oh-lunchtime.
ahem. back from lunch, which was lovely, in some ways. here's the thing about lunch.
everyday we have rice. its the staple of the senegalese diet and it is also cheap. with the rice we have varying forms of sauce, fish, meat, or veggies. almost always very spicy. some better than others. i don't know which i get more sick of. the rice or just the taste. its not that it tastes bad. it doesn't. its just not good enough to make me want a heck of a lot of it, and makes me realize that finally my food preferences are rather boring in some ways. i eat quite slowly in small bites. if i eat too much it can make my stomach hurt. but generally its fine. today lunch was lovely because i had a realllllly nice talk with Eve, who has just returned from a trip away and it was so nice to finally get to know her so much more and feel like there's someone else in the office i really like, esp as we'll probably be working together a fair amount (I hope! She's lovely!)
Anyways, this weekend. After work on Friday I went home and waited to hear from Amalia. Around 9 she called so I headed off to get a taxi, got to the Virage spot, and found her perfectly. We had a beer at the (my new favorite) Belgian place and then went home, ate mac and cheese, and passed out. Slept late. got going late--walked to the supermarche and bought lunch, decided we wanted burgers. sadly we failed on getting the bbq to work, besides which it was already about 3 and we wanted to go to the beach! we made it to the beach around 5 which wound up being PLENTY of time--there were still loads of people, the beach wasn't supremely clean, but it was water. and it was 5 min from home! and there were waves! so that was fun, including meeting our new friend David who sells tshirts that say "si tu m'enerves je retourne en France" (if you piss me off i'm going back to France... too bad half the people who piss you off can't read...) andhad travelled all around europe and spoke to usin the most bizarre english accent but totally believed my name was Fatou.
then home, showers, and ready for night out of Adventure. We started at a restaurant called Le Mogador. That wasn't really just a restaurant, it was a place for a fancy meal out. Well, it was definitely an experience and I have been dreaming of their swimming pool since I saw it. we had a drink, met up with Amalia's friend Mark, and decided to try the tapas bar for dinner. not a great decision. had a beer and a drink there and some bits of toast to pass for dinner, and then decided to try Le Thiossane, which is a night club owned by world famous singer Youssou N'Dour, and got all the way over there to find it closed.
then the taxi driver told us that there was another club where Thione Seck was playing, some other singer, and he'd take us there. We wanted to get the price for the full trip, but were unfortunately already in the taxi and off he drove--when we started trying to talk about it he claimed that the initial price had been 3000 not 2500. very very maddening. he said that where we were going was like the same as that distance, so we figured we would pay at most 6000. then we finally got there and the guy said that since the club was further up the road than the restaurant we'd started from it should be more. really, NOT that much futher. ok, 6500. I wound up paying 7500--essentially 1500 extra for a distance which was shorter than one i'd paid 800 for earlier in the day. my arguing wasn't good for much when all i had was a 10 000 bill. when we realized the club would cost 6000 each, we thought about it momentarily, and went for it.
It was definitely a very Senegalese-Dakarois nightclub experience. Gorgeous people all dressed up in flashy clothes, ladies covered in sequins and just loads of makeup and sexy outfits. wowie. when we arrived around 2, noone was dancing. by 3 it was packed with people dancing everywhere. hardly anyone was drinking, certainly noone seemed drunk. a big changed from the club scene in other parts of the world... it was definitely about see and be seen, though a lot of people were in couples too.
then the last cab ride home--at that point we could only afford that--mark came over too as he didn't have enough money to get to his flat downtown. agreed with the driver for mille francs (1000) and was so relieved to have found a reasonable driver this time. but when it came time to pay him he whined and said that it was further away than he had thought and that there had been a lot of rocks on the road. i was so angry i just gave him a thousand and left.
was about ready to pass out but we all wanted showers. i let Mark use my bathroom and used dad's, and when i was going to bed he came and said "there's a civil war in your bathroom" and i went in and a colony of small ants was at war with a colony with big ants. i couldn't deal with it at that point so went to bed. in the morning they were all gone.including the dead ones. they ate them. gross.
yesterday we went downtown and saw mark's apartment. the city part of dakar looks like any southern italian city. pretty special. we had lunch at a great lebanese place--trying to remember hte name because it was really good. al alassane or something like that.
amalia went home to Thies and Mark and I had a coffee and chatted and then it was seven! and i went home. what a relief. had a shower and chatted to Brian for a couple hours, got exhausted, and then as I was going to bed realized that the ants were back.
i sprayed the faucet with this spray that i have which is anti-mosquito but for clothes. i thought it might make them stop coming out of the hole behind the faucet they seem to live in. but instead it must have like asphyxiated them because they just started pouring out even faster. i ran away. actually. and went to look for an ant spray. didn't find any, but did find some other flying insect sprays which are actually meant for the environment and not for clothes. a lot of them seemed to be already dead so im not sure if they actually were killed by my clothing spray or what. but there are tons of dead ants in my tub now. then i didn't sleep so well.
now i'm going to try to upload pics. the girls are coming over and making dinner tomorrow so that's going to be fun (i hope)-- i'm just trying to figure out how to deal with all the logistics. only 2 more hours til i get to go home! yaaaay!
No comments:
Post a Comment