Merry Christmas! Story Chapter 1

So its Christmas time, and I figured I'd give everyone a little present: the greatest contribution to world literature by a Melville since Moby Dick. So without further ado...here it is enjoy. There's no title yet...so bear with me. I'll post it in installments every now and then...whenever I feel like it basically...

There are some who would argue that Dakar is hardly a city worth fighting over. All they see is the dust that blows down from the Mauritanian desert lining the streets. They see children begging on the streets, beaten if they don’t bring home more than a couple hundred francs, and their optimism withers in the face of such extreme poverty. Trying to cross the street, they are turned back by exhaust fumes, rushing taxis, horse-pulled carts, and clouds of dust kicked up by the cars. And they wonder why anyone would want to live here.

This story however, is about the others; those who see piles of trash strewn in the overgrown empty lots next to half-built houses and think “Ahh, this is a place to raise my kids.” This story is about those who see Dakar as a mere starting point, a platform from which to jump to bigger, better things. Today Dakar, tomorrow the world, as the saying goes. This story is about evil goats.

The evil goats of Dakar see this bustling African capital as one thing and one thing only: a place from which they can bide their time and plot their evil takeover of the world, establishing an Evil Goat World Dominion which looks suspiciously like the UN Security Council. In the meantime, they roam the streets of the city in evil packs, eating garbage, climbing on half-built walls like the cliffs of the Great African Escarpment of the time before the Great Exodus, and in a game known as “traffic dodging” in the evil goat community, causing crippling traffic jams throughout the city (“embouteillages” as they’re called – bottle necks – which may or may not come from the fact that one must have consumed an entire bottle of wine before braving these city-wide traffic jams).

Late on Friday nights (or early Saturday mornings depending on how you look like it), as the people of Dakar are just getting ready to go out to clubs, concerts, or other venues of mass entertainment, the evil goats are getting together in their respective neighborhood commissions, and preparing for their eventual world-domination. But the evil goat commissions are habitually divided. For one thing, goats aren’t allowed on the misnamed car rapides (they’re in fact, not very rapide at all) without the accompaniment of a human handler, which makes transportation around the city rather difficult, especially if one is planning world domination. Even if evil goats were allowed on the misnamed method of transport, they wouldn’t get very far as by some cruel trick of nature, goats have no pockets and can’t carry change to pay the fare. Because of the difficulties in travel, the goat commissions rarely get a chance to interact with each other, and as a result, the goat domination movement is fractured by neighborhoodal (I know I’m making up words again, but this is my story so cut me some slack) interests vying to take power for themselves.

This week, however, the excitement centers on a neighborhood commission in Sacre Coeur 3, where the evil goat who goes by the code name Charles (to protect his identity from the authorities) has begun implementing plans to unite the evil goat community under his rule. Evil goat leaders from all of Dakar’s neighborhood commissions are present. It is a momentous moment indeed, as for the first time in the evil goat history of Dakar, representatives from all across the city are meeting to discuss plans for the future. Evil goats from all over the city have spent days trudging through the crowded streets of Dakar, getting lost in back alleys along streets that seem to change direction every hour (or every half hour if you’re coming through Mermoz). Even evil goats from outside the city have come, braving potholed roads, sandstorms, and the odd bush taxi. The St. Louis evil representative (Code name: Lou) is sitting next to the evil representative from Tambacounda (Code name Tom) while Zinguinchor’s evil representative (Code name Ziggy) debates the proper technique for eating mangoes with the evil representative from Kolda (with the worst code name of them all: Shirly). They’re all here, and there’s business to be dealt with.

The impetus for this momentous moment concerns news that Lou brought to Charle’s attention weeks ago. They were born in the same litter (what’s an evil group of evil goat kids called again?), and still maintain touch despite the distance between them. Evidently, the eviler pelicans in Lou’s district have begun preparations for an invasion of Dakar: a bold move that if successful, would severely hamper the evil goat’s intentions of world domination. Lou was alerted by an informant in the eviler pelican community, a little diving bird named Hal.

“Order! Order! I demand order!” Charles called over the din of arguing goats. He was standing on a pile of gravel that had been left by the humans. “Brothers! We are all gathered here, for the first time in our evil goat history, for there is a dire situation before us. Brother Lou has brought us intelligence from up north that concerns us all. Brother Lou?”

Lou jumped up onto the gravel pile and spoke. “Thank you, Brother Charles. Brother Goats! As he said, a dire situation is upon us.” His voice was raspy from the many years he had spent up in the dry, dry heat breathing the dust that blew in from the Mauritanian desert. “It has been brought to my attention that the eviler pelicans are plotting a plot that is so eviler in nature, so horrific in its consequences, that it makes any evil plot that we plot seem downright magnanimous in comparison.”

