Before I begin I have to say that I am quite jealous of several people whose parents are visiting at the moment, mostly because they have a great excuse to miss class and have taken hot showers in the hotel. Some news for today: French class is cancelled because our professor is somewhere in Gambia, and Maman Amitie is tired because she has to wake up Samu so he doesn't wet the bed at night. "Il est un gros pisseur," she said this morning; "quelquefois c'est les pompiers!" which means "He's a big pisser...sometimes its like the firemen!" Also she told me and Hannah that she was fattening us up before we go home, so she wants us to eat good breakfasts. It's most certainly working, I can tell I'm gaining weight. Another great Maman Amitie moment was last night at dinner when she and Mamie were grilling me about why my stomach was hurting, and I thought it wasnt okay to say during dinner in front of the whole family. I sort of waited till the kids had dispersed and said no to a list of things it could possibly be, including menstruation, fish, spicy spinach sauce, and too many cookies. Finally I quietly told the two of them and was met with a very loud exclamation of "Ohhhh, t'es constipee!" from Maman. Pretty embarrassing, though I probably should have just said it in the first place.
Oh also this morning we went to two pharmacies and got laughed at before we found a pumice stone, which cost over 6 dollars but is probably going to be the best purchase EVER. The man who sold it to us told us that it was for girls, generally. We were sort of confused because it's rather obvious that we're girls. I mean, I think it is.
So where was I? Ah yes, our arrival at WARC around 9 am. Let's make it a Wednesday. I'll usually run into the computer lab for a few minutes and check my email, until Sophie comes in to yell at us that the Islam professor has arrived: "c'est l'heure!" (it's time!) Class usually goes from 9 to 11 with about a 20 minute break sometime in there. You never know where class is going to be - there are really only a couple of classrooms and the different groups of students sort of fight over who gets the big one and who gets squashed into the office. When it's actually time for lunch we sort of slowly mobilize people for a variety of different choices:
1) Eat at WARC. It's a real restaurant that lots of people other than the students come to, and it's rather expensive (between 800 and 1200, or around 2 bucks.) They sort of cycle through different meals, including fish and fries, Cebbu jenn, Yassa poisson or yassa viande, vernicelli and some kind of meat, mafe, and once in a while theyll have spaghetti with meat sauce. Usually there are two choices and theyll tell the students that the good one is all gone so they can serve it to the Senegalese professors and other people. Most of the time it's pretty good, but again rather expensive and it's fun to explore other options.
2) Buy pain thon, which is, as Tina calls it, tuna slop, on half a baguette. This costs a whopping 125 cfa - 25 cents.
3) Buy pain chocolat, chocolate on bread, then buy a banana from the fruit vendor, slice it up, and put it on the bread. Again a good half a baguette or more than a foot of bread, but it's not that filling.
4) Walk to Nando's and buy Thiakry (sweet yoghurt made from dried milk. The bottom of the carton is filled with a sort of watery millet mush that you mix in and its DELICIOUS.) This can be supplemented by fruit or bread. The walk is about 20 minutes either way.
5) Walk to the Toubab store (run by Toubabs, frequented by Toubabs) on the Corniche (the beach) and buy bread, yoghurt, granola, cheese, vegetables, and any number of good things if you are willing to walk and to navigate a giant store full of anything that can be imported from Europe. It's a great place but also kind of expensive. I like to get laughing cow cheese, bread, and a tomato, then make a sandwich.
6) Go to a resto, where you can get fairly decent to excellent cebbu jenn for 300-500 cfa, depending on how hungry you are. Be prepared to speak some Wolof and possibly have terrible gas later.
7) Walk over to the University (if you're there, it's clearly the best option) and go to a restaurant where you can get pretty much any of the same things as above, but for less.
8) Walk over to the University and buy an egg sandwich from the vendor. Be prepared for shoving and inquiries from Senegalese students and getting ripped off if you don't know the price beforehand.
9) Walk to a shawarma place or the french-style sandwich shop.
I was hoping that list would get up to ten, but there you have it.
