Ok let's start with the most important thing first: it is now officially mango season. Which means that every day this past week, I have been eating a 20 cent mango the size of my face. It's been awesome. Turns out they're oine of the messiest, stickiest things ever though, and being an ungraceful toubab, mango eating on the street is just really not an opotion; it must be done in the privacy of one's own home to avoid humliliation.
But it's totally worth it.
Moving on...yesterday's installment of Adventure Wednesdays consisted of us going to Ile de Madeleine, which is an uninhabited island of the coast and home to a number of rare and exotic bird and plant species. It's a bit more of an adventure than we anticipated though; the pirogue ride to get there is basically you asking a rando Senegalese man with a boat if he'll be nice enough to take you, then arguing over the prive for about an hour before actually setting off...in what turns out to be a boat with a motor that needs to eb attached by hand right before you set sail...and which comes equipped with several buckets to dump out water as the boat fills up to prevent it from sinking while loaded with passengers...and no life jackets.
The weird thing is that I don't even bat an eye at this stuff anymore.
Anyways, once on the island, we hiked around, checking out the scenery (which includes an absolutely gorgeous view of the entire city of Dakar-if you're ever in the area I would highly recommend that you check it out). And the entire time our "guide" slash boat man (who, by the way, was wearing a Chicago tee shirt) was asking us for our phone numbers, despite the fact that one of the student's mothers in our group was accompanying us. I swear Senegalese men have no shame. Or boundaries.
And so now officially I have seen all of the islands off the coast of Dakar, so I can cross that off my Lonely Planet bucket list...it's rapidly shrinking, which is good I suppose considering I only have about 5 weeks left here and finals coming up. Next up; religious pilgrimage: part 2: try not to get assaulted and mugged.
Inshallah.
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