March 28

Spring Break Post #2:
The sept place ride to Saly went much more smoothly; it took less than 2 hours and the car had functioning windows (and incidentally, the car was functioning too) so it was really just a breeze by comparison.  We stayed at this adorable little hotel called Au Petit Jura, owned by this middle-aged Swiss man and patronized by wealthy middle aged French men...who bought us wine on a daily basis in the middle of the day so that we could drunkenly discuss world politics by the poolside.  It was awesome.  One of them was a professional traditional wrestler in Bretagne, and he kept trying to explain the rules and how it's different from Senegalese wrestling (let me give you a hint: everything is different) which was definitely mildly entertaining, especially after a few months of verrrry limited drinking and 2 glasses of wine in rapid succession without eating lunch.
Beyond that, most of the trip was spent sitting by the pool and tanning.  I may as well be North African now.  Aimee and I ventured one day to Mbour, a fishing port town, to see them bring the fish in on boats, and while we got to see a bit of it, we were getting harassed so much by the villagers that we abandoned our mission early to return to Europe-in-Senegal-land.
And naturally, being my mother's daughter, after a few days of lounging around, I started to get restless...so when another group of 3 girls from our program met up with us in Saly, we decided that we should leave a day earlier than originally planned so that we could try and catch the Senegal-Cameroon international qualifying soccer match in Dakar on Saturday night.
We had heard that national soccer games in Africa are a must see because of how crazy the fans get, but absolutely nothing could have prepared us for the experience.  We make it to Stade Leopold Sedar Senghor about 2-3 hours before game time, and obviously it was already sold out; but, unfortunately for us, locating and interacting with scalpers in Wolof is much more difficult than we had anticipated.  Shocker.  Between trying to rip us off, and us drawing crowds of cops like it was our job (I wonder why?  Oh yeah.  We're the ONLY white people here), things reeealllly were starting to look bleak...and also we had no way of getting home.  Then, just as we were about to lose hope, I make eye-contact with a group of 3 Senegalese men right in front of us, who ask us in French if we have bought tickets yet.  I respond that we haven't, praying that maybe these are some nice scalpers that won't try to kidnp us/rip us off, but turns out they're even better; they're Senegalese people in search of scalpers too!  So they invite us to join them, and off we go on a quest to illegally buy game tickets...which they find immediately, thanks to their superior cultural and linguistic skills.  And we only ended up paying the equivalent of $14 for game tickets (which were initially prices at $10) so basically these guys were awesome.  Oh and between us 3 girls, we only even paid for 2 tickets (they bought the third...and also gave us a free jersey, flag, and wrist bands so we could look more legitimate).
And the fun doesn't stop there.  The game itself was "hache," or sloppy, as our new friends Alex and Alain said, but the ending was just about the most epic thing I've ever seen live.  With just about a minute of stoppage time left, in the 92nd minute, Senegal breaks the scoreless tie with a gorgeous goal inside the 18 yard box-and I swear all of Dakar erupted as though Senegal had just won a war.  Fans sprinted onto the field, grown men hugged and kissed, and children (and pickpockets) danced in the streets.  I've never seen such excitement; and this just for a qualifying match!  Like literally nothing happens now except that Senegal gets a few extra point towards qualifying for the 2012 African Cup of Nations.  I'd be afraid to be here when a game that actually really matters happens.  But it was so awesome to be there, and now we have some actual Senegalese friends that we met ourselves that weren't assigned to us by our host families.
After the game, I went back home to Ouakam...and it turns out my host uncle Isaakha had been there too.  And also that my other host aunt had her baby of Friday!  And also that Sunday was some major prophet's birthday so we got to celebrate and eat lax all day!  So it was a bit of a whirlwind of a weekend, but it was wonderful seeing my family again...Tabara gave me a giant hug when I got back (I've never seen her display emotion so that was very exciting).  Also, the new baby is enormous-like, it's already bigger than the 2 month old, and he's three days old.  Yikes.  Luckily, there weren't too many complications with the birth and his mother is doing just fine.
So that pretty much brings you up to speed with everything here through break...I'm sure I've accidentally left some things out, but I'll post them later if I remember them.  Ba beneen yoon.