Spring break was amazing. Europe was amazing. Paris is one of the best places in the world. In the interest of time (both mine and yours), I’ll summarize those luxurious 14 days in acrostic form, OK?

Left Dakar almost three hours late
I missed my connection and had a 12-hour layover
Surprised by Lisbon’s beauty and laid-back charm
Braved the cold in flip-flops and socks
Ogled at some monasteries and medieval fortresses
New entry on my Top 5 Places To (Re-)Visit list

Really exhausted after traveling for 26 hours
Orgasmic hot shower (first since January 6) almost made me cry with joy
Managed to see the (outside of) the Colosseum and the Palatino
En route to Florence a few hours later

Fêted my birthday with pizza and
Lots and lots of alcohol consumed, including wine, beer, and
Oh, six or so Kamikaze shots, obviously all leading up to a fantastic
Roaring drunk and subsequent multi-hour blackout.
Eh, and I saw some of the city too.
Nice views from the hills on our bike ride/wine-tasting.
Chowed down on paninis, GELATO, and some delicious chef-made meals at the Villa.
Explored Parma and Bologna and enjoyed efficient public transportation infrastructure.

Probably my favorite place in the entire world.
Avenues and boulevards and beauty and greenery.
Really cheap wine drunk on the Seine
I want to move there ASAP.
Saw the episodes of LOST that I missed, too.

Well that’s it for me being a poet. Now some Senegal news. Ben came, saw the dirt and went to the beach and left on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Molly, Stacey, and I set out on our rural visits. We basically did it for the money (OUR money), but we were also promised sea turtles and beach. Come to find out — this after a hellish five-hour journey on cramped, smelly busses averaging 5 kph on shitty rutted roads — that not only is our contact not in the village, but there are no sea turtles in sight. Instead, it’s dead fish, fishhooks, and other fish-related paraphernalia. The woman we’re supposed to stay with: also not there. So we spend the first night with a friendly gentleman named Jacques, whose angelic if busty sister Léonie cooks us omelettes and takes care of us with a Florence Nightengale-esque gentleness. The next day we take a walk on the beach past the most beautiful hotel in the world (search Google for “Le Royal Lodge”), and then return to the dirty, running-water- and electricity-less village. We’re promptly torn from our haven at Jacques’ house and dropped at the woman (now returned), a cross-eyed creature named Seynabou. We take a nap in the unbelievable heat, which of course necessitates weird fever dreams and cold sweats… Five hours later, we’re still in the room, still on the mattress, with absolutely no energy to do anything, if there was anything to do. (There wasn’t.) Lunch is fish and rice — not half bad — but dinner is rock-hard fried fish that could probably have been used as a murder weapon. (Either forcing someone to eat it and thereby killing them, or just hitting them on the head with it and breaking their skull.)

So, basically we decided to leave a day early and endured the five-hour bus ride back, complete with inexplicable 45-minute pit stops, smelly old men, obese Senegalese women, and flocks of street urchins selling frozen bottles of water. All in all, it wasn’t that bad in the village, especially at night, when it sort of became like camping. But in the end they didn’t have anything for us to do or see, so leaving early was a good choice. Plus the Jew in me was delighted at the the nearly $70 profit!

Classes are coming to an end. They should be completely done next week, and this coming weekend we’re going up to St-Louis (“crumbling colonial beauty”) with the all-mighty Professor Babacar Guèye, the playa-est playa the Senegalese political community has seen in years. Then I just have to get through paper-writing — eased by the grand opening of an American-style café down the street, complete with lattes and delicious crêpes and smoothies — and then it’s home. And if STA Travel doesn’t screw me over, I might even be coming home six days early.

Time to go home for dinner (disgusting fried fish in fried onion sauce with French fries!) so this is where I leave you. Hope everyone is coping with papers, finals, and the realization that we’re going to be seniors soon. I’ll try to keep up the blog in the last couple of weeks, but then again I’m lazy, forgetful, and don’t do much besides drink and sleep.