A chorus of evil voices erupted in an evil din that made the demon spirits that inhabited the city late at night dive back into Hell from whence they had been borne into this world to cause mayhem and mischief. “Oh help us!” “The eviler pelicans!” “What are we going to do?” and “How are we going to take over the world now?”

“Please, please! Brothers, please calm down!” Charles yelled over the din. “Please, now I realize that this situation is dire, but we must not give in. I mean sure the pelicans are eviler than we, and sure they’re plans for world domination don’t include plans for craggy crags in every city, town, and village, for our kids to play on but we must fight them!”

“How, Brother Charles?” said Herman, as the representative from Liberté 6 was called. Herman’s evil goat head raised above the evil hoard of evil goats. His horns were curved, in the fashion of the evil goat horns from Libertés one through eight. “The pelicans can fly, and furthermore, they eat fish, a far superior protein source than cardboard.”

“True Brother Herman, the pelicans are militarily superior than we, and their superior protein source makes them more than a little bit stronger than us. I did not say it would be easy. But this is my home, I was born here, I played on these very streets as a kid with Brother Lou over there. And I for one won’t let the pelicans win! Who’s with me?”

There was an awkward silence as the evil hoard of evil goats assembled before Charles shuffled uneasily from front-left hoof to front-back hoof and back again, avoiding Charles’ searching eyes, glowing like evil coals in his head.

“Alright, if that is the way that you guys want it. If you want your kids growing up under the domination of the eviler pelican flock, then I suppose there’s nothing that I can say or do to convince you otherwise. When the pelicans arrive though, I will be fighting them, be it alone or with an evil hoard of evil goats behind me.” And with that final exhortation of a defeated leader, Charles nimbly hopped from the gravel pile to a thin stick perched precariously between two cement blocks and turned to walk away.

* * *

I hope you guys enjoyed that. That's all for now. Merry Christmas!
Love,
Jake

I’m BAAAAAACK!!!

Yes, that’s right. Jake (me) is now back to terrorize the United States like never before. I’ve been back home for almost a full day now, dealing with new things such as smooth roads, traffic lights, constant electricity and internet, hot water, and a worrying dearth of goats. How then, you must be asking, is Jake getting along with all the convieneces of Western life?

Is he burning his skin as he steps into a hot shower for the first time in four months? Have his fingers and toes frozen off in the sub-70 degree weather? What’s it like adjusting to central heating? How about orange juice and milk of the non-powdered varieties? How is he holding up without the evil hoards of evil goats?

Truth be told: just fine, thank you very much (well, everything but the goats…but we’ll get to that later).

Perhaps (or more precisely Definitely) the biggest fear I had about coming home was how was I going to adjust from the African tropical climate, where it’s considered cold when its 70 degrees (that’s in the shade), to the blustering winters of New England, where after hitting an average of the mid-40s, the weatherman is complaining about how this winter has been unseasonably mild. What was I going to say when I stepped off the plane in Paris (and then New York) and the temperature was exactly (maybe more than) half of what it was when I got on?

The answer: “This feels really, really nice!” I swear it.

Stepping off the plane in Paris, the only thing that myself and my fellow CIEE comrades could say was how astonished we were that the cold actually felt…good. It didn’t feel alright, like we could deal with it if we had to, but it actually felt refreshing. There was something clear about the cold – not oppressive like the heat in Dakar which surrounds you and blankets you in a carcinogenic cocktail of sunlight, dust, and car exhaust. I have to say I was pleasantly surprised to find that my lungs didn’t freeze instantly upon taking my first breath in the cold Parisian air. Nor did they on my second or third, or any breaths after that.

That’s not to say that I didn’t have any run-ins with the northern/western/developed world (or whatever you want to call it). I’ve got this little story of cultural reintroduction, which should be fun. It's true, I swear to it.

I stayed the day in Paris to visit and catch up with some old friends that I knew from when we lived there. Naturally, I needed a place to stay, and my toubaba friend Ana (from Dakar) was kind enough to let me crash with her and her grandmother Monday night. In return for allowing me to sleep on her floor, Ana’s grandmother asked me to figure out how to turn on the TV and internet in the apartment she’s renting. Simple enough, right?

Well, if I’ve learned one thing in Africa, it’s that things are usually NOT as simple as they seem. What I didn’t realize is how much that applies for everywhere else.

