I forgot to say...

I ate this:

Sometimes this place surprises me with beauty

Two striking things I saw today:

The first: a tri-color printer smashed to bits by Senegalese, soccer-playing youth. The bright magenta, cyan and yellow were smeared like sugar all over the red rocks and grey concrete.

The other: at dusk I saw a Sedan rolling slowly towards me on a road of sand--it was silent and moved like a ghost towards me under yellow street lamps. Like a movie with no sound.

Stuff

Here they are. They don't have captions yet...they may never have captions. But all you need to know is this: The huts are where I spent three days, the kitten is named Henri and he is, unfortunately, not with us anymore, and the mountains were very cool, especially when we were standing on top of the giant rock formation.

I had a lovely time and have now turned my attention to writing the proposal for my independent project which will include an entire month of carving wood....

http://picasaweb.google.com/cschuele/KedougouAndEtchwar?authkey=Gv1sRgCOeRjon5hZPOOg#

Villages

Hey all,

It's been a while since I've written anything here, but I just thought I'd throw out a little update.

I got back from the village of Mouit on the 2nd (?) of October. We spend 3 days in the village in a homestay family and then spent 3 days in beautiful, air-conditioned hotel rooms in Saint-Louis. Needless to say, the drastic switch-over was a little unsettling.

Mouit was wonderful though. It is a concrete-constructed village--I had my own room with a nice comfy bed, we at bread and butter from breakfast, and people had cell phones. However, things were far different than in Dakar. I showered from a bucket, I walked to my host dad's boat to retrieve fish, and I offended people if my knees showed when I sat down. The people in the village were very, very welcoming. They held us toubabs a sabar dance, which means we all dressed up and danced around like fools, and then our host sister and mother took the floor and showed us up. YouTube search "guana dance" and that's what we tried to look like.

Saint-Louis was, like I said, very different. It felt much more like a vacation--we had chocolate croissants for breakfast, delicious vegetable-filled dinners, and all the air-conditioning we could dream of. We looked at some historic sites, but mostly did a lot of vacationing...

Tomorrow, I am off on another "excursion". We are driving all day long to reach the town of Kedougou in southeastern Senegal. The town is nearly in Guinea. There, we are staying in a campment and hiking to some cool waterfalls and up some mountains. Or so we were told they were mountains. After a few days in Kedougou, we are headed off to our respective villages. Me and a classmate will be in the Bedik village of Etchwar. It will literally be grass huts, porridge, and workin' in the fields: http://www.google.sn/imgres?imgurl=http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2165/3002686659_38cf1cd3db_m.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.flickr.com/photos/32097021%40N03/&usg=__hgDiUiuBRrXLYDNgQmKPRwvQccw=&h=180&w=240&sz=22&hl=fr&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=gvahxaFOKBKrbM:&tbnh=106&tbnw=133&prev=/images%3Fq%3Detchwar,%2Bsenegal%26um%3D1%26hl%3Dfr%26sa%3DN%26biw%3D1024%26bih%3D485%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=705&vpy=213&dur=650&hovh=144&hovw=192&tx=117&ty=110&ei=R762TOulBcb84AaYpdiwCQ&oei=R762TOulBcb84AaYpdiwCQ&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:10,s:0

I will be out of Internet range, so check back in about 10 days, and hopefully there will be a load of interesting photos!

TMI

When I take a shower, the color of the water running down into the drain is always, always brown.

Photos from: Mouit, Saint-Louis, Thies, and Mauritania

I've been quite busy with schoolwork (what?) and traveling and such, so here is a bit of a filler for writing--pictures! They're got some commentary, and make sure there are no young children watching when you look at the last two pictures, they might have nightmares.

http://picasaweb.google.com/cschuele/SaintLouisMouit?authkey=Gv1sRgCPyD25iu5IPzMw#