All day Tuesday I was aching for a really good drunk, but by the end of the day (after going downtown to buy some presents for my European hosts and hostesses) I was just too gosh-darn tied. As a consequence of this pent-up alcoholism, Wednesday night was a fun if self-destructive evening of gin and brioche and blurry bedtimes.

And, as such, Thursday was horrible. Normally if I was that hungover I would just skip my 8:30 class, but seeing as I’m skipping this entire upcoming week to go gallavanting through Italian piazzas and French châteaux, I figured I should probably suck it up and make an appearance. Unsurprisingly, economics at 8:30 was awful. At 10:30, we had a meeting with Baobab Center bureaucrats: enraging, as usual. Note: rage and hangovers do not mix well. Then we took a ride in Babacar Guèye’s Land Rover to talk to some people about the elections, yet again. It was actually really interesting, as these people seemed to actually know what they were talking about (rare). The only problem was that I was still fighting off the dizzies and the room we were in was in the process of being painted. Note: paint fumes and hangovers do not mix well. Then I went home for lunch, napped for literally 14 minutes (woken up by spoiled annoying nephew), and returned to school for another invigorating two-hour Wolof class. Luckily my Wolof teacher/personal hero Zator was as unenthused as we were and let us out almost an hour early. I love Zator.

Suffice to say I was in a horrible mood, and was really looking forward to getting a good, cheap haircut, as I had twice before. It sounds weird, but haircuts always cheer me up, especially when they’re $1. I went to the guy I’ve been to before, and told him the same thing I told him before, but somehow — in that infuriating illogical African way — he decided to take matters into his own hands and basically give me a prison-issue buzzcut. Indeed, the first comments I got were in reference to Michael Scofield and Prison Break… not exactly the look I was going for, especially since my scalp is winter-in-New-Hampshire white and the rest of my body is white-boy-in-Africa tan. And it’s not like I have a lot of hair to work with here, dude. Pretty awful-looking. Anyway, I was ripshit and had to get up at 7:30 the next morning to go on a weekend trip.

The trip, organized and paid for the Baobab Center (i.e. our money in the hands of incompetent fools), was to a delta region south of Dakar called Siné-Saloum. We were told of mangrove forests, river swimming, beaches, etc. Exciting, right? Read on, dear reader.

So we left the Baobab Center almost 45 minutes late (saw that one coming!) On the way to the Saloum we stopped at an NGO called the Centre Malango. We were supposed to meet traditional healers and see them in action… what this has to do with anything with any of our class, you tell me. So we pull up to this very isolated conglomeration of huts and wait outside for the director, who’s on the telephone talking about slavery or somesuch nonsense. The sun is beating down, we’re sitting and waiting and swatting at flies. He comes out and gives a long-winded lecture about how traditional medicine works and how it’s so hard to gain legitimacy in the eyes of modern medicine. Well duh. Pouring milk on the ground and sacrificing sheep on Fridays isn’t exactly on par with, say, anti-retrovirals or the polio vaccine. Anyway, we got a brief tour of the compound’s very cutting-edge laboratory facilities — think the science station on LOST (see my Flickr page for more). And then we sat down to talk with the healers: all male, all old, all wrinkly. There were no patients about, since it was Friday and most healers don’t work on Fridays. We were able to get a demonstration of their healing abilities, though: one man put on a fancy headdress and then proceeded to chew a razor blade. With medicinal skills like that, I’m surprised he hasn’t cured malaria. (I warned you that this was going to get bitterly sarcastic.)

We departed the healer’s village and continued south to literally the end of the road: the ferry dock that was supposed to take us across the river to the “bustling” town of Foundiougne. Of course we were late, and missed the ferry, so we left the van behind and hopped on a pirogue. Well, we first waited for the pirogue driver to clear away the fishhooks and stinky fish carcasses, and then we hopped on. Across ther river, we pulled up to our hotel and literally ran to the lunch table. Lunch was shrimp, grilled fish, and fruit.

