Happy Birthday, Spies!!

Here's a shout-out to my man Spies - happy birthday to you!  Hope you have a great day.

Nothing exciting to report here.  Had my second Thanksgiving party on Saturday, and I decided to make my mom's famous artichoke dip.  To do this in Dakar means trekking to the fancy grocery store (aka the Toubab Market) - a one hour walk each way, in the sun, if you are saving your cash (for a concert I thought was on Sunday, and therefore before I would be able to go to the bank - but turns out it's Tuesday instead - oh well) and feeling masochistic.  It means being flexible with things like cheese variety - the dip calls for parmesan cheese, but here pretty much all you can find is Emmanthal.  For those of you who aren't familiar, it's kind of like swiss cheese, flavor-wise.  NOT parmesany at all!  I was able to find some super-expensive dried/powdery parmesan, but it's not the same as grated.  So I mixed Emmanthal and dried powdered parmesan.  So the dip is:  artichoke hearts, mayonnaise, garlic, and (in theory) parmesan cheese.  Normally, this wouldn't cost too much.  But here?  $22.  That's right.  I paid $22 to make my damn artichoke dip.  And you know what?  It was WORTH EVERY PENNY.  It was SO good!  Emmanthal notwithstanding.  It was the hit of the party, and I'm sure my mom is not surprised.  So, thanks, Mom!

So I had the good fortune to have MASHED POTATOES two times in one week - for those of you who know me, you know that mashed potatoes are like manna from heaven for me...  If stranded on a desert island, my food of choice would be mashed potatoes; if on death row my last meal would be mashed potatoes, etc.  Kate, another Fulbrighter, made apple pie, brownies, stuffing, and chicken -some roasted, some fried.  Again, I must emphasize the effort /expense involved in making American food here - so it makes it all the more special.  Cameron, the archaeologist, made carrots and roasted squash, AND served me my first baobab coctail.  MM!  Baobab juice (called "bouie") mixed with rum.  Mighty tasty!  Too bad baobab fruit isn't readily available back home...  I would love to mix some for you!  I wonder if there's somewhere in the states where you can buy it?  I've never seen it canned or boxed here - it's always made fresh.  You boil down the fruit and then strain it and add milk and sugar.  So, anyway, after gorging on artichoke dip and mashed potatoes and the like, I waddled home (cabbed, then waddled the rest of the way) and collapsed. 

Today I had my second Wolof lesson, this time with my mate Karima.  It's fun having a classmate.  Her Wolof is way better than mine, though, because she lives with a family that mostly doesn't speak French. 

So, here's an important lesson I learned today:

The word for "ear" and the word for "love" sound almost exactly the same.  So if you're not careful, you can say "I ear you", or I guess if you have an ear ache you might accidentally say your love hurts.  I figure if I need to refer to my ear I'll just point to it to be on the safe side.

I have to ask my Wolof teacher what the word for "heart" is.  This is to contribute to my friend Ben's philosphy about countries' attitudes about love.  It goes like this:  In French, heart (coeur) rhymes with flower (fleur).  In German, heart (herz) rhymes with pain (schmerz).  In English, however, heart rhymes with???  Fart.  Yep.  He calls it his Heart-Fart theory.  So, I'd like to know what "heart" is in Wolof and what it rhymes with.  It might just illuminate some mysteries about this country for me. 

Thanksgiving in Dakar!

Robin Diallo, the Public Affairs Officer at the US Embassy, hosts an annual Thanksgiving party at her villa in Fenetre Mermoz, a nice neighborhood on the other side of the highway and a little further north from where I live.  Apparently she's famous for her Thanksgiving parties, and now I can understand why!  First of all, it's no small feat to pull off a traditional American Thanksgiving feast over here, but besides that, she goes all out and features a little play, holds a hand-turkey contest, streams American football projected onto her wall, and has games to play. 

Having been here now for 3 1/2 weeks, words cannot describe how wonderful it felt to spend a whole afternoon and evening speaking nothing but English, eating things like cranberry sauce and stuffing, mashed potatoes with gravy, turkey (from Gambia!) with gravy, SALAD, and PIE!!  I had cherry pie and pecan pie.  AND, REAL coffee, not Nestcafe!!!  Whoopee!!


Run was pretty psyched about Thanksgiving, too.