Turning on the TV involved two pages of instructions, four remotes, turning on three different boxes, and then pushing 4325789 different buttons, in an intricate combination of X’s and O’s that you only got one chance to do because if you're supposed to cut the green wire and you cut the blue wire then this whole place blows up, but if you cut the orange wire (who makes orange wires anyways) then the cops come and the whole plan is foiled. What’s a boy fresh off the plane from Africa (where, it might be noted, he only had 1 TV set that, due to some conflagration involving the Senegalese government and the evil hoard of evil goats that roamed the streets of Dakar as they plotted to take over the world, only received 2 channels. And one of them was the TV guide channel) anyways, what’s this boy to do?

The only thing I could do: follow the instructions. I turned on the first TV with the 2^nd remote. Then I used the first remote to turn on the third box from the 8^th wall on the left. When I had finished that, I stood on my head, put my left foot on green and my right hand on yellow, and pushed the 23^rd button from the top on the 3^rd remote. The TV screen turned on, but it turned to face us. This is getting weird. Oh well, I thought. At least the TV was on. Now for the cable box.

I then pushed the power button on the remote control marked clearly “CABLE BOX” like the instructions said. Clearly the simplest part of the whole process.

Nothing.

I pushed the power button again, this time harder thinking maybe after being in Africa for 4 months without a remote control, my pointer finger had somehow lost some of its power strength. Still nothing. The grey screen of the TV mocked me in its…um greyness. I called Ana over. The two of us stood there in front of the TV for a good 10-15 minutes trying to figure out how to turn on the cable box. We were like cavemen suddenly shoved in front of a car and told that we had to drive it to the nearest restaurant if we wanted our cheeseburgers. It was all quite frustrating.

After 10-15 minutes, Ana finally managed to get the right combination of strength and dexterity in her pointer fingers, and the cable box flashed to life. The TV screen started dancing in high definition with um, dancers dancing to some band or something. Then Ana’s grandmother calls from the next room: “OK kids, time to go out. Turn the TV off and we’ll get going.”

Only one problem, the TV didn’t turn off. The “OFF” button on the TV remote didn’t work. The “POWER” button on the cable box remote didn’t work. There was no two-page set of instructions how to turn the TV off accompanying the two pages on how to turn it on. We sat there for another 15 minutes trying to turn the TV off. In the end, we had to leave it on. We were in a hurry. What else could we do?

My backyard could use an evil hoard of evil goats…what happens if the eviler flock of eviler pelicans attack?

Love,
Jake

PS – I know that I’m done with the whole Dakar thing…but I’m going to keep posting because, well because I really like writing (go to Africa, learn I love to write…go figure). So keep reading if you’re so inclined, and if you’re not well then too bad because, you might be missing out on something sweet…like for example the Melville’s greatest contribution to world Literature since Moby Dick. I’m not giving anything away, but suffice to say it involves goats, pelicans, and some not so rapide car rapides…stay tuned. Same bat time, same bat channel…

Learning for Dummies

This is going to be my last post from Dakar. I’m leaving tonight at 11.30. I’ll arrive in Paris at 6.30 in the am, where I’ll be spending the day and night. I leave Paris on Tuesday afternoon at around 3.30 or 4, and I should arrive Stateside somewhere between the hours of 6.00 and 9.00 in the evening (all of this, of course, includes a big inchallah).

What this means is that while I’m leaving Dakar tonight, I won’t be home for another couple of days, which has the combined effect of making me want to get home even more, and making my homecoming such a long way off that I don’t even need to think about it at this point.

But of course, I have to think about it, not the least because last night I saw some friends off to the airport, where they will (hopefully) make it home and have a hot shower (something I’m sure is sorely needed) before I even step on an airplane tonight. Saying goodbye to friends who I will (inchallah) see again got me thinking about this whole semester abroad experience. They tell us we’re supposed to grow, in ways we never thought possible. They say we’re supposed to learn things we never thought we’d learn. We’re supposed to experience things that we could get nowhere else. And as I sat there on the curbside, waving to the van as it carried my friends off to the airport, the question hit me full force: did any of it work?

Perhaps a more precise way to phrase this question would be to ask: what have I learned? In what ways have I grown? What experiences have I um…experienced?

Since this blog is (ostensibly) about my experiences here in Senegal, we won’t cover those in this post, save to say that if you’re so inclined to read them you can click on any one of the links over there ------> which will surely provide you with enough reading material to last you through tomorrow (some even have pictures!).

I wish I could tell you that I’ve grown up in x, y, or z ways, but I never liked graphing much, and even if I did I don’t think I’d be able to tell you where I stand now, much more than where I stood before I came here and started to think about this whole personal growth thing. As far as I can tell, the only growing that I’ve done in Dakar has been up, and that basically means I can now go to bars without the fear of being arrested.