Next we took some horse-drawn carts. Our destination: salt pits. The area around Foundiougne is, to say the least, desolate. Very flat. The river is literally at the same level as the ground — there are no banks, so it looks like the river is just inches deep. The water salty and the water table is so high that nothing can grow. Thus, the only real industry is extracting salt from the ground. We went out to the pits and saw how they dig holes and wait for the water to evaporate. Men dig, women extract. There is no “private property” per se; they just trust each other not to steal someone else’s salt.

Next we continued our horse-cart ride to a local village, where we were duly swarmed by several dozen rapscallions. And by rapscallions I mean totally unsupervised, dirty, bedraggled children. Runny noses, torn clothes, brown teeth, seven-year-old girls holding seven-month-old babies on their hips. You cannot imagine the frenzy that ensued when we whipped out our bags of milk cookies and started distributing. Little black hands flying everywhere. Then we learned about this mystical ancient drum from a toothless elder; they beat different rhythms depending on the occasion (marriage, death, drowning). Then we continued on back to the hotel, passing some more desolation and lots of trash fields. Tragedy of the commons much? I asked some questions about the desolation to our cart driver. He said that, in the past, the entire area supported agriculture and fields were everywhere. Now, he said, “the salt won against the land” and the saltwater table is too high to grow anything. They constructed some dikes in a few areas around the town to keep the salt out, but I would estimate several hundred acres were completely barren. Except for the trash, of course, which has been pretty much evenly distributed across the plains. (By the wind, on purpose, who knows? Senegal’s funny like that.)

Upon returning to the hotel, we had lunch — which, for the first time, we got to choose — delicious salad, omelette, and french fries. Totally satisfying, disgustingly full afterwards. That’s life. Then some hardcore napping until dinner, which was followed by what had only been described to us as a “soirée folklorique“, whatever the FUCK that means.

Actually, I know exactly what it means. It means a line of chairs set up specifically for a group of seven white American college students. It means an extremely bright spotlight shining on you as a group of probably otherwise unemployed rastafarians in ridiculous costumes play bongos and do traditional dances (read: breakdance) in front of you. It means they run back and forth screaming like they’re at some Pentecostal revival and experience the power of Jesus through the uncoordinated flailing of their bodies. It means they physically force you to join in the flail-fest, even if you would rather die and afterwards feel like you might want to make that happen. (Wow, that was bitter even for me. But I’m not going to delete it.)

The next morning meant breakfast, coffee, and a thoroughly satsifying bowel movement. And toilet paper was provided! (Don’t worry, I stole the roll before I checked out.) Then we drove maybe 90 seconds to the ferry dock and boarded another pirogue (again after the fish guts and rusty hooks were removed). Off the the lush mangrove swamps!

Two hours later: no mangroves yet, but we pull into a village. Get out, our Baobab Center chaperones/minders tell us. Why? we ask. What happens at this village? Turns out they dry and smoke fish. No thanks, we say, we don’t want to spend an hour in the sun watching and smelling smoked fish. We want to swim, is that too much to ask? Apparently yes. But after some tough words, we continued on to a mildly interesting mangrove-y area and saw a couple of birds. Maybe four.

Then we had to opportunity to dive off the pirogue and swim in the river, which was destined to be the highlight of the trip. Molly went first and did a graceful dive! Oops, they forgot to tell us the water was literally up to her knees. Thanks, Baobab Center minders. Thanks, boat driver. We didn’t really like our spinal columns anyway. Anyway, the swimming was a lot of fun if extremely salty. The second you got out the sun would bake that shit off you. If we were locals, we could have sold it.

Back to the hostel for our free afternoon! Yay! Free time! I took a quick nap, read a little, and then ventured out into the hot sun to find something fun to do. And by something fun to do, I mean ice cream to eat. Molly, Stacey, and I take the initiative and start the long walk into town.

Exactly 90 seconds later we arrive in bustling downtown Foundiougne and start our quest for ice cream. After trying to explain the difference between blocks of ice and ice cream, we give up. Apparently they don’t have ice cream because it would melt before they could get it from a bigger nearby city. Let’s not think to make our our ice cream. Too hot.

