En Ville

Downtown Dakar is quite the happening place. The streets are much more packed than what you can see here on the left, especially when we're walking around. Merchants flock over and follow for what can end up being hours.

One thing i've noticed is a lot more hostility towards folks like us when we decline to buy anything. We were taking a walking tour of down town and when we came to the craft market, a number of artisans approached. When we said we were just looking but would be back in french, they responded in english "you're not going to buy anything?" "get out of here if you're not buying anything!" Not exactly welcoming. But understandible all the same - a bit of a tease when these guys are working so hard and very likely have to pay a bit of money to be on that street.

It's also funny to watch other folks' wanderings in markets. Some have never been in an environment anything like this and feel a need to apologize for not buying anything and others completely ignore everyone.

Anyway, markets are always a great time - such a reliably exhausting sensory explosion.

Il pleut

It's the rainy season here in Senegal. There’s a couple of bouts a week at least where the sky goes from partly cloudy to dark velvet gray to oops I’m wet all over. I guess a bit like a distracted munchkin that wets its pants. That’s the sky in Senegal these days.

But that’s okay! It’s just more time to hang out with my host family or other students. Both of whom by the way are great. They’ve both got dynamics that are taking a lot of getting used to.

With the family, I’m the youngest and I think that’s probably much more of an adjustment than the cultural stuff. I mean, sure we eat on the floor – sometimes with our hands – don’t exactly use toilet paper, stay out regularly well past 3 or 4 in the am (everybody except me I promise, it’s been exhausting so far keeping up with conversation), and speak one of two languages that isn’t English. But I’m really quite used to there being someone younger than me. Other notes about the family… we live on this great neighborhood courtyard that appears after a stroll down a robo-sketchy alley (it develops the graffiti on the walls along the path was all done by my brother).

As for the other students, I’m one of two guys out of some 30 odd kids on the program and this hasn’t exactly been easy. I've always been interested in the way that groups work out some sort of organization to them. But some of these girls were really nasty to each other. Very quick to say things about people that they didn't even know. I think it's much more the type of cut-downs fashioned to build each other up than to really criticize folks' character, but it still makes me kinda shut down. It's okay, getting better as time goes on. It's such a small group that being exclusive is its own punishment.

Hut yo mouth

We had the day off so a bunch of kids got together and made for the beach. I'm not exactly sure about them for 3 reasons:

a) there are flies that hang out in the sand so if you lay directly on the sand for an extended period they crawl into you and lay eggs, which end up being these huge boils.

b) during my oral french placement exam, the one place the guy said should be completely forbidden was the beach.

c) most families will give a sketchy reaction if they know you're going to the beach, because that's where a bunch of folks sit around and smoke and hollar at women. It's also a bit Nak jom, which is a cultural expression I'll explain sometime.

Anyway, taking all of this into account, it's still the beach, and they have some of the best waves i've ever seen here. Too much to miss. I still didn't swim this time since I wanted to check it out first, but I can tell it's a good group since lots of folks wanted to drag me in.

The only down side to going out ended up being the taxi ride home. Everyone but me was getting out at once, but I live in a different neighborhood so we negotiated a price to my part of town. But once we were halfway there, the sleezemonster of a taxi driver decided that the ride was over. After a lengthy exchange, and after reminding him that we had an arrangement and that if he wanted to break the arrangement, then I would take my money. That helped to drive the point home, and me too eventually.

Asalaam-maalekum

Everything has been great so far. They call this the honeymoon phase of studying/living abroad when everything is new. The next phases on the list are hostility and humor. Hmm...

Mangos are in season here and are quite fresh and juicy. Some of the most fun and messy fruit I've ever eaten :-)

We started Wolof classes today and have our french placement test this afternoon before we start sometime next week I think. Wolof is a lot of fun the way it bounces out of the mouth. Lots of r, n, g and k sounds and with all of that together it's kinda like saying spring a lot. Plus the direct translations are all a treat. Greetings have a huge process to them going through "where/how are you," "I am here only," "where is your family," "they are there only," "is anybody sick," "no, god be praised," "did your evening pass with peace," "peace only," "are you working," "yes, god be praised." etc. etc. etc. It's quite a trip because the teacher doesn't really speak english, only french but luckily that's come back very quickly. It's still a bit like throwing my head in a blender, which actually is quite fun and refreshing. I haven't been stimulated this much in a long time, kinda like clearing out cobwebs in the brain.

