In Which Johanna has Four Adventures in One Day, Part One (Mashallah)

Dear Felix, I don't think I was quite clear in my first few messages. I am not okay with us being roommates, which means that I am VERY not okay with you biting me three times in one night. I was not okay with you biting me once in one night, or any time, at all. Felix, you have violated my trust. Please stop giving me spider bites. Love, Johanna

Yeah, Felix was still there Saturday morning. And I have two itchy red spots on the back of my left knee, and one on my right arm. I think that spider got fresh with me despite the 98% DEET I doused myself in before bed. Breakfast, though, was delicious- nice hearty rolls and real jam and butter, with coffee that at least tasted better than the Nescafé and real, not powdered, milk. And then we piled into the bus (a common theme) to head off to the mangroves. We picked up the Senegalese students on the way, but came to a screeching halt when Karamba realized we left the djembe behind. We then waited, in the bus, in the middle of the road, while someone walked back to the hotel to get the drum, while we all were left wondering why it was worth the time to go get a djembe when we were just going to see mangroves.

It's interesting how abruptly, on the drive there, you go from brown grass savanna to GREEN. And I mean, there was a straight line between "Dry" and "Delta". We had to wait for the tide, we couldn't head out right away, but our guide took us along the coast where we could see the group of women who were gutting and preparing fish to be dried, the immense drying racks, the piles of oyster shells that would be ground up to reinforce cement, the huge fires where women were roasting and shucking oysters... we were followed by a few children who would pose every other step- in an eco-tourism community, they knew how to spot a digital camera, and would run up to see the picture after the camera flashed.

And then we all, drum included, piled into two boats and zoomed into the mangrove forest. Does anyone remember playing Amazon Trail in grade school? The computer game where you're in a boat and have to hunt for fish and trade with natives? We didn't do any of that, of course, but it was the same feeling, of a winding narrow blue path through dense green branches. we couldn't get too terribly close considering our boats had motors, and one of the things we were learning about was how boats wreck the root systems. Also I did not see any manatees. Or monkeys, though I guess there's this kind of monkey that only lives in mangroves because the way it's evolved it can't support itself to walk on the ground. I did see a few herons of various colors though mostly white. And more baobabs which have ceased to be exciting but remain amazing and immensely entertaining.

And there, in the middle of the mangroves, on the other boat, Karamba started playing that drum. And all the other African students started singing, and we all started clapping along. And then they started standing up and dancing. In the middle of a boat. In the middle of a mangrove delta, on the edge of Africa. The song would call for people to stand up and dance, something along the lines of "and now it's so-and-so's turn to dance, hey, they're dancin', look at them dance, now we return to the refrain before we end up shouting out someone else's name to stand up and dance!" Of course I couldn't understand a word but it was that kind of song you could tell. And there was no way I was standing up in that wobbly old plastic boat, but Waly started prancing at one point, and Kenta even jumped up and stood on the seat to dance which scared us all and thrilled the guides and we passed around bottles of water and clapped and laughed and when they stopped playing the drum we broke out in American church camp songs (Rise and shine, and give God your glory glory...) and bad classics (Ain't no mountain high enough...) and sang all the way back to the shore.

And back to the hotel for lunch.

Dear Felix, I'd apologize for the maids scaring you away but I'm actually glad they did. Please don't come back. Love, Johanna.

They tidied the room and made the bed and even folded the clothes I left on the floor which was kind of odd but whatever. We didn't get new towels, though. And some people jumped in the pool, and a few learned how to make attaya which is the special kind of brewed tea here. I also forgot to mention that the previous night, by the pool, Karamba taught Joey how to play the djembe and then taught about eight of us girls this song and dance that is really simple but meant to be sung under speeches or something? He said we'd perform it as a surprise for the dance troupe and the performers we'd see Saturday night. He kept checking throughout the day to make sure I remembered the tune. Which I did. I couldn't forget it. It was firmly implanted in my skull, which would be exciting except that when I get back I'll sing it for you and you'll see how mindnumbingly simple a song and dance it is to have stuck in your head. You'll see.