So we spent the rest of the afternoon playing Rummy 500 (also known as Rumy Sénégal, the game that never ends) and waiting patiently until 6 PM to start drinking. Then another shower (that’s right, number three), dinner, and the Senegal-Tanzania soccer game. Again disgustingly full, so we take a walk to a boutique to buy some snacks. The boutique owner looked suspiciously like a character from the great Brendan Fraser flick The Mummy, but it turns out that’s only because he’s Mauritanian. They have slavery there, you know.

The fun continued the next morning at practically sunrise, as we headed an hour and half south to Toubakouta, a gorgeous, lively, interesting tourist town where WE DIDN’T STAY. Apparently the Baobab Center has never heard of Lonely Planet and/or likes to pick random towns to stay in. Anyway, we order our lunches and continue on to Parc Fathala, which advertises giraffes and rhinos (shipped in from East Africa, don’t worry). After paying an exorbitant amount of money to get in and buy an auto permit, we drove around with a guide for two hours of bumpy roads and hot sun. We were actually better at spotting what few animals there were than our expensive guide. For most of the time I wanted to claw my eyes out in boredom, since there were no creatures to ogle at. Even the landscape was boring, having been completely burned down in an accidental fire the month before. Anyway, we luckily were able to see two rhinos and two giraffes, along with many antelope-like creatures and plenty of warthogs. Overall, though, a sad, lonely journey through the savanna.

Then to the restaurant for a really good, sweaty lunch. We each had 5,000 CFA to spend, so we basically kept ordering Fantas and french fries and beers. Not a bad deal, especially since the chicken was delicious and meaty. Then we hopped into the van for the exciting SIX-AND-A-HALF-HOUR ride back to Dakar on some lovely roads/non-roads. By the time we hit the Dakar metro traffic, I wanted to die. But at least it was finally less than 100 degrees, even if the air was chokingly polluted.

Moral of the trip: Baobab Center sucks, and must be cut out of the loop as much as possible.

I went home exhausted and dirty, but was immediately cheered up by the awesomeness that is my host family. They’re just so goddamn friendly and funny. Papisse (one of the sons) was back in Dakar, home on a week’s vacation from his job with the World Food Programme in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Mama, Papa, and him had gone to Touba for the day to do some fun Muslim things, so I hadn’t even missed dinner. And we had maafé, which is probably my favorite Senegalese dish, so I devoured that. Life was good.

And now the class schedule is up, the Hoyas are in the Final Four, my bowels are doing really well, my cousin and his wife had their baby, and I’m leaving tonight for a disgustingly luxurious two-week European vacation! Life is even better.

I actually have a really funny story about the horrible movie I watched with Tico last night, but that will have to wait for another day. I also won’t be uploading/stealing other people’s pictures from the Siné-Saloum trip for a couple days, since my camera battery died on Sunday and I haven’t had the chance the charge it. Be patient.

In other news: when I left this morning Papisse was cleaning a goat in our courtyard. I said something to the effect of, “Who’s your friend?” and he replied “Don’t get too attached to him, he won’t be around for long.” So when I get home there will probably be a dead sheep carcass blocking the stairs. Downside: blood everywhere. Another downside: lots more mutton in the near future. Upside: I’m going to Europe tomorrow.

This turned out to be the longest post in the brief but illustrious history of this blog. I’ve really run out of things to say, and my stomach’s grumbling, so I’m headed home for (a possible maafé) lunch.

Next posts from Rome, Florence, and Paris!

This blog post is going to be brief, if not for the fact that this past week has been uneventful, then at least because I’m going to the bar in less than 20 minutes.

