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:
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:
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!!
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