After lunch was our visit to the first village. Once again, pile into the bus, bring along the drum and now we know why. Bump-and-jostle and zigzagg down the road, drive on the sand and grass and potholes and then head cross-country on a sand road, how they know which turns to take is beyond me because we're outside the realm of signs or arrows or electrical wires or anything that would give any indication of where we are. There's lots of goats, though. And the occasional waving child. When we arrive at the village the amount of waving children increases exponentially. And by that I mean we were instantly surrounded by waving chattering curious kids, some with even smaller kids on their backs, maybe younger siblings or cousins or perhaps just friends. They're followed more slowly by their mothers, women who shake our hands and offer us places to sit under the giant tree, the "arbre de palabre", the tree-under-which-people-meet-and-discuss-things, the center of the community, as it were.

We sat in a circle, it took me a while to notice that all the men were on one side and the women on the other, we were all interspersed with our hosts, guests and elders sitting on the benches and more sitting on buckets or standing behind us, with children filling in all the gaps. It would have made a wonderful picture but there was something very wrong-feeling about taking out a camera, not that they would have minded perhaps- or they might have- but more that I wanted to see everything with my eyes, now, here, completely. A lot of the kids were sitting on the ground, or leaning against the tree trunk, one of the boys was wearing a pair of yellow pants- there was no seat or front to them. An old woman was sitting behind me, I didn't know whether I should move to the ground so she could have a better seat or stay in the seat I was given. She kept smiling whenever I caught her eye, she had a squirmy little toddler in her lap. On my other side were two girls, I wasn't sure if one kept tapping me on the shoulder or if it was an accident and she was just trying to see. One of the African students kept dozing off. We sat there for a long time, discussing various problems and difficulties they had in the village.

Waly acted as an interpreter, speaking to us in French and to the chef du village in Wolof (and actually Waly is Sereer, not Wolof, so he speaks both indigenous languages plus French plus English), and he introduced us all as a group and thanked the chef for having us, and explaining to us that this village was unique because the leader was so young, usually it's an elder who is in charge but this guy's father died young? So it was an interesting point of view, because even he asked the elders if they wanted to speak first, and we always asked the elders, not the chef du village, he actually did very little speaking. Instead, the elders spoke, and sometimes the teachers. We discussed how far away the latest health post was (7 kilometers) and how by the time you got there the one or two workers would be so tired they'd have to turn away patients. We discussed the Italian solar panel that a government program put up but failed to provide a battery to collect the energy. We talked about how the only source of water was a 100 year old well, and how difficult it was to transport goods to sell in the larger towns when the roads were in such poor shape. We talked about how their school, built in 2006, only has two classrooms and how the closest high school is in the city, too far away.

And then a few women brought out some plastic tubs, squatted behind them, and started beating on the bottoms with their flipflops. Karamba brought out the drum, and the women pulled us all into the middle of the circle to dance. So, in a village of four hundred people, in the middle of Senegal, we had a dance party.

And then a tour of the town, which was more like a parade, since all the people walked with us, to see the well and show us how it worked, and then back on the bus, back to the hotel for pool time, and even though there were bees everywhere I happened to look out into the trees beyond the hotel to see TWO MONKEYS sitting on the fence. Next was dinner, which was delicious, followed by dessert which was a mixture of melted chocolate and honey, which explains the bees. There's a Wolof proverb that says that if you like eating honey, you can't be afraid of bees. I'm not sure I agree with that, but dessert was awesome.

Dear Felix. It is very bad manners to invite friends over when you're not going to be there. Not that I want you back, but your two cousins are even bigger and scarier than you are, and you never even introduced us. Please make them leave. Love, Johanna.


(again, breaking up the posts so they don't get too long, but remember that this Saturday still has two more adventures to go!)