Interesting Things about Dakar

I thought I'd share with you some unique aspects of Senegalese life, so you can fully understand why I love living here. :)

1. Everything is shared. If there's a bottle of water set out for people to drink, there will be only one glass/cup for everyone to share. You just have to wait your turn for the cup.
2. You don't drink and eat at the same time. You always eat and then drink. Supposedly, this is to prevent choking.
3. If you thought the midwest was friendly, you thought wrong. You greet EVERYONE here. This means that when you're walking home, you have the same 30 second conversation at least 10 times. Once I walked into my friend's house and asked if she was there and I got a long lecture on how I didn't greet her first.
4. You bargain for just about everything here. It's a way of developing relationships with people. I think it's funny that you're gaining friendships while being mean and not giving them the price they want.
5. The Senegalese are very observative. If they see you once, they'll most likely recognize you again, which is really frustrating because it's hard to remember who people are here. I understand this may be because I'm a Tubab, but it's been frustrating to have people remember your name and not remember theirs. Also, when you're eating from a big bowl, the mom will quietly throw meat your way if she notices you're having a hard time breaking off pieces or if you're just not eating any.
6. I always look shitty (by the way, I feel I can use this word because my grandpa taught me it... although my grandpa has taught me a lot of things that I shouldn't say out loud :)). Rephrased: I always look grungy compared to everyone else. You can try to look better than the Senegalese, but you can never look as good as them. Especially when you go out to the clubs... I've never seen so much bling in my life.
7. You're lucky to find a toilet with toilet paper and a toilet seat. That's all I'm going to say about that.
8. Most families are very matriarchal, especially my family. My mom runs the household and knows everything about everyone. My dad barely speaks to me and if he does speak to me, he's getting someone to accompany me to another house, or telling me to not take anything out at night. I was not expecting this before coming here.
9. There's this cooking show that people are obsessed with here. It's called MasterChef. It's kind of like TopChef. I find this hilarious because the food they make on the show looks NOTHING like Senegalese food and the plates prepared on the show could maybe satisfy half a person; whereas here, the food could satisfy more than 10 people.
10. Men are very affectionate with one another. It's hard to get used to, but after awhile it's very refreshing because I feel that if two guys are sitting at a dinner table together, people assume they're gay. Here, it's very normal to have guys going everywhere together, and even dancing together. It's actually very rare to see men and women together out in public.
11. It's never silent in Dakar... you can always hear some type of sound and it's usually people singing in the streets. It's one of my favorite things here.
12. When it rains, Dakar becomes lazy. My prof (my Tonton) didn't show up to class all day on Monday because of the rain. In his defense, the roads are completely flooded when it rains, and it's really difficult to get to school without walking through puddles ankle deep; however, the roads were moderately cleared up by the afternoon.
13. Women like to cook outside their homes with cauldrons. Most of them are cooking peanuts or corn. When we're walking home, it's hard not to stop.
14. Lots of people have sheep living in their homes, most likely on the rooftop and they feed them lots of cardboard. Although they do like to eat clothing as well because Katie's shirt was hanging on the roof to dry and a sheep ate the whole thing. So now one of her few shirts will probably be in her dinner within the upcoming weeks.

Doesn't this just make you want to jump on a plane to Dakar?!
Love, Alyssa