Stuff!

I finally figured out (a few weeks ago) how to change the background on my blog. Did you notice?  I've decided to change it more often now to mix things up.  It's kind of fun.

Big news!
I'm going to be in SenCirk, THE circus troupe in Dakar!  I'll have to rearrange my classes a little bit to make it work, but I WILL make it work.  It may mean that I won't be able to travel during my break, but it may also mean that I'll get to perform on silks during my break...so that's cool.  There's a performance they're planning at the Olympic pool (which is where they practice) which would have the fabric rigged from a diving board over the pool.  Aminata (the director) was telling me about it and said nonchalantly, "So you'll probably be doing that."  Since I learned silks, that's always been one of my fantasies: silks over water.

I'll also be able to train other skills (that I am currently completely unskilled at), which will be great.  So, potentially, I won't go back to school having not done aerials in 9 months.  AND, I'll even have other cool skills and be in great shape.  Yay!

Classes are almost over, which means we have a bunch of papers to do now, but soon we will be done.  This weekend we're taking a trip to Socone, and I have no idea what we'll be doing there.

More to come soon!

Thanksgiving in Dakar

I feel as content as I could possibly hope to be right now.  I just celebrated Thanksgiving in an apartment we rented in Dakar (for $50/night) and now I'm resting and eating and lounging about.

Wednesday I could barely focus on classes because I was too busy trying to figure out how we were all going to get the ingredients we needed and cook all our Thanksgiving dishes in time for dinner on Thursday.  Wednesday night, the plan was to make curried butternut squash and granny smith apple soup, applesauce, and pies.  We were missing ingredients for all those things by the time we were going to get started (and by that point all the stores were closed), so we just bought some apples from a local boutique and made the applesauce.  We finished at 2:30 in the morning and then woke up at 7:15 to go to the food market to buy what we'd need for the rest of the day.  By 9:45 we were back and ready to go.  We spent the entire rest of the day cooking, up until about 5:30 or 6.  By the time we finished, we had:
curried pumpkin and apple soup
stuffing (from scratch)
4 challahs
green bean casserole
turkey and roasted veggies
mashed potatoes and stuffing
yams
green salad
fruit salad
"cranberry" sauce (made by boiling hibiscus into "bisap" juice, which is common here, and then adding the flowers, some citrus, a little sugar, and some gelatin.  It really tasted exactly like cranberries, but there were none in it [or Dakar]).
applesauce
2 pumpkin pies
apple pie

The 8 of us, plus Dinah from the Baobab Center, plus our 4 usual Sene-boys, plus Katy's brother Amadou, ate until we could eat no more.  We managed to finish almost half the food.

We went around and video taped each of us saying (in French) what we're thankful for.  It was particularly moving because we had pulled off a beautiful, delicious, inclusive holiday without any of the resources we usually had.  We cooked all day without power or water, without enough knives (and they were all dull), without moms to tell us how to do things (like cut the head off the turkey?), without family to come and tell us how much they'd missed us since the last gathering.  Still, the sense of community was almost tangible.  Some of us teared up when we talked about what we were thankful for, and we all felt how much it meant to everyone to be together.  It was exactly what Thanksgiving should be, and I'm so proud of all the women in my program for being willing to take on such a huge task and pull it off with such grace and style.

I'm thankful for the fact that I have such opportunities in my life to do completely new and different things.  I'm grateful that I'm constantly given chances to take risks that allow me (and force me) to grow as a person.  I love being here, I love the women here with me, and it constantly amazes me that I'm finally feeling in my element in a country that I had barely heard of two years ago.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone everywhere.

Amusingly Bad Night

Yesterday was Sarah's birthday.  I had a great day and a wonderful evening.  I went to bed excited to meet some circus folks in the morning...

And then everything went wrong.

I mentioned that on Friday night on the island I was getting eaten by mosquitoes.  I didn't mention that I now have over 60 mosquito bites just from my knees down.  I'd taken Benadryl the last couple nights because I knew that otherwise I wouldn't sleep through the itching.  I didn't want to take drugs to sleep for a third night in a row, particularly since I'd been having some trouble waking up.

