Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (of last week!)

Alright, here's to catching up on my blog posts! First I'd like to apologize for my excessive use of bad language in my previous blog. When I write I let things flow out naturally and on that specific blog post there were several situations that called for harsh language, nevertheless, I promise to be more considerate to my reader base in future blogs.

Friday:

Friday was an interesting day that was spent wisely. The beginning of my day started off well as I had a 30min skype conversation with Waseem and afterwards went to my internship. The guys at my internship were very friendly and humorous and one of them even kindly made some tea for me. We ended up getting in a playful debate on whether or not women need men and whether or not women work harder than men, and I played the feminist card quite a good deal. Still, it was interesting to see my fellow co-worker's perspective since I work under male supervisors. Even though there was plenty of work to be done and I was planning on staying late, I had to retire early because my charger stopped charging. I was annoyed because I was enjoying my work but after my computer died I packed up shop and told the guys I would be in search of a charger so I could return back to work soon. After that I was walking home when I ran into Tasha. She asked if she could come over to my house for lunch and I agreed so we both walked over to my house. Unfortunately, I haven't mentioned that my family and I have been having interesting relations to say the least as of late. For the past week, my house mom has gotten colder and colder towards me and at this point she barely has the energy to say good morning. I've been stressing about this situation for awhile, but since I don't know what I did wrong I'm at a loss for words. I tried to talk to my mom about it today (Tuesday) but a bunch of relatives came over so I didn't have a chance to talk to her one on one. Either way, I'm going to really try to make a relationship between us happen because I'd really hate for her to feel distant from me and vice versa for the remaining three months I have here. As an added thought....it's been a month! I've been gone for a whole month!!! Wow, time surely does pass by so fast...

Continuing on with Friday's story, my family wasn't too warm with Tasha and I ended up apologizing to her because after a wait of an hour she ended up having to leave with nothing in her belly since lunch wasn't ready. She reassured me that it was no big deal but I still felt bad. We didn't end up eating lunch until 4:10pm and it was quite a challenge for me to subdue my hunger pains in an attempt to be polite. After lunch, which was a yummy mixture of sauce, vegetables, and rice, I decided I'd head over to the school to use the internet so that I could see whether or not I'd received word back from the Cary M Maguire public internship I'd applied to. While on my way to school I ran in to Jos, (a student that attends the university of law that shares the building with CIEE, and is from chad) and we exchanged a few words about life and about love. He had recently broken up with his girlfriend on account of her jealous behavior and I tried my best to comfort him. In all honesty, Jos has been the best thing to happen to my french here in Senegal. Talking with him has improved my French more than anything else because he is so persistent that I speak in french around him even when my American friends are around. Smart guy Jos is, smart guy. So we ended up standing on the sidewalk talking for about an hour. When we finally finished the conversation I told him I was on the way to school to use the internet and he told me that the reason he had stopped me in the first place was to tell me that the school was closed. We laughed at this and he asked me if I had any plans or if my schedule had freed up. Of course it had so he offered to walk me back to Sacre Coeur. During our conversation I mentioned how I wanted to eat some sweet bread and use an internet cafe and he said there was a bakery with some delicious pastries and a cyber café in his neighborhood. Unknowingly, I excitingly agreed to go on a 4 mile hike in the direction of liberté 6, Jos's neighborhood lol. We walked alongside the VDN (the major highway) for quite some time just chatting in French about how Jos is a don juan and a womanizer. The conversation did have some significant meaning though as I found out that for Jos' culture, a relationship is solid when there is lots of physical contact, when there is no physical contact it signifies that the relationship is in trouble, this goes for both guys and girls. I told Jos that generally in the US people have a complex with personal space. That if one is too touchy, Americans are weirded out and may even possibly be offended. Another side effect of physically touching an American, especially if they are a girl and you are a guy, is that they may think you like them—this could mean they may develop feelings for you or try to avoid you. The conversation was a good conversation for our friendship because he understood exactly where I stood with physical contact, and where some of my friends stand as well, and I understood his womanizing behavior which really just ended up being Jos's personal exaggeration of Chadian culture. When we finally reached the bakery he bought me a bunch of bread to take home to Tasha and Rosie and we shared a couple of pieces there. We never made it to the cyber cafe because we got distracted and walked to Rosie's house where I offered all my bread to her family. Rosie's mama invited Jos and I to eat around the bowl with them and we had a yummy concoction of eggs and spaghetti. It was a really fun night, as I always have fun with Rosie's family. I've actually grown a lot closer to Rosie's family than with my own since Rosie's family is a lot more friendly and warm—that is partially due to the fact there are younger children in the house and in my house everyone is already grown and serious haha. Essentially Rosie's family catches my humor while my family does not. It's a working process, I really do want to have a good relationship with my family and I'm hoping that things get better between us in the future.

