Niodior

It's going to be really hard to remember everything I want to talk about regarding last weekend, so I've been putting it off a little.  Here we go.

We left at 8 am on Friday morning for Niodior, Prof (Pap) Sarr's village.  We took two taxis to the Garage Pompier to get a sept-place (seven-seat taxi, pronounced set plahss).  The seven of us took one sept-place to...some place whose name I can't remember. Something with a J.  The drive too about 5 hours and went by some stunning scenery.  In parts, we seemed to be in the middle of nowhere and not following a road.  At one point, we were passing through a village, and a woman asked to hitch a ride up the road with us.  She hopped up front, and suddenly our sept-place was a huit-place!  A few minutes later, three more people approached asking for rides, and the driver said, "Sure, but you'll have to sit on the roof."  Then there were six legs hanging down in front of our windows, and we were in an onze-place!  I swear, if that's not a new record, I don't want to be in whatever is.

At last, we got to the "dock", where we would be taking our pirogue (little fishing boat with a motor and a cool paint job, pronounced peh-ROGUE) to the island.  There are two pirogues per day, the second leaving at 1pm sharp.  We got there at 1:07.  The boat hadn't left yet, but it was waiting for...something.  It was unclear what.  In any case, we wound up waiting there until 3.  Then we got on, along with somewhere around 20 people, 1 sheep, and a heck of a lot of cargo.  There was no dock, just a beach, so we waded into the water to get in the boat.  I sat down, and then I was told to move.  I moved up with my friends, and discovered why I'd had to move: I would have been in the way of the man who bails out the water from the boat.

There was water leaking in--rather quickly, though not alarmingly so--from leaks all over the sides and bottom of the boat.  Bailer-man stood there behind me and bailed water out with his plastic jug until it got sufficiently low, and then waited for the bottom of the boat to fill again.  As we approached the island, we were sailing through a channel marked by tree branches sticking up from the water.  On either side were people wading in the water about waist-deep, each of them holding a long stick in one hand and a bucket in the other.  They were fishing for mollusks!

We finally got to the island about 45 minutes later, and we docked at a real dock!  The island's pathways were covered in mollusk shells (which are easier to walk on [and make a great crunching sound] than the deep sand that covers the island).  We were quickly served lunch in one of Pap Sarr's family's many houses on the island (I think this one was his brother's, right next to another brother, a sister, a cousin, an aunt, etc).  It was delicious!  Some sort of tomato-y sauce with fresh (but cooked) sea snails!  We all ate a ton and came alarmingly close to finishing the whole plate...but we fell short.  Then we had oranges, and then a nap.

After that we went and watched a wedding that was taking place between two of the villagers.  All of the village women were there, and a DJ played great tunes like "Beauty and the Beast".  The villagers ceremoniously gave gifts to the bride, and then they danced.

We then ate dinner (spaghetti with yassa onion sauce, potatoes, and bread) and crashed.  We had our own room, complete with a huge bed and a smaller mattress on the floor.  There were seven of us, and we could fit three comfortably on the bed, and two on the floor.  I wound up being kind of an odd one out, because I'm too light of a sleeper to be packed in with people like that.

I had awful insomnia, I wasn't used to the noises of the house, and I realized that I hadn't heard from Caleb in 36 hrs, even though he would normally have been texting with me pretty regularly.  I'd talked to him last when he was driving from MA to OH in the snow, so naturally I thought something terrible had happened.  It hadn't.

I survived the night by grabbing a hugely fluffy blanket and making a tent out of it, and then reading from my Kindle (I'm reading Guns, Germs, and Steel right now) by flashlight.  It was kind of nice once I relaxed.

The next day we took a tour of the island, led by Pap Sarr's first son (who was actually given to him by his brother).  The tour was great, introducing us to the village's only doctor, the prize that the village women won by reducing poverty through sustainable agricultural practices, the local radio station, and much much more.  By the end, having not slept the night before, I was about ready to fall over.  We were served a lunch of ceeb bu jen (fish and rice), and then we took a long nap.

Later, we ate coconuts picked for us straight off the tree (by a 10-year-old boy), drank locally produced baobab juice, and hung out.  I cut Rachel's hair for her (I'm trying to develop that skill, and it's really coming along) and we all drank cafe Touba (a spiced coffee) and listened to the radio and talked.

Dinner was delicious--lettuce, green peppers, tomato, and fish, eaten with bread.  After that I went to bed, with the help of a Benadryl, while everyone else watched a lutte (Senegalese wrestling match).

We were up at about 5:30 the next morning to catch the boat back at 6.  The boat actually left at about 7:30, of course, but we were on time.  Then another sept-place, then we switched to a new one in Mbour (thankfully, because the first one leaked a ton of exhaust into the back seat where I was sitting).  We got back to Dakar at about 1pm on Sunday.  I spent the rest of the day with Rachel, who left late that night.  It was nice to spend some time with her and eat food prepared in a French style (with my own plate, and water I could drink during the meal!).

I hope you'll all look at my Niodior pictures on Facebook, because I don't feel like I did a great job of letting you know what the village was like. In any case, there were no dolphins, but I had a fabulous time.