Senegal River Valley

Right now I'm on the island of St Louis, but we leave today to go back to our homestays in a town called Richard Toll (ree-sha TOE.  Sounds kind of like chateau (sha-TOE) when people say it.)  My host mom is a politician in Dakar.  There are three young women, two of whom have kids (but no husbands, as far as I can tell).  Everyone at the house is extremely friendly, and there are lots of little kids and babies and young adults around all the time.  They've been feeding us well and showing us around the neighborhood.  And everyday after lunch they give us crème glacée (frozen creamy juicy stuff in a little plastic pouch that you bite a corner off of) and then attaya, which is quite luxurious!

Now the less luxurious:
There's a baby girl who is about six months old but so far can barely support her head and can't roll over when she's laying on the floor.  Judging by what my cousin's six-month-olds can do, I get the sense that she's a little behind.  In the mornings, I wake up to her crying endlessly in the courtyard.  She only cries until someone comes and holds her, but it takes about an hour most of the time before that happens.

In the mornings, I get up out of bed and step around all the insects on the floor--they congregate in my room at night--and open the door.  Two birds who have been keeping watch immediately swoop into the room.  They have a next in the corner of the ceiling.  One night, we found a huge toad in the room.  We can't figure out how it got in, since there's no way it would have fit under the door.

There's nothing in the house that resembles a sink--that is, a faucet with a drain under it.  That isn't a big deal, except that I can't put in my contact lenses using the shower to rinse them off--I don't have any spare lenses right now, and I don't want to risk losing one.  So I've been brushing my teeth in the shower and wearing glasses a lot.

Okay, so that's home.  Now for some select adventures from the last week.

Monday while we were en route to Richard Toll, we got word that Prof Ibou's son had died.  There was brief talk of sending Alyssa and me back to Dakar for the funeral, but Rama at the Baobab Center said not to worry about that.  Tuesday we were told that we'd be walking in a marsh and to dress accordingly.  We drove to this little village with lots of kids who swarmed us and talked to us in some language that was not French, English, or Wolof.  My guess is that it was Pulaar, but I have no idea.

We started walking past the village and out into this flat, endless expanse of mud.  My sandals kept getting stuck and slipping off my feet, and I kept nearly falling.  After about 15 minutes, they gathered us all on a less sticky bit of mud and told us to take off our shoes.  We proceeded from there barefoot.  We asked Prof Thioub (choob) where we were going, and he said, "Just over there.  Not too far."  That's the typical Senegalese response for anything.  It turned out we were hiking 6 miles barefoot in the mud under full sun with no shade.  No one had known that was what we were going to be doing, so only two of us brought water, pretty much no one was wearing sunscreen, and I was the only one who'd brought a scarf to cover my shoulders.

Even though we came back dehydrated, sunburned, and exhausted, we had a phenomenal time.  The mud was cool and slippery and felt good between our toes, and the sillyness of what we were doing was wonderful.  It turned out that we were going to see rice patties, and it was neat to suddenly emerge from this flat, muddy, brown nothing to these fields and fields of bright green rice.

We saw a lot of water pumps on our various sorties (outings) the last couple of days.  We went to a sugar factory.  There are lovely beaches along the Senegal River.  We went by a farm run by a French neo-colonist and listened to our prof roast him (while smiling sweetly).

Yesterday we went to a wildlife refuge and saw some monkeys and tortoises and gazelles.  I had a love thing with one of the tortoises, Martin.  He's sixty years old.  I squatted down in front of him and chatted with him and he crawled closer and stuck his head out close to mine.  I pretended to kiss him.  It was great.

We later took little boats down the river to where it feeds into the ocean, la Langue de Barbarie (Barbarie's Tongue).  There were crabs everywhere, and they looked like cartoons or something.  They were so cute and silly-looking.  I collected tons of gorgeous shells.  The water was fabulous.  Then we hung out at a swanky hotel with a pool and a beach for the afternoon.

Today we head back to Richard Toll, and I probably won't have internet for another week.  I'm heading back to Dakar on Saturday, and life will continue pretty much as usual.  Hope this isn't too suspenseful for everyone!  Have a great week!