Saturday was a lot of fun too and consisted of a bunch of random events. It also was Jos's last day of vacation, as he is a very serious student and will be studying non-stop for the next month, so on his request no one can hang out with him until the end of April :(! Still, he met me at the hotel mariama at 10am and him and I took a car rapide to centre ville in search of a mac charger. We also arranged to meet Tasha downtown too. Halfway downtown we stopped at this random boutique and inquired about a charger. The price tag was a misconception since it had 10,000 written over 80,000. We thought it was 10,000 and Jos begin trying to bargain down to 5,000 but the lady just laughed at him and told him that 10,000 was actually a 100,000 that they marked down to 80,000. Both of us just stepped back from the counter and walked out. Just for you Americans reading this post...80,000 cfa is 160 dollars for a mac charger. So of course I declined. After that Jos and I jumped on a bus towards downtown and we met some of his cousins on the bus. Jos has a lot of cousins, since we ran into one at the bakery the day before as well, I inquired whether or not they were actually his cousins or if he was just using that as a fond title. Nope, they're all actually his cousins. That's the thing about polygamy, families are extensive and connections are literally endless—with so much family, in Jos's case around 300 cousins, you're bound to know someone somewhere. He tried to convince me to marry one of his cousins so we could be family and so that I could have a huge family too but I politely declined and reminded him that I am in love with a wonderful man named Waseem lol. After wandering around looking for chargers we ended up meeting up with Tasha at the French institute. Tasha met us downtown so that she could buy a towel cheaply, but thanks to my terrible bargaining skills and tendency to throw out random numbers without thinking, she had to pay 4.00 for a towel...woops lol. I helped her out with the cost to ease my guilt so it all worked out. After that she invited us to a lunch date she was invited to and Jos and I heartedly agreed although we were already an hour late. We hopped on the Car Rapide in the direction of Oakam and exchanged stories about spanish, french, love, and farts. When we finally got to Oakam we walked in the direction of the statue hoping that the guy wouldn't be too upset about our tardiness (which was technically my fault). Tasha and I ended up scaling a wall and running across the highway as an attempted short cut to the statue, but Jos who took the regular walkway still got their faster than both of us which was pretty embarrassing seeing that I was plain out of breath by the time I reached where Jos had been waiting for 5 min. Tasha's lunch date Senegalese man arrived to meet us wearing a british t-shirt and torn fitted jeans, quite the personality that one. His name was Ibrahim and we followed him to his house where he introduced us to his family and later ate Ceebu Jen blanche around the bowl and drank tea in his room. We also had a political argument about Wade and Jos pretended to like dictators. At one point I thought he was being serious and I started getting really worked up at his comments, but after awhile I reminded myself it was jus t Jos and rolled my eyes at his incitement of conflict lol. After lunch Jos bought Tasha and I some bananas and we all shared them. The idea was for Tasha to take some bananas home to her family but some Talibé boys came up and so Tasha gave them the majority of the bananas, keeping two. When we returned to the house Tasha gave a banana to her brother and offered the other banana to her mom but her mom didn't want it because it was only one banana. Tasha's mom is kind of a grump. I think I prefer my mama to Tasha's mama, even though it's been rough around here the past couple of days. Tasha's mama honestly just has a grumpy personality—grumpier than I've ever encountered. She literally gets mad at everything. Tasha and I discussed the possibility of her moving out of her house, but she really likes her brother Mikael (who I think is cool too) and so I think she's deciding to bite the bullet. I told her if she's going to have to deal with a grumpy mama the best way to do so is with humor and patience.

Anyways, I chilled at Tasha's for awhile and won her brother over with my laughter and cheesy jokes. We ended up watching an Eddie Murphey classic together and it was a lot of fun. It only was a bit awkward when the sexual parts came up during the movie...since her brother and her friend were watching with us. My recation was to just giggle and look away and her brother got embarrassed and changed the channel. Pretty hilarious. Eventually Jos came by the house and him and I took the bus back to Sacre Coeur 3. We had a long conversation about debating and taking the opposite side of a situation to incite discussion—since he wants to be a lawyer he has learned the importance of this in his law classes. I am in agreement, solely because taking the opposite side always provides everyone with a better understanding of the topic. In my opinion the point of conversational debating would not be to change the other person's mind, but to simply provide them with both perspectives and to learn. Then again I'm no debater.

Later on that night Jos and I met some of the SC3 people at the SC3 bar and we went out to “Le Patio”--otherwise known as my first Senegalese club experience. It was definitely an unforgettable experience as the dance clubs in Senegal are much different than those in the states, or at least those that I have frequented. The price to get in to “The Patio” was $6 but I and a couple of friends managed to sneak in for free since we went in through the back door. There was a typical bouncer standing at the door but I think he let us slide since it was our first time at the club. Some of the other CIEE students were already at the club and so when we went in we jumped into a dancing crowd and it was a lot of fun. Half way through the night I decided I wanted to dance alone (that is my favorite way to dance if I'm not accompanied by Waseem) but I found that to be practically impossible since the minute I went off on my own I was surrounded by 4 or 5 guys. I just thought it to be humorous since I didn't want to dance with any of them. At one point, two guys decided they would go for me at the same time. One reached for my right hand and the other reached for my left hand, one of the guys was definitely a foreigner (from France or Arab country perhaps?) and the other guy appeared to be Senegalese. I laughed at their attempt because it ended up turning into a dancing triangle—that's right the guys held hands too lol. This whole time I was just cracking up and was relieved because in their attempts to fight over me they actually made it easier for me to reject them both. Eventually my friend Jos walked by and I grabbed on to his arm, leading myself out of the awkward triangle. Later on that night I ran into the Senegalese looking dude again and we danced to some American songs. In the midst of breaking it down (we were coordinating dance moves, he leaned left while I leaned right kind of thing lol) the french dude came back and grabbed our hands. Once again I was dancing in this awkward triangle haha. I rolled my eyes and danced for a bit but then I got pretty thirsty and motioned that I was going to go get a drink. The Senegalese lookin' dude grabbed my hand and led me towards the bar and the French dude grabbed my other hand and tried to pull me back to the dance floor. Needless to say this all looked rather silly. Eventually I tugged myself away from the French dude (who by this time was seriously creeping me out) and the Senegalese guy and I went to the bar. When we got to the bar I made it clear to him that I wasn't looking for anything except friendship. He tried to buy me a drink but I told him that he should save his money for another girl. We ended up getting some free water and had a conversation about politics and his mother country, which ended up being the Maurtinique. Afterwards we went back in the club and I saw Jos and we danced together a bit. After that a bunch of us jumped in a cab and went home. All in all it was a very interesting night.

