Here it is: My first blog post on STA. Hoorah. Now, hopefully this isn't classed as cheating, but since I'm currently semi-permanently stationed in Montreal with no exciting adventures or shenanigans on the horizon, I'm posting some entries I made in my Senegal travel journal from last summer. Onward:

July 20, 2006 3:03 am

Okay, the last two hours = sketchiest two hours of my entire life, no contest. So I got off the plane in Dakar along with about twenty others, took the shuttle thing to the arrival gate, filled out my customs form, received my first taste of the famed “hospitality” in the form of a security guard who leered at me and gave me the Senegalese equivalent of an ultra-creepy “how YOU doin'?”, went through immigration, and exited the airport into the crowd of waiting taxi drivers and shady characters.

Issa was not there. There were only a handful of signs being held, none of which said anything remotely like “Sierra” or “Projects Abroad.”

I waited for a while. 1:15 turned into 1:30, then 1:45. No Issa. Seeing me standing there obviously clueless, people started becoming bolder in their approaches. One man, missing teeth and reeking of alcohol, came all the way up to me, grabbed my arm, and claimed he was supposed to pick me up. Several guys who had been hovering around me for a while offered the use of their cell phone. I knew money would enter that picture sooner or later, so I refused at first, but as 1:45 became 2:00, I gave in. So I'd be out a few bucks, better than standing in a crowd of creepy, aggressive men in the wee hours of the morning. I called Issa, didn't really get what he said, tried to impress upon him that I was waiting by the entrance.

Back inside, with the cell-phone man demanding more money and a crippled guy hurling what I gathered were very crude comments at me, I caught sight of two Western-looking women and engaged them immediately in conversation. One was French and offered to call Issa and get a better idea of what was going on. Relieved, I agreed. She called him and it turned out that he would be picking me up in fifteen minutes inside the airport restaurant.

I went inside and waited. At maybe 2:35, the cell-phone guy came in with another man and claimed that he was Issa's brother. He had a sign which said “Teaching and Projects Abroad, Ciara” on it. H handed me a phone, saying “it's Issa.” The guy on the other end explained that he wasn't in Dakar, but his brother would take me to the Toucan and he'd meet me at eight in the morning to go to St-Louis.

I was totally and utterly sketched out by this point, so I did my best to evaluate the situation. The “brother” thing seemed like too much of a classic ploy and I was pretty disinclined to believe it, especially when he was accompanied by cell-phone man. On the other hand, I didn't think I had ever mentioned the name “Issa.” Back on the first hand, they had spelled my name incorrectly. On the other hand, they knew to put “Teaching and”, which I had certainly never mentioned. Back on the first hand... well, those were really the best cons I came up with, but it was wicked sketchy and if I went somewhere with the wrong guy, I knew my night could end very badly indeed. Issa's mention of St-Louis (again, something I didn't think I had mentioned) sealed the deal. Plus, I got a good feeling from the brother- and when I say “good,” I don't mean “warm and fuzzy” but rather “I'm more than 60% sure that he's not planning to rape and kill me, which is really about as good as I'm going to get in this situation.”

Anyway, we took a taxi to the Toucan, which, let's just say, is not what immediately springs to mind when you hear the phrase “fine and upstanding.” It's located down a dark, dingy alley and has paintings of naked white girls on the walls. The brother left shortly after I checked in and the receptionist (about 23, I'd guess) showed me to my room, which is a 10x10x10 box with nothing much in it. The lock- thank God- amazingly enough, works, and the desk guy even left with only minimal fuss (after he showed me in, I was afraid he was going to linger, a fear which did not exactly shrink as he began talking about how he would shortly be in the US and maybe we could meet up there...?).

Anyway, I need a bathroom, but I'm way too creeped out to venture outside my room. I guess it can wait another four hours till morning.

6:17 am

Oh, God. I really, really, really have to go to the bathroom. I have NO IDEA where it is and, if I recall correctly, there's no number on my door, giving me the added trouble of trying to remember exactly where my room is if I go wandering away.

I'm torn between a) trying to wait it out, and b) taking my valuables with me and heading out in search of a toilet.

7:23 am

I finally changed my clothes and left my room- there's a toilet right next door, it turns out. Unfortunately, this brings up another conundrum: one toilet? For men and women? What the heck do I do if there's, for example, some guy at a urinal? I don't quite dare go inside. Even if I do, I'm picturing vile toilets (probably of the squat variety, I assume) and no paper (such is the quality of this lovely establishment).

7:42 am

Whew: mission accomplished. After a particularly violent and noxious rumble from my stomach, I threw caution to the wind and charged into the bathroom. It turned out not to be one of those communal dealies after all, but a private one with a lock (I was particularly impressed by that last, completely unexpected, detail); there was even a Western-style toilet, though no paper. I took care of, shall we say, half of my toilet needs. The other half is the one which has been making its presence known all night, but I was wary enough of the cleaning method necessitated by the lack of TP that I decided to hold off for as long as possible.

July 21, 2006

Okay, let's see if I can finally get some updates written. I've just been out with Issa on my induction (he was three and a quarter hours late; I started to think he wasn't coming!). Anyway, I've been thinking: this is culture shock beyond anything I've ever experienced. I'm afraid to do the most basic things for fear of offending people.