After over an hour of unsuccessfully trying to sleep, I took half a Benadryl at midnight.  Around two, I finally dozed off.  Only to be woken up at three by something crawling over me.  Something kind of big.  I turned on my flashlight to discover a rather large (1.5 inch long) cockroach in my bed with me.  It quickly began scampering all over my mosquito net and I ducked out and grabbed a shoe.  I spent close to 30 mins chasing around this stupid giant cockroach as it skittered under my bed, up my wall, behind some plastic bags...and then I managed to corner it and club it with my shoe.

After that, of course, I was pumping with adrenaline.  Also, my mosquito bites were all itching again.  I ended up taking the second half of the Benadryl and falling asleep about an hour later, at around 4:30.

This morning I had my meeting.  Or I would have, if the circus people had shown up.  Instead, the guy who was supposed to be introducing me expressed his deep love for me and all beautiful American girls of Polish descent.  Then his friend joined us and found out I was Jewish and was thrilled at having met a Jewish girl (he loves Jewish people) and so he hung around for about an hour.  I missed two classes to get proposed to and talked at and in the end didn't get to meet the guys I wanted to meet.

There is a plan in place to get me introduced to these boys, and I'm impatient to see some progress.  For now...this is life in Senegal.  Comme ci, comme ca.

Weekend Number 10 (Edit: Actually Number 11)

I got stranded on an island in the middle of the night!

I decided to hang out with Billy on Friday night (after spending the afternoon at the beach) and we were looking to hang out at someone's house.  His friend Thomas has a house on Ile d'Ngor (the island off of Ngor beach), and he invited us to a house party he was throwing.  We left at about midnight, met up with Aya and Andrew, took a cab to Ngor, chartered a boat to the island.  The boat man said that some people had gone ahead of us and had his number, and he was going to come pick them up at about 4.

We went to the party and had some drinks and met people from Germany, France, Quebec, and the States.  We swam in the ocean and danced and talked (and I got devoured by mosquitoes) until 4 o'clock rolled around.  We tried calling the boat man, but he wasn't picking up.  He was sleeping.

We hung around some more, and at about 5 I crashed for a little while on a bed upstairs.  At 5:20, I was woken to go back to the beach--the boat was there!  Only, it wasn't actually.  Mamadou, the American Senegalese man among our group, took off his clothes and announced that he and James, one of the Americans, were going to steal a boat.  We managed to talk them out of it, and tried calling the boat guy a few more times.  In the meantime, Thomas came over to me and started apologizing profusely for the fact that I was not going to make it back in time for my field trip to Touba.  It was 5:45, and we were leaving at 7:30 for Touba.

I walked back to the house, and I had no sooner arrived than the boat was there!  So we all went back, and then Mamadou decided that the rates we were being charged were unfair (twice the normal rate).  He accused the boat man of raising the prices because we were toubabs (himself excluded) and the two of them got into a fistfight.  Turns out Mamadou speaks fluent Wolof, which was useful, but it would have been better if he wasn't using it to yell at the boat man.  By that point, 6 AM, I just wanted to go to sleep.

After breaking up the fight and taking the cab home, I arrived in Mermoz at about 6:50.  By that point, everyone had finished the first prayer of the day, the sun was up, and the birds were singing.  It was very confusing.  I bought an egg and tuna sandwich at the bakery, changed into mosque-appropriate clothing, and headed to school.

We went to Touba and saw the grand mosque, which was breathtaking.

We were in Touba only long enough to rest a while, eat, have tea, and see the mosque.  We got back in early evening, and I discovered that my Papa was in the hospital for his high blood pressure.  Everyone says he's doing okay, but that's a cultural thing.  They said Moussa was doing better up until he died, so I'm a bit nervous, but hopefully everything will work out.  For now, my house is even more weird and crazy than usual, because both parents are gone and everyone is still on vacation from Tabaski.

Alyssa and I went out to dinner last night when I discovered that my family was not feeding me, and then I Skyped my family (in the U.S.) for several hours, which was lovely.  When I went home to go to bed, I discovered several  cockroaches in my room, one of which I failed to kill.  I need to do some serious cleaning soon.

