playing catch-up

Hiya folks,

It's been over two weeks due to an unfortunate series of power outages and a crazy trip to the Gambia. As I am currently in a weird slow cyber cafe the latter and probably most of the former is going to have to wait a little, hopefully a second post later today, but I'll begin catching you up starting with two weekends ago, as quick as I can on this French keyboard that keeps getting stuck on the letter qqqqqqqqqq...
To begin with last Friday, Hannah and I decided to make chocolate chip cookies for the family before she left on Saturday morning for the Gambia (I left the following Wednesday.) This is not the simple task it is in the US, and a huge deal because the oven takes a ton of gas and some hands-and-knees effort to turn on and is very rarely used. I spent a good part of the afternoon in the computer lab trying to look up recipes and do metric-English and liquid-solid conversions so that later we could tell the boutiquier how much we needed. I went to the Toubab store to buy baking soda and try to find chocolate chips, which they didn't have. The girls were going to help us later that night with other ingredients.
Hannah and I walked home from WARC together and pretty soon afterwards the incomprehensible Jaco asked us to accompany him on a walk to Samu's school as it was report card day in all of Senegal. There were no teachers by the time we got there since he'd slept too late in the afternoon, but we now know where they go to school, and when to avoid the reeking sewage canal that borders the campus (pretty much all the time). On the way back we stopped off at some friends/cousins houses, where we dropped off a mysterious bike and said hi to Marlene and her fiance and his brother. Their family's house is sort of oddly bare of furniture and decor but they do have a computer and several electrical appliances. Odd. I mean people choose where they put their money...my family has satellite tv but the flush toilet hasn't worked for 8 months. In any case I promised Marlene I'd go to church on Sunday. More on that later.
So getting the rest of the cookie ingredients turned out to be a much bigger deal than we expected, since you have to go to the boutique and ask for dry ingredients in either half or third kilos et cetera, and we didn't know the word for third or sixth in wolof, and practically the whole family had gotten involved, what with us walking to the store with the boys, and down the block with the girls, and Mamitie getting all pissed at our attempts at mixing and eyeballing and questioning the available utensils that she finally threw up her hands and said "Callie a fait ca toute seule et c'etait parfait!" - the last exchange student did it all by herself and everything came out perfect! Hannah and I felt pretty awful buying the chocolate (in bars that had to later be smashed with a big wooden spoon and knives) because it cost almost 12 dollars and we bought it in front of the kids, who never just have that kind of cash. At one point during the mixing they all berated me because I went to wash my hands and dried the heels of them a little on my pants before I put them back in the batter. I mean, there are no hand towels, everything drip dries, and I was in the middle of mixing, and come on, theyre going to get baked anyway. We decided to throw in an extra egg and a lot more flour and some vanilla and probably too much baking soda, but how bad can you really mess up cookies? Several hours later, after lighting the gas oven in several places with matches, and severely buttering the pan for each of four batches, we had a large bowl of sort of cakey chocolate chip cookies. They were delicious, and everyone liked them, though they did get compared in every way possible to Callie's. Mamitie, knowing the kids would eat them all, gave us a small jar to keep for ourselves, and they didn't last long. They were about the best thing I've eaten in months...
Another interesting observation from Saturday night: chez nous, the word of Mamitie is god. As absent as gender equity is in this society, the matriarch has considerable power in her home. Sylvan, Mamie's boyfriend, came over to say hi while we were making the cookies. He still has to ask permission every time to go into Mamie's room, which is visible through an indoor window from the family room couch, though the two of them have been dating for a year and a half. He was about to leave since he had class very early the next day, but Mamitie said "no, you should stay for dinner," to which he of course responded "no thank you, I have class very early," to which Mamitie said "no really, you have to stay and eat," followed by "no thank you, really, Mamitie, I have to go," and then "You will sit down and stay for dinner. Sit down!" And he sat down, just like that.
Saturday morning I woke up to find that there was EVERYTHING possible available for breakfast, and no one around to see me eating it all piggishly. I had two cuts of bread, one with chocolate, and one with jam AND butter, plus there was hot chocolate mix and instant coffee (mmm mocha) and tea and even sugar and powdered milk left (the kids never leave us any). I cannot WAIT until I can wake up in the US and make whatever the heck I want, eggs and real cheese and cereal with real milk and stuff. But onward! I went back into my room to get dressed and when I came out to leave for dance, Mamitie (Maman Amitie in case that contraction was not obvious) was screaming at the top of her 68-year-old lungs while beating Arture on the ribs with a giant wooden pole because he had dug up her freshly planted flowers. It went like this: poor Arture would run by whimpering, she'd whack at him, he'd scream and run into the house, she'd scream at him to get out, he'd run by whimpering for another smack, et cetera. I got out of there ASAP. The poor dog was all bruised and limpy for a week.
Dance was disappointing as our teachers (dance and drums) are on some kind of strike against WARC who doesn't pay them enough and whose students never show up because the class is so damn disorganized that lots of us gave up. The six or so of us who were there learned a little bit of Sabar for half an hour or so from another girl who works at the WARC restaurant. She was a terrible teacher, only talked to one person the whole time and was impossible to follow, plus she speaks very little French and everyone ended up frustrated and just went home. It's a sort of unfortunate situation and I don't know whats going to happen since last week when I missed it to go to the Gambia only one student and one drummer showed up. Who even knows?
Ugh I have not even made it to the end of last Saturday and my hour here is up, so this may just get more and more postponed...sorry all, but don't worry, I'll get to my Gambian adventures hopefully before I leave for spring break and Saint Louis from the 31st to the 10th. If there's no power outage, n'shalah. Tootles!