Since I'm once again behind on my blog...this is becoming a habitual thing...I hardly have time to write! The elections were this weekend and so it's been very difficult to get access to the internet. Nevertheless, I will have an update on the past week tomorrow. Thanks for your patience everybody!

2 1/2 weeks of blog posts compiled into one, What a crazy time.

Alright, so I've gotten a bit behind on my blog since I haven't had internet for the past couple of days/randomly fell asleep on the couch for a little bit too long...(product of overeating I assure you).

I'll give you a re-cap of each day and touch upon the most important parts.

I last left off writing on Thursday, which happened to be my least favorite day since my time here. I have a particularly annoying class on Tue/Thu taught by a Senegalese professor that speaks terribly fast french and has no structure. Perhaps there is nothing more frightening for one's educational entegrity than taking an anth class in French when the prof lacks structure entirely. His teaching mostly constituted scribbling incessantly on the white board while mumbling to himself. After awhile, his scribbles began to overlap and everything was unintelligible—a mix of french accents, circles, and a makeshift map of West Africa. Needless to say I learned close to nothing in that class and am hoping my next class with him will be better (I have him tomorrow). Thus, with this being the best part of my day I assume you can understand why I might consider the rest of my day to be quite annoying. After French we were paired up with our language partners and met them for the first time. My Language partner's name is Viviane and her bright red rain coat stood out to me more than anything—since it's like 70 out. She was very well put together and cutsie and we chatted a bit about the clubs here in Senegal and what the dance scene was like. I of course had no choice but to break a move and she laughed at my american moves (which for the record are really just Marissa moves). We exchanged numbers and later on she sent me a txt wishing me a good night, today (monday) she said hi again so I'm glad she's trying to put in a little effort. I'll try to meet up with her this week sometime but we've yet to hang out. In all honesty, the fact that Viviane turned out to be a girl was quite a fortunate circumstance. Apparently the language partner concept is a bit confusing for some senegalese men as they had previously perceived it to be an American dating service. Apparently they're some rather persistent ones—one girl told me her language partner had called her 9 time this morning (monday)--and other have told me their language partners have already confessed profound feelings of love. Oh Senegalese men, they lack sport entirely. Which is a whole 'nother subject worth mentioning...

Later on that day I had a really shitty panini at this 'american-style' restaurant named Ceaser's here and decided I would avoid eating there at all costs. I also had to walk home alone which took me about 45min. Unpleasant to say the least. When I actually arrived home my family didn't really chat with me and I was worried they were mad at me for being out so much and relatively late. Partly it's school's fault—I go in at 9 and get out at 4:30pm LONG DAYS—and partly my exploration tendencies. Still, dinner was a bit cold in that every time I left the table my family started talking and when I returned they would slip back into complete silence.

Friday was much better and consisted of several new experiences. Oy I'm running out of time to write this! Ok well, it was the first day of my internship at RADDHO and I worked for about 9-12:30pm. We were given our first assignments, which will apparently consist of two research papers evaluating the cause and trend of violence throughout the elections/before and after and the current violence occurring in the Cassamance. The Cassamance will prove to be harder to investigate as news that comes from there has the tendency to be skewed, painting the rebels negatively without a two-sided perspective of the story, and so we are in charge of obtaining valid sources—interesting to say the least! I want to get my hands a bit dirty so I'm hoping they give us work beyond the theoretical exercises, although I'm terribly appreciative of the chance to write over these subjects. They also offered to possibly publish the work so I'll be working towards that objective. Wifi wasn't working throughout the time so the work effort was relatively stunted, going in tomorrow and hopefully it'll be better.

I'm going to stop writing here for now, as it's getting a bit late. I'm going to go ahead and post this bit because I've been keeping you guys waiting for so long, but hopefully I'll have the chance to finish the rest of the blog post later. So expect the full post as an edited version with all 5 days should appear later on today.

Continuing where friday left off, after the internship Miriam and I (another student who interns with me at RADDHO) met some of the students up in front of our old hotel “the continental” so that we could go to the beach in Ouakam. I hadn't been yet so I was terribly excited even though I forgot my bathing suit and didn't have the opportunity to actually get in the water, if you check out my facebook there is actually a picture of a bunch of us at the beach from this day. I'll try to find a way to post it on here. Getting there was a bit of a challenge, as all of the car rapides were filled with people. When we finally managed to get on one, (I and about 4 others) the trip to Ouakam was long, bumpy, and dusty—adventurous to say the least lol. Since the car rapide was packed I managed to squeeze in by loosely hanging my arm over a mother and her child's shoulders. The mom was holding a baby and was accompanied by a girl around the age of 4 or 5. Suddenly, as we reached our stop, the little girl threw up all over the floor of the car rapide. All the students in front of me leaped up on to the bench-seats but oddly enough I didn't budge even though I was the closest to her. Her mother immediately began screaming in Wolof but the situation didn't really play out as we had already reached our stop. I couldn't help but wonder if the little girl was going to be ok but instead of buying her and her mom water I joined the other students up the road. I regret that now, promise if you ever find yourself in this situation you'll do whatever nice gesture pops into your head—it's worth your time and money.

