Hello all! I know I wrote pretty recently, but with wireless internet in my house it’s pretty easy to update again…so here you are!

Sunday, April 12:
After I wrote my last blog entry, at around 11:30 Courtney and I left to go to Edouard’s band’s concert in a place neither of us had ever been, and neither of us had any idea where it was. We were out for an adventure!! We flagged a taxi near our house (should have checked beforehand to see if it had headlights) and I gave the directions Edouard had given me (near a night club called “Casino”) and hoped for the best. The ride there was one of the most frightening rides I’ve ever taken but we arrived in one piece (well, technically two pieces, since there were two of us) at the night club called Casino. Edouard was playing in a tiny night club next door called the Via Roma. We approached the man selling tickets and I asked, “Is Edouard Manga playing tonight?” And he said, “No. It’s Cheikh-D.” And I said, “Well is Edouard part of that group?” And he said, “No.” So I said, hoping with all my heart we hadn’t just come all that way in the middle of the night for nothing, “He plays the kora?” And the man said, “OH, Edou! Yes he’s in the group.” So we each paid $6 to get in but just before entering the man asked, “Did Edou invite you?” When we told him yes he gave us back our money and Edouard came out to greet us. We got hugs and he led us to a table in the front, and the three of us sat and chatted for a while. The night club was pretty fancy and pretty empty as well; apparently the show started at 1am, not midnight like normal, because it was Easter Sunday! Everything is closed and nobody works on the Monday after Easter…I still don’t understand why everyone here celebrates that day, even though 95% of the population is Muslim. Anyway the show didn’t start until 1:45 but the music was marvelous, as expected. It was a really interesting mix of styles—I heard reggae, rap, rock, plus the addition of the distinctive sound of the kora—it was just really unique and intriguing. There was a drummer, a guitarist, a bassist, a singer, a backup singer, Edouard on the kora…and I’m sure there were some other instruments being played but there were no lights on the band so I couldn’t see at all. We ended up staying only until 2:30 even though we were really enjoying the music, because we were exhausted and we had oral French and Wolof exams the next morning, for which neither of us had studied because we both forgot our notebooks at school. Our ride home was not nearly as frightening, by the way, because our taxi had headlights.

