Pictures........!

Quick update plus pictures.

I have a new computer, alxamdulilay. Thus the update and pictures.

We are still on strike. Chalk up tally for week number 11. Oh well. I'll go back to St. Louis tomorrow, cause dadda's leaving tonight. :( But not a big deal, I"m going to get to work for real on my project this time. :)

So. An update on what we did whilst my father was here. We drove to Lac Rose, a lake that is supposed to be pink due to the high levels of salt. But alas, it was not. The rainy season was too much, so it was a slight brown color. I decided to leave the pictures out of the post. From there we continued to the Deserts of Lampoul, where we... mounted camels and took a trip. Just around the dunes, but SUPER cool. :) And yes, my father rode a camel. Can you say you've ridden camels with your father in Africa? I can!
After a night in the deserts (an extremely cold one at that), we drove up to school, where i unloaded the mother-load of food from his suitcase. I re-loaded with everyone's presents. Which I think are all bought!
Anyway, we went to a camp in between the Senegal river and the ocean. We stayed in a cabin on the river. Literally ON the river. On stilts. Our toilet and shower flushed to the river...sadly enough. Shower, not too sad... toilet. SAD.
We stayed the next night in town and went to the tailor and nothing was done. The power cuts have been so bad lately that even the university has had power cuts, which is unusual. But we've been without power rather frequently, thus why the tailor had not finished... no power, no sewing machine!
The next morning we went back to the tailor to pick up what was supposed to go home with my dad, which wasn't done yet. He finished and continued to stall... because he made my dad the cutest shirt ever as a gift! :) Ask him to see it when he gets home.
Well, we came back to Dakar in the scariest 7-place ride of my life. but we survived, only to be fought over for a taxi... literally 15-20 men yelling at each other trying to get us in their taxi. After, we had the most peaceful dinner ever.
The next afternoon, we headed to Toubab Dialao, a small village that has a nice hotel. We visited Bandia reserve, a glorified zoo, but WAYYYY better than san diego... and saw animals. Then we did a batik class the next day. Super fun. I would probably do that for relaxing time.
Anyway, we're back in Dakar, walked a lot today and yesterday. He leaves later tonight and I'll be in Saint-Louis by nightfall... incha'allah.

Wellll, here are the pictures. I hope you enjoy.


Beggue... Kate

No captions, sorry. Most creative caption wins a prize upon my return.

Tabaski Time. Pt. 1 muttons!

Now. I don't want to hear any complaints about posting. I will be posting several times this week, and this is to make up for and save up for when I do not post. :D

Tabaski.

A wonderful festival. This is the celebration of when Abraham decided to kill his son and God gave him a ram instead. Muslims celebrate this as "Tabaski" The men in the family kill a mutton (ram/ sheep... since rams are sheep) and then they prepare it, get fly dressed up and eat it.

*Note: At Tabaski time, it is against their religion to kill and eat female muttons. If a mutton is not available (which seems incredibly impossible), you may use a chevre(goat) or a camel. Now, here's the thing. The man who explained this said that it is normally because of financial reasons that one cannot use a mutton. I'm not a rocket scientist or anything, but camels are a LOT bigger than muttons. Therefore, would not camels be more expensive than muttons? I'm just asking.
**Note on the Note: Female muttons may be eaten at any other time of the year.

Now. You're asking yourself... where are these pictures of Kate looking great? Now defal ndank followers. (defal ndank will roughly translate to chill out or slow your roll) The fete (party) isn't even until tomorrow and by tomorrow, I mean Wednesday. I'm just blessing your presence with another post simply because I'm just that nice!

So... begin fotos.

Well, begin text, then photos. SO. Today. I decided to go into downtown Dakar. What spirit provoked me to do so, I have no idea. That was NOT a good idea. First. REWIND. Coming back from Saint-Louis to Dakar, which was a 4 hour trip the first time, took 10 hours. NOW. Add to the fact that the windows did not open on the bus, the seats go five across, and they have that funky, itchy car floor type material covering them, I, Yours beloved, got stuck on top of the tire. Yep, that's right. I spent ten hours scruntched (Spelling, please?!) up in a ball, shoving my knees into the horribly itchy carpet seats while the man in front of me was continually grunting because I was giving him an involuntary "back massage" Now... apart from my discomfort, I must say that the ride was beautiful. We left at 2 o'clock... and were coming into Dakar-ish area around sunset. Do you know how cool the sunset with Baobabs in the foreground is?! I bet you would if I could have taken a picture. But I couldn't, so I'm just teasing you for next time I come back at nightfall. My apologies for being mean like that. AND when we got closer into Dakar, on top of and in the trunks of most cars were... you guessed it! (probably not) MUTTONS! Tied up and looking incredibly sad. But they were cute on top of the roof of what would be compared to fifteen passenger vans.

Fast forward to present-day Dakar. I grab a taxi to go downtown and prices are HIGH. I'm talking 4 bucks. CRAZY. So, a normal trip into town would have been, what, 13.5 minutes at the most. We spent at least half an hour just trying to get down there. So on the way, this i what I see! Enjoy. and I lied, this was the trip home.








Also, I almost forgot about Baayfall Rastaman (Baayfall is a sect of a brotherhood... basically if you see someone who looks like Bob Marley... He's a baayfall. And they don't wear shoes, I guess. And they say "trrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrranquil!" which is slightly obnoxious, but you have to love it.) who tried to sell me a mutton while in the taxi. He noticed me noticing his fine muttons and encouraged me to buy one. After I said that it was okay, I didn't need a mutton, he was sad. So I told him "apres" (later, or next time in senegalese speak... aka NEVER) and he was happier. Traffic Jam moved ten feet forward, and five minutes later, I still wanted to look at his gorgeous muttons (He had a pretty shell collar. It's not everyday a mutton has a nice collar), so I turned around. He got excited that I was going to buy, because I think he assumed that this moment was "apres" but I had to turn him down again. Although, if I had to buy any mutton, it would have been his, because they came with pretty collars. And I wouldn't kill him. I'd name him Xaar-bi (aka Harvey) which is the sheep in Wolof. Xaar=sheep bi=the. I must admit that I'm ingenious.

Another note on muttons. They have mutton shows here like we have dog shows in the states. Except here, you don't win as much money, but you do win Adja, my preferred margarine!


Now, you are also privy (Spelling again, please!?) to this lovely video I took while on the way home. It's incredible. Probably up for a Grammy. Or Oscar. Which ever one is better. Maybe MTV music video award? OHHHHHHHHHH baby. This is just a short clip of the amount of muttons in the city right now. MUTTONS GALORRRRRRRRRRRRE!



Let me just say that you should thank the internet here for uploading the video incredibly slow. For that reason, you have received an EXTREMELY long blog post. Well... that failed. Literally, that is what blogspot just told me, soooo I shall post the video to facebook and you may view it there.