Money is an interesting thing here in Senegal, even though I'm sure I spend much less here than I do in Dallas, I still can't help being a little stingy with my money. For example, wifi sticks over here go for 30 bucks, or 15,000 CFA, and I can't bring myself to make the purchase. An hour equates to 1.00 U.S Dollar and even though it would be convenient to have wifi at home, I want to try to haggle down the price. I realized being here, that wireless internet is such a luxury.

The beach was of course, a delight, it happened to be situated right next to a light house and a UN building. The water was freezing but after letting my feet crystallize and sink in to the sand, it felt so refreshing. There was a bunch of us CIEE students there and so we made it a day—frisbee, waves, sand turtle building, and hacky-sacking. After the beach Pop, Cameron's host brother, asked us if we wanted to see the “infamous” statue. I of course was done so Cameron, Cameron's brother, Pop, Nicole, and Pop's friend Moussa visited the piece of shit. Sorry for my vulgarity, but I happen to not like anything about this statue.

Here's a bit about its history:

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/senegal/100113/renaissance-monument-wade

Yes, you've guessed it, Wade is definitely behind its creation and to be quite frank, I felt an uneasy feeling of disgust as I walked up to the towering hunk of metal. Other than the obvious hypocrisy and corruption behind its existence another interesting fact is that it has its own personal power supply. You can imagine how inappropriate this is when Dakar is a city that suffers from frequent power outages. That's right--whenever the entire city is in darkness the statue shines on. Oh Wade what a winner. The only nice thing about the statue was that I could see all of Dakar and it was quite the view. Still, I can smell scandal all over that place.

Saturday took a different pace as CIEE took a group trip to Gorée Island, infamous for its dark role in the slave trade. I was expecting it to be a somber trip filled with museum wandering, but the day actually turned out quite differently. Even though Gorée Island has such a dark history, the actual island is very quaint. The buildings are reminiscent of old Portuguese architecture and there were flowers and green in almost every direction. This was quite a pick me up compared to the scene here in Dakar which is dominated by rows of unfinished buildings, heaps of rubble, trash, and the occasional horse cart (not to be to morose here, there are beautiful parts too like the beach!) We only ended up visiting two museums since the others were closed for the weekend (due to a Muslim holiday) and we had the rest of the time to wander around the island and preoccupy ourselves. Since the island was inhabited by vendors and artists, the majority of the group, including myself, were eaten alive by vendors. They pretty much came from all directions and in all honesty, they were clever, sneaky, and scary all at the same time.They'd lure you to their stands by saying things like “Hey I saw you on the boat earlier, do you remember me?” and if you had the bad luck of having seen her, you'd have to either lie or reply yes, which would lead her to pestering you to visit her stand. This wouldn't be such a bad thing, but once you were at their stand they would pressure you to buy something that was terribly overpriced and say things like “come on sister, by this as a present, or how can you come to my stand and look but not buy?” to make you feel like a bad person lol. Thankfully I have no guilt complex when it comes to vendors and I was the only one who didn't get tricked into buying an overpriced item. Although I have to confess I did end up seeking out a small musical instrument for my friend JL. I couldn't help myself, the musicians were playing a rendition of “Beautiful Girl by Sean Kingston” on it and I was sold...haha.

Here's an article on it to get a bit clearer on what I'm talking about:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3054442.stm

Alright the rest of these days are going to be summed up (sorry but I really need to catch up on this blog!):

On Sunday the CIEE group went out again to Downtown and we got a little tour of all the important buildings including the presidential palace (where most of the riots take place). Oddly enough, the entire city was vacant due to the Musilm holiday which is completely opposite of its normal bustle. The streets were clear of any traffic—both human and car—and only the vendors could be spotted wandering the streets carrying wooden African statues looking for prey. I'm not proud to say that I got into quite a tussle with one of the vendors while trying to help a friend. The vendor, who was a middle-aged man came up to my friend Tasha

and attempted to try to sell her some African statues. She said no thank you but he was extremely persistent and wouldn't leave her alone. After about 5 min of his antics I decided to help her out and I told him that we were students with little money, but even less of an interest in African statues. He attacked me with “I was talking to your friend not you, get out of our conversation.” Needless to say, I didn't respond to nicely and snapped back telling him no thank you very forcibly. He eventually left only to come back with smaller statues. He was, quite annoying. It took the whole group telling him to go away that finally did the trick. Then I got made fun of for loosing my patience—ah I deserved it, I understand he was just trying to make a living. But really, statues? Haha he would have had better luck with some beads.

When I came home from the outing, my extended family had gathered in my living room. My sister, Marcela, her French husband, and three kids had come to visit and we all had dinner together. My aunt came later and so it was quite a party. I really enjoyed the company of nieces! They were all terribly nice and cute, especially the youngest one Tina. At one point she took her diaper off and was waving it around—yup she won my affection lol. The two older ones, Carla and Lilian, started asking me about Texas and Lady Gaga. Carla asked me if everyone in Texas was as short as I. To be quite honest, she is 11 and my size so the question was well placed lol. Don't worry Texas people, I said no and attributed it to my mexican roots lol. I also was given the title Tata, and all three of my nieces called me tata for the rest of the night which was such a treat. I ended up playing UNO with my nieces and we told jokes back and forth. I really liked hanging out with Marcela and her family and I can't wait to see them again.