Before dinner there were all sorts of yummy appetizers, and I was surprised to learn that I actually liked eating shrimp.  I NEVER like shrimp, because they always seem too squeaky to me.  But these were tiny and super soft, not a squeak to be heard.  I found myself eating half the plate of shrimp.  Decorum, Melissa! 

While noshing on appetizers, everyone was asked to make a hand-turkey like we all made when we were in elementary school.  Here's mine (a hippie turkey, hanging out with his new friend Run):

Here I am with the super-cool Karima:

And here Run is with his new mates:

Laura, a Fulbrighter studying dance here

Aboon (sp?), daughter of Marie, a Fulbright scholar and professor at CUNY

Paula, the recently hired new head librarian for the Embassy.

Marie and Aboon.

Laura and Carrie, another Fulbrighter who is studying something relating to public health.

Karima and Run go way back.

All of the Fulbrighters.  I still haven't mastered everyone's name / field of study yet but will try to add more of this in later.

After the crafting, Robin recruited some guests to be actors in her Thanksgiving play.  The play made fun of fears about dying from stuffing the inside of a turkey, and recast the traditional holiday narrative with some good old Zinn-style revisionism. 

Here's Robin, narrating.

Some of her recruits.

After dinner, Robin's husband Khalil projected NFL football from his computer onto the wall - the picture was almost as clear as an HD big screen TV.  We saw the New England / Detroit game.  The last time I looked at the score it looked like New England was winning.  The halftime show seemed even more grandiose than I recall them being - eagles and statues of liberties on big screens, pyrotechnics, and American flags everywhere.  This all took on a somewhat surreal feel, watching this from Dakar.

After the non-sports fanatics among us tired of watching the game, some of us started playing a game called "Apples to Apples."  Everyone takes 7 red cards, and the cards all have a random item on them - a famous actor, a random noun, etc.  The green cards are all adjectives.  Whoever is the "judge" for the round picks a green card and reads it out loud to everyone and then puts it on the table.  Everyone then looks through his or her hand and decides which red card most aptly fits the green adjective on the table.  Of course, the idea is that it's all a matter of opinion, and you can "lobby" the judge if you disagree with his/her decision.  Accuracy is not always the best approach - it depends on the judge.  Irony always wins big, as do random, quirky and funny associations.  For "chewy," I didn't have anything particularly accurate, so I chose "morticians."  Got some laughs. 

So, that was my Thanksgiving in a nutshell!  I felt thankful to get to speak some English, to eat American-style food, to have new friends, and in general not to feel quite as far away from home for a little bit... 

Here's hoping all of you had a great holiday too!

Week 4: Internet: YAY! Electricity: BOO!

Well, somehow a miracle has happened.  I now have access to the internet, finally, in my room!  Would you like to know what the hold up was?  A slow translation of paper bureaucracy into digital activity?  No.  A poor connection?  No.  A faulty modem?  No.  The problem, friends, was my inability to accurately read the curlycue numbers handwritten on my receipt telling me what my login phone number is.  That is to say, I could read all but one, and one's enough to screw everything up.  What seemed like a pretty clear 1 to me was actually a 5.  Now, I am not unfamiliar with European-stylized handwriting (this being a former French colony, their handwriting lessons growing up are, I assume, similar to those in France, and consequently I find the countries share a general commonality in handwriting style - as compared to the States, at least).  I know how 1's NORMALLY look here, AND how 5's normally look here, and this looked like a 1.  Of course, all of this could've gotten cleared up much earlier if anyone else before today's technician (who gets a GOLD STAR!  YAY!) had thought to ask for my client number as a backup.  He was the only one who thought it odd that the number I thought was correct drew up a Mr. Gueye.  A woman with a horrible American accent?  Probably not Mr. Gueye.  So, he clarified the number mistake, and - voila!  Now it works!  WOOHOO!

So, I was all giddy and excited to be able to check email from my room, blog from my room, etc., and I had just enough time to log into my email, see who had sent me new messages, delete my junk mail, and then - BAM!  Electricty OUT!  This is how things work here, so it's not like I was surprised, but I thought - come on, man - can't I at least relish my internet victory for a FEW minutes first, please?  I killed some time making some tea and just at the point that I was losing my patience and was going to go to the cafe (now that I saw I had messages from friends, I wanted to read them!), it came back on.  So I excitedly sat down to read the first message, and I was about halfway through it when - of course - power out again.  This time it stayed out and stayed out and stayed out, until finally I caved and came here, to the cafe.  (At the cafe, if the power goes out, it comes on again relatively quickly because they have a generator, which I have deduced is a prerequisite to any successful business establishment here).

