tried to enjoy it because I figured that it was the last time in my entire life that I would be in that particular fish market, so I might as well enjoy it.

By the way, that’s the new attitude I’m trying to adopt here: I’ll never do this again in my life, so even if I don’t like it, I’m going to be positive about it.

On our get-away horses away from the fish market, some kids were attacking Katie and Alice with fish (they were on the edges while I was snuggly between them, so I was not attacked by fish).

After our tour, we were transported directly to our tour bus and were taken back to our houses. We were allowed to repose for about an hour. Then we were fed a nice big plate of LAMB and yaasa. I hate eating lamb because it’s A BABY SHEEP, but it’s SO good )= Yaasa, however, is another story. I absolutely LOVE yaasa. Yaasa is an onion sauce that the Senegalese put over rice and some kind of meat (chicken, fish or beef). After that, we were taken to a ‘cultural evening.’

This ‘cultural evening’ was actually really fun (I had my doubts, but I came to like it). Our group sat in a courtyard with about twenty other Senegalese while having others entertain us. They had dancers, singers, actors and a FIRE EATER. The actors were from a theater group and they preformed a comedy skit that was HEAVILY dependent on the audience knowing Senegalese culture, of which nobody in our group knows. The skit was about some guy stealing another guys song, and then they sang their songs-which were in Wolof- to the audience. The Senegalese crowed LOVED it, but we weren’t that impressed, probably because we had to listen to Awa and Josephine quickly translate from Wolof to French for us, and the joke MUST have gotten lost in translation.

The coolest part was the fire eater though! He had two batons that were lit and he rubbed them on his skin and you could actually see is skin melting away from the fire. He rubbed it on his legs, his arms, his chest, ect. Then he ate the fire. It was pretty cool.

To be continued when I have proper internet...

Between some rocks and...the Senegalese Military??

I finally decided that I should start a blog (mainly because I got jealous of everyone here with their cute little blogs and such). I was going to give some nice descriptions of where I live, where I study, where I volunteer, ect., but then I had a semi-exciting day, so I'll write about that instead-sorry madre, you're not going to be too pleased with this blog =/

SOOOOO... after I was done teaching, I tried to take a car rapide back to WARC (West African Research Centre, where I study). I rode along the main road until we got to 'Shit Canal', and then the car rapide turned, which it isn't supposed to do. The man that hangs off the back of the bus kept shouting "Post Fann Leggi"--which I thought meant either 'Post Fann works', or 'Post Fann now' (Nope, I don't speak Wolof, and when I asked someone what I said, she repeated it to me in Wolof) Either way, I got off of the car rapide and decided to walk the darn half mile to the Post (no, I didn't realize that ALL the traffic was being diverted AWAY from the road that I was walking on...). Instead, I thought 'oh, great, there's NO traffic here what-so-ever! This would be the PERFECT time to cross the road. So I did. On the side of the road, there are stands that sell fruit, electronics, shoes. As I was walking I kept thinking 'WOW, I could totes steal this stuff because nobody is watching it...why the heck would you leave all this stuff on the side of the road. I kept walking (still no traffic). Then, I hear the cursed HISSING from across the street (it's the way to get someone's attention). I look and there were two women hissing at me and waving their arms to get me to cross the street...I thought 'why would I want to cross the street? There's SO many people on that side of the road and I have this entire side of the sidewalk all to myself.' And then I looked up and saw that rocks being pelted at me. THEN, I realized WHY my car rapide turned early, why the traffic was being diverted and why nobody was on my side of the sidewalk. To say the least, I darted on the other side of the road, then watched. There were about 10-15 people hurling softball-sized ROCKS at a Senegalese soldier (and at me, before I stopped being a dumb ass and realized I should cross the street) who had a HUGE gun. A crowed of about 50 or so people (mainly men, and me) watching the pelting-of-rocks. The soldier kept threatening to shoot, but didn't for a while. Then, the rock-pelters must have found some stronger guys to do their pelting, because the rocks started to go across the road and REALLY close to the crowed. The solder pretended to walk away, then he turned around, ran at the fence (the fence was between the soldier and the rock-pelters) and started shooting at them. The crowed and the pelters laughed because it was apparently very evident that he was shooting blanks. It was actually kind of embarrassing for the soldier; he was being laughed AND had rocks being thrown at him =/ I felt bad for him. I watched for a good ten minutes, but then the soldier got sick of people laughing at him, and started to go after the crowed with his 'gun', so I left-which I thought was a good call on my part. I never did find out why that happened, though.

Hmmmm...I think I tell that story a lot better than I can write it. Sorry!


However, I seemed to attract trouble yesterday. After lunch (yassa!!), Alex, Leah, Allie and I went to N'Gor Island to hang out on the beach. We took a taxi there but on our way there was a fight on the side of the road between another taxi driver and our taxi driver's client (at least that's what I gathered from the situation). Our driver mumbled something, pulled our taxi over, left the four female toubab's (toubab=foreigner) chilling in his car while he broke up the fight. He did come back for us though =) Our conclusion was that the two men were fighting over ice cream =/

I heart you all and miss you!!
Tiffany