Another crazy weekend

Hi All! Thanks again for your posts and comments. This weekend was a pretty good time and I'm completely gueri (cured) of the strange malady that put me in the bathroom for a week. It's much easier to keep my head about me and avoid thinking about home too much, now that I'm feeling myself again.
So to begin with Friday afteroon. My friend Jeremy and I decided we wanted to brave the downtown crowds and find this one pharmacy in all of Dakar that sells Malarone (for a very hefty price.) There are other malaria meds that are super cheap but either unapproved by the US or cause crazy side effects so I'm sticking to Malarone and hoping that the insurance company will take the teeny printed receipts. Anyhoo, we started out walking towards the bus stop from WARC - both of us had gone downtown with Senegalese family or friends but never on our own so we were kind of lost. We got to where we had taken the bus the last time and asked a bunch of people if bus 10 or 20 was coming or how we could get downtown. After three people had sent us to different places we decided just hop a car rapide and see what happened. Car rapides are like these little minibuses or vans painted dark blue and yellow and they run all over the city. There's a driver and a dude who sits in the back to tell the driver to stop and tell people where theyre headed. So if its headed to Ouakam, for instance, they'll hang out the back while the driver pulls up to the curb and slows down a bit and yell "OuakamOuakamOuakamOuakamOuakamOuakam aaaayyaaaaaayyyaaayyyyOuakamOuakamOuakam" and things of that nature and shove people up into the car who want to go there. All of the car rapides have "ALHAMDULILAHI" written across the front which basically means "thanks to God" in Wolof. It is an essential exclamation and is a pretty good response to almost anything anyone says. It is pronounced "all-cham-doo-lee-laiye" and you MUST say it as an exclamation.
So we got into this car rapide and told people we wanted to go to centre ville and after a while we figured out that we were in fact headed exactly where we wanted to go, for the small price of 100 CFA each (20 cents). We descended upon arrival downtown and the theme of the adventure was "pick a street and see where it goes." We found the pharmacy, the bank, a place to eat, and many other exciting alleys without any trouble and I was so proud because nothing has ever worked out directionally for me before in my life. We told most people who asked that we were married or newlyweds, sort of to avoid having people ask Jeremy if I was available and of age, but mostly because it was really funny since we both look way too young to be married. Most guys here place my age as 16 or 17 and are surprised to know that I'm 20 and thus a woman. This is fine with me - if you look older you get bothered by more dudes. After a while while looking for an ATM with Jeremy these two dudes approached us and told us they knew where one was so we followed them and found out that their family owns a bunch of little shops that they wanted to take us to.
This sounds mad sketchy, just following dudes around, but even the Senegalese will do it to get better prices on things. We really wanted to lose them after a while and they wouldnt really leave us alone but they were friendly and well meaning so we put up with it and then sort of snuck out after going to the pharmacy. They took us to some fabric shops and pushed a lot of stuff in our faces, and I said no, not today, and then they took us to buy CD which Jeremy wanted. He bargained pretty well but he's kind of a sucker and ended up buying stuff he didnt really need, like he usually does. Thats sort of the opposite of me - I am still a little too nervous to buy anything so I keep holding off, but after our adventure actually worked out from start to finish I feel like I might survive in this city! We were thinking about taking a taxi but then we came upon a bus stop where the right bus actually just came along so instead of paying 4 bucks for a taxi we paid 25 cents to take the bus right back near home. An extraordinarily sucessful outing which terminated in me having more malaria pills and Jeremy having 3 Yossou Ndour CDs and a goofy traditional shirt and no money. He owes me a couple of lunches now. But I feel as though I could do it myself now if I had to, get downtown and buy what I need without too much trouble.
Friday night was uneventful and I woke up early Saturday for dance class. We met and took the car rapide to OuakamOuakamOuakamOuakamOuakamayayayayayaayayaOuakamOuakam and spent almost 4 hours dancing with our teacher, a woman named Kadja, and learning djembe from these rasta dudes, like 8 of them, who smoked the whole time. Our dance is turning out to be awesome - we start in the back of the room and us girls run out bent over shaking our hands and dancing in a formation for a while. Then we separate out into two lines and the guys come out and dance, hopping on one foot and stuff, while we do a kind of simple line dance on the sides. Then each person in turn goes out in the center to dance by themselves and one djembe player comes out front to play for us. Thats all we have for now, and its really sweet. You really have to get good at hearing where you are in the music because its not like a set number of each kind of move, its certain sets of beats that signify a switch to the new move which you do until they get tired of playing the beat for that move. Its a long morning and when I got back everyone had eaten lunch already but Fifi got some leftovers together for me and it was the first protein I'd eater in a week due to the rice-and-bread diet I'd been following.
Saturday afternoon I slept a lot and then got up later to go out with like 12 people downtown again, to a weird little movie place we'd heard about. We tried to take the car rapide but nobody spoke french and after much gesturing they asked for twice the usual price and this one kid was trying to bargain for all 12 of us. We found out that the car rapide had only decided to continue all the way downtown because all of us wanted to go there so as a sort of compensation they asked us each for another 100, but we tried to compromise with 500 extra for all 12. It wasnt the money, just the principle of the matter but eventually they got angry and kicked us all out in a sort of dark sketchy street that ended up being about a 20 minute walk from where we wanted to be. We asked some people on the street and found out where we were. I personally did not have much part in all this and kind of tagged along having little idea what was going on. At one point it got a little creepy when the girl I was walking next to stepped on some kind of cracker that had been thrown out a car window and this giant CRACK went off and we couldnt hear anything for several seconds.
