Le temps senegalais!

This weekend made it very clear to me that I'm in Senegal. SHOCKER, I know, that's it's takin' so long to realize this, but it has.

Friday Night
After dinner, we had went to a birthday party for one of the host brothers. The party was in an apartment in Medina and it was so interesting because the girl who lived in the apartment cooked for about 20 people. That would never happen in the States! Especially for people of a younger generation. This girl was probably a couple years older than me and she made 2 crepes, pizza, salad, and a couple other unidentified (like most things here) foods for EACH person. It made me feel so lame considering the extent of my cooking is EasyMac... and I frequently screw that up. We then sang Happy Birthday and ate some cake. Around 2am (yes, 2am) we went dancing and my conclusion is that Americans cannot dance. I don't know where these Senegalese learn how to dance, but it's amazing and makes every Tubab (Caucasian) look incredibly lost.

Saturday

Old Prison

I would have loved to sleep in, but the Baobab Center planned for us to go to Gorée Island with the guides.. at 10am. Gorée was an island used to hold slaves, before traveling to Europe, the Untied States or Latin America. The ferry ride took about 15 minutes and, although it's totally catered to tourists (aka tubabs), it is absolutely beautiful.

Door of No Return

The first places to visit was the Maison des esclaves (House of Slaves). The most fascinating aspect for me was to hear/see history from a different perspective. I feel as if the brutalities of slavery are avoided; however, at the Maison des Esclaves, they weren't afraid to tell it like it is... excuse my cliche. In addition, it was more powerful than learning about slavery in the States simply because I'm living in a country that is still recovering from colonization, and may never fully recover. This is not to sound hopeless, but you can see every day how colonization has affected the lives of the Senegalese. The most prevalent example of this is the way French has been imposed on the Senegalese. Now, I won't bore you with my opinions on colonization, but you can see why this visit to Gorée was inspiring for me. We then went to a couple other museums, including an old prison. We sat down for dinner and heard some good music. We then spent the rest of the day on the beach. The water felt like a jacuzzi and because it was so salty, you could float easily. Although, after two hours we were so sick of Gorée because vendors would not stop bothering us. When I got home, I took a nap and after dinner, Erica convinced me to go out to a concert with our guide Samba.

So, we got to the Boabab Center to meet Samba at 11pm. We waited for 45 mins and then we called. He said he was coming, but he never showed up. Around 12:30am, some other guy decided to take us to the concert. When we got to Just 4 you, we found out that there actually wasn't a concert there and we went to Madison. When we got to Madison, we found out that the Baobab Orchestra was in fact not performing and that Assane Ndiaye was performing. We decided since we'd gone through all that trouble, that we'd stay. The performer was supposed to start at 12, but it really didn't start until 3am... le temps senegalais!!! All in all, I'm glad I went... although I basically fell asleep listening to Assane Ndiaye sing. His music is on iTunes if you're interested.


My pictures aren't attaching to this blog, so I'll attach them to another blog.
Bisous!
Alyssa