When I last left you, I had returned from a relaxing and at times blurry vacation weekend in Toubab Dialaw aka Rivendell.* Transitioning back to the mindless droning of egotistical, underqualified professors the lucid, fascinating, well-organized lectures of Senegal’s best and brightest academics has been, well, difficult… I’ve talked before about how Dakar can be a boring, museum- and cinema-less city with nothing to do except go to the beach, the Internet cafe, the beach, or the bar. (Believe me, the beach gets old.) The sad thing is I’m never actually that bored during the week, since we have class pretty much all day. It’s the weekend afternoons that can be suffocating. So coming back from Paradise has been hard, and my dissatisfaction with Dakar has only been compounded by the fact that Spring Break is a mere 12 days away… it’s hard to stop thinking about paninis, lattes, and my birthday. But life really isn’t that bad, and I get a little spring in my step everytime I think about y’all going back to campus and dealing with the stress of classes and work again. (That’s what you call schadenfreude.)
Well, that’s enough soul-baring self-reflection. I know you people don’t care about my innermost thoughts. You just want gratuitous sex and violence, so I’ll just skip to the highlights of the last weeks:
Pears. This one is bittersweet: as the mandarin orange season leaves us, the pears have started to appear. I’m admittedly not a huge pear fan in the United States, as they’re usually underripe and just generally underrecognized as a delicious fruit. The pears here are very sweet and ripe, and while they may never equal the mandarin in my mind (especially since they’re 100 CFA more expensive), they’re getting pretty close. Plus they have fiber!
Duphalac. Speaking of fiber, I’ve kicked it up a notch on the intensinal front. Instead of paying 15,000 CFA ($30) to see the Baobab Center’s “excellent” doctor, I took matters into my own hands, and with the help of Molly’s detailed notetaking from our health session during orientation and a little advice from my local pharmacist, I purchased a bottle of French-made stool softener. This shit works wonders! LITERALLY!
Hummus. On Monday afternoon, our literature class was canceled. (We’re reading a book called The Black Boy. Surprised?) Normally, I would have gone to sun myself on the roof, but with my new anti-boredom crusade in mind, I went with Molly and Stacey to a mysterious, much-discussed Lebanese-owned grocery store on the Corniche Ouest, which is the main road along the coast on the western side of the city. I had heard many things about this supposedly magical store, which is located in Fann Résidence, the disgustingly posh neighborhood where lots of foreign diplomats and/or evil French robber barons live in pastel mansions behind high walls, eating Brie and escargot while raping Senegal of its natural resources. The store was supposed to have lots of Western luxuries (cereal! face wash! the Economist!) and I was in the mood to drop some bills on unnecessary but comforting imported goods. And let me tell you, the Magical Lebanese Supermarché lived up to the hype. Supermarché? Nay, more like hypermarché! My purchases: a can of hummus, a soapdish, and a can of mandarine orange Fanta. My satisfication: complete. The hummus is chilling with some veggies in the Baobab Center minifridge right now, and if today’s lunch lives up to my expectations, I will be back at the Magical Lebanese Hypermarché very soon to stock up on more Middle Eastern delights.
Babacar Guèye. Our infamous, frequently absent “academic director.” This is the man ultimately repsonsible for Georgetown’s program in Senegal. The man who went to France for an angioplasty; the man who, back from Paris, mysteriously disappeared for a week. Theories abounded: maybe he went to a traditional healer in the bush? Maybe he was kidnapped? No one knew for sure, since Guèye had left his cell phone at home with no alternative way to contact him. Turns out he was in Saudi Arabia writing some treaty or something. But, after months of absence, finally back from his vacations/invasive surgeries/diplomatic missions, Guèye wanted to make amends. So he brought us to Terrou-Bi, an upscale restaurant behind the University (“the best restaurant in Senegal”), a favorite of French people and wannabe French people. We each had 10,000 CFA to spend ($20, an exorbitant amount of money for food, although it came out of the program budget and was therefore paradoxically part of our tuition). We first ordered white wine. I wanted a half bottle, Phelan wanted a half bottle, but the waitress suggested splitting a 3/4 bottle, since in her mind that was more than two half bottles. We argued for probably four or five minutes, trying to explain to her our simple math (half plus half equals whole), but in the end relented and just let her bring the booze. Phelan and I then proceeded to split a pizza (artichokes! and mushrooms!) and spaghetti carbonara, finishing with a fruit salad and sorbet. This on top of WARM WHOLE WHEAT BREAD with BUTTER. The capital letters barely communicate my excitement. And then a ride back home in Babacar Guèye’s baller 1995 Land Rover, followed by some writhing in bed with the fullest stomach I’ve had in a long time.
Feist, The Reminder. I only have six songs at this point, but damn is this record good. I’ve had “I Feel It All” on repeat for the last week, and I still can’t get enough of her lyrics or her impressive vocals. I wasn’t such a huge fan of her last one, but this one’s on a whole other level. Makes for a nice break from constantly playing Neon Bible, although, let’s be honest, I still find the time to do that too.
Prison Break. My host brothers and sisters are now officially addicated to this show, and while I’d seen parts of it on Fox at home, I’d never really gotten into it. And while it’s hard to follow sometimes in French, I watched 10 episodes in like three days. Question for all you dedicated Prison Breakers: what is Michael Scofield’s prison nickname in English, because in French it’s something like “Angel Face”?
Kinkiliba. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this before, which is surprising because I think I’ve developed a chemical dependance. Kinkiliba is a kind of Senegalese tea; it comes from a special bush that is dried and then compressed into a tube-like shape. You pull off the dried leaves and put them in boiling water with some fresh mint, add a little powdered milk and voilà — the most amazing after-dinner drink ever. I don’t know how and I don’t know if it’s legal, but I’m smuggling a dried tea bush back home, even if I end up in Guantánamo wearing a bright orange jumpsuit with a hood over my head. GEORGE BUSH DOESN’T CARE ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE’S TEA!
OK, I have class again now, so I’ll leave on a high (or very, very low) note:
Sheep’s testicles. I ate one. It did not taste like chicken. I still get queasy thinking about it.
That’s all for now. Depending on whether or not the Marines have forgiven the Georgetown girls for not going to their invite-only naked pool party the other week, we might be able to watch the Georgetown-Belmont game tomorrow. Let’s hope they love March Madness as much as they love freedom and democracy.
* Thanks, Vince, you’re more of a loser than I could have ever imagined.
I am so happy to hear that your experiences in Senegal continue to enlighten and enrich your budding mind. If you would like the rest of the new Feist, I’ll put the tracks you don’t have on sendspace. And speaking of your birthday, I got you something (an OiNK account) which may in fact cause you to involuntarily ejaculate, that is if you don’t already have one. Either way, you’ll have to wait until you get home. Bring me some of that tea, too; if it’s anything like matte de coca than I must have as much as you can carry on the plane.
Just in case everyone thinks that what you’re actually looking forward to about Spring Break are paninis, lattes, and your birthday, I’ll let them in on our little secret. We have code names. I’m “panini,” Amanda is “latte,” and Lauren is “my birthday” (I call her that all the time. “Hey My Birthday! How’s it going?”), and we’re actually the most exciting part of your upcoming Florence visit.
Great blog, good job getting it all together
In the first season, they all call Michael “Fish,” because that’s what everyone calls the new inmates. T-bag calls him “Pretty.”
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