My roommate is fantastic - good thing since he's the only other guy on the program. All the girls are pretty cool too, a good mix of interests and folks that have or haven't travelled. Everyone on the streets loves talking to Americans since we aren't french and the teachers are some of the most fun and engaging profs i've had in a while. Very refreshing.

My main story for today is one that kinda haunts me a bit. Last night a guy approached us that was diabetic and had a high sugar level. It'd be one thing for this to happen in the states because it's easier to brush these guys off or get insulin from the hospital. But here there's somehting of an insulin shortage and it's really pricey. Like $100 per pack of doses. Folks with diabetes are supposedly not given visas to come because of this issue.

Anyway, he had all of the equipment and took his blood sugar level right in front of us and showed us the book that goes with his equipment and it was clearly ridiculously, well dangerously high. I have pretty limited knowledge of diabetes, but it sounded like it was pretty pressing, and he was clearly very distressed. He had been to two hospitals and a diabetes clinic and there wasn't any free insulin available like there is from time to time (didn't realize the lion's club did neat things like give insulin to folks here). But we walked with him to the pharmacy to see what we could do but this was before we knew how much it was going to cost. It wasn't until we had spent half an hour with this guy that it was apparent we didn't have anywhere near enough money.

So then we were really pressed ourselves. He clearly had a problem, and we were clearly much better off than he was. The easiest solution would have been to walk back to the dorms and talk to folks about splitting the cost. But it was really psychologically and emotionally grinding to talk with this guy since he was in such a bad way and we weren't up for shoving that on the other kids in the program. So we talked to a couple of kids that were in an internet cafe and rounded up some cash - roughly %70 of what he needed and wished him luck and went to dinner. Relief set in so quickly after walking away from him - it was surprisingly easy to forget about him and make ourselves feel like we'd done all that we could even though we hadn't and if he didn't get the insluin soon he was gonna be in a bad way.

Then once we got back and eating dinner, he was outside again looking for the other %30 from the other kids. He understood that we didn't feel comfortable asking everyone else but he really needed that other bit of cash. Well, we eventually got the cash since everyone else was already worried about him and were going to walk back to the pharmacy with him since he insisted on injecting the stuff in front of us to proove he wasn't using it for something else, but we figured out the pharmacy was closed. Now what? Well we talked with some of the folks around and they mentioned there's a pharmacy just down the road, so after insisting that we really did trust him at this point and didn't feel like taking a ride on the bus and he really didn't have to leave something for collatoral so he would have to come back and thank us, we said our farewells and bon chances and sent him on his way.

It's tough to make yourself help someone like that. He was well dressed but it's so impossible to trust anyone that it took an hour for us to really see what a mess he was in. It's not like he was gonna be getting off on insulin, and he was clearly in pain. But in spite of these obvious signals it felt more normal to give the money to an organization to redistribute the funds instead of a direct gift - one that wouldn't have the loss of administrative cost. More of how removed we are from tough choices in the states. We hide our garbage, homeless and sick. Hopefully this kind of thing won't happen all the time.

New and Improved... Biobeer

So today was mainly getting ready to leave tomorrow. I had to stay the night in Brussels to make sure I can get up to the airport in time, but I decided to hope over to Leveun for dinner. I can't stress enough what a cool city it was. It's where the university is so it's got that great college-town vibe mixed with some of the oldest architecture around. Apparently some of the larger buildings were spared in the two W-Ws. Might be my favorite town in Belgium. Even if I did get lost on the way. I kinda missed my stop on the train and rode an extra 40 minutes in the wrong direction. The conductor types were very sweet to redirect me... in french. But it worked out all right. It seems to vary day-to-day depending on what I'm wearing what language folks decide to address me in. I was wearing french today :-)

Anyway, I sat on the square in front of the building to the right and had a Westmalle, a great trappist ale and chocolate crepes with ice cream. The ladies sitting next to me were laughing at how ridiculous my meal was, but it was good. Really good.

