Everything is cooler in Africa

::I edited this post. Mostly just the end of it. I had to clean it up somewhat because, well I was a little bit rushed when finishing it before::

Back from the weekend and I think I can say one thing with pretty much certain definitivity (yeah im making up words again): Africa is the just like the western world, except if you turned it (stay with me here) upside-down, inside-out, frontwards-backwards, leftwards-rightwards, threw it all in a blender, blended until mushy, froze that, then thawed it and mixed it with some tabasco sauce for a little heat and spice.

Still with me? Too bad. I'll illustrate with a few examples from this weekend (which might have been one of the coolest three days of my life...)

We'll start from the beginning: Friday.

It must be mentioned that when we went into Dakar the first weekend, my friends and I noticed a sign on the side of a road across the street from a group of goats eating cardboard boxes from a pile of trash overlooking the temperate waters of the tropical Atlantic (yeah and that's not the weirdest thing I've observed here). This sign was for "L'Oceanarium," a business (I guess, I mean I don't really know what else to call it) that specialized in taking people on all sorts of maritime adventures from kayak renting to boat rides to scuba diving. Yes, Scuba diving AND kayaking. At the same place. So my friends and I resolved to return in a week and go scuba diving because well what else am I going to do with my weekend right? For the rest of the week, as we told our friends back at school about this idea every conversation went like this (and though I do have exaggerative tendancies, here I am not kidding, every.single.conversation.):

Them: Scuba diving, huh? that's pretty cool.
Me: yeah man i know seriously right?
them: are you licensed to go?
me: no
them: dont you need to be?
me: come on, this is africa! no rules here (its true..there arent. I checked).
them: wow. thats really cool. dont die!
me: well ill see what i can do.

Fast forward to last Friday around 3.30pm. I'm floating on the bottom of the tropical atlantic ocean under 20 feet of salt water. a crazy french guy named "michele" is grabbing onto my friend's back while his crazy french girlfriend is grabbing onto mine.

scuba diving was probably one of the coolest things ive ever done, and to be honest i cant wait to go back (oh and i will be going back - sorry mom). its crazy. and french. only without the stench of body odor. you know i never really realized how much effort they put into those tropical fish exibits at the aquarium because thats exactly what i felt like i was swimming through. to be honest the whole thing felt kind of artificial and i had to remind myself every now and then that yes, i was in fact in africa. under water. strapped to a tank of air. being held up (or down depending on my boyancy at that particular moment) by a crazy french girl. looking at tropical fish.

i saw so many different types of life ill give you a partial list here (please note these are the lay-person's name for them so you guys can understand exactly what it was i saw - you know the point of a writer is to paint a picture in the head of his readers and its hard to get a picture of fishicius biggius):
sea urchins
big yellow fish
little yellow fish
little blue fish
fish with all sorts of rainbows on their backs
Dory from Finding Nemo (evidently she forgot she found him - i had to remind her where australia was too)
starfish
starfish eating sea urchins
that evil octopus lady's eels from the little mermaid
weird french guy
weird french guys girlfriend
two toubabs (would that be...dare i say it...twobabs?)

Welcome to Africa.

And that was just Friday. We shall press onwards to saturday.

Saturday:
Saturday we got to go to the Senegal vs. Mozambique football match (thats what they call a soccer game in Africa). It was really cool. Senegal Won 2-0. it was amazing. i wanna go back. But two things really stuck out.