Monday passed as a normal school day, as did Tuesday, and on Wed I had the horrible misfortune of falling sick (which is partially why this blog is so late!). I'm not quite sure exactly what led to my sickness, but looking back on it all I attribute the stomach pain, vomiting, and fever to a sandwich made from leftovers. Yup, that little sandwich did me in and I was stricken down by an intestinal infection. Luckily,I didn't suffer alone lol. I had wonderful company throughout my sickness as on Thursday Tasha came by with a carton of orange juice and movies. While wathing Juno Tasha and I monitored my temperature like hawks and we had a bit of a scare when my temperature rose to a solid 102.7. All in all I had a consistent 102 fever for 3 days straight, and forgot what it felt like to be normal. It was such an odd feeling as I had never had a consistently high fever for that long of a stretch. On the third day, Friday, I decided I needed to do something about my fever and tried to walk over to the pharmacy with my sister-in-law. While I was trying to decided which type of medication I wanted to take, I became natious and dizzy and walked outside to sit down and get some air. Soon after I went to the back of the building and vomited bread and acid (haha specific I know) and later my sister found me there. To be honest I was pretty freaked out by the vomiting and fainting spell and on the insistence of my sister-in-law I decided to call SOS Medcin.

It is important for everyone reading this blog to understand that I do not like the culture that surrounds biomedicine. I particularly have a personal vendetta towards greedy doctors, more specifically ones that show up, wave some medical tools at you, and after a great deal of thought...prescribe antibiotics. Now, don't be misled to think I dislike doctors or the field of medicine in general, I do plan on going to medical school after all. Nevertheless, it is important to mention that to me, the person is much more than a disease/sickness.

I also don't like having to pay doctors unnecessarily large amounts of money. It makes me feel dirty about feeling healthy because I just think about all those individuals that suffer because they need doctors but can't afford to pay. Thus, Friday was an odd day filled with mixed emotions—relief that I was no longer suffering from fever yet stressed that I had to pay a pretty penny to feel that way. The only comforting thought was that I could hear my mom telling me from the states “Marissa, your health is more important than money, just pay the doctor and take your meds.” so I ended up handing over the cash. Still, I was really upset by it and it took a lot to finally come to terms with being sick.

Saturday was a much better day all around. The CIEE group had another scheduled sorée and we traveled to Toubab Dialow. Which quite appropriately means—white person Dialow. It was described to us as an artist's colony next to the beach but it was really more of a resort next to the beach with hungry vendors waiting around every corner lol. In all honesty Saturday was a lot of fun since I finally got to wear my bathing suit and jump in the ocean. Saturday I felt pretty good all day but my stomach would act up and didn't let me enjoy my meals, still on the meds it was relatively smooth sailing. Saturday night the group went to a Reggae concert that was held at the “resort” and some of the students got up to dance with the artists. I would have, however, my stomach was protesting at the mere thought so I passed. We also got to batik, which is a form of art here in Senegal. That was a lot of fun and consisted of painting with wax and dying the fabric in different colors. I ended up painting a mosque on top of a mountain surrounded by the ocean—a sight inspired by a picture I took around Toubab Dialow.

Sunday morning was spent at Toubab Dialow as well and after a breakfast of, yup you guessed it—bread and jam—I decided to take to the beach although the choice perhaps wasn't the best one since I was still feeling pretty unwell. In fact, as awkward as it is to share this, I was feeling pretty torn up about the status of my poop which was the oddest shape/form/color that I have ever witnessed. Beyond the pain of being ill, I will never forget the fear of not knowing what the hell was going on with my intestines.

Despite all that, I attempted to suppress my fear by wandering around making small talk with the vendors. At one point some students invited me to walk with them along the beach and I jumped at the offer since I wanted to distract my mind from my health. Unfortunately, while walking a giant wave came and crashed into me and a nearby student named Oliver and I'm not sure what it was about the wave—perhaps the fact that it was cold or perhaps it was the obscenity of it all—but the impact triggered something inside and I burst into tears. Oliver of course, was completely caught off guard but still attempted to comfort me buy putting an arm over my shoulder. I was just a confused mess at that point and some of the other students came back and tried to comfort me too. Eventually I just ended up lying on a towel trying to feel better. While I was lying on the towel, two young senegalese girls came up to me and started to tickle my feet. I think they could tell I was feeling badly and there act of kindness really touched my heart. So, naturally, I tickled them back and we were quite the odd scene of laughter and tears.

Later on that day, I felt strong enough to play soccer and a group of students and I borrowed Katie's ball (a girl from the program). We started up a game of soccer between the 4 or 5 of us and of course, once the ball touched the sand some senegalese guys came to join in on the fun so we ended up turning it in to a match. It was a lot of fun but unfortunately half way into our game, Tasha noticed the ball was beginning to deflate. It had been punctured by the rocks and was on its last breaths. We had to return the ball to Katie deflated and apologetic (me not the ball) but a bunch of agreed to buy her a new (BETTER) ball which made it a bit less sour. Right before we left, I went to go pick up my Batik artwork and while waiting for it to be done had some tea with the artists. This is probably my favorite thing about the Senegalese culture thus far, the amount of sharing and offering that goes on. I have grown inclined to do so myself. For example, if I am eating a sandwich, and a friend walks in, no matter how much sandwich I have I always offer some to my friend. Most of the time, no matter what I have, the other person says yes and upon sharing my food I feel a great warmth in my heart. After that all the CIEE kids got on the bus and went home and I came home to a busy household as a bunch of relatives had come over to watch the finals of the African Cup. Zambia won, surprise surprise lol.