Friday night was the birthday party of Georgetown’s own Stacey. The fête was a week after her actual birthday, but was nonetheless a welcome break from oily Senegalese dinners. It was the most unique of American get-togethers — the pot luck — so everyone brought a little something. I was planning on getting Coca Light, but to my chagrin a liter bottle cost 1,350 CFA, so I let that dream go. Instead, Molly and I pooled our respective contributions and bought bagfuls of fruits and vegetables: cucumbers, tomatoes, bananas, oranges, and apples. We also bought my new favorite vegetable of Doug fame: the beet, a delicious but sadly underrated tuber. Anyway, we cut all that shit up and mixed the veggies with some lime juice, and the fruit with lait caillé (yogurt). It was delicious. Stacey made pasta with meat sauce and a huge heart-shaped Funfetti cake was also provided. Also delicious.

Saturday we went downtown and ate lunch at the Institut Français, which Lonely Planet described as a “leafy” place.  It was indeed leafy and lush and green, and very European (in a good way).  The meals were a little pricey, but the food was so good that I didn’t mind paying almost 10 dollars.  (I can’t use a dollar sign because this keyboard ain’t got one.  Heathens.)  It was actually pretty funny:  As soon a our waiter, he let us know that they were out of hamburger, which was fine with us since as soon as we sat down and saw the menu, we had all immediately decided to get the Avocado Chicken salad, because avocados are, well, avocados.  Funnily enough, the kitchen had run out of avocados, and had replaced them (without our knowledge) with apples and cantaloupe.  It was funny in that Senegal-sometimes-makes-you-want-to-kill-something way because the waiter made it a point to say they’d run out of hamburger, but neglected to mentioned that the main ingredient of the salad the SIX of us ordered was, well, not available.  And to further enrage us, a group of obviously rich African students came after us and were immediately served hot, steaming, ketchup-and-mustardy — you guessed it — hamburgers.  AFRICA 4 LYFE!!

Sunday I slept late, laid around, Skyped with my parents, and did other lazy things.

Today we’re going to Raddho, a human-rights-cum-election-observation organization (they supervised the observation that we were supposed to do but was canceled for not apparent reason). Friday we leave for Sine-Saloum, a river delta in the south of Senegal (but north of the Casamance, where the rebel fighting has “taken a turn for the worse”). In typical Baobab Center fashion, we’re not going to find out exactly when or where we’re going until Thursday — that’s right, the day before. “You gotta be flexible, guys…” That’s their motto/excuse for their incompetence. But I won’t let that get me down because…

Spring Break is in less than a week! I’m extremely excited. I’m a little sad that I’ll be away from the family for two weeks, since that’s an eon in Senegalese time, especially given the fact that when I get back in April I’ll be showing Ben around for a week, then I have a week of rural visits, then a long weekend of political deliberations in the bush. So that doesn’t really leave a lot of time, which is good on one hand because classes will end soon, but bad on the other because I’ll basically never be at home for the last month of my study abroad experience. Oh well, I think the family will survive, especially if I bring them back pastries, candy, and Italian-made shoes.

But, seriously, my shower this morning was unbearably cold. The weather has been really uncharacteristic (lows in the mid-60s!) and everyone, even the Whiteys, are cold. The wind doesn’t help either, so it makes cleaning oneself quite difficult. It’s funny how you start defining levels of cleanliness: there’s the full shower, where you shampoo and use soap and wash your face; and the medium shower, with just shampoo and face wash; and the disgusting non-shower, where you just wash your hair and hope for the best. Hot showers. Six days.

Oh, in other news: I found out that I got GUROP, which is awesome because now I can stay in DC for the summer for sure. And I think most of the tenants of 1691 35th Street will be there as well, which leads me to believe that this will be a summer full of BBQ, beer, and (fingers crossed!) blackouts. The humidity might kill me, but I’d rather die sweating in my single in Georgetown than in my room in Strip Mall USA.

I’ll try to post again before we leave for Sine-Saloum, especially if I call my internship (yes, that’s right, the one I was supposed to start six weeks ago). Oh, inefficiency, you are constant companion.

P.S. Would anyone else sacrifice their first-born for the class schedule to be up?

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.

Last week was pretty rough for me. Dakar was getting boring, school was annoying, I was tired and my lungs ached from all the pollution. Our rural visits (during which we would have a week off of school) were moved forward from March 9 to some indefinite time in the next 12 weeks. It was time to get out of town.