I've been meaning to ask someone what a normal marriage age is- yesterday I told some guy I was “too young to marry” and he looked at me like I had three heads, but on the other hand, I've met plenty of nearly-thirty year old guys who aren't married.

Before I forget, one major culture shock thing: attitude toward garbage. There's trash EVERYWHERE, and no freakin' wonder: people toss their bags and wrappers in the street without a second thought. On the drive up to St-Louis, the sept-place driver was sucking on a bag of water and when he'd had enough, he unceremoniously threw it out the window. I was so shocked I almost said something like, “Uh, dude, maybe you didn't notice, but you just dropped a plastic bag on the road.” This is extended to inside the house, too. You pretty much just chuck crap on the floor and it gets swept up a few times a day.

There's a lot on my shopping list, including but not limited to: towel, shampoo, hand fan (the best invention EVER). I wish I'd had one last night, because I don't think I've ever been so miserably hot in my life. Even my HEELS were sweating. See, the power went out pretty soon after we went to bed, meaning no fan. I drank my entire huge water bottle and eventually moved to the floor because it was slightly cooler. There are no sheets on the beds, which surprised me at first but now makes total sense; you'd have to be a lunatic to use them in this heat.

July 28, 2006 10:45 pm

Okay, we're going dancing tonight. Ameth is coming, too. (May 2007 me here: Ameth was the neighbor, who hit on me pretty much constantly, and my other dancing partner was Matabara, my host brother, whom I eventually developed a minor-league crush on). This whole arrangement seems to have the entire house in stitches, but I can't quite work out if it's because they find the idea of me and Matabara laughable, or if they think I like him, or if they think he likes me, or if it's just the good ol' “this dumb American girl going clubbing is about to get groped and harassed from here to hell and back” kind of laughter. All I know is that about 60% of all conversations since about 7:00 pm have included the following exchange:
Person 1: Hubbely hubbely Sierra hubbely Matabara hubbely hubbely Ameth, hubbely.
Person 2: (Gales of laughter) HUBBELY?
Person 1: (Answering laughter) Hubbely! Matabara hubbely hubbely Sierra hubbely!

They just gave me some fruit juice to drink and after the first burning, mouth-numbing swallow, I was more than half expecting Awa Cheik and Anta to howl with amusement and say “Silly Sierra! That's not for drinking, that's for adding several gallons of water to!” but they didn't. I couldn't finish it, though, and ended up experimenting a little. Indeed, it took a solution of at least fifteen parts water to one part Saf-Saf to approximate anything I'd call drinkable.

August 4, 2006

Couple random things:
-It REALLY smells like pot in the kitchen. Wonder if Anta's toking up or if they just use some kind of marijuana-like substance in cooking?
-I have so many things wrong with me at the moment that I feel more like a walking ailment than a human being. In addition to the ear, I now have a cold, stomach cramps, and some kind of bizarre desert disease which has made my mouth absolutely repulsive, like a scaly acne goatee.
-Everyone seems to have a vague idea that I'm racist. Like the other day Anta held up a picture of this wicked old man and asked me if I'd marry him. Upon hearing my refusal, she said knowingly, “Oh, because he's black.” WHAT? NO, NOT BECAUSE HE'S BLACK, BECAUSE HE'S OLDER THAN DIRT.
-I looked up Matabara's nickname for me today (“diskette”), half fearing that it meant something like “fat one” or “toubab with a desert-disease-induced acne goatee”, but it actually does mean “pretty girl” like he'd said. Sweet.

(later)

Having just come back from what may have the dubious honor of being the Grossest Shit I've Ever Taken, it may be time for a word about the precautions I'm taking food-wise, and how none of them actually exist. I guess in the dual spirit of laziness and Trying Not To Offend My Host Family, I gave up trying to avoid certain foods before I even started. Here's the surprising part, though: apart from occasional and mostly harmless stomach rumblings and such, I really haven't suffered any ill effects of my lack of caution. Meaning that I've had infinity percent fewer semi-serious bouts of intestinal illnesses here than in South America, while taking infinity percent less care to avoid said illnesses. Interesting.

(May 2007 me again): Well, that's it. Not my whole journal, of course, but most of the rest is either too dry to be of interest to anyone but myself, or in Swedish (I was an exchange student in Sweden 04-05 and I'm always looking for places to practice. A semi-secret journal, particularly one which is often subjected to surreptitious reading-over-the-shoulders, is a perfect place for that). As I was typing all of this up, it occurred to me that the majority of it came out sounding pretty negative and even potentially offensive in some places (the hubbely sequence, for example). I wrestled with the idea of self-censorship but eventually vetoed it. You, fortunate readers, have just read everything as it originally stood; I didn't even cut out the bit about my scaly goatee, which fortunately disappeared pretty soon after I returned to the States. And no, pictures of said goatee will NOT be forthcoming.

Anyway, I thought I'd just take these final few paragraphs to reassure you that, no matter how my entries come across, my month in Senegal was one of the best things I've done in my life. It... well, never mind, I guess I'll just let a post-return journal entry do the talking for me:

August 18, 2006

Back from Senegal, and although I suspect I will never be able to adequately express the way it's changed me, the thousands of love affairs I found there, and the small hole absence will leave in my heart, I may eventually be tempted to try. For now, I will just say that it was an unbelievable chapter in my life, wild and bittersweet and way, way too short.