Ok, so basically I'm getting more and more behind on my blog so I'm just going to skip all sort of details and just give the basic gist of everything that has happened to me so that I can catch up on my blog and start writing consistently again...otherwise I don't think I'll ever get this thing running smoothly again.

Alright well, last monday was Tasha's birthday and Rosie and I went to go celebrate with her in Oakam and ended up staying the night in her house. She only had a twin bed so it was a funny scene of three girls trying their best to fit.

Tuesday, Valentines day, was a random day as my friend Amy convinced me to go see a guy give a math lecture at the French institute. Her, patrick, and I all booked it to downtown and on our way there our car rapide broke and we had to walk the rest of the way (which took about half an hour to 45 min?) Downtown Dakar is crazy. So many people and so much movement. I quite literally got lost in the velocity of things. Either way, we were late to the lecture which was about Math nerds and ecolocation. The guy was quite intriguing though as he referred to himself as the “lady gaga of the math world” I'm sure you can imagine why we were so intringued in the first place. Just for imagery's sake, he was wearing a broach the size of his head on his lappel. Great stuff.

Within the past week the two baby goats were born and now they are growing up with their mamas. They were literally born within days of one another and I'm pretty sure that has something to do with hormones. One baby goat was a girl and the other a guy, my nieces named them Pamela and Bobba. I got to hold them in my arms, but didn't do that for too long as the mama goat started trying to break down the fence to get to her baby.

Also, within the last two weeks several things have broken/gone terribly wrong. For example, my phone, camera, shoes, and computer cord all broke. I've kind of just been dealing with everything because I'm trying to remind myself that no matter what, I'm still in Senegal, still having an amazing experience. Nevertheless, its been hard blow after blow. Although its awkward writing about this after what happened today, my director was nice enough to lend me his phone (which was a very expensive phone) to replace my broken one for the next four months. Unfortunately....it was stolen today (Monday) in the shittiest of ways. While riding the car rapide someone pick pocketed me. Later when I figured it out, we called the phone and a guy answered. He said he would return the phone for some money and we agreed but he never came to the meeting place even though we waited for an hour. When we tried calling we realized he had removed the sim card and decided to claim my director's phone as his own. What a douche. People like that make the world a harder place to live in amongst all the tragedy we already have to face with nature and illness. Still, it happened and tomorrow I will have to face my director and tell him I've lost his phone. All in all, I will have to dish out a shitload of cash within the next week---on trying to compensate for my mistake of having lost his phone. I don't think I'll get another one though. I think perhaps I'll just try to use my broken one...I can't afford paying for all my broken things since they all happened to break at once.

In addition, although all of this would be cool to blog about in great detail I will sum it up:

I met some leaders of the “Y'en a marre” rap group here in Senegal who are leading a lot of the protests. The protests are getting increasingly violent as the election date comes closer. Quite frankly it doesn't appear as if Wade is going to step down or relinquish his candidacy. This could turn in to a bitter sweet situation. We shall await and see, I'll keep you updated on the political situation as time goes by...so far 11 people have been lost in the riots.

I apologize for being so behind on everything guys, I promise my future blog posts will be better and more organized, I just wanted to post something up so everyone would know I was still kicking. Until next time!!

An Unfinished Blog Post

Alright, so I've gotten a bit behind on my blog since I haven't had internet for the past couple of days/randomly fell asleep on the couch for a little bit too long...(product of overeating I assure you).

I'll give you a re-cap of each day and touch upon the most important parts. Sorry you guys are missing out on the details but its late and I'm sleepy lol.

I last left off writing on Thursday, which happened to be my least favorite day since my time here. I have a particularly annoying class on Tue/Thu taught by a Senegalese professor that speaks terribly fast french and has no structure. Perhaps there is nothing more frightening for one's educational entegrity than taking an anth class in French when the prof lacks structure entirely. His teaching mostly constituted scribbling incessantly on the white board while mumbling to himself. After awhile, his scribbles began to overlap and everything was unintelligible—a mix of french accents, circles, and a makeshift map of West Africa. Needless to say I learned close to nothing in that class and am hoping my next class with him will be better (I have him tomorrow). Thus, with this being the best part of my day I assume you can understand why I might consider the rest of my day to be quite annoying. After French we were paired up with our language partners and met them for the first time. My Language partner's name is Viviane and her bright red rain coat stood out to me more than anything—since it's like 70 out. She was very well put together and cutsie and we chatted a bit about the clubs here in Senegal and what the dance scene was like. I of course had no choice but to break a move and she laughed at my american moves (which for the record are really just Marissa moves). We exchanged numbers and later on she sent me a txt wishing me a good night, today (monday) she said hi again so I'm glad she's trying to put in a little effort. I'll try to meet up with her this week sometime but we've yet to hang out. In all honesty, the fact that Viviane turned out to be a girl was quite a fortunate circumstance. Apparently the language partner concept is a bit confusing for some senegalese men as they had previously perceived it to be an American dating service. Apparently they're some rather persistent ones—one girl told me her language partner had called her 9 time this morning (monday)--and other have told me their language partners have already confessed profound feelings of love. Oh Senegalese men, they lack sport entirely. Which is a whole 'nother subject worth mentioning...

