A Weekend in Senegal - Katie

09/04
I’m not sure how it didn’t occurred to me sooner that as of now I am living in a completely different universe than most everyone else I know. Perhaps it was after I bathed in a bucket and then dressed in my room without with a mirror for miles, or maybe it was after I bought a Popsicle and as I stepped out of the store watched it steam in the evening heat. Possibly it was when I returned home as the call to prayer rang throughout the streets and walked inside to see my father performing his prayer in the living room, or when I went to my classmate Kristin’s house to see that her family owns a goat that lives in a sandbox in the living room. You see, there are so many things here that appear to be the antithesis of Western comfort that I feel I should be homesick or unhappy or at least a little scared. However, I think that there is so much to see and smell and experience here that I have no time to feel any of these.

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And experience I did this past weekend, starting with Saturday morning when a woman from CRESP took us on an “official” tour of Yoff where we basically walked in the scalding heat for 2 hours, seeing the different quarters (there are 7, and the only way to distinguish the lines between them is a road in between each) and the different Mosques. It was brutal and my Mountain-acclimatized lungs showed no mercy to me as I suffocated in the thick air. Nonetheless, lunch revived me and Mously escorted the Americans to la plage des Almadies on the northernmost tip of Dakar, and then to dinner at a trendy night club called The Blue Note. It was officially a Jazz Club but the musicians ended up playing Bob Marley, Cat Stevens, and even Alicia Keys. We then danced to Senegalese music until 1 am.
Today was the rainiest day Senegal has seen thus far this year, and when it rains here, it pours. That did not deter us, however, as we made our way to the port in two taxis. What I realized though, as I ran through the streets of Dakar and fell in a hidden muddy pothole, is that the rain should have deterred us. It rained until it couldn’t rain anymore because it had leeched every ounce of moisture from the sky, finally ceasing around 4. Even so, the island was absolutely incredibly and exactly how one would expect an ancient colony to look after being taken over by the lively people it once enslaved. The walls decayed and crumbled, but were hidden by the vibrant colors that coated every building, palm trees sprouted up against the azure coast, and the locals ran about with sarongs in every color. It was my first weekend in Senegal and I feel the most overpowering, hectic, fast-paced weekend of my life… but I have never enjoyed anything so much.