This is how I spent the first few days of this last week—In and out of the commissariat of St. Louis proper, seeking to file a report outlining the theft of Josh’s ipod. The hoops that we had to go through to finally accomplish this task—which did not actually get resolved until five days after the actual theft—prevented me from updating my blog properly, and for that I’m sorry! Quite a bit has happened, but I’ve been rather lazy about writing it all out.
But where to start? I suppose I should explain the ipod issue… We volunteers often frequent a bar by the name of the Comptoir, a nice little hole in the wall in the northern part of the island just off of the bridge. I think the main reason that we have become regulars there is because the owner, a frenchman, is a football fan and shows all the matches on a big screen. There’s also a pool table and a jukebox that still runs on old french francs. Anyhow, last saturday night we were having a pool tournament/drinks for Pierric, a french volunteer, who was returning home the next day. Stephane, the bar owner, was kind enough to connect Josh’s ipod to the speakers so that we could have some of ‘our’ music in the background, and so we spent a few hours playing pool and chatting very happily until suddenly we realized that the music had stopped playing. Looking around, we realized that the ipod had disappeared from the top of the bar where it had been sitting…and saw the back of a man running out into the street. Needless to say, we tried to catch him, but were unsuccessful. Anyway, that was the simple part of the whole affair—a crime of opportunity which, while frustrating, was certainly not the end of the world. The real ordeal came afterwards when trying to file a police report so that Josh could file a claim with our insurance agency.
Over the course of our time sitting in the police station—all of sunday afternoon, monday morning, monday afternoon, thursday morning and afternoon—I read two books, Taken by Dean Koontz (a horror/thriller of a paperback that I found in the office) and The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead (a fabulous speculative fiction novel that I fell into rapidly), wrote and polished one poem, and jotted down the scraps of what will (I think) turn into something else that might be interesting. You’ll notice of course that I dont mention speaking to the police, which is mostly because we didnt really…they felt for some reason that we may not have been exactly straight with them about how the theft took place, or at least that is what they said. Honestly, I feel like they may have just not wanted to do the paperwork, and tried to dissuade us from pressing the issue by making us wait. Either way, it was a rather long week of just sitting around and not actually working at the clinic.
The only really great thing that happened last week apart from (finally) resolving the ipod issue was that my pre-school class threw me a going away party on wednesday morning. Because tomorrow is the 50th anniversary of Senegalese independence, the teachers had scheduled a march around the quartier with the kids singing the national anthem and waving home-made senegalese flags. It was super cute and then when we came back, they had set up a little table with soft drinks and popcorn and a sign saying “merci tata Emilia”. They also pulled together a gift of a new pagne (a wrap-around dress) and a sack that reminds me of the Discovery album cover…very very touching. I took tons of pictures which you can see here, and the video below is from that day—my class singing Hello/Goodbye by the Beatles. I was so proud that they actually learned the song so quickly considering they have only had four english classes so far.
Otherwise, let’s see… My roommate, Elise, is in Dakar this weekend so I have the room to myself which means I’m probably going to be trying out some new songs on the guitar that (until now) I’ve tried to spare her from. Also did laundry this morning and FINALLY got down the senegalese way of scrubbing…not sure how to explain it exactly, but you sort of use the knuckles of your left hand as a washboard and if done correctly, you should get this squishy/squeaky sound as you scrub. My host mom was super impressed. Tomorrow, I’m going to head down into the old city to watch independence day festivities, and then in the afternoon there is a lutte that I’m probably going to watch with a few volunteers at the Comptoir… I’ve never actually seen the combat part of the lutte (only the dances and feats of strength before the fight) so I’m excited to see that as well.
Beyond that, there’s not much to say. Last wednesday was my halfway mark, so I only have a month and a half left here. Time just flies….
Love and miss you all!
