TOUBA... BU BAAX

Well, I have now successfully experienced my first pilgrimmage. Although I am not actually sure if it is technically called a pilgrimmage, I am dubbing it as such, because I travelled to Touba for a religious reason. Thus a pilgrimmage, n'est pas?

The trip started late. 11pm. I walked out the door, to the gate of the University to sit and wait at least an hour to get into a car. Car obtained a little after 12am. We were taxied over to the gare routiere, where all 7 places leave from. 7 place is a station wagon-like car with 8 seats, so there are 7 places to fill and the driver. The men were mean and were trying to charge us 2000cfa more than usual, which no one wanted to pay. After trying to barter and bargain for 45 minutes, we decided that it wasn't going to work. And then we found out that he was doing that for everyone, including Senegalese. We paid, and were off... around 2am.
Arrival to Touba around 5am. We set our stuff inside, covered our hairs and went to the mosque. Now, if I had a computer, I would put my pictures up righhhhhhhht now, but I don't. I'll steal some from google, or give you a link at the end.

The mosque is quite possibly the most beautiful thing I've seen. ever. It was constructed by a marabout (the religious leaders of Islam), and looks way better than anything built by an architect.

Anyway, after that, we hopped back on our horse cart and went to Modou Fall's aunt's house to sleep. The girls spent the next two days peeling potatos, cutting onions and doing general "woman things" while the boys were treated like kings. RIDICULOUS. :)

It was a lot of fun although there have been some intestinal issues that have followed (not for me, alxamdulilah!) but those will clear up, inch'allah (happy Justin?) soon.

http://www.google.sn/images?hl=fr&q=Touba&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=1024&bih=490

There are the search results. I think, personally, that my pictures are better. :)

Good day!

Kate

Send me mail. :D

electronics assassin. 'nuff said.

Life after the most stupid strike ever.

let's start off by saying I have a ton of work for the next two weeks. Two, possibly three papers, a presentation and work on my research project. Now, compared to the US, I guess not bad, but due to the fact that they are all on books in French that I have barely read or haven't started or didn't understand, this is much more difficult than b-s ing a paper at home. So at the time where I need most my precious computer, what does it decide to do?

COMMIT SUICIDE and jumped off my bed, figuratively speaking, of course... but it is no longer working.

And, on the same day, my phone decided not to work (which is now working again)

BUT then I also had a nightmare that one of my friends was a serial killer who I found burning someone alive (but don't worry, the girl was just skin and bones, literally, so I don't think she felt it). Naturally, in my dreamland, I ran. Quickly, which was when I knew it was a dream, right? I dropped my backpack and went in some house which appeared to be from the seventies, just like the people who were there with George Clooney moustaches and ugly old clothes. So, they also must have been high because they came up with the idea that if we (somehow Joleen was there with me) changed clothes, we wouldn't be found. So they brought us to the basement where all the clothes were size XS and wouldn't fit. But Joleen was sassy and told me in length how the fit her. Upsetting, right? well, for some reason, I had my camera, and as Joleen was getting up in my face, I dropped it. The lens went all the way into the camera and when I finally turned the camera on, the lens was curvy. I was devastated, but then thought... "OH BOY! I have my other lens in my backpack! But it is outside by the serial killer..." then I woke up.

Depressing, right? That's what I thought.

Well, that's my life. Please don't send me your electronics, unless you want me to kil them, then please do. I am now officially an electronics assassin.


How many of you can put that on your resume?

(which thankfully I retrieved from my hard drive and is now safely stored on my external!!!)

Have a great afternoon!

Chicken chandwiches and peanut butter

Hello friends, family, loved ones, and beloved followers.

Life is still the same. Nothing too much going on. I have effectively changed rooms, due to an increasing uncomfortability in my previous room. My new roommate, so far lovely after 2 days, is Fatoukine.

My last roommate decided to make it obvious that I was not wanted in the room through various techniques. My favorite and most hated one was back-handedly telling me I was sleeping with someone and was whoring myself out. Not true, but well used to make me feel extremely uncomfortable. Instead of trying to deal with it and iron things out, I decided to leave. Having six months left made the decision much easier. And seeing as after a while, I completely avoided my room and at the end successfully spent a mere 20 minutes there in 5 days, I thought it was a pretty necessary move.