We’d heard of Toubab Dialaw from other students, and Lonely Planet is a big fan of this tiny, touristy (that is, white) beach town on the Petite Côte south of the Dakar peninsula. LP described the village as “Tolkien-esque” — I was picturing the Elves’ city with all the waterfalls and shimmering sunlight. (I’m sure someone can tell me the name of that fictional city, and perhaps even give me a detailed history. Kevin…)

We met on Saturday morning and took cabs to the Gare Routière, which purports to be Dakar’s main bus station but is basically a parking lot in an industrial zone under the highway. Groups of “helpful” men swarmed us and after 25 minutes of haggling and being misled and arguing in Frolof, we got a man to take the seven of us in his minibus — direct to Toubab Dialaw (no changing buses in the middle of the savanna!) for 14,000 CFA ($28).

The bus ride was hot and… hot, but pretty quick once we got out of the Dakar metro area traffic (not an easy feat). We got to the hotel and could hardly believe our eyes. It’s called Sobo-Bade and really is a Hobbit village. It’s built into the side of a cliff, everything is decorated with seashells, all the roofs are thatched, hammocks abound, and the views are really stunning.

We got a seven-person dorm room for $8 each a night (a steal), and proceeded immediately to the beach, where we lounged until the sun was starting to scramble our brains. We ate dinner at a restaurant across the street, where we waited a full 90 minutes for our pizzas (although they were good). Then some of hiked up the hill to a liquor-selling supermarket to buy cheap rum and warm juice. We took our disgustingly hot beverages to the hammock area, played drinking games, rocked in the hammocks, and watched the lunar eclipse.

The next morning we woke up late, got breakfast on the beach (although there was no jam, as advertised). More lounging on the beach, another hike up the hill for alcohol (now double the amount from the night before). Dinner was at a restaurant populaire, which was more or less this woman’s living room. We all had a craving for chicken, and while she didn’t have any on hand she was nice enough to get some from one of her aunts. We had chicken sandwiches, and then she offered us (free of charge!) fresh ginger juice, rice and vegetables, and this Senegalese custard for dessert. Her daughter was a midget… a very creepy child who stood next to our table with her tongue out moaning for little bits of chicken and rice. When they gave her the leftover chicken bones to suck on, it was like something out of a horror movie. But the woman was so friendly, and our stomachs were full for the debauchery that was about to ensue.

Andreas and I tried to cool the alcohol in the ocean, but it didn’t really work and may or may not have gotten sand all over the bottles. No matter — we drank plenty nonetheless, and were having such a good time as to be asked to move by some other Americans (“trying to sleep” — LAME) in the hotel. Then some of us decided to go skinny-dipping in the frigid and actually dangerously fast-moving ocean, while Sennett and I made friends with some middle-aged stoners named Babacar and Youssou N’Dour (no relation).

The next morning was dizzy, dizzy, dizzy. We got breakfast on the beach again, and then swam and laid in the sun to try to gather strength for the bumpy car ride back to Dakar. (We had long ago abandoned the hope of making it back for our 3:30 class.) The hotel was nice enough to call us a sept-place, which is a converted station wagon with seven passenger seats; the driver was nice enough to take us all the way to Dakar for 17,000 CFA.

So, suffice it to say, this weekend was unforgettable and exactly what I needed to tide me over until Spring Break (only three weeks away). And also suffice it to say that I will be returning to Toubab Dialaw/Heaven at least once before I go home.

It’s 10 o’clock now, which means free coffee at the Baobab Center (our Wolof class this morning was cancelled). More class this morning, then some free time in the afternoon to prepare for a presentation with my friend Zoe in African Literature tomorrow… the book is about colonialism and the social changes that accompany it! SUPRISE! Never read about that before… oh wait, that’s EVERY FUCKING BOOK WE’VE READ FOR THIS CLASS. I’m not bitter.

This week should be manageable, seeing as I only have three days of class left. Hopefully we’ll be able to watch some of the Big East Tournament at the Marines’ house. And for those of you who are regular readers, I will try and write more… really. Hope everyone’s enjoying their Spring Break. Just don’t end up on Girls With Low Self-Esteem.