So failing those two options, we’ll settle on the only question that really matters anyways: what did I learn in Dakar?

Since this whole semester was geared towards the holy grail of “cultural assimilation” – we’ll focus on that. You know you have culturally assimilated (which actually sounds kind of messy and unpleasant when you put it that way) when you can successfully throw 15 goats on top of a sept places in under 3 minutes. While the sept place is moving. Down a road full with potholes.

Not that I can throw 15 goats on top of a sept place, but I give you:
Three Easy Steps to Cultural Assimilation (complete with hints!)

Step 1) Getting There: The Long Road – Learn how to take public transportation anywhere.
In Dakar, this means figuring out where your car rapide is going, and if it in fact is going to be rapide (if so, choose another one as a properly named car rapide is probably the most dangerous thing on the road besides the evil hoards of evil goats). Once you figure out where your car is going and whether or not you want to get on, you must (naturally) get on the car to get to your destination. This usually involves some sort of hop, skip, and jump from the curb to the back of the car which may or may not still be moving (either still stopping or just starting). Chances are there’s a goat involved. Chances are it’s evil. Don’t trust it.
If you’re lucky enough to make it to your destination (any one of flat tires, traffic jams, random stops, starts, and goat hoards can stop a car rapide dead in its tracks), you need to express a desire to get off. This usually involves someone (you, the guy behind you, or the guy hanging off the back of the car in some combination) rapping on the window, sheet of metal that passes for a chassis wall, or random metal bar. If the car rapide stops, or slows down to the point where you can descend, congratulations, you’ve passed step one on the road to cultural assimilation. If not, go back to zero. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

Step 2) Getting There: The Short Road – Learn how to cross a street
Corallary 1 – learn how to walk in the street.
So you’ve taken your car rapide to the general area where you need to go. Good job. The only problem is that you’re stuck on the wrong side of the street. Cars, trucks, un-rapide car rapides, rapide car rapides, horse-drawn carts, and evil hoards of evil donkeys are whizzing past you in a blur. How can you cross the street like those kids over there weaving in and out of traffic like its some sort of game or dance?
Crossing the street here is daily a life-threatening activity – not the least because there are, in fact, no pedestrian rights. Even if there were rights for people walking, I doubt that anyone would care about them. I mean, if you think its hard crossing the street dodging the evil hoards of evil goats, then you try driving with them without killing anyone or yourself. Crossing the street usually involves some sort of half walk/half run into oncoming traffic during a slight break. It sometimes involves waiting in the middle of the street, with traffic whizzing by on both sides of you, waiting for a break to come the other way. Then it’s a mad dash across the street, a hurdle over the evil goat there just to trip you up, and when you make it into the sand-dunes on the other side, you’re (relatively) safe.

Step 3) Eating – Learn how to get cheap food
Anyone who knows me knows how central food is to my existence. I daresay I wouldn’t survive if it weren’t for food. I’m that kid at the party who instead of socializing is standing in the kitchen by the counter, hovering over the pigs in a blanket while he waits for the dip to come out of the oven. The centrality of food to cultural assimilation should thus come as no surprise.
Not only does this step include eating dishes central to the particular target of assimilation (still sounds unpleasant), ceebujen, yassa, thiackary (to name a few of my Senegalese favorites), but it includes finding foodstuffs that are particularly indicative of something or another. My personal favorites in Africa happen to be bags. They eat almost anything you can think of in a bag here – ice cream, wine, thiackary, water, yogurt, juices of every variety. The man who figures out how to successfully eat a roast beef sandwich out of a plastic baggie wins my prize for man of the century. Not only do bagged foods taste better, there usually cheaper (always a plus) AND usually a little bit sketchier, which only makes you cooler when you eat them among toubabs – ‘you’d really eat that yogurt from a plastic bag? Man you’re hardcore.’

So there you have it, once you complete those three steps to their fullest (meaning, um…completely), it is my expert opinion that you are fully culturally assimilated. Congratulations.

Oh, and I learned about the evil goat plot to take over the world, AND the eviler pelican plot to invade Dakar at some point…but that’s a different story for a different time.

See you in the States.

Love,
Jake

NOW They Tell Me...

Have you ever had one of those days? You know, one of those days where everything you thought you knew about the world was turned upside down, inside out, and then kicked in the shins. Hard. Well, yesterday was one of those days.

It came as I was doing a little research for the greatest contribution to world literature to come from a Melville since Moby Dick. You know, what’s known as "field studies" - where I visited my subjects in their natural setting to observe them as unobtrusively as a human in an evil hoard of evil goats can be and took notes on everything from how they prepare their food to their initiation ceremonies to their mating rituals. And let me tell you, contrary to popular belief, watching goats figure out how to mate is not how you want to spend your Thursday afternoon.