This morning I went to the Olympic pool to see Christine swim in her first Senegalese swim meet.  She did well (in my biased and uninformed opinion) and it was fun to watch.  I also discovered a funny looking piece of fabric hanging from the ceiling in the bleachers...an aerial silk!!!  I couldn't play on it because it was tied up, but I did find some people who worked at the pool and knew the circus boys and offered to introduce me Tuesday morning.  Now I have some renewed hope!

This week and next we have at least one paper or project due for every class, so it's a crazy work week.  I'm excited to get some stuff done and celebrate a fabulously unique Thanksgiving!

Tabaski

Tabaski, as I've mentioned, is a Muslim holiday commemorating Abraham's sacrificing (or his willingness to sacrifice) his son Isaac.  In memory of this sacrifice, the head of every Muslim household in Senegal (who can afford it) sacrifices at least one sheep.  My family this year killed two sheep and a goat.  Here's the goat, post-mortem.

My papa, who had been very ill and feeble in the last few weeks, was suddenly in great form yesterday.  His breathing wasn't labored, he was moving in a spritely way, and he was talking and laughing effortlessly.  He killed one or two moutons (we've given up calling sheep by the English word, and now I always think of them in French) before getting tired.  Then Youssou's friends Rawan and Gallo took over with a couple other neighborhood boys.  I watched something like 6 killings, which were not too bad.  Luckily for me, our house is way too small to kill animals in, so they dug a hole outside down the street and several other families joined mine in killing moutons over the hole.

Next, they prepared the carcasses for eating.

My family preparing moutons under the trees

My little cousin got some blood on her hand

Papa laughing and watching the younger men work

Lots of activity at Theresa's house, where they killed six moutons.

Then the cooking started, and it continued pretty much throughout the day.  Mama did most of our cooking, and I helped by making fries.  

We ate lunch and then I met up with Billy for a while and we walked to his friend Luke's house.  We talked for a while and then I took a nap.  Then I got all dressed up and started touring around the neighborhood saying hi to friends.

It was a good day, and the food was plentiful and delicious.  My family is kind of weird, I've been realizing.  Something that I don't understand at all happened in the morning and resulted in some people in the neighborhood being mad at my papa.  So my parents were both very tense and stressed and yelling at everyone.

I have been trying to spend more time at home and get closer to my family, but I've been realizing that my family just isn't close.  If I spend time at home, I can watch TV with whoever happens to be in the living room, but generally my family members don't interact much with each other and don't do much at home.

I also realized that my little sister doesn't have any friends.  She'll sometimes hang out with the little kids in the neighborhood, but they're all at least five years younger than her.  I've not once seen her with someone her age or older who isn't family.  I feel kind of bad for her, but she doesn't have friends because she's not friendly.  She's never once done something nice for me or said something friendly.  I went out on a limb the other day and let her use my computer, and she broke my headphones, closed everything I'd been using, and wrote on and looked through my Facebook.  When I explained why I wouldn't be lending her my computer again, she didn't apologize, she just checked to see if her mom had heard what I was saying.  Most of my interactions with her consist of her walking into my room uninvited and saying, "Erica, do you have ____?"  If I say no but she suspects that I'm lying, she starts looking through my stuff (this is common) and I ask her to leave.

So I'm feeling sort of cheated family-wise right now, but I have some benefits that other people don't have, like a key to the front door of the house.  I'm allowed to go out whenever I want and no one cares, which is quite nice.

Did I mention that Youssou has malaria?  He's a lot better now, but it was sad that he couldn't do much of anything for the holiday.

Saturday we're taking a field trip with our Islam class to Touba, the holiest city in West Africa.

I think that's about it for now.

Crazy Life

I had a very up-and-down week, and it's ended on sort of a down note.  Things are a lot better today, though, and I know they'll continue to improve.

The gist is that people have been lying about me a lot.  It's mostly unintentional, I think.  A little thing that I do wrong gets misconstrued and makes a mistake look like something I've done with ill intentions.  If you're reading this blog, you probably know me to be someone who lives without wishing ill on anyone, so that's been making me very uncomfortable.  There have been several small mix-ups that have built up and been misconstrued and for a short period I felt like everyone I know in Dakar thought I was a terrible person.  That's pretty much all cleared up now (Alhamdoulilaay [thank God]).

