Sokone

I'm writing this on the bus back from Sokone on Sunday, Dec 5.  I'll try to get in the most important parts of my weekend, but mostly I want to focus on Saturday.

On Thursday night, we all went out for dinner and then dancing to celebrate Meredith's 21st birthday.  I got tired of dancing pretty quickly, and then happened to end up talking to a guy I'd danced with a little.  He's from Toulouse, a French Air Force paratrooper stationed in Dakar for the next few years. We chatted for a while and it was pleasant and he was respectful.  He asked if he could kiss me ("No.") rather than just trying to kiss me, he gave me his number rather than asking for mine, and he wasn't ridiculous and persistent like Senegalese men tend to be.  So that was good, but I'm not planning to see him again.

We left at 9ish on Friday morning and got to Sokone at 4ish.  Ate lunch and then had way too many things to do and the power was out until about 11.  The village near the hostel (pictures of the hostel to follow) threw us a dance, which was cool, but then they made us dance a ton.  I'm not huge into dancing, I had danced the night before, and they were doing traditional Senegalese dance and music, so I had no idea what to do, was intimidated, and didn't enjoy it that much.  Ah well.

The next morning, Saturday, we had a lovely breakfast:

Then we went to a honey-making place:

And were given a container of mangrove honey.  Oh yeah, that's a big thing: Sokone is known for its mangrove forests, which are super cool and gorgeous.  We then went on a little barefoot walk through the mud into the mangrove grove to see the beehive boxes they kept in there.  There were crabs everywhere!

They were these adorable little colorful crabs that were purple and red and white:

After that we went to a dock and got on a boat:

The boat took us to some beach that was a mile or so walk from a village called Bambou.  Bambou is a
preserve, where there is no fishing or farming or nature-reaping of any kind permitted.  We had a delicious lunch of yassa poulet:

After lunch we lounged in the shade and then went kayaking and swimming in some water.  We had to walk through a stream through a dense mangrove forest to get to a bigger river, and there were, again, so many crabs!  Literally herds of hundreds of crabs skittered away from us wherever we walked.  There were so many of them that there was a sort of rushing clicking sound from their collective skittering.
We did some handstands and cartwheels on the beach and then swam and then went back and had watermelon.  When we finally got back on the boat to head back, there was a brilliant sunset starting.  We watched from the boat and enjoyed the clean water of the river (unlike the Senegal River up by St Louis/Richard Toll) and the lovely sunset.

We were headed to l'Isle d'Oiseaux (leel dwah-ZOE), whatever that was.  It was getting pretty dark and we still weren't seeing any birds, until suddenly we came across this:

It was crazy!  There were so many birds on this one stand of mangroves, and for no apparent reason!  Also, possibly related, there were whole schools of fish around us leaping out of the water.

We finally got back to the dock at about 7:30, when it was full dark.  I had already decided that this was one of the most incredible days of my life.  But then, there was this man who had come from Gambia (20 mins away) to eat dinner with us.

Not just any man.  This guy was Papa Diop (our professor)'s brother-in-law.  Oh, also...he's a famous reggae singer, the lead singer, composer, and creator of a band called Black African Positive.  He played us his music, sang for us, hung out, and told us to call him if/when we come to Gambia (we're seeing if we can go this week).

Finally we went to bed and slept like rocks.

UNTIL 6:20, when we woke up to watch the sun rise.  We walked down to this nearby salt marsh and sat out and watched one of the most gorgeous sunrises I've ever seen and took pictures of it and of us in front of it.  I will probably be tagged in some on Facebook soon.  Another great breakfast, this time with fresh mangrove honey (which is fabulous), and then we took a nap.  Did some gift shopping, hung out with some Senegalese school girls, ate lunch, and then headed back.

This has been a wonderful experience.

Today also marks the halfway point in my program.  Today is December 5th (Happy birthday, Mom!), and my flight to New York and then Detroit is March 5th.  I never expected to be having such a good time, and I think it'll only get better from here.

Thank you for reading my blog.  It means a lot to me; I talk to my friends here about how cool it is that I can put this stuff online and then hear from friends and family how fun it was for them to read it.  Keep reading and commenting and I'll keep posting.  Deal?  Deal.