You know...like the Jimmy Buffett song "Cheesburgers in Paradise" only they don't have cheesburgers here and as much as I hate to say it Dakar is far from paradise. Read Karly's blog to find out more. She's better at tackling serious subjects like the inability to assimilate culturally than I am. And rude awakenings.
It can be found over there --------->
But onwards we bravely travel. This weekend we visited Africa's answer to Hawaii. or the Florida keys. Or Heaven: Toubab Dialow. Its a little village on the coast south of Dakar. And its Paradise. thats right. With a capital "P."
The beaches were gorgeous, not crowded (!!!), and clean. The hotel was rediculously romantic (i think karly said disgustingly romantic...and that about sums it up), kinda crazy looking and overlooked the cliffs. My room was au bord de la mer (thats french for SEASIDE AND SEA VIEW!!!) and i shared it with some delightful people. The weather was perfect. It barely rained while we were there, the sun was hot the water was warm, and the breeze was gentle. the waves in the ocean were big enough to be almost scary, but made for some excellent body surfing without breaking you and making you plea for mercy, uncle, or cry for your mommy when faced with the awesome wrath that is mother nature's awesome power and might. I came back home a lot tanner and exhausteder.
But this is still Africa, and no matter how perfect a place might seem, there's always something that goes amiss. Let's start from the beginning:
The ride there: The thing about drivers in africa is that nobody really knows where things are. sure they've got a general idea where toubab dialow is (somewhere that way by that place with the thing), but then they look at the 10 toubabs sitting in the back of his van who stare at him blankly when asked if this is the turn to the hotel or will this road plunge us all into a horrible firey death at the hands of the African escarpment? (at least i think thats what he asked). Apparently all of Dakar takes the one dirt road out of the city on fridays at 11am so it should have been no surprise really to find that there were a million other cars going where we wanted to go. and i know i might be repeating myself but in Africa where theres room for one person you can be damned sure that there will be three people there. this is a fine (albeit somewhat cramped) philosophy when dealing with personal space but the thing about cars is that well...you try to put two cars in the same space and youget whats known as a fender-bender. or to be more specific two fender-benders. within 100 feet of each other (i'm not making this up...that distance is accurate. we measured). but thankfully this place is an ambulance chaser's nightmare (nobody particularly cares about petty accidents like that) so after making sure that the lights still worked (though that might be an optimistic assessment of what the driver did when he got out of the car - at least he got out of the car and pretended to check for damage) we were on our merry way again. we arrived without further incident.
though i must mention - the brake signal - you know the red light that tells drivers behind you that the car is stopping..i know its usually custom to put it on the outside of the car so iwas more than a little surprised to find that it was actually on the inside of our bus there...
Now I know I've said that my room was practically perfect (like Mary Poppins...and you Mom - I'm so cute its disgusting). But the operative word in that sentence is pratically. Practically means no running water. Practically means that the very concept of running water is perhaps a misnomer. Perhaps walking water would better describe the state of water pressure. Or sauntering. Or moseying. But definetly not running. Practically means mosquitos inside the mosquito net (though I will say they at least gave us mosquito nets). Practically means my "bed" is a piece of foam on a shelf of rocks (though we did get bedsheets, and a blanket - though i couldnt say why when the temperature at night is easily 80-90 degrees).
Don't let this think I'm going through a hostile phase. I truly enjoyed every second I was there. Maybe it's saying something about how I've changed that I can go to a place like this and find it in me to love every minute I spend there enough to guarantee that I will go back, even though there's no running water. You know? I mean I'd like to think that this represents some sort of paradigm-shattering change within me. That I have grown enough as a person not to thrive in a situation where the water casually ambles out of the faucet, not runs, where mosquito-proof isn't an actual requirement for being a mosquito net.
But let's be honest with ourselves here. This was about as close to paradise as I'm going to get in a long time. The whole time I kept asking myself - What are we doing here? We're college kids. We don't belong in a room au bord de la mer! We belong in stinky, cramped dorm rooms! We're rowdy, rambunctious, damn college kids! We dont belong in a place thats so tranquil that dogs and cats can eat together, sharing the brotherly food of cheibudjen together, out of the same bowl! This is probably the weirdest thing I've seen - I still don't believe my eyes and wish I could have taken a picture because it really happened and I know you don't believe me. Cause let's face it. Dogs and cats eating together...out of the same bowl...without killing each other? It's the kind of think that only happens in dreams.
Don't wake me up.
Love,
Jake
Oh yeah, ps pictures will be up tomorrow inchallah. Find them by following the picture link over there ------>
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