On Wednesday, I had a phenomenal conversation with one of the host brothers about religion and universality and the inter-connectedness of everything in the world.  It was beautiful and deep.  At one point he told me about this moment of clarity where he realized that God is in everyone and everyone is good and beautiful and just thinking about that moment, he started crying.  It was a great conversation (on the rooftop at night) and it was cool to be able to talk about all that in French.

...Unfortunately it was that same host brother who then caused a TON of drama.

Since Wednesday, I've been up late every night.  It's been good, except when I'm staying up late to tell my side of a story that people are upset about.  Like I said, though, things are getting better.  Most people realize that I'm not one to lie or to knowingly hurt people, so this hasn't been too complicated.

Pardon the fact that I haven't posted much in the last week--I haven't wanted to go into a desperate rant of complaining about Senegal.  I'm actually moving up on the W-curve, so I don't want to give an inaccurate impression.  Life is good!

French

While I've gotten a lot more comfortable speaking French in the last two months, I've also been picking up some bad habits.  There are a lot of Senegal-isms that are really improper French expressions that are starting to sound normal to me.  A lot of them are just Wolof phrases directly translated, when they don't actually translate.

Here are some examples:
"Tu t'en vas?"  It's meant to mean, "You're going?"  But it really makes no sense.  The proper French would be "Tu y vas?"

"Il y a du mieux?"  It's supposed to say, "You're doing better?  There's improvement?"  It translates to "There is some better?"  It should be, "Tu vas mieux?"

"Tu peux m'apprendre l'anglais?"  I hear this one ALL the time.  "You can learn me English?"  In Wolof, to teach is "to learn to someone," so it makes sense to a Wolof speaker.  It should actually be, "Tu peux m'enseigner l'anglais?"

I'm trying not to pick up bad French habits, but I'm worried that my judgement about French grammar may be slipping a little.

Picking Up

Life here is speeding up, even as I'm lacking energy.  It's now been almost a week since I got out of the hospital, but last night I still had to sleep 12 hours.  Today after class I'm planning to go work out on the beach.  I'm sure that will exhaust me, but I need to start rebuilding my strength and muscle and girlish figure and self-confidence and stuff.

We have a bunch of homework projects and assignments due in the coming weeks, plus we need to plan a Thanksgiving celebration.  Tabaski is coming up--it's the Muslim holiday commemorating Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac at God's command in the Old Testament.  It involves dressing up and sacrificing a sheep.  I bought some traditional bazin, the fabric people make Tabaski clothes out of, yesterday.  It's a gorgeous and rather bright shade of orange, and Youssou was really excited about the design I came up with for it ("That's so nice!  It's just what I told you that you should wear!").

I'm still trying to reach the guy who said he'd give me contact information for finding an internship for my ICRP (research paper--15 pages written in French about an internship).  Hopefully he'll get back to me soon, but if not I'll just find something equally cool myself.  There's some serious revenge for you.

I had a nice talk with my host parents this afternoon.  Making more of an effort to be social with the family is a good thing.  Papa has really bad high blood pressure, and the drugs he's on for it make him sleep almost constantly.  He's clearly feeling ill and weak, and I wish there was more I could do for him.  Mama is stressed and working too hard, but she seems otherwise to be okay.

I'm excited about actually doing some productive stuff in the next few weeks, but I'm nervous about getting everything done.  Wish me luck, and I'll post again soon.

Weekend Number 8

I was able to go out last night!  I was feeling really depressed on Saturday.  On Friday night, Meredith, Sarah, Katy, and I went out to dinner at this restaurant near the Baobab Center.  It was delicious.  We were joined by the rest of the crew for drinks, plus a professor who lives nearby and heard our voices.  We had some drinks and chatted and enjoyed the ambiance of the restaurant for a few hours.  Then everyone wanted to go dancing, so I went home to spend the night all alone.  I knew I wasn't well enough to spend an entire night exerting myself, so I decided to get more sleep instead.

I felt really depressed when I woke up on Saturday.  I did some productive things and then ended up calling Billy to hang out.  We chatted all afternoon until the sun started going down, and then he invited me out for his friend Eli's birthday.  We went out to a swanky restaurant downtown where we split a hummus plate and some pasta.  Eli missed dinner because he was having an argument with his girlfriend via Skype.  Then we bought drinks at a corner store and then went to an oceanside club.  We danced and chatted and wandered for several hours.  Eli's wallet got stolen, which was pretty tragic.  Another kid got his phone stolen.  Youssou and Aya showed up right when we were preparing to leave, so we didn't hang out for long.

