Last post from Abroad...

Welcome, friends, to my last update from Senegal! This is unreal for me, that I feel like I’ve been here forever and that I really have a life here, but I also feel like it just started and like I haven’t even left my homes in Vermont and Alfred…I’m having many mixed feelings about this, but have really been enjoying this last week!

Friday, May 8
I handed in my ISP around noon, and it was like dropping a large dumbbell that I’d been carrying on my shoulders for the past month. I left the school through a crowd of students hunched over their computers typing frantically, sat on my roof in the beautiful sun and did my laundry.
I then met Bethany and Kenna for the second attempt at visiting my homestay family (we were going to go the day before but Bethany ended up having to have a meeting and hamburgers and…it just never worked out). We walked along the ocean all the way to Ouakam, and finally got to my old house. It was very…unreal to be back there and I had mixed feelings about this meeting. I got to the door and strangely, it was locked. The family knew I was coming, I had called twice to tell them and they were looking forward to the package I was delivering them (sent to me by one of their past homestay students), so it seemed weird that they wouldn’t be there. I called my sister Aminta and she said something to the effect of, “there’s a problem with the house, we moved to my sister’s house.” I’m not sure if she meant for the night, for a little while, or permanently, but I was a little frustrated that they hadn’t let me know before I made the trip. She said though that she’d be at the Final Party the following day so I could bring her the package then…so I went home.
That night I met Alex at the Thai restaurant and we had a delicious dinner and multiple desserts, and stayed there talking until the restaurant closed. I got home around 1AM and played some kora, starting to prepare for my upcoming performance at the resort.

Saturday, May 9
I met Megan for lunch at Les Ambassades, a glorious little French restaurant packed with cakes and pastries of all shapes and sizes. Afterwards we went on a very short souvenir-shopping trip at Marché Tilène, the market I fell in love with the first time I went downtown so many months ago. We then headed to the Final Party at SIT, where we’d all get to say our final goodbyes to our homestay families and see the art everyone had created during the Art workshops earlier in the semester. There was a band playing (consisting of my 2 griot kora teachers, my djembe teacher, my dance teacher, a balafon player and a singer), and tons and tons of food. I expected my family to show up because a) they really wanted that package and b) they told me they’d be there to say goodbye…but they never did. A man I’d never seen before came to pick up the package to bring to them, saying the mother was in the hospital so they couldn’t make it (I never found out whether she really WAS in the hospital or not); as this was my 3rd try to say goodbye to a family with whom I never really connected, I just told him to say goodbye for me.
Later that night, after another lovely family dinner, Abby and I put on Madagascar II for Aida, the 3-year-old in our house, and her cousins who were visiting (half-Italian, half-Senegalese, beautiful children), in French. Sally came over later (since she had lived in this house for the first 2 months) and we had a little sleepover and packed for the trip to Mbour!

Sunday, May 10
We all gathered at SIT in the morning to see the first of the presentations: a kora presentation, some dancing and some visual arts. It was really great to see what everyone has accomplished in the past month! The presentations are almost like a little talent show.
After visiting the Village Des Arts for the visual arts presentations, we hopped on a bus to Mbour. We got keys to our bungalows (I was with Erin and Elena) and entered the beautiful 2-level hut we’d be lounging in for the next week. I worked on my presentation that evening while my friends went to the market, played some kora, and relaxed. What a lovely escape from Dakar!

Monday, May 11
In the morning we had more presentations, took a break for lunch, and then mine was the first one in the afternoon. I got to experience my wonderful nerves! The presentation didn’t go AWFULLY, it was just extremely choppy, sweaty, and many wrong notes were played among the right ones. I was just SO relieved when it was over! For the rest of the week I’d be able to relax, lounge on the beach, and just enjoy others’ presentations without the pressure of thinking about my own. Afterwards I went with Megan and Erin to get thiakry (which I will miss immensely in the US) and we walked around and explored the town a little. We went to a supermarket, which was a little bit of a culture shock.