Yesterday, we decided to find a tailor that someone in an important person's office (if anyone knows what a rector is, please tell me) told us about. After going to another tailor the day before and having a woman who was completely unreasonable and a rather large snoB, we decided to go with solidarity and not leave any of our clothing there. So, we headed into town and found the tailor... rather he found us. His locale is in the middle of a market filled with tailors, so we needed to be found to find it. After 2 hours of describing and drawing and having someone translate for us, we finally left. I left 2 skirts, 2 dresses, 1 pair of pants and a tunic (which is going to be amazing). They are supposed to be done by next Saturday, enchallah (which is correctly spelled in the wolof tradition, thank you though brother). I'll let you know how they turn out.

I'll take some pictures of school and try and get them up here for you all, since you've been begging. It's just that, honestly, NOTHING is really happening. This is the middle of the semester.... no parties, no fun. :( Just kidding, we always have fuN!

Except when I'm trying to figure out the new site for GV and plan classes for next year! No fun. But otherwise... delicious chicken chandwiches and nems (egg rolls, kind of)... and peanut butter.
Not together.

And dad... bring lots of peanut butter.


LOVE YOU ALL

naman naa leen.
bisous.
embrasses (which is used as hug here... Carol and Nick)

KATE

LIFE

Not dead. I promise. I just don't want to bore you with my life. Presently there is nothing going on besides some small drama issues, which will be posted about once taken care of. Unless an assassin is involved, then the unknown would be for your own good. Trust me, the less you know, the better.
Anyway. Our professor from Madison was here this past weekend, which was fun. We talked about a lot of things, ate and figured out my research project which I need to go do and finish before leaving this country, enchallah.

Other than that, classes have successfully started, although some professors feel no need to teach because students won't be there anyway. That happened to two of my classes last week. But all-in-all, I'm pleased with today. I figured out what I will have to do for my literature class. Read a whole novel and give a presentation by the 29th. Therefore it's time to get serious and start working. And the novel, as of right now, is pretty confusing. YIPPEE! Oh well, last time I was complaining there was nothing to do... and now I'm innundated. I'm glad. I should be. I just wish we didn't have to mush an entire semester into four weeks!!!

Off to lunch and then to class...

This school thing is a little too much for me! ;)

Kate

The Gambia

The Gambia.

For the record. It is nothing like the Dominican Republic. Sadly.

Well, let’s just call the little tiny country a huge pain in the… well, you know. It was a long 12 hours of travel from Dakar to the border. We get to the border and the passport control people are confused by Stevens’ lack of visa, but after telling them that he didn’t need one, they let us through. Cue Gambian problems. We get to passport control there and Hannah and I are fine. Stevens, being Haitian, must have prior clearance to enter the country. Even though we went to the embassy in Dakar, got our visas and asked SPECIFICALLY about him, they said we only needed a visa. Well, finally after about half an hour or forty five minutes, the guy decides to give him a 7 day visa. Exactly enough for what we needed. So we cross the ferry and get to the hotel. Nothing too special. Just your run of the line crappy hotel. The next morning we decided to get money out. I go to the machine and try my mastercard (which someone had told me was accepted mostly everywhere in the country. Turns out he probably had no idea what I was saying) which didn’t work. Hannah’s card was rejected, but her second one worked. After a bunch of money troubles, everything worked itself out. I owe Hannah money. Simply said. The middle of the trip was okay. Nothing too exciting, just a country speaking English, which was weird enough in itself. We decided to leave early to try and arrive on time for the Akon concert, seeing as we were doing nothing in The Gambia. Well, we made it to the border, crossed the Gambian side—no problems. We get to the Senegalese side where they don’t want to let Stevens in because he doesn’t have a visa. We get our heads talked off about how Hannah and I have visas, how we follow rules, why can’t he? He was brought here by the President to study, so he shouldn’t be having fun, going on vacations. He should stay at the University during vacations and study. He doesn’t have the right to move out of the country. He wasn’t brought here for that. After almost an hour of that, the man decides to let him in (out of the goodness of his heart or some bs like that). We get to the taxi area to go back to Dakar and they try to make us pay $80 dollars, which again, is complete bs. Finally we got everything figured out and headed back to Dakar, only to be stopped every half an hour by customs officials because we had fabric smugglers in our taxi. Fabric is at least half price in the Gambia, which is why they would deal with all of the customs officials and pay them all off.