So, to review:  Internet:  YAY!  Electricity:  BOO!

But, needn't you worry - I am aware of my good fortune to have this to complain about. 

Now, HERE's something I have the BAD fortune to complain about:

I have a bout of the flu.  Not just any flu, mind you, but the intestinal flu.  No need to tell any of you how fun THAT is.  It hit me like a ton of bricks Saturday night, and I only played one tune with Milim before I had to go home - what had started as an increasingly throbbing headache quickly progressed to, by the time I made it home (which normally would have taken 1-2 minutes, but probably took me 10), what felt like I had been beaten to near death with a crowbar.  Then, night sweats, fever, chills, shivering, etc.  The next day, I had a temperature of 38.4 (don't know what that is, but normal is 37).  Thomas, my neighbor, gave me a high-dose fever reducer.  I spent all of Sunday languishing and hoping to die or at least sleep.  My host family thought it was malaria.  Monday I went straight to the doctor, who gave me what I suppose in the grand scheme of things was good news:  NOT malaria!  But intestinal flu is no walk in the park, so needless to say I'm not starting the beginning of Week 4 on a good foot.  However, I can tell I'm slowly getting better.  The doc gave me good drugs to ease the flu pain and temper the intestinal civil war I've been hosting.  I've been drinking tea and Sprite and eating ramen noodles - I was told to avoid all of the regular Senegalese sauce dishes, and stick to easy-to-stomach things like white rice, plain pasta, and soup. 

So, today I can say I definitely feel much better - I feel human - I was able to drag myself out of the house to come here, at least.  I think by tomorrow I might actually be able to do a bit of work.  So, ONWARD! 

Tabaski Photos

Across the street from my house

Boys cleaning sheep entrails

Burying the unusable parts of the sheep

Tabou's family preparing the Tabaski feast

The women deal with the vegetables and make the sauce; the men prepare and grill the meat.

 

Tabou's cousin joking around; Tabou insists that I assure you all that Africans are not evil vampires, as she fears this picture might give people the wrong idea...

My first plate (there were 3).

Tabou gave me a traditional boubou as a Tabaski gift.  She also dolled me up with makeup, jewelry, high heels... (see earlier post about that lesson learned)

The whole ensemble

A close-up of Tabou's make-up work on me; I look a little shocked, as you can see.  Also, note the sweat above my upper lip (I don't think it blends well with the foundation) -  it was REALLY hot in there, and no fan... 

These were NOT the shoes I ended up wearing, but these are the shoes I SHOULD HAVE worn...

Tabou and her grandmother

Grandma

The whole family, except not really, because there are many more...

My darling Bintou. 

Bintou and Layfatou.

Tabou and a baby cousin who's name I didn't catch.

Cutie!

4 of Tabou's cousins or half-sisters dressed up in their Tabaski finery (it's still unclear to me exactly how everyone is related to Tabou - especially because people tend to use "sister" and "brother" even if they are really cousins) .

Another cousin - I think her name is Mata.

Me and Grandma (AFTER the prayer rug incident, so you can see there are no hard feelings)

Me and Tabou's mom, Aida

Tabou's half-sister / cousin (?) Khaji.  She loves getting her picture taken and likes to strike suave model poses.

The very lovely Tabou dressed in her formal Tabaski outfit.

Tabou's younger sister Astou - she is a character.  She's funny and is always cracking up about something.

Me and Tabou at her mom's place.

The day after Tabaski Tabou asked if she could braid my hair...

These are "free braids," as opposed to cornrows...

Drawing goofy animal cartoons was a big hit with the kids - especially with the younger ones who don't really speak much French yet.

Africa's FUN!

Neighborhood kids wrestling - Senegalese wrestling is a unique traditional sport and people here are as obsessed with it as Americans are about football.

The neighborhood gang - they love getting photographed and really like to ham it up.

Khaji (far left) in her fancy Tabaski outfit, along with some other cousins / sisters / neighbors in their own custom-tailored boubous.

The living room area outside of Tabou's room - this is where we ate our mutton.

I believe this was an episode of Gossip Girl dubbed over in French.

The courtyard area outside of Tabou's house.

Tabou's building taken from the balcony outside her room.

Tabaski sunset.

Tabaski moon.