So I’m observing these evil goats, trying my best to blend into the background so that the goats go about their daily evil business as naturally as possible - to get that streak of authenticity for my story. One of them comes up to me. It appears that the invisible cloak that dude in Sandaga sold me doesn’t, in fact, make you invisible. As an invisible observer, this is exactly what you don’t want to happen - because if the goats see me they start acting differently. So not only am I crushed by the fact that the guy in Sandaga told me it was a genuine invisible cloak (I believed him too! After all I couldn’t see the cloak on the coat hanger - and that’s what invisible means right?), but I start to get supremely confused when the goat starts talking to me. At first I just chalk my confusion up to the Larium I’m taking so I don’t get the malaria. But gradually, the goat starts making sense.

"What are you doing here?" he asked me.
"Just chilling," I responded.
He noticed my notepad. "Whatcha writing?"
"Oh just doing some research for my goat story."
"Goat story? That so eh?"
"Yeah, that’s so." I respond, irritated.
"How’s it coming along?" he asked.
"Splendidly," I said (note - I have never use the word ‘splendidly’ before this very moment).
"Even though you’re watching sheep?"

I was stunned. Sheep? I thought this was an evil herd of evil goats. They looked like every other evil goat I had ever seen in Dakar.

"Every other goat you see in Dakar must just be a sheep too," he said. It was then that I realized that I was thinking out loud.

"A sheep?" I said. "So I’ve been mis-naming these goats the whole time? They’re not really goats? They’re just lame old sheep?"
"Hey man, watch who you calling lame!" The sheep shouts. "You’re the one with the unhealthy obsession with goats, sitting here on a perfectly good Thursday afternoon watching sheep eat cardboard!"

I barely heard a word he said. The world was spinning. All this time I thought that the animals I was passing everyday on my way to school were goats, and this one is telling me they’re sheep? Then what have I been obsessing over for the past four months?

If goats are no longer goats, but sheep, then am I really who I think I am? Am I really Jake, or am I some kid by the name of Chad or Louis? Is up really up or is it now down? And if so does that make down up? And if gravity makes things go from up to down, then have I been heading the wrong way for my life? I had to sit down before gravity realized that it was heading the wrong way and I flew up, up and away.

I was getting dizzy. I began to doubt everything else (I thought) I knew. Was the American Declaration of Independence really written in 1776? Does a spoonful of sugar really make the medicine go down? Is "embouteillage" really French for "bottleneck?" Does Meatloaf really say what he won’t do for love in the epic "I Would do Anything for Love (but I Won’t Do That)"???

"Seriously man, what were you thinking?" the sheep said, suddenly.

That was a good question. What was I thinking? I mean I had seen goats in Africa, certainly. Those 10 animals that the sept places driver threw up on top of our car with the four other suitcases and the bike really were goats. Of that I was sure. They looked like goats from back home in American petting zoos. And there were others too, who climbed on walls precariously, who climbed on cliffs of the Great African Escaprment, who made goat cheese. And they ate cardboard.

But so did these animals…whatever they were. I was sure I had seen them eating from a pile of garbage, and to my (former) knowledge - goats were the only animals that ate cardboard, that must have been where it came from.

"Come on man, you start thinking like that, then every 3rd grader that tries to eat a piece of paper to impress the girl sitting across from him is a goat," my sheep friend said, sleepily. It was kind of annoying how I kept thinking out loud without meaning to. But he did have a point.

"OK Mr. Sheep, if you’re not, in fact a goat like I thought you were, how can I tell next time? I need a foolproof way of avoiding sheep/goat confusion."

"On sheep, everything goes down towards the ground: hair, ears, eyes, faces, horns, tail. On a goat, everything goes the opposite way, up towards the sky. Sheep have curly horns, goats have straight horns. That and goats are smaller. And they possess a superior intellect. And they are evil."

"That’s quite a repertoire. I can’t believe I never noticed it before," I said. "But if sheep aren’t evil, what are they?" I asked.

"We’re what we like to call morally ambiguous," he said.
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"It means were too scared to pick a side in the battle between good or evil. We don’t want to be on the losing side."
"Sounds pretty cowardly to me," I said.
"We prefer the term courageously challenged," he said.

Whatever, I thought. They’re all goats to me.

"I heard that!" he said.

Man, I really, really have to stop doing that.

Love,
Jake

PS - for your learning pleasure, I have included a handy-dandy guide for differentiating the goat-sheep difference. Notice that my goat friend was right, and in fact things on goats do go up towards the sky, in marked contrast to their evil nature. Ironic isn’t it?