Honestly, it would have been better had we not gone on this trip. It was really upsetting. But after talking with my host mother, it’s even more upsetting. She agreed with what the border official said. Basically the Senegalese have imprisoned the Haitians here and won’t let them out. She said that they’re supposed to be poor Haitians, so why would they have to travel? I just feel like no one even thinks about them as people. He’s not a production. You can’t just make them stay at the University for 5 years, doing nothing. It’s ridiculous. They think that the Haitians are here out of a necessity, but how many truly poor Haitians could you bring to do studies here? NONE. Truly poor Haitians don’t even speak French. If you want to prove that you are helping someone who is truly poor, bring over the Haitians who can’t afford to eat, who don’t speak French, who have never stepped foot in a school, and then tell me that you’re helping the poorest of Haitians. I’m really upset, and more upset that my host parents are talking about it in Wolof thinking I don’t understand, saying that he has no right to do anything. I’m getting angry again. At least Sylvie understood. You can’t expect people to stay in Saint Louis for five years. That’s not helping someone, that’s imprisonment. I feel like the Senegalese are extremely ignorant. How can you think that someone who has gone to College in Haiti is going to be extremely poor? Completely ignorant.

I’m leaving,

Pissed off…

Kate.

Walking in a Sandy Wonderland

Christmas. Abroad. In. Africa.

This is strange. Not horrible. Not amazing. Way better than I thought it would be, but strange.

I'll recount my Christmas tales from this glorious sand-filled wonderland.

I'll start with Christmas presents. We decided to do Secret Santa for Christmas, which was a lot of fun. I had Hannah, so I thought, hm, what's better than a home-made African stocking with her name embroidered on it? So I take my fabric and go to the tailor. Now, since we're all good Christmas celebrating people, we could all probably make a stocking with our eyes closed, right? NOT the case in Africa. After explaining it to him, he tried to charge me $20 to sew up two pieces of fabric. Cue in story of Derek Zuidema making me a stocking a few years back. Got him down to ten dollars (sorry to tell you the price if you read this Hannah!) with names embroidered on the top. I was thinking, man, this is going to be amazing. I head over to the tailor's on the 23rd, when we were going to do Christmas and they weren't done. They were cut out, but due to a power outage (thanks Karim Wade!) the sewing was not possible. Now, honestly, I could have saved them at that moment, seeing how horribly ugly they were, but I didn't. I thought it was too funny. So I left it.

That night, we had Christmas with the Toubabs. Hannah, Andrew, Joleen, Karolina (Joleen's friend who is here for the month) and I celebrated in only the most traditional ways. Christmas tree cut from a magazine, fire place made from French bread (the logs) and a red t-shirt (with actual candles on the side), Sacred Mother Christmas (a scantily clad, large breasted African woman, very sacred) cut from a newspaper) and presents wrapped in bags, newspaper and creepy Santa Claus wrapping paper (I had to buy it! It was only 300cfa!).

Now that decorations were beautiful, it was time for the traditional Christmas food and drink: extremely salty tuna salad sandwiches and cans of soda from the convenient store outside my house. We sat outside for a bit, and enjoyed the freezing weather (which as a result of that, I am now sick. :( which was probably also only 75 degrees). After that, we came inside and opened presents. Hannah got me a pretty black necklace made out of something semi-precious, some tea, a bracelet, a wallet and a bunch of coupons for things, and other things, I'm sure. I got a sweet book from Joleen; the children's stories by Senghor which are incredibly famous. It's something that will last a long time!

After presents, Andrew started making paper hats, which has sparked a new tradition (I guess we need to see next year if it continues...!). I'll put up our pictures. By the end, we were laughing so hard we were crying. It was incredible. And then we decided to go find a restaurant (the Copacabana) to have a drink, but we couldn't find it. I think the Senegalese thought we were crazy walking around in our paper "Christmas" hats.

The 24th. Christmas Eve.

I went out to Pikine to hang out with Stevens for the day. We came back into town to make dessert for a dinner party we were going to with Hannah. While at Casino (the supermarket) we found a log cake, and decided that that would be better than baking quickly, so we bought log cake and a ice cream roll (I was inspired by Christmas at Aunt Marcia's!!) instead. We met at the Baobab Center and walked to the apartment where dinner was served. It was an amazing evening with people we did not know, but came together as a small family and shared a great time. We read Luke 2 and ate ham. It doesn't get much better than that! ;) And, don't worry, there were traditional Christmas fireworks being lit off in the street as well.

The 25th. Christmas Day.

