Dancing, Drumming, and Animals!!

This past week was our dance and djembé workshop. In the afternoons we all did both. I really liked djembe!! It was a lot of fun but it was clear that he’d given us really easy rhythms to learn, and I don’t think I’d be able to progress far in the djembé world. We had djembé class in the hut out behind out school.

Dance…oh dance. Somehow I KNEW that I’d be bad at it. The woman got really frustrated with us and kept stomping her feet at us yelling “waaaaaan, toooooo” (1,2) she was not patient with us at all. You’d think that even though she’s been dancing since birth that she’d realize that not everyone is a natural dancer. Some of us CAN’T DANCE! In theory we’ll have the chance to do dance again—I signed up to learn the kora (string instrument)

Saturday we all went to school and piled into a pretty nice bus to go to the “park du bandia" where we climbed into pick up trucks—safari style—and got to see some hyenas, giraffes, ostriches, rhinos etc!! after the park we went to the beach which was beautiful and the water felt AMAZING. Whenever 11 Americans show up anywhere (especially the beach) a crowd always forms. Luckily this time the crowd was kids and not 30 year old men looking for American Marriage Visas.

Sunday I hung out at home, read, studies, wrote some. Apparently the theme for food on Sunday was: make Mame Diarra Obama (that’s me—though the ‘obama’ was just added yesterday—my host dad’s contribution) pick inedible things out of her mouth. The fish gumbo like stew we had was CHOCK FULL O’ BONES—lots and lots, all different sizes. If a bay leaf can puncture your intestines; imagine what a bone can do!!! I am pretty sure I ate some anyway. Then for dessert we had watermelon (apparently I am LUCKY that fruit appears as often as it does at my house—something that I am grateful for) the watermelon was delicious but had sooo many seeds in it ( I know I know—that’s how nature intended it before American scientists genetically engineered them to grow without seeds, but there were just so many)

Also: I AM FINALLY GETTING MY LAUNDRY DONE!! Two and a half weeks and finally getting some stuff washed—luckily I over-packed so it wasn’t really an issue