I had a great time spending time with a new group of people, and they were a lovely bunch.  I'm looking forward to more outings with them in the future.  Everyone was acting like I was Billy's date for the night, and I caught a couple meaningful glances aimed at him and seemingly about me from his friends.  I'm not sure whether that was his intention, but it did sort of seem that way.  I guess I'll find out about that later--he leaves tomorrow for the week, and I'm going to be away this weekend.

Things with Caleb haven't changed much.  I'm trying to distract myself and give him space, even though it feels wrong.  At this point, everything feels wrong, so...whatever.  Things will get better.  I just don't want him to come out of all this hating me, and I know I'm doing everything wrong, against my best intentions.

Also...this is sort of an odd thing to have to add.  This blog is public.  I make a point of trying to represent people and events fairly, but mostly this is just a place for people I care about to be able to keep track of what is going on in my life.  This is not a place for people to come get gossip to spread about people back home or people here in Dakar.  Please don't go around saying, "Erica said ____ about ____ on her blog!"  If you think someone should see something I've written about them, that's fine--this is public.  But it's not intended as a source of gossip.

On that note...  Youssou and I had yet another serious chat yesterday.  He said he's not going to try to hide his feelings for me, but he understands where I stand and isn't going to try to pressure me.  Still, he thinks I need a man.  He also said I should make more of an effort to be social--I've been tired and depressed all week, and as a result have been quiet and withdrawn.  He was right on with that, so I've been making more of an effort today.  I went out to the market today and had a great time, and we went out to dinner tonight.

Tomorrow is another market excursion, and after classes we're all hoping to go work out on the beach.

Have a great few days.  Until next time!

Malaria

When I posted last and was sort of indifferent to my surroundings, it was in part because I was feeling out of sorts.  I started feeling sick to my stomach every time I ate, developed a fever, and got a headache.  I saw a doctor, who told me I had the flu.  Theresa, who had the same symptoms as me, came with me and we went back to the hotel in Richard Toll.  We took some drugs that made us feel better and generally felt better the next day.  Theresa's fever broke and she was able to keep food down again and be healthy.  I think this is right about when I developed malaria.

My fever continued through Saturday, which is when we were scheduled to leave Richard Toll.  On Friday night, I was pretty unable to eat any dinner.  I was slowly forcing myself through it when the doctor came back.  I had never felt more ill and uncomfortable, and I guess I looked pretty miserable.  This doctor told me that my problem was that I was too weak because I wasn't eating.  I needed to make an effort, force myself to eat, come to his house with him, make tea with him and his wife (?!?!?!) and be up and active.  He then brought me a huge bowl of pineapple which he made me eat while he watched.  By this point, it was clear to the Senegalese students we were sharing the room with that this guy was crazy.  She got him to leave and then locked the door and said we wouldn't let him back in.  The pineapple made me sick, no surprise, and I woke up feeling even worse the next morning.  I told Prof Diallo that I didn't think I'd be able to make it back to Dakar.

I was taken to the only clinic in town, which happens to be for the sugar factory.  Seems like a good place for an ill girl with hypoglycemia...only they didn't once give me something for my blood sugar.  They did, however, give me a malaria test, which came up positive.  I was still unable to eat, and I was told I'd be taking an ambulance to Dakar.  The ambulance took 8 hours to show up, and another 8 to get to Dakar.  They took me straight to a clinic here, and then I was left alone to check in.  After a scary night alone and sicker than I'd ever been, I got moved to a lovely double room and used the last of my phone credit to call a friend and ask if someone could come hang out with me.  Meredith showed up less than an hour later.

From that point on, I was hardly left alone at all.  I spent Saturday night through Wednesday afternoon at the clinic.  Once I was on the right drugs, progress was pretty quick.  Now I'm home, and it feels great to not be hooked up to an IV and to be able to look after myself more.

Hopefully this will be the only time I get really ill here.  I'm glad this episode is over and I can get back to normal life.