Anyways we got to the place and walked up a tiny dark staircase and climbed through some weird dark rooms to find a dude to brought us some tables and a menu. It turns out you can order drinks and food and then the price of the movie is included, and since there were so many of us they said we could pick a film to watch from this little video room they had in the back. The drinks were like 5 bucks each but since there were 12 of us he lowered the price to 3 bucks. We sat on a big terrace under the stars and drank beer and Fanta until about 2 and then decided we didnt really want to see a movie anyway. One person ordered some really expensive beef kabob that was the best thing Ive tasted in weeks. I took a taxi back with some girls and we got ripped off because I didnt recognize anything in the dark and made this dude drive around a bit more than he wanted to. Its hard to bargain when someone is shouting at you angrily in Wolof and you cant say anything except for salutations and "mann deggna tutti rekk olof" which means "I only understand a little bit of Wolof." The 20 minute taxi ride still only cost 2 dollars for each of us. I got home safe but had to knock on the window, where Mamie was thankfully still awake, since my roommate had the key to our room and had gone elsewhere thinking she'd be back first. JB went out when I got back and came home around 7 am. He's crazy. Ive found that Maman Amitie is like super overprotective and worries so much about us having our phones and keys and bags stolen that she checks where we've put it all and made me take a taxi just to get down the street to where I was meeting my friends. She's a great old lady and understanding but super paranoid, especially since she hosted students in the past who had gotten robbed or hurt.
Well Samu had been begging us to take him to the beach so he woke us up around 9 to say we were leaving at noon, then again at 10:30 to say quick quick come eat, we're leaving! it turned out he hadnt asked Maman Amitie and wanted to get out before she could tell him no, he had to do his homework. So we were up really early, then waited for the kids to come home from church, then didnt end up going until 3 pm after lunch when Jean Paul got home. We were both pretty pissed off at Samu, mostly because we didnt know what was going on and sat around in our bathing suits all day thinking we were leaving when we could have been in bed. He begged us not to tell Maman Amitie and he got enough crap from his brother and from us that we didn't say anything. Maman Amitie's daughter came over with her kids, more cousins, and some friends, and everyone ate lunch and watched a lot of what I call Jesus TV. There are biblical cartoons for the kiddies and sermons for the adults, and songs and prayers, and Maman Amitie is really into it. She sort of supplements it with little speeches to Samu and Reine and Fifi about how you cannot accomplish anything without love, and says Amen and tells the kids to pay attention when she is particularly impressed with something. I found out that she is the head of the senior citizens' charity group at her church and they organize events and get together a lot. "We are old so we cannot go very far," she said, and I told her it was great that she was still so involved. She and the other ladies have matching uniform dresses with headscarves and the name of the church all over them.
When we finally headed out to the beach it was with Jean Paul and not Samu, and we had limited conversation walking there. It was a beautiful little beach with tons of guys doing exercises and running around, and kids playing soccer. The water was cold so we went in a bit but mostly sat and tanned and fended off men who came to stare at us. Some acquaintances of Jean Paul's were around and wouldnt leave us alone. Everyone thinks that Hannah and I are twins and much younger than we really are. One guy told Hannah he loved her after about five minutes and wouldnt let it go even with the other guys telling him he was being stupid. Ive been here a bit longer than her and have learned to sort of hold an expression of indifference or boredom and not talk too much. Its so tiring to have a whole beach full of people staring at you in a bathing suit for three hours, but we were with Jean Paul who gave us some tips on how to annoy people so that theyd go away. You have to find a balance between being nice and being forceful.
After the beach we came back to a coupure de courant (blackout) which lasted until we went to bed, so we spent the night in semi-darkness, eating and showering by candlelight and playing Uno with the kids. It was a good time and a nice break from the TV which is on ALL the time. We got some sleep and I didnt have to be here today for anything in particular so I got up a bit after Hannah and had a leisurely breakfast and cleaned up, then entertained Farou the maid's son but this terminated in him screaming so I sort of ducked out.
This week's random list:
1) For some reason, the girls I meet LOVE the color of peeling nailpolish that is currently on my toes, and can't find it anywhere. It's sort of whitish-pink, and I should probably take it off.
2) Everyone goes to everyone else's funerals and weddings here. I was invited to the wedding of the friend of a guy who coordinates the dance lessons. Its on February 10th and I may actually go.
3) If I didn't say so yet, there are TONS of blackouts here. Like every three nights we spend at least an hour in the dark, using candles and flashlights. It's kind of fun.
4) If you comment to a woman about her moustache it means you have respect for her. I was insulted and told Jean Paul so, at which point he explained that its not a rude thing to say here. But this seems to be true about a lot of things - you can point out distiguishing features on people, and even compare their beauty, and people dont get insulted. Only us Americans have to try hard to take it with a grain of salt when people say things like "tu es belle comme une poubelle" which means you're pretty like a pail of garbage.

Well, thats all for now! I'm finally feeling mostly settled in - Alhamdulilaay! Time for a lunch of fish and rice.