One door leads to the kitchen, one to the bathroom, and another to the main house. There are a few other mystery doors, which I later learned lead to more bedrooms where other students have stayed before the boys moved out. In the middle of the courtyard is a large tree with shady branches and clothes lines strung from it. A small garden sits on the far end of the yard, and most days laundry is hanging out to dry in the sun, and stray cats are hiding underneath the leaves. Honestly, the fist thing you really notice about living in Senegal is that the American way of life is disgustingly opulent and luxurious in comparison. Buildings here are older than at home, and because they don't insulate against cold, only heat, most building are just made out of concrete with layers of paint over it. It doesn't matter if it's our house in Sicap Baobab or the 4-story apartment building occupied by a single extended family in Yoff, decor is often sparse, bedrooms usually contain only a bed, and a dresser. All rooms are lit by a single bare bulb. I'll take you on a tour of the house. In my room were two small four-poster beds hung with mosquito netting, and a short vanity between them. There's a single dresser against the wall, and most of my clothes fit in it but it also serves as a linen cabinet, so it's a little cramped. The window is covered in a wrought-iron grid painted white and the light is kept out by two large shutters that don't open. I have a fan facing my bed and two laters of mosquito netting (because I need to be able to stick my leg out from under the covers but I'm paranoid that if I just use the net they gave me, I'll still get bitten. So I have two nets. Plus it's pretty. Also, Senegal is dusty as heck, and every day I come home with my feet covered in dirt while Mariane and everyone else I know manages to be neat as a pin. I don't know how they do it. So, my feet are perpetually dusty, and the floor is always dusty, and I'm the only one who seems to attract any of the dirt. Lucky me. Across from my room is Mariane's bedroom and the master. All of the area in the house that isn't bedroom is living room. There's a TV and 4 couches and some low tables where we eat and hang out most of the time. A black and white photo of a woman is pasted over an informational calendar with pharmaceutical information on hemorrhoids and hung with a long length of Islamic prayer beads. If you go outside the house, you'll find the door to the kitchen, and a few feet away from that is the bathroom, with a toilet, sink, and little shower. There's also a big sink in the courtyard where we usually brush teeth and do laundry.
I think the best comparison I have to Senegal is Mexico. Stray cats and dogs prowl the streets or sunbathe on the side of the road. Everyone greets each other(this is very important, as my teacher told me. If you don't greet someone, they won't talk to you at all. Asaala Maalekum. Waalekum salaam.) There are always people, everywhere you go. Sitting outside polishing shoes, drinking tea, hanging out at fruit stands, chilling in piles of rubble next to unfinished apartment buildings. In fact, I think the biggest difference between Dakar and Playa that I've noticed so far (beside like, different continents) is that because the parts of Dakar I've been to is less commercial that most of the parts of Playa I've seen, there are just piles and piles of sand and dust and building materials everywhere. Next to really beautiful, modern and old buildings there will be a seemingly abandoned construction project. So, to imagine Dakar, think of Playa, but subtract about a billion tourists and add about a million more cinder blocks. And that interests me, because it's just the norm here. In the States, I can't imagine that going over very well anywhere outside of very, very poor neighborhoods. But then, that's the standard. This isn't uncomfortable at all. It's just the reality. There are just unfinished buildings and lots of dust and it's not a wealthy neighborhood by any means, or probably even an upper middle class one. But it's not uncomfortable. If this is the most uncomfortable I am in my life, then I'm in for an easy life. It's hard to explain. It's not gross or bad or dangerous. It's just not the pristine, bright, shiny life that Americans (and Europeans. And most people you and I know) think they/we are entitled to. I'm fine with that. It's like the food. In the States, I feel like we eat such a limited variety of foods. Today I picked fish meat off of its bones twice and watched while someone plucked the eyes from one of the large, toothy, terrifying fish heads and eat them. Everything is a tiny bit crazier than the very tame, very mild, rather boring U.S. It isn't unusual to eat lamb's head on a Sunday, or be slightly afraid to ask what's in a sauce, or sometimes (though it hasn't happened to me yet) find a stray bit of intestine in your food. I love Senegalese food, but I can assure you, there's a reason Andrew Zimmern has done an episode of Bizarre Foods here. Today the Lewis and Clark study abroad group and I drank tea the traditional Senegalese way, which is in three rounds. The Tuareg people (Bombino!) share the tea ceremony and recite a long poem before each round. You use the same tea bag for all of them, so the first glass of tea you drink is scaldingly hot, ultra sweet, and suuuuper bitter, in the Tuareg poem, compared to the dry desert wind. It represents death. The next glass is a whole new pot of tea, with the same bag. It's less bitter, and represents life. The final glass of tea you drink is the least bitter, and the lightest in color, and that represents love. By then the tea leaves are spent and you can't drink anymore.
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