Whenever I have two classes a day, there is generally between three and four hours of free time in between. Here are some of the things I do in between:
1) more computer, if there aren't tons of people there.
2) gather awkwardly and talk to whoever else is there
3) read for class
4) do homework (HA! like once in a blue moon)
5) sit on the ledges of the building or at the WARC tables and play cards. Gin rummy, hearts, and most recently euchre (which I just learned and am awful at; none of the Michigan people will be my partner)
6) fall asleep under the big painted tree or on the building ledges
7) spend a while in the toilets if you're having mal au ventre then talk about the quality of your bowel movements - we're all so past the point of having any shame left
8) wander around dakar
9) go to a cyber cafe
10) go downtown or to the markets (for business or pleasure, business being the post office or picking up plane tickets or something administrative and pleasure being I have no idea what because its so insane down there)
Yeah, the days go slowly here. WARC is a good comfortable place to be, though, and things take so much more time than at home that the hours just sort of roll by.
Wednesday afternoons I have literature class, also two hours and involving usually a break of almost half an hour, during which I sometimes go across the street to the boutique and buy Biskrem and more recently Cafe Touba. Cafe Touba comes very hot in a little plastic cup and tastes like someone added a load of pepper to some really cheap coffee, but it is in fact delicious. And heavily caffeinated. Biskrem, and forgive me if I've already described them, are about the greatest cookie in the world. They come in packs of twelve and cost 60 cents. They're round with a delicious stale cardboard texture and a pasty chocolate filling. I probably eat an average of 3 or 4 daily. Meaning that I eat several packs a week. Hey, it's better than cigarettes. And I'm working on my jaayfunde (a most excellent Wolof word meaning big round butt, and one of the highest compliments among the youth in terms of physique).
After class we mobilize for the walk home. I don't really like to be part of a group of more than 5 or so Toubabs, but inevitably it ends up that way. Once in a while we get followed back towards Nando's by the stray dog pack that rules the streets near WARC. They're pretty mangy and scarred and you can tell who's the leader, and which of the females are pregnant, and who's been in a fight recently. I think they have it pretty good considering the amount of garbage that is available to them without much effort on their part.
The best part of walking anywhere is the intersections where, no joke, I fear for my life every single time. Sometimes the police direct traffic and help us out, but most of the time its just complete insanity. What you usually have to do is cross the first lane when you can, then stand in the middle and hope not to get hit by a bus while you wait to cross the second and third lanes. Tuesdays and Thursdays in the middle of the day we have to walk from WARC to the Baobab Center for Wolof class, which takes about half an hour and involves between 1 and 3 of said intersections, depending on what route you take and what you want to do on the way there. I walk pretty much everywhere unless I'm out at night and it's dangerous. Some girls just take taxis all the time so they can sleep in because they don't like walking. I have some friends who live 15 minutes walk away and take a taxi, and others who walk over an hour each way to school just because they like it.
It's also pretty amazing how different the situations of the host families are here. A couple of girls live with a very well-to-do Cape Verdian family in a giant courtyard house with mango and grapefruit trees. On the other hand, three peoples families have combined shower-Turkish toilets in the bathrooms (woohooo thats a stinky shower) and a couple of people live in apartments where they can only get running water at certain hours of the day and have to lug it up from the basement in buckets. And even they are very well off. My family is pretty wealthy, I think, and has a lot of luxuries compared to the rest of the population. Ibou, our frend in construction, lives with something like 20 people, works 72 hours a week, and said that most everyone lays their heads down on floor mats in the same few rooms. At our house, all the girls have beds, as do JB and Jean Paul (they share one) and Maman Amitie. The kids will switch off, I think, who sleeps where, and Felix always gets the couch in the family room until the morning when Awa comes to clean up and he moves to the floor of the boys' room.
Well I'll continue with a third installment soon, unless more excitement ensues. I mean, you never know. I wish I could put up pictures here but the computers won't support those kinds of programs, it seems. The good ones are all on facebook.
Yenduleen ag jamm (pass the day in peace.)
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