1) how truly easy it is to find 5 toubabs when there surrounded by 50.000 screaming african fans. i mean you might think this would be difficult finding five people in 50.000 but toubabs have a tendency to...how you say...stick out a little bit.
2) how even going to the bathroom is cooler than in the states.
there must be only one bathroom in the entire stadium because every male in the stadium was trying to get through that one 2 foot wide door. it was pandemonium. people tyring to get in, people trying to get out. people trying to just stand there and block everyones way. cats, dogs, goats eating cardboard (still, it wasnt the weirdest thing ive observed while here). once you finally manage to fight your way in, you enter the bathroom to find people lined up at the stalls, rather calmly. its a stark contrast from the chaos that you must endure on youre way into the bathroom. so you wait in line for your turn to pee into the turkish toilet (thats a fancy name for a hole in the ground).

but as ive begun to learn in africa, wherever there is room for one person, there will be two people occupying that space. apparently, even toilets. so there you are standing in a turkish toilet, bumping elbows, hips, heads, shoulders, whatever, with a complete stranger, while you both are trying to pee down the same 2 inch hole in the ground (which is standing 5 feet away it might be noted), while trying to not pee on your own feet as well as avoid your...neighbors (somehow that just doesnt convey the sense of...intimacy inherent in the act).
did i mention i had a pigeon in my pocket for dinner?

Welcome to Africa.

Blaze onwards to Sunday:
Sunday is the fabled Goree trip, a trip that nobody was looking forward to, but everyone loved (by everyone, i mean really only me as far as i know - though i do think that others are going to be returning with me). goree is basically this island. its beautiful. look for pictures later this week or read karly's blog over there ------>
but thats not the fun part. the fun part was that morning, before we left (karly i dont mean to steal your thunder, but i think this story deserves to be told a million times):

It starts like any other morning. I met hannah and laurie (my toubaba neighbors) and we went to go to collect brinan (my toubab cousin). on the way over to brinans, hannah asks me "do you think its going to rain? should i bring a raincoat?"
I look up at the sky, pause for a second, and act decisively: "nahh..you probably wont need it"
the timing of this cannot be overstated, for as soon as i finished those words the sky laughed at me.
this i swear is true. it laughed.
right on cue, raindrops started to fall.
"should i go back and get it?" hannah asks. were at brinans house by now.
"nah, itll stop soon" i assured her.
apparently the sky thinks im a funny guy, because it laughed. it guffawed. it was like a little kid watching by tom and jerry cartoons.
it started to pour.
"maybe it would be a good idea,' i conceded. of course by this point it was already too late, and running back to the house to fetch a raincoat would involve a short jog followed by a swim through the sea of brinans house followed by the river that leads to my house. followed by another short sprint inside.

so it rains. we catch a cab to school. were waiting for everyone to show up and karly notices a bulge in my raincoat pocket (no its not what youre thinking).
whats that? she asked.
i reveal a piece of baguette filled with greyish-brownish goop wrapped in computer paper.
oh its my pigeon sandwich. my mom made it with leftovers from last night. i didnt really like it (i mean it was kinda funky tasting and the idea of pigeon sausage just doesn't sit right with me) so im probably going to give it to one of the talibes. i reply.
oh ok cool.
we go on chatting idly for a while until karly says something:
wait a minute...you realize how weird that is right...having a pigeon sandwich in your pocket?
yeah. i said...laughing. cause its true. i mean how often do you carry around a pigeon sandwich? but this is africa. things are weird like that.

about a half an hour later waiting on the bus to take us to the ferry to take us to goree (sounds a bit complicated, but simplicity isnt really that big of a thing here). the other bus decides its not going to cooeperate and so the bus drivers get together and decide to preform an experiment. can a school bus filled with 20 toubabs be turned into a tow truck (i'll give you a hint - it cant. but maybe it was because there were too many toubabs on the bus). so while this is going on...karly turns to me and says what is quite possibly the funniest thing ive ever heard:

"you know, here we are. sitting on a bus. trying to tow another bus. and youve got a pigeon sandwich in your pocket. and this isnt weird?"

Welcome to Africa.


Here is my new definition of Africa: "Africa is when a normal state of affairs includes sitting on a bus towing another bus through a minor sea, with a pigeon sandwich in your pocket. "

love
jake

ps: at least this wasnt us: "The boat was also overloaded. Now it is at the bottom of the lake,"
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/africa/09/05/congo.boat.ax.ap/index.html
not that you know, africa is scary or dangerous or anything....and there were a lot more than 35 people on our boat...