Sheep:

Baby Goat:

Saints may not have been as much fun

But they definitely stayed out of places like this…

When I said yesterday (or today if you’re reading this as I’m writing it which you most likely aren’t but never mind) that nothing of note happened…I lied. I’m sorry. Something of note DID happen…it goes a little something like this:

Last Wednesday, I was downtown with some friends who decided they were going to be nice and take me out for lunch for my birthday. After a delicious lunch and some ice cream (passion fruit and caramel nuts and cream for anyone who cares), my friends Hannah, Jarod, and I went looking for some stuff at the market downtown (no, I’m not telling what – it’ll be better if it’s a surprise).

Now Sandaga market has a reputation for being quite hellish. It may be crowded, chaotic, and dirty. You might get more than a little bit frustrated with all the vendors who try to get you to come to their shop with “even if you look its ok,” a friendly “My brother! We have the same skin!” or my personal favorite “Don’t be afraid of the black man, we don’t eat white people. We’re not cannibals here.” People coming up to you trying to take your pants off (or pick your pockets if there’s anything in them) might seem a bit odd to you, because where you come from strangers tend to leave your pants on.

But it’s all a bit unfair, I think. If you know how to deal with all hassling, keep your belongings safe, and wear a belt, you might make it out of there alive and if you’re lucky, still have your pants. If you’re really lucky, you’ll have some really sweet stuff to bring back home. Sandaga’s not really that hellish.

Or so I thought…

I like to think that Hannah, Jarod, and I are what you could have called Sandaga amateurs – that is to say we could pretty well deal with the hassling, the guys trying to take us to their shops (“just to look!”), and every time we’ve gone in there, we’ve come out with our pants still on (which is a good thing because an un-rapide car rapide ride with no pants would be the epitome of awkward). On this particular day, we’re walking through the main plaza at the beginning of Sandaga and I hear someone behind me: “Ahh, the young newlyweds!” “My sister!”

“Don’t look back,” I didn’t need to warn Jarod and Hannah. They knew the drill. “Keep going.”

Full steam ahead we barreled our way through the square, dodging the occasional taxi until a man catches my arm. “Hey! There you are! You remember me from the last time you were here?” Um….no, I’m thinking. “Last time, you told me you’d come to my store the next time you were in town. Remember?”
“Oh yeah, were you the guy standing over there by that thing?” I ask, gesturing vaguely over in that direction.
“Yeah, yeah, that was me!” he says.
“Hmm…sorry I would love to come visit your store and then have to tell you that I’m not going to buy anything, but we’re really in a hurry,” I said.
Hannah chimed in: “Yeah, we’ve got to go visit a friend and pick something up and then we’re on our way back home.”
“Oh, where is he? I’ll take you there!” my new “old friend” says.
“Oh, no thanks. We don’t need any help finding it,” I say. “It’s right over there in the covered market,” I say pointing. “We can get there ourselves.”
“Let’s go.” He says. And off he goes in the direction we’re going. “This way.” He says, turning off to the left.

At this point, I do not want to follow this dude, only to have him realize that a) we have no idea where we’re going and c) we’re not even sure what were looking for, but fortunately for me (not so much for Jarod), Jarod had gotten stuck between a territorial taxi and an inquisitive vendor. I stop and wait for him to catch up with us. Then we’re off, without a look at my new “old friend” who’s starting to realize that we didn’t follow him into the covered part of the market. When he realizes that we’re not getting off at his stop, he comes back to us. “Oh, you’re going this way?”

“Evasive maneuvers,” I mutter under my breath to Hannah and Jarod. “Roger that.” We break formation, banking into the middle of the street. The three of us start dodging and weaving, ducking and rolling in some sort of weird urban dance with the taxis, buses, and cars driving down the street. Off to the left a goat munched on some cardboard.

Still, our new “old friend” follows us. Usually dancing with taxis is a little too intense for the average annoying vendor. This guy is persistent. “We’re almost there!” he shouts.

To the left, I spied an opening in the booths and an inky black hallway led deep into the market itself. Desperate times call for desperate measures. “This way,” I said to my companions.

Looking back, the fact that the turn off actually worked and our new old friend didn’t actually follow us should have probably been my first indication that this was not somewhere I wanted to go. Barring that, then the three dudes with a full set of teeth between them who were sitting at the like gatekeepers to some infernal pit should maybe have tipped me off. But they didn’t, I had turned this way, pretending I knew where I was going, and to turn back now admitting I had no idea where I was going would have been a huge mistake in savvy Sandaga shopping. I probably should have.