Tuesday, May 12
In the morning we had more presentations, and then in the afternoon we had an optional excursion to L’Île de Coquillage (shell island) which is famous for the mix of Muslims and Catholics living together and sharing a cemetery (90% Catholic and 10% Muslim, so pretty much the opposite of the rest of Senegal). We explored the touristy island and walked around the beautiful cemetery, and then on the way home were planning on stopping at President Senghor’s birth house (which is now a museum). Before the museum, however, we stopped at a place called Warang, where many liquers are made from exotic fruits. Sarah, one of the program directors, wanted to buy some for her family, but the students wanted to check it out too. So we all went in and were offered a “tasting,” which consisted of I think 7 consecutive shots of their various liquors: pineapple-grapefruit, tamarin, ginger, hibiscus, passionfruit, mango, and chocolate-banana-coffee. I must say, it was one of the most surprising and wonderful group excursions we’ve had so far! Needless to say, the bus ride back to the hotel was a little crazy.
After dinner there was a party going on for Lucy’s birthday in the big bungalow so we went there and danced for a while, and then sat in a circle and played “Most Likely To…” where we went around the circle and chose what we thought everyone would be most likely to do in their lives. I was “most likely to have dreads down to my feet” and “most likely to start my own line of organic macaroni and cheese.” I think the second one is fitting. Around 11 we heard a very loud round of what sounded like gunshots right outside the hut, but it turned out to be fireworks on the beach! Apparently there was a party going on at the resort next door for some Belgian chefs…and there was a neighbor who showed up very angry that the unexpected fireworks had woken up his 2-year-old son, and was threatening to “kill someone”….so we left pretty quickly after watching the beautiful show. At midnight everyone sang me “Happy Birthday!” And soon I went to bed, because I am an old woman.

Wednesday, May 13
My 21st birthday!!! We had presentations in the morning, then spent some relaxing time on the beach, and in the late afternoon I went to the Mbour market with Erin. The first 20 minutes were about the most hellish 20 minutes I could imagine; a strange man trying to convince us that it’s obligatory for a Senegalese person to “guide and protect” every white person who comes to the market, and therefore following us around constantly while we tried to tell him to leave us alone and that we could “protect” ourselves, we had lived in Senegal for over 3 months and weren’t stupid; then his friend joining in and telling us there was no way they could leave us alone; us standing still and staring at the ground, trying to make them give up on us; us speedwalking through a maze of small market paths trying to lose them; them finding us and me being extremely angry and yelling at them; them continuing to follow us and us finally having a shopowner tell the men to leave us alone. Whew. I was fuming. “Steaming mad.” After they finally left the market was lovely! On the way back to the resort in a taxi we made some friends, the taxi driver and another man in the taxi, but then the car stopped working so we switched to a different one. That night we had a lovely dinner and watched “Juno” afterwards on the projector, while Erin, Alex and I shared the homemade mango-passionfruit wine and the hibiscus wine I had purchased at the monastery, and it was delectable. A very relaxing, happy birthday ☺

Thursday, May 14
We finished presentations in the morning (meaning ISP is officially OVER!) and had a little re-entry/goodbye session, which I think is just an incomprehensible idea for everyone here. The rest of the day was spent lounging on the beach, swimming, filling out evaluation forms, and eating wonderful huge amounts of curry and vegetables. In the evening SIT provided us with 3 “surprises”: Been (1): luscious creamy ice cream; Naar (2): crab races and prizes; Neent (3): drumming and dancing. It was cute. Afterwards it was only about 11, and Erin, Elena, Megan and I went back to my bed to lounge and talk and all passed out within 10 minutes.

Friday, May 15
This morning we had to say goodbye to four members of our group who are taking flights out of Dakar tonight. It’s so unreal to think that tomorrow I’ll be getting on a plane and coming home. I’m not going to reflect much now, I still have tomorrow in Dakar and I’ll do a final update once I get home…basically the last couple days of things are anxious for me; I hate goodbyes!

So, I guess…I’ll see you soon! Really soon!
Love☺