Later on that day I had a really shitty panini at this 'american-style' restaurant named Ceaser's here and decided I would avoid eating there at all costs. I also had to walk home alone which took me about 45min. Unpleasant to say the least. When I actually arrived home my family didn't really chat with me and I was worried they were mad at me for being out so much and relatively late. Partly it's school's fault—I go in at 9 and get out at 4:30pm LONG DAYS—and partly my exploration tendencies. Still, dinner was a bit cold in that every time I left the table my family started talking and when I returned they would slip back into complete silence.

Friday was much better and consisted of several new experiences. Oy I'm running out of time to write this! Ok well, it was the first day of my internship at RHADDO and I worked for about 9-12:30pm. We were given our first assignments, which will apparently consist of two research papers evaluating the cause and trend of violence throughout the elections/before and after and the current violence occurring in the Cassamance. The Cassamance will prove to be harder to investigate as news that comes from there has the tendency to be skewed, painting the rebels negatively without a two-sided perspective of the story, and so we are in charge of obtaining valid sources—interesting to say the least! I want to get my hands a bit dirty so I'm hoping they give us work beyond the theoretical exercises, although I'm terribly appreciative of the chance to write over these subjects. They also offered to possibly publish the work so I'll be working towards that objective. Wifi wasn't working throughout the time so the work effort was relatively stunted, going in tomorrow and hopefully it'll be better.

I'm going to stop writing here for now, as it's getting a bit late. I'm going to go ahead and post this bit because I've been keeping you guys waiting for so long, but hopefully I'll have the chance to finish the rest of the blog post later. So expect the full post as an edited version with all 5 days should appear later on today.

Wakam et Mon Stage

Let's see, a re-cap of Tuesday and Wednesday and some thoughts...I'll try to make it interesting :). I'm sure you've guys figured out I'm writing every two days or at least that's how it's been working out so far since I won't have internet on the weekends and it gives me time to write my blogs at night (which is 5pm for you guys) and have it posted in the morning. By the way, when you're all snuggled in for bed dreaming I'll be studying Wolof—just thought you'd like to picture that.

Tuesday was the second day of school and I must say it was the first time I've ever had classes cancelled due to political uproar. Now, I don't want anyone worrying. The political manifestations are indeed a reality but I am hardly in any danger and am taking necessary precautions. I'm not sure if there is any coverage of Senegal/Dakar back at home but just understand that I am away from any rioting hot spots. Even though I have a secret desire to sneak out and see a political manifestation, I'm duly listening to other's cautionary statements and have opted for plain ol' news coverage. Unfortunately Senegalese news is done in a Wolof/French combination with riot coverage amounting only in replayed footage of the same scenes over and over again. Some of these scenes are gruesome, showing scenes of wounded rioters, but they mostly portray the struggle between the police and the opposing party (not Wade's party). So far there have been around 3 to 4 deaths due to the riots and although the police are blaming people like the Y'en a marre, I have good reason to believe (and sources to confirm) that the police and or pro-Wade infiltrators are really behind the incitement of violence. Just to be clear, all CIEE students are not allowed to participate in manifestations and we are strongly advised to stay away from danger zones which are clearly pointed out to us ahead of time. CIEE directors do a great job of protecting the students form any possible danger, as you can see—my class was cancelled due to the possibility of a riot occurring near the school which didn't even happen.

Here's a little more of Senegalese history that just enthralls me. It ties into the political situation here that I believe all of you should be aware of:

http://www.rfimusic.com/news-music/outraged-rappers

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/opinion/the-mixtape-of-the-revolution.html

I hope you don't mind me educated you a bit on my blog, but it is quite necessary if you truly want to comprehend what I'm going through over here in Dakar. At the moment I find myself quite fortunate to be witnessing a historical moment in Senegal's history—my only hope is that is turns out positively for the senegalese people.

Since classes were cancelled on Monday, I had some extra time to fill out internship applications which was good because the deadlines are all now. It has been terribly stressful trying to complete these applications while abroad and I definitely won't be repeating that mistake. I give a shout out to all of those who helped me make it possible, many thank yous. I'm almost done!

After completing applications I happened to be one of the few left in the center and I walked home with some of the girls from my program. It was about 3pm when I got home and I was dead-beat exhausted. I ate leftovers from the night before (which I had packed for lunch and didn't want to waste just because we technically didn't have a lunch) and took a 20min nap. I was awoken from my nap by a txt message from Hakima, a student who has been here since the Fall semester, which entailed directions to the naming party that was being held that evening. Earlier that day, Hakimah had shared with the CIEE students that her sister had recently given birth to a beautiful baby boy and that they would be having a party later on in order to give the baby a name, here they call it a baptism...even though there is no catholic or christian relation lol. So of course, I jumped out of bed, grabbed my camera, and headed downstairs. My cousin Gizele asked me where I was going and since I really had no idea, she offered to help me find the party. It wasn't too hard to find—senegalese parties can be spotted miles away. First of all, there was a tent set up in the middle of the street in the front of Hakima's homestay's house and second of all, surrounding the tent, coming from the house, and leading out into the streets, was...“the party.” Everyone was dressed up wearing beautiful Senegalese outfits, both traditional and modern, and the scene was coated with colors and elegant fabrics. I felt a bit out of place with my blue t-shirt, worn jeans, and bandana, but no one really noticed and I quickly began chatting it up with other CIEE students who were already at the party including Hakimah. Hakimah also introduced me to some of her family, including the new mother and father, and at one point I and about 4 other students were in her living room (very hot sticky living room) talking to some Senegalese our age. (Oh and btw, the reason why there are no pictures is because I forgot my camera cord...I've been meaning to ask my mom to send it to me here! Hopefully after that I can go back and add pictures but until then use your imagination :)!!)