Monday, April 13: I went to SIT early to study for my exams. I was very nervous and mixing languages all around in my head, but both ended up going better than I expected. I got my results: since I got here, I’ve gone from novice-mid to intermediate-high in French, and from novice-low to intermediate-mid in Wolof. I’m happy with both scores, though I’m not sure how accurate they are (especially the Wolof one!!).
Later I left for my first kora lesson, extremely excited for the lesson but apprehensive about my ability to get to the place. I got in a taxi with the directions to say the name of a neighborhood and, when I got close, to call my kora teacher and he’d talk to the taxi driver. All was going well until the kora teacher didn’t pick up his phone—this had been my fear all along. I was sure I’d end up stranded in the middle of a strange neighborhood (which wouldn’t be a huge deal, I could ask pretty much anyone in the neighborhood where to find the griots and they’d know), but I called Souleye and he talked to the driver, and then my kora teacher ended up calling back afterwards and talking to the driver as well. After asking many pedestrians and talking with Souleye and Fa the taxi driver actually ended up dropping me in the correct neighborhood and pointing me to the correct house!
I entered the house, chez Cissokho, to find a whole different universe—people EVERYWHERE, kids running around, people watching television, people just sitting in random corners—I guess not so much a different universe but like, a neighborhood all in one small house. I was led inside and given a chair, and asked why I was there. That I did not expect. I said I was looking for Fa, to give me kora lessons. They told me Fa wasn’t home. After a couple phone calls it was determined that Fa was coming home in a few minutes and I was led to a room where one woman was laying on a bed watching a soap opera and smoking, so I sat there for a while with her and her daughter and watched with them (the daughter just stared at me the whole time). I asked how many people lived in the house and the woman said, a lot, she didn’t know. Over 40, though. She said it’s like that in Africa in the griot household. I can’t even imagine.
Fa, to my great surprise, did actually return within a few minutes! He took me over to his house (the other house was the “family house”) where we walked up a very narrow stairway to a tiny porch area where he cleaned off two plastic chairs and told me to sit down. I took my kora out of its case but didn’t end up using it because it wasn’t tuned and he didn’t know how to do it, but would leave it for his Uncle to do that night. The lesson went well; it was a bit different from the ones I had had with Edouard in various ways, and EXTREMELY different from music lessons I’ve taken in the U.S. He would play a song, and then slowly take out notes until he was playing just the very basic roots of the song, and then he would take portions of that basis and play them over and over, and then hand me the kora. He said I was a good student because I have a good ear for music, that music is in my blood, and that I have a good memory. He seemed very surprised that I learned so quickly; the second song, however, for some reason, was so much more difficult for me!
During the lesson he’d get up and walk away frequently, one time turning on the TV, another time to go talk to a friend outside, others just to go sit in his room for a minute. I found that funny because I don’t think that’d ever happen in a music lesson in the U.S. Another big difference is that most of the lesson is spent practicing, repeating one phrase of notes over and over and over and over again; in the U.S., from my experience, the practicing is mostly done outside of class and the class time is used for learning new things, getting assignments, etc. I guess it’s much more necessary to use class time for practice with the kora, though, because there’s no written music, it’s all memorization.
After the lesson Fa walked me to the bus stop and explained how the buses work (I had never taken a bus before in Senegal, I was too scared.). We talked a little bit about my music background and about his family—he has 46 siblings, and this is normal in a griot family.
I waited for about 45 minutes for the right bus to come by and took it back to school. It was much easier and less stressful than I had imagined, which was great. When I got back Kenna and Bethany had picked up my clothes from the tailor! I tried them on and both fit very well so I was happy ☺
I went home to grab Courtney and we went to the supermarket so I could get some more band-aids. No way when I packed did I anticipate running out of band-aids, but I’m a special case here in Senegal. I found out the supermarket is much closer to my house than I thought, though, after taking a silly 1-minute ride on a car-rapide, so that’s handy! We walked around one of my favorite markets too, and then went home for dinner. Lamb and pea stew! What a great day.

Tuesday: In the morning I went to school even though I wasn’t going to have classes, just to organize things and get things printed and to get my exam levels (which I mentioned before). I also went back to the tailor with some new fabric and a new dress design, so I have another piece of clothing to look forward to! I made lunch and was off to attempt to take the bus to my next kora lesson! I left about an hour and a half of time before the lesson was to start because I knew at least one of many things would happen (the bus would be late, or never come and I’d have to take a taxi, or I wouldn’t find the bus stop, or the bus would come but then get a flat tire, or the traffic would be awful, or I would make it there but not recognize my stop and then have to take a taxi and backtrack, etc.). This worked out perfectly: the bus arrived 45 minutes after I did at the bus stop, I did end up recognizing my stop, and I remembered the route to walk back to Fa’s house and arrived just as he was walking out the door. Perfect! (Things RARELY work that easily here, I’ve found.) Fa told his uncle to come along to tune my kora, but his uncle also ended up giving me my lesson. I’m not sure why, as it seemed like his uncle was not as good at playing OR teaching the kora, but the lesson went well anyway. I used the uncle’s kora as mine was still not tuned, but at one point during the lesson they detached all the strings from my kora and fixed it and tuned it. So then I got to use my own! (Well, not my own, the one I’m borrowing from SIT.) So the lesson went well, his teaching style was a bit different (he’d play a very long phrase a few times and then hand me the kora and expect me to play it) but it was neat to see another teaching style of someone who probably learned the same way Fa did.
Afterwards I took the bus home and have been doing some work since then, and looking forward to dinner.

I have only 2 days left in Dakar (yikes!) before I leave for the monastery…I have no clue if I’ll have internet access there, so treasure these words as you may not be getting many updates for the next couple weeks! But I’ll try ☺

I hope all is wonderful where you are and I miss you all!!

Ba ci kanam!