IMPORTANT P.S. I forgot to mention that everyone was so happily drunk we all failed to wake up when a stray dog wandered into our room and took a huge, steaming dump on the floor in the middle of the night. That is all.

This morning I was supposed to have class from 8:30 to 1:30, but I’ve feeling like crap lately so didn’t go into school. I never thought I would get sick in Africa, but it’s been legitimately cold (legitimate in the sense that an American officially confirms that it’s “cold”). I probably caught it from my host brother, who caught it from my host sister, who caught it from my host father, who caught it because he had to get up at 6 AM and carry back ten kilos of vegetables and fish back from the market in the “freezing” cold. But last night I slept almost 12 hours, and I feel a lot better. (Skipping class might have made me feel better, too.)

My immune issues aside, the highlight of the week has been a birth in the family… a birth that I witnessed. Tuesday night, the stray cat that hangs out in our house (see previous post in which the cat was napping in my suitcase) gave birth on the floor in the spare room where I slept during the construction. Bitch just plopped down and squeezed a kitten out on an old foam mattress. We didn’t want to move them, and let them sleep there peacefully. The next morning, however, Papa came upstairs, threw his shoe at the cat, and ran away. He would later hire some neighborhood boys to shoo the cat out of the house. Emily had to step in to save the kitten’s life, because the kids would have probably taken it out into the street and stepped on its head.

People really hate cats here, and Papa in particular. In a lot of African animist traditions, each family has a “totem,” which is the animal that family members are forbidden to touch at any cost. Mama has it easy — her family’s totem is the camel, not exactly a city-dwelling animal. Papa has a lot harder, since the Thiam totem is the cat, and there are feral cats everywhere in this city. When there’s one in your house, though, you throw your shoe and get the hell out of there.

Emily put the kitten in a box with a towel, and left it on the street in front of our house. As of this morning, the mother hadn’t been able to find the box, even she keeps standing in front of the now-locked door to the delivery room. We brought the kitten with us to the Baobab Center, and Emily (after an unsuccessful attempt to buy an eye-dropper at the pharmacy) has been trying to feed it milk, although it can’t really swallow or open its eyes.

So that’s the cat story. Only in Africa.

Sunday is the big presidential elections, and you know what that means — ELECTION VIOLENCE!!! Yesterday some people got “gravely injured” in front of this restaurant popular with white expatriates, and the Embassy is throwing a hissy fit. They’re recommending that Americans don’t go outside after 2 PM and stay at home on all day Saturday and Sunday. OK, good advice.

Oh. Wait a second. We’re going to be ELECTION OBSERVERS all day Sunday. The Georgetowners and some students from the Wells College program are going to be scattered througout the city and voting centers, keeping an eye on shit and making sure things are free and fair. Contradictory? I think so. Although we were told a few times that voting centers are some of the safest places to be, since they’ll be heavily protected by the Senegalese Army and Dakar police. Apparently it’s not 100% sure that we’ll actually be going now (the Wells program director is questioning the safety of his students), and we’ll have to wait until Saturday night to find out.

In another potentially unsafe move, tomorrow (the last day of the presidential campaign), we’re going to do a brief internship with a political party. Mine is the Reform Party, but — true to their name — they’ve decided not to run a candidate this year, and instead to support the incumbent president. More like the Status-Quo Party.

In other news, I finally beat down my Jewishness and bought my plane tickets for spring break. I’m leaving the day before my birthday for Florence and the Villa, then heading to Paris on April 4, and then back to Dakar on April 10. Ben’s probably coming the week after that, so hopefully he gets malaria.

I’ve been on the Internet for too long, so now it’s time to buy some orange juice, go home and read Cold Mountain, and watch the 14 or so minutes of Lost I sucessfully downloaded this afternoon. And don’t worry, if a crazed mob attacks me (in the name of democracy), I can just hold up the kitten… that should scare them off right quick.