A few updates:

1) I've been helping some musicians lately with their music business-related efforts.  Advice on setting up Facebook pages, websites, etc.  Researching good venue matches in the US - festivals, university concert series, etc.  I feel like I've learned a few things over the years with Yid Vicious and it's another way I can give something back here.  Hopefully it will pan out into some gigs for them!

2) Papis, the sound engineer for Milim, invited me to have lunch with his brother, sister-in-law, and some other people.  His brother had gotten married a few months before but Papis hadn't been over to visit since then.  Aicha, his beautiful sister-in-law, was a typically Senegalese newlywed - eager to impress as hostess.  And boy, did she ever.  My, my, the spread!  My jaw dropped when she brought out the enormous platter piled with a mountainous array of rice, chicken yassa (a lemony-oniony sauce), and various artfully carved vegetables as decorations - cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes.  It looked like it belonged on a royal buffet somewhere.  I was pretty impressed.  Also, pretty intimidated, because I knew what my role as guest of honor was supposed to be:  gluttonous PIG, that's what.   I did my best, I really did.  The food was absolutely delicious, and we ate it in the traditional Senegalese style, on the floor, with our hands (right only, of course).  Each person gets his or her own little corner of the platter, so nobody is really digging their paws into anyone else's eating area.  It's pretty practical, actually.  Any time I showed signs of slowing down, I'd hear, "Lekkal!  Lekkal!  Il faut BIEN manger!!"  (Eat!  Eat!  You must eat WELL!)  I kept on trying - I did the best I could, and I had to have packed about a week's worth of food into me before they were finally satisfied.  Then we had ataya (Senegalese tea - super yummy, very strong and sweet - great for after a meal!) and then Papis and I went to his place to watch the wrestling match with his friends.  As I've mentioned before, people follow wrestling here as avidly as Americans do football, basketball, or baseball at home.  Only probably even more so - here it's pretty much wrestling and soccer, that's it.  So, we watched the last two or three matches and some wrestlers won and some lost and cried and had to have their handlers drag them over to the sidelines to console them, and then I cabbed over to Place de l'Independence to cat-sit for Paula again.

3) Today I decided to do something nice so I went to this secluded beach area at the southern tip of the city that my friend Bambi had showed me one day when we were driving around.  He said it was where he always used to swim as a kid, and he liked it because it was tucked away and never very crowded.  The beach itself was relatively clean, although you still have to walk over a pile of trash to actually get to it.  But the water was a beautiful turquoise and the place felt like a cozy little hideout in the midst of bustling downtown Dakar.  A group of kids were playing in the water, and some others in the sand on the beach.  But it was relatively quiet and I sat on a rock with my feet dangling in the water (it wasn't too cold!) and sketched a little.  It was a nice, relaxing way to spend some of the afternoon.