Revenge of the mutton

When I last left you, I had just gotten my haircut for a mere 500 CFA which is actually less than a dollar.

The last couple of days have been really stress-free, as Monday night was a Muslim holiday, meaning today was a day off. The holiday is called Tam Xarit, which is some sort of untranslatable Wolof play on words. Suffice to say it had been built up as a really fun Halloween-esque party, with people dressed up in drag and kids going from door to door asking for money and couscous and CHICKEN, which deserves to be capitalized since chicken is expensive here and is never eaten in my host family.

(I still don’t understand the point of the holiday. Someone said it was when Noah’s Ark reached Paradise, someone else said it was when Moses was born, someone else said it was when Mohammed’s cousin was killed in battle. Who knows.)

The actual festive meal was really disappointing, as its turned that Senegalese couscous (as opposed to Moroccan couscous) is really gritty and dry, and we had… you guessed it… mutton instead of chicken. But regardless it was nice to experience some sort of non-Judeo-Christian holiday, and Mama had been cooking for 12 hours so I ate way too much to make her happy.

After the couscous meal, I went with some of the group to Baobab 4 (which, in case you haven’t figured out already, is our favorite bar) and had a beer but was so disgustingly full that I left after just one. Then I met Tico at his friend DJ Mactar’s house. All of his friends are called DJs for some reason; one of them calls himself DJ DJ. It was a bunch of Senegalese teenagers looking at each other’s cell phones, listening to unfortunate Senegalese dance music, and speaking really in Wolof so I left after 20 minutes and went home to drift off to sleep while listening to the new Andrew Bird album.

This morning I woke up, had some of the bran cereal that I found at the gas station for $2 (to help with the digestion), and then helped do the massive amount of dishes resulting from the previous night’s “feast.” Then I met some Americans and we walked to the beach, where I listened to my iPod and watched a group of Senegalese teenagers strip down to their Speedo underwear and have a pick-up wrestling competition on the beach. After watching them beat the shit out of each other on the sand, we went to Caesar’s again for some delicious chicken nuggets and ketchup. Then home to shower, watch a few episodes of Arrested Development, then to the bar (at 5:30 PM) with my housemate Emily and her friend to drink Gazelles and eat a grapefruit.

Now I’m here in the Baobab Center trying desperately to download episodes of 24 and/or the new Arcade Fire album before I have to go home for dinner.

Oh, and I forgot to mention I had a class in there. This place is so unbelievably laid back. I feel like I’ve had a six day weekend. We also just found out our academic advisor has to go to France to “recover” from his mysterious illness, which should hopefully throw our program into chaos and allow us to continue our beach-to-bar lifestyle.

This Sunday marks one month in Senegal, which is very, very hard to believ. We are 20% done. I can only hope that the next weeks go a little more slowly… or at least that I get to go to the beach more often.

Get a pedicure, get your hair did

I don’t have too much time to write because I have to go home for a Muslim holiday (which I will explain later), but I just wanted to say that I got my haircut today… for a dollar.

You give me white wife yes?

First off, excuse any typos as I’m currenly slummin’ it in the local “cybercafé,” which I place in quotations due to its lack of post-1992 desktop computers and barely functioning French-language keyboards.

Thursday night we went to Baobab Quatre as usual, and got Gazelles as usual.  It was pretty dead, as I don’t think the concept of the Thirsty Thursday has made it to Dakar yet.  I had 2.5 beers, which gave me a nice African buzz and made for a peaceful night’s sleep in which I did not wake up once because of mosquitoes, goats, or calls to prayer.  Plus there was this psycho guy at the bar with a bloody gauze patch on his head covering what seemed to be a lobotomy scar.  He was funny.

Friday we stepped even further outside of our comfort zones and tried a new beach (adventurous, I know).  We had heard good things about Grandes Mamelles, which translates as “Large Breasts” and is named after two big hills that funnily enough do not resemble breasts.  The beach was pretty stunning, with a massive cliff on the western side, lots of cave formations, and motherfuckin’ HUGE waves with tons of fun undertow.  Also, I had one of the most awkward cross-cultural interactions with a Senegalese soldier patrolling the beach.  I forget his name, but that’s not important.  What is important is the fact that he asked if I could “offer” him a white woman as a wife.  He’s been in the army for going on 16 years now, and he thinks it’s time to settle down… with a white woman.  So when I get back to the States I’m supposed to tell all the womenfolk that I met this great guy in Senegal who’s looking for some sweet interracial matrimony.