After this experience, I can honestly say I’ve been to Hell. Not metaphorically or philosophically, like the trip to Bakel, but literal, physical Hell. Satan may not have been there, but I’m pretty sure I saw a giant eviler pelican lurking about in the shadows.

Hell is not the fiery pit of sulfur and brimstone that some would have you believe. Hell is not a place where you’re forced to roll a stone up a hill for all eternity. Hell is not even a place where you’re forced to listen to oldies for a 15-hour car ride with your family. I have been to Hell. I have seen what it is like and it is none of these things.

Hell is a basement market after closing time. Hell is a place that should be full, busy, chaotic, but is instead still, with the exception of a few vendors lingering around like that creepy gym teacher outside your school. Hell is a place where parts of fish lay rotting on counters that were just a few hours earlier covered in the fish that I probably ate tonight for dinner. There is no light in Hell. There are lights in Hell, but there is no light. Hell stinks. Hell smells like rotting fish, body odor. It smells dark. It smells worse than death, the smell is death. The smell sucks everything in, it sucks the breath from you, it sucks the light from the air.

For the first time in Dakar, I was scared. I had to get out. Something was wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on it. We had to get out. We kept going.

“Uh oh, don’t step in that,” I said. “That” was something squishy, yet firm. It was wet. It was dark; I didn’t know what it was. Keep going.

“Uh oh, I stepped in it,” Hannah said. Keep going.

Deeper into the bowels of the market. Keep going. Turn right. A fish head. Keep going. A light. Then why can’t I see? “Jake, get me the hell out of here!”

Keep going…

I have never been so glad to see light in my life. We followed it. A goat stood there, munching on cardboard. After we finally made it out, there was an awkward silence…

“Sorry. I uh, I guess I took a wrong turn there or something,” I said at last. “But hey, at least we got rid of our friend.”

“Go to Hell, Jake.”

No thanks, I’ve been there already.

Love,
Jake

I know, I know I'm late....

I would like to take this opportunity to apoligize for any inconvience that I may/may not have caused in your life, your dog's life, your parent's dogs life, or whoevers life, for not posting all last week. I have no real reason for that other than there wasn't a good story to tell.

That being said, it doesn't mean I didn't do anything last week, au contraire, as they like to say in France, last week was chock full of....stuff. What between the last week of classes (I mean, not exactly excitating, but it does mean that there will be no more stories about how rediculous Wolof is), and my birthday on Wednesday, I'd say there was a fair amount of...how you say...stuff.

But I would like to clear up any misconceptions that may (or may not) have arisen from my last post. I did say that it was cold here, and I meant it. It's no longer chilly. It's cold. I'm full blown wearing my one sweatshirt every day now. And I'm greatful for it.

But I'm afraid I may not have give you a fair sense of just how cold it is here. For example, today, the coldest day we've had so far, the thermometer has plunged to a frigid 22 degrees.

See I told you it was cold.

I guess what I forgot to tell you is that 22 degrees is French for 73 degrees.

See I told you it was cold. At nights it might even plunge below 70 degrees to (heaven forbid) 68 degrees!

As you can see, this presents me with quite a problem. Because I'm coooooooold here. Not chilly, not even a little bit cool. But cold. And if I were in CT (or even DC) right now this would be downright balmy...we would be pulling out all the global warming jokes and all that jazz. But not here. Here global warming is the furthest fear from my mind. I'm more worried about how I'm going to keep myself warm. Well that and the goats. Goats scare me.

So if I'm cold here, and its really not that cold here, what am I going to do when I get home?

I'm going to freeeeeze. Mom, Dad, bring my coat. Please?

So I know this is short, but I've gotta get going...studying for finals and all that jazz. But the goat story will be here in its first installment tomorrow inchallah.

Love
Jake

Things I never thought I'd say in Africa:

It’s getting cold.

Not chilly, not cool, but cold. I can’t see my breath yet, and I fear the day when I can (because it will most likely be somewhere with an actual zip code), but I’ve been cold.

I don’t know if Africa’s getting to me, or if I’ve just been getting used to the heat or what, but I’ve stopped needing my fan when I sleep at night. Cold showers have stopped being a relief from the heat and started being…well cold. The other night I actually needed my sweatshirt. You remember, the one that I brought thinking “oh I’ll never need that, it’s Africa!” Well I needed it. Score one more for Africa.

We were sitting on a terrace hanging out, waiting for the appointed hour (1:00 am – they start things a bit later here) when we would go to Youssou N’Dour’s club to watch Senegal’s answer to Michael Jackson (except without the nose) as he played at his club. It was 12:30 and a strange sensation overcame me. The hairs on my arm started to stand on end, straight up. My arm and leg muscles began to vibrate uncontrollably.

