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