After the beach we went to a super-Americanized restaurant called Caesar’s (home of the Famous Caesar Fried Chicken Since 1954!).  I had a Shish-Ta-Wook, and some of everyone else’s nuggets, pizza, and paninis.  Mmm.

After gorging on chicken, I went home and continued reading my awesome book (Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow, it’s so good) and took a hardcore three-hour nap before dinner.  I woke up with some intense sunburns on my legs and knees, but I think that’s inevitable in the equatorial sun.  After dinner there was a power outage, so I sort of just bummed around the ‘hood with the host brother before returning home to watch Cellular with Kim Basinger, that horrible actor from Fantastic Four, and, surprisingly, William H. Macy.  It wasn’t so good, but it was either that or Big Momma’s House 2.  Seriously.

Today has been really uneventful.  There is a ton of construction happening at the homestead, with lots of cement being poured and chisels chiselling away.  Hopefully this will be done soon, because it’s pretty loud and the construction workers smoke a lot.  It will be nice to have new flooring, though, and I’m getting a new mattress which should help me sleep better.

So now I’ll go home and read more Ragtime before lunch, then there is a remote chance I will exercise for the first time in three weeks, or, if not, there’s always Big Momma.

Man, dégg naa wolof tuuti rekk.

Just got out of a long, long Wolof class wherein we learned to count! And measurements of time! Counting in Wolof just might be the most convoluted thing ever. They base everything on five, as in: one, two, three, four, five, five-one, five-two, five-three, five-four, ten, ten-one, and so stupidly on.

To say, for example, someone is 99 years old, you say: “Juróom ñent fukki at ak juróom ñent la am,” which translates as “Five four ten years and nine has he.” And to make things even more complicated, the same goes for money. You have to divide all prices in CFA (the West African franc) by five to say them in the correct Wolof form, the dërëm, which equals 5 CFA. So if something costs 170 CFA, that’s 34 dërëm. I mean, seriously people… a base-five system? No wonder you were colonized.

But despite the tediousness of Wolof counting, my ability to understand the language is slowly progressing, and I’m starting to be able to pick up words in my family’s rapid-fire discussions over the dinner bowl and on the street with my host brother’s sketchy, sketchy friends. There’s nothing more satisfying than when I’m able to put together a coherent Wolof sentence and not have my host family mock my grammar (or lack thereof).

Later this afternoon we’re going to a town hall meeting on the political situation at the American ambassador’s residence, which should be mildly interesting (especially if there are hors d’oeuvres). The president just pushed back the elections in what seems to be an unsurprising attempt to not relinquish his huge amount of power. I’m secretly hoping that there is going to be some election-related “disturbances.” I just think that would be cool to experience. Most of the violence in America is not election-related, but rather drug- or money-related. A new kind of violence might be enlightening.

The outlook for this weekend is good. Tonight we’re planning to get as close to “Georgetown drunk” as safely possible. Tomorrow we don’t have class and as such will be on the beach from 11 AM until the sun sets. Plus my room at home is getting slightly renovated… goodbye disgusting 1970s linoleum, hello shiny new tiled floor! And, depending on the moon (I still don’t understand how we don’t know what the moon is going to do…), the Muslim New Year holiday of Tam Xarit is going to be Sunday or Monday night, in which case we’ll have the following day off of school and a glorious feast of couscous and chicken. Mmm, delicious on both counts.

Speaking of food, dama xiif (I’m hungry), so I have to go and lekk (eat). L8R HOMESLICES (that’s Wolof for “goodbye”).

Things that Senegalese people like too much

Sugar. I have yet to see a Senegalese person make a cup of coffee using anything less than five sugar cubes. People suck on sugar cubes as a snack.

Knock-off designer clothing. Not that I have anything against fake clothing, but it brings a smile to my face to see people wearing shirts with misspelled designer names: Dolcee & Gabbanna, or Tomy Hilfigger.

Mutton. Seriously, mutton is disgusting.

Chocoleca. This one is related to the sugar observation. Chocoleca is advertised as the “Delight of Champions,” a super-sweet chocolate spread. Take the nuts out of Nutella and replace them with some sort of gravelly chalk-like material, and you would get Chocoleca.

“Psst.” This is both a verb and a noun, a way of getting someone’s attention. For instance: you’re walking down the street and someone “Psst”s at you to come into their shop and purchase Chocoleca.