I didn’t know what was happening to me. This had never happened to me, usually the strangest thing to happen to my arms is they get shiny with the sweat (and that’s walking home at noon). I was completely unaware as to what was happening to my body. I thought I might have developed some sort of disease – one of those horrible ones that they warn you about but are so rare that they never give you a shot for them:

“Yeah, Jake” the doctor says, “there’s this Ooluubula Fever that they have there, but it only strikes one person a year. It’s pretty bad, first your skin puckers up and then you start to shake uncontrollably and then a giant alien bursts out of your chest and devours your soul. There’s a shot for it, but I don’t think you’ll need it, I’m pretty sure they’ve had their one case this year. Though it might be one case every fiscal year in which case I’m not sure they’ve had their case yet, or it might be on the Muslim calendar, which means that if you don’t see the moon you’ve got it but if you see it, you have to wait a day or two before you get it.”

So here I am, on a roof, my muscles are shaking uncontrollably and my skin looks like a freshly plucked goose. “Hannah,” I say, turning to my toubaba neighbor who happened to be accompanying me that night, “look here, do you think this is anything I should be worrying about?” I ask (she’s pre med so I figure she knows about these things).

I show her my arm, almost hitting her in the face my arms are shaking so bad now. “hmm,” she says. “Ahh.” She takes out a tongue depressor and checks my ears. “Oh my,” she says. “What?” I ask. “What is it?” “Oh it’s just very interesting. It’s been a while since I’ve seen anything like this.” she says.

Oh no I’ve got the Ooluubula Fever. I’m counting down the seconds until my chest explodes and an alien devours my soul.

“It appears that you’re cold,” she says.

Cold. It sounds strangely familiar. Like a picture of a childhood friend that you stumble across in a closet or attic somewhere. I know that face, but I can’t put a name to it.

Cold. It reminds me somehow of Connecticut, and sitting inside by a fireplace.

Cold. It reminds me of staying up late one night at GW, watching snow (whatever that is) fall softly in the streetlight, covering the street and sidewalk in a soft glow.

Cold. “Cold?” I ask. “What’s that?”

“It’s the body’s natural reaction when the temperature dips below 80 degrees.” Dr. Hannah answers. “It happens to everyone at some point in time,” she assures me.

“Is it bad?” I ask. “Is it contagious? Can I still go out?”

“It can be bad,” she tells me. “Fortunately, it’s not contagious and it’s easily cured.”

“How?”

“A sweatshirt. Everyone should have one; you probably have on in your closet somewhere,” (as she spoke, that semicolon came out…it was weird).

“So I can still go out?” I ask. I mean, this is my one chance to see the Michael Jackson of Senegal (without the nose thing). The only way I wouldn’t be going is if an alien burst from my chest and devoured my soul. Because let’s face it, Michael Jackson’s just no fun without a soul.

“Yeah, I mean you should really go back and put a sweatshirt on,” she says, “but if you’re going out to dance I think you should be alright,” she tells me.

Phew. So I went out. I saw Youssou N’Dour. He was amazing. Let me recommend to anyone who happens to be in Africa, specifically the westernmost city (Dakar), that you go and see Youssou if you get the chance. I mean he didn’t come onstage until 2.00, a time at which point most clubs in the states are (I’m guessing) closing. But if you’re not my dad and can stay up past 8.30, its definitely worth staying up till 4.00, dancing the night away to the liquid rhythms of Youssou’s mbalax (I should really look into reviewing music) and pretending to be married to four different toubabas so they have an excuse to not talk to sketchy guys that haunt clubs (I mean I know four is a bit much, but they say if you can afford it you’re allowed, and it costs nothing to pretend to be married – that and it’s over as soon as you get into the cab home unless your cabbie is sketchtastic in which case you’ve got bigger problems to deal with).

And the best part about the whole thing is this: when I came out of the club hot and sweaty after having danced to liquid rhythms for two hours, a cold shower actually sounded refreshing. Unfortunately, by the time I woke up the next morning, cold shower sounded once again…cold.

Stay warm.

Love,
Jake

PS – If you noticed that this post is noticeably devoid of evil hoards of evil goats, it’s because all evil goat energy is currently being used to write what is quite possibly the Melville family’s greatest contribution to world literature since Moby Dick. So if you’re craving evil goat stories (and even if you’re not) then fear not, because once this masterpiece is finished, you shall have an evil goat epic for the ages. It will make you laugh, it will make you cry. It will rival The Odyssey in its epic-ness, The Collected Works of Billy Shakespeare in its lyric-ness, and Farmer Browns Goat Almanac in its insight-ness into the lives of evil hoards of evil goats.