Hi friends!
Ok so this weekend was obviously a Real World style adventure (a house full of drunken twenty something year olds from different backgrounds all sharing one kitchen and one bathroom-drama ensues). HOWEVER before I tell you anything that happened there, I feel the need to share with you a bizarre occurance from this morning: I got stink-bombed by the police.
Well, not just me, but everyone at the school where I teach...which is kind of even weirder. Basically, there have been these professors' strikes at the University, which have now devolved into students' strikes (they're not receiving their scholarship money, nor the education they were promised, as the professors are on strike)...and apparently, revolutionary fever is just in the air because now, this has led to rioting amongst even younger students-like those in high school and middle school. Anyways, a few hours into our classes today, we start to hear some disturbances outside of the classroom-students are yelling, and throwing rocks and things at the sides of the buildings, and are generally just causing an uproar. As they start to get violent, the police get called in, and in an effort to disperse the crowds, they started throwing smoke bombs and stink bombs...and being the trained, careful professionals that they are, they throw these "peace-making agents" DIRECTLY INTO THE CLASSROOMS. Because that's going to help.
So everyone panics and flees the classroom (the smell was awful and everyone was mostly just confused and scared) and so that was the end of classes for the day...I went with the teachers to hide out in the teachers' lounge until the police got the riots under control (where we also tended to a student who had a seizure in respinse to the gases used in the stink bombs...because why would you ever call in a trained medical professional to deal with something like that? Luckily she ended up being fine, but it just seemed a bit...odd).
So that was my morning; apparently this isn't even too much of an anomaly, the teachers indicated that this is not the first time that this has happened in the recent past. I just can't believe that students have to "learn" in an environment like that.
Anyways, back to Ile N'Gor. Well, we ended up only staying oen night...as we were kicked out for the rest of the weekend because apparently, they only wanted 8 people staying in the house...not 17. Whoops. You would think that teh proprietor would be more laid back about this sort of thing, since this is Senegal (see example above), but hey, what can you do. On Friday night, I took a little star-gazing walk with my friend Jenn, where we were met by a new "friend;" a man that lived in the house next door...and felt no need to wear pant. Or any underwear. So he just stood there talking to us for several minutes, ending each phrase with "il n'y a aucune de probleme" ("there is no problem here") despite the fact that there was, in fact, the very legitimate problem of his exposure. He left us to go back inside (where we prayed he'd put on some pants), but then returned to talk to us again, sans pantalons, and so naturally Jenn and I took off at a dead sprint back to our own house.
Yikes.
Besides that, there were no major disasters...spent the next day on the beach, then used our money we got back to go out to eat at this fabulous little Turkish place with a second story terrace (best meal I've had in Senegal thus far)...and then we bought copious amounts of chocolate and peanuts and watched Eat Pray Love. Because we were in that kind of a mood. It was a great little getaway weekend, as promised-kind of a nice escape from the hustle and bustle of the city.
Sooooo that's about all I've got for you today...I'll post again before we leave for our excursion to Toubacouta on Thursday. Ba ci kanam
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