I woke up and did homework. Oh boy. While y'all were sleeping and then opening presents, I was reading about the national literature of Africa. Wooooooooooo. I had to go back to the tailor to pick up a dress that was supposed to be done four days ago. He told me to come back tomorrow. I told him I was not going to be here. So I have to go back in a few to pick it up. This will make SIX trips to the tailor in the last few days. I'm annoyed. But my dress will be done. I hope. Yesterday felt like Christmas, today does not. Everyone is working, stores are open, it's ridiculously hot, I'm sweating (not because I'm wearing a wool Christmas sweater), I didn't go to church because mass in French just isn't anything and I don't know where Protestant churches exist, the food smells like fish (not good...!)... it's just strange. I'll let you know about tonight. There's a group of nine of us going to the Jardin Thailandes (derishous, to quote Hannah). It should be festive and fun. I'm just wishing I was at church or sipping mimosas with the Brown family ;).

Love you all and miss you.
Have a blessed Christmas and don't take your time with family forgranted...

Kate



Karolina's gift of a pineapple. Which she loves, most obviously
Christmas set up in the dark. It's prettier in the dark. :)
Hannah showing off her traditional tuna salad sandwich in front of the fireplace. Please note that she has an entire HALF LOAF of french bread!
Joleen in her traditional paper hat. Please note she is crying from laughter. But it's beautiful, right?
Andrew, Hannah and I in our hats... Hannah's and my hat they have three corners... three corners have our hats!


Hannah and her stocking. Please note the three year old's handwriting on it.One of my fantastic coupons. Spray deodorant!

Tomorrow I'm off to The Gambia with Hannah and Stevens. Our other friend who was going to go with us is no long er going because his mother is extremely ill. Please throw up a prayer for her. Thanks guys.

Love you and see you when I'm in SL again!

Things you can buy in cars...

On our way into downtown Dakar from where I live, Hannah and I decided to make a list of the various items you can buy while sitting in a car in a traffic jam. Here it goes.

~paintings, framed.
~phone chargers of all shapes and sizes
~phone holders
~hangers, both wooden and plastic, for all of your hanger needs.
~DVDs of lutte (wrestling), 24 and other various shows
~lotion from vasoline? not sure what that means, but it's only 200 cfa.
~limes and onions from one seller
~fedora hats, in case you want to go out on the town looking like a gangster
~baseball hats with nothing but plain colors... which I found slightly strange.
~soccer jerseys, fakes, of course.
~baby shoes, in case your baby in the car is barefoot and wanted to walk.
~sandals, flip flops
~baby clothing, in case your baby in the car is also naked
~peanuts which are delicious and nutritious
~phone credit. ALL OVER.
~sim cards for your phone, because who has a phone with a sim card?
~musical cds, all fake and ripped
~balloons, traditional Christmas ones. I believe I am going to buy some for you all. :D
~Inflatable santa clauses, because who doesn't need an inflatable santa claus
~toy trains, in case you're too lazy to go buy a Christmas present for your kids.
~towels, in case your's is worn out... or you just took a shower and your hair isn't dried yet.
~scarves because it's now windy and cold.
~table clothes
~pillow cases, unless that was a t-shirt, not entirely sure
~cafe touba (coffee that's spiced or something. I'm not sure what it really is, but there's a coffee element to it.
~knives. This was during Tabaski time, not as much now.
~Tupperware containers, but not real ones, crappy Chinese versions of them
~prayer rugs, in case you left yours at home and the call to prayer pops up unexpectedly... HA! get it?
~prayer beads
~men's underwear. You know how I know it was men's? It said "Man" on the elastic band. Also sold in Senegal, but I did not see it on the street, is Obama underwear. Know why? Here's a quote from our friend Modou Fall "because Obama is the President of the world" Makes sense, right?
~necklaces galore
Last but most certainly not least.... Drum roll please...

~ baby birds. Who on God's green earth would be sitting in their car and think "OH! Baby birds! I need to buy one of those!" and furthermore... Where would you put it?

Essentially, what this post is trying to say is that if you need anything and you're too lazy to go to the store, just drive your car down the corniche (the ocean side) and you can get everything you ever wanted and more.

I was amused by the sheer amount of buyable things on the streets of Dakar, so I thought I'd let you know.

Take care.

And busta rhymes was pretty freaking funny. Most entertaining concert I've been to ever. I'd probably go see him again, even though I don't really know his music. and he didn't even shout out to the cookie factory! I bet it's because we weren't in the cookie factory. Sad.

Hoping to see a Cuban salsa band tonight. HOPING! Enchallah.

bonnnnnnnnnnnnnnne journee.


EDIT:

I completely forgot that they sell plastic Christmas trees, garland and ornaments too!

And we went to another concert last night, which I didn't find too great, but that's just me.

But on the way home I got an Arab scarf, so it ended well.

Did the laundry this morning, now I'm heading to the tailor to pick up some stuff. :)

TAKE CARE................ klb