The conversation was a bit interesting since they were trying to talk to us in Wolof, but we ended up taking pictures together and sharing jokes. I'm not sure what it is with Senegalese people but they're terribly forward haha, well at least with Americans. At one point one of the Senegalese girls told my friend Emily they liked her dress and then said to give it to them. Now, I want you to imagine a woman about...28ish, saying “I like your dress give it to me” in a completely monotone voice. Yup. We were told this was going to happen and in response a playful “I'll name it after you” is always welcomed.

Another example, and a more personal one, was when one of the senegalese women asked me if I thought her cousin was cute/nice. He was holding a baby at the time so I said, “who the baby, yes the baby is very cute!” trying to play it off but after laughing she insisted again. The guy was terribly embarrassed by her and was apologizing with his eyes, so this time I said, “I have a boyfriend already but I think he's a great friend and a good person,” they let off then but jeez senegalese women! Way to throw your friends under the bus!

After food and drink, the night came, and with it heavy drum beats, clapping, and laughter. The night was reserved for the ladies, as typically in baptisms men take part only in the daytime celebration. I only saw a bit of the festivities as I had to return home for dinner, but I quite enjoyed the drummers and the vivacious ladies who danced together in the center of the tent. I had an urge to dance as well and Rosie's mom saw me busting a move a couple of times. She was pretty amused by my attempts and still won't let me live it down lol. I really did enjoy the night and later on Hakimah walked me home (which is really close) and I ate dinner with my family.

Today, Wednesday was definitely filled with new experiences. I had my first public health class, even though my professor still didn't show up... His assistant was present though and carried on an introduction to the class. I liked him because after the explanation of the syllabus we had a discussion on the public health system in Senegal in comparison to the USA, etc. I'm looking forward to this class (even though the professor seems to be quite a flake) because we are planning to visit some villages and do a public health analysis. We are also planning to visit a public and private hospital here in Senegal. Experiences that I don't want to miss out on. The most exciting part of my day was marked by two events: Meeting the organization of which I'm going to do an internship with and visiting Wakam for the first time. Unfortunately I don't have pictures of either of these events because I had forgotten my camera at home, but I'm going again tomorrow (thursday) and will snap away at the scene.

The name of the organization with which I will do my internship is “RADDHO” or “Rencontre africaine pour la defense des droits de l'homme.” Here is there website for further information: http://www.raddho.org/

I, along with one other student named Miriam, met with one of the directors who explained to us a litle about the organization and asked us of our interests. It seems that I will be placed with monitoring the events here in Senegal, and thus, will be quite knowledgeable about the human rights violations of the senegalese situation by the end of my stay here. Don't be surprised if I'm commenting on the situation several times throughout my blog as I will be preoccupying much of my time with this internship. The actual building was situated within walking distance from my school and had a very nice garden and patio-like setup. Inside it seemed used, old, and small. I'm hoping to do good work here, and I plan on working hard so that I can make a difference during my stay.

Later on in the day Rosie, Tasha, Miriam, and I went to the bookstore to pick up some books for my french class (a total of $12). They actually didn't have enough and the guy said that he would call in an order for tomorrow. He asked us if we could go downtown (where all the riots have been) to pick up the books and my response was (mind you in a joking tone), “What with all the manifestations? Surely my books will be on fire!” The girls laughed but he merely chuckled...I have to get a hand on senegalese humor...maybe I'll just start dancing everywhere that usually does the trick lol. Afterwards the girls and I quite literally hopped on to a car rapid (fast car in english) and held on tight in the direction of Wakam. It was my first time riding the car rapide with friends and it was definitely a memorable experience. At the beginning there were several people already in the car and we were crammed up like sardines. Smelly sticky sardines hehe. Either way, the woman next to me was kind enough to scoot over and let me sit down because I was hanging out of the back of the car clutching my backpack for dear life. (which btw has an open backdoor). After that it was smooth riding and when we reached our destination, the guy who collected my money shooed me off the car rapide... well at least I never have to worry about missing my stop haha.

Wakam was bustilng. The general environment was the same as Sacre Coure, worn buildings, chipping paint, lots and lots of sand, but the personality was much different. The mintue we got off the car rapide, several Senegalese friends of Tasha called us over to chat—something that has yet to happen in Sacre Coeur! There were children everywhere, a very youthful place, and toys were sprawled in every direction. There were also lots of cars and motos so I cringed a couple of times when I saw a baby stumble in to the street. There is no right of way here, for baby, elder, or youth—cars are king in Senegal. Either way, I got to visit Tasha and Miriam's home and meet some of their family. Later Tasha, Rosie, and I went out for a drink but I ended up just getting some orange juice to quench my thirst and calm my fatigue from the day. We had a long political conversation with some american topics thrown in including the election back at home (which I had...completely forgotten about). I talked about how odd it would be to call someone else president besides Obama, as I have grown quite fond of him despite some terrible decisions. The girls agreed and we sat back and let the sound of senegalese men cheering to a football game drown our conversation out. After that Rosie and I took a bus home (the first time!) and a senegalese woman kindly told us we had arrived at sacre coeur and stopped the bus for us. I walked Rosie home, greeted her family and was invited to her sister's birthday party and later went home to eat and sleep. I watched a bit of tv with the fam. I've been spending quite a bit of time out so perhaps I should spend more time with my Yaye!! It's hard though, since Yaye spends most of her day at home and I have the inclination to wander and to discover.