Little discoveries

I have too much to say and too little time to say it all. But I'll start with a funny story that led to one of my many little discoveries this weekend...

On saturday, I spent all day at the office (I was here until midnight), so this story was recounted to me the next day by my host mother:

For dinner, my host family was BBQing upstairs on the roof (where the kitchen is, but where I had yet to go because they serve me my food in my room). Apparently, Mustaffa and Papis were downstairs with Mohammed, the little one, and Anty and Coumba were upstairs doing the cooking. But they both went out briefly to buy something and left the grill unattended. Of course, Mohammed took this opportunity to venture upstairs and started playing with the hot ashes. He took some of them and put them on a couch that they also have up on the roof and set it on fire. When Mustaffa came looking for Mohammed, he saw what he had done and instead of putting out the fire, proceeded to yell at him instead. Coumba came home and saw that the house was filled with smoke, so she ran upstairs and tried to put out the fire. By the time it was out, pretty much the whole couch and part of the wall were charred black.

After Coumba told me the story I ventured upstairs to take a look and discovered that from the roof of their house, they have an amazing view of pretty much the whiole city. Needless to say I'll be spending a good amont of time up there in the coming weeks (if I ever get out of the office, that is). So, the story allowed me to discover 2 things: a)the awesome view and b) that Mohammed is a pyromaniac (or at least a little troublemaker). and I should not let him anywhere near my room when there is a source of fire anywhere nearby.

By the way, I'm still investigating why in the world their kitchen is up on their roof, while their refridgerator and kitchen table are down on the second floor by my room. I'll get back to you on that one.

Some other little discoveries...
On our way to the beach yesterday, Karina and I stopped by the health club that's close to work (i think its mostly for the diplomats and ambassadors who live bearby) because she said they were building a pool and wanted to see if they'd finished it. When we walked in, no one was there but the pool had water in it (and was quite beautiful, I might add). It was clearly not yet open to the public because they were still doing construction on the surrounding areas, but we walked around until we found someone who worked there and asked if we could take a dip and try it out for them...and he agreed. So we had this luxurious pool all to ourselves. It was awesome.

Then, we went to the beach, which was nice but much less luxurious. The beaches here, at least the ones around Dakar, aren't very pretty unfortunately. They have all of this coastline with steep cliffs and beaches, but a lot of it is eroded and there isn't much vegitation or development to take advantage of its potential natural beauty. Still, the sand was soft, the sun was shining, and the water was the perfect temperature for swimming.

Then; after the beach, we had dinner at a little hole-in-the-wall Ivoirian restaurant with Aimé (who I work with) and his friend Koné (both from Côte d'Ivoire). It was interesting to hear them talk about intra-African politics...they both came to Dakar because they couldn't find jobs in Côte d'Ivoire because of the war there. But they haven't been very welcomed by the Senegalese and have had a hard time making Senegalese friends. There are a lot of foreigners (other africans, a lot of French people and some others, including a significant Lebanese population) here in Dakar, so they interpret their difficulties making freinds to the aversion Senegalese have to outsiders (at least other africans) coming into Senegal and taking their jobs. Seems to me like the same story we're hearing all over the world. But I'm excited to have Ivoirian friends because, unlike Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire is in the World Cup, so they'll be more fun to watch games with, I imagine. Interestingly, the few Senegalese I've asked seem to be supporting France this year, though I imagine there will be some imporant divisions among people here in that regard.

Okay, that's all for today. Happy Memorial Day!

(Oh, one more discovery...I'm not sure how I had this one wrong, but apparently Senegal is only 4 hours ahead of DC, not 6! Crazy. 4 hours is nothing. I guess I assumed it was the same as France for some reason.)