I decided I'd need some real food in me so I hit the street recommended by the guide given by the brewmaster at Ommegang breweries. Found this place called Greenway which may or may not be a chain but they had a great spinach burger and organic beer.

The night before I sat in a great pub in Brugges and eavesdropped on all the folks that blew through. There was a fantastic couple that I got to chatting with that had been married for 53 years. They were having such a great time together the whole place seemed to be glancing over with either a sort of personal hope for their own or a memory of others like them.

Leave for Senegal tomorrow! The idea still hasn't quite begun to turn on in my head. Reading a great Senegalese book right now that's turning out to be one of my all-time favorites. Check out Ambiguous Adventure if you don't have anything to read these days.

Love you all

Oh yeah, I used to do that a lot...

This might be an excuse for say... singing row row row your boat one too many times, or even slurping one´s drink a little too loudly. I used to do that a lot, however, is no excuse for wetting the bed.

And therein lies the disadvantage of staying in a dorm-style hostel. You can´t control who is sleeping above you. Luckily, I wasn´t the one who was peed on, nor was i the one doing the peeing. And to be fair, the wettee was really quite reasonable with the wetter - especially considering it was 4 in the morning and the wetter had been snoring like it was his job for 2 hours before his body decided to be `pee carefree.´ But, in his possibly drunken haze, the wetter was unable to produce a better excuse than oh yeah, i used to do that a lot.

Anyway, everything is going well over here. It´s so much fun, kinda like hanging out in brick store pub for four days with a 75% discount. Am gonna try to bust into a trappist monastery today, wish me luck!

Oh Captain, My Captain!

8/10/05 Atlanta, GA to Beaufort, SC to Atlanta, GA

Alright, this entry is a bit out of the ordinary. You may be tempted not to believe what’s coming, but we assure you it’s all true. Even better, if you doubt any of it, we encourage you to go and talk with Robert Brooks to see for yourself. He might like the company.

So just before we left for our trip I ran into a group of friends that had just gotten back from their own road trip, and the first stop they made was in Beaufort, SC. 288 miles directly east of Atlanta. They went to Beaufort to visit with a friend Alex Brooks’s dad’s cousin, Robert Brooks. They went to make the acquaintance of the real Captain Morgan.

It’s true. The man claims his mother’s maiden name of Morgan and the family line that can be traced back directly to a Dutch Buccaneer Captain Morgan. And apparently some time in the mid-eighties the makers of Captain Morgan’s spiced rum took his photograph and rendered the illustration that haunts so many boozers across the nation. He still has the costume and everything from when they put him on a promotional tour across South Carolina.

But the fact that he was a real-life pirate who employed Arrgghs in casual conversation was just the beginning of the richness of this guy’s character.

We made our way back to his house by way of a long series of turns, passing signs issuing warnings like “pavement ends,” and sleepy oaks and willows partnered with spanish moss generously doling out shade to the tepid South Carolina summer afternoon.

A few years back in an accident with a lighter he lost the end of his left index finger, which he happily caps with a metal hook on special occasions. The explosion also cost him the skin on his thumb, which was remedied by a surprisingly common procedure of sewing the damaged area to the chest and then ripping the thumb off once it’s healed. The issue with the Captain’s thumb though, is that when they ripped his thumb from his chest, it took some hair follicles with it. The man totally has chest hair growing from his thumb!

He’s also alarmingly well-armed. The Captain is insured for $70,000 worth of firearms – most of them collectors items that I couldn’t begin to list hear. In addition, he has a home-made trebuchet and a cannon which he uses to trade fire with the Governor of South Carolina on a regular basis. Not to worry, he’s got a fully functioning air-raid siren that he uses to warn the neighbors before he ever fires.

To pass the hours he also invented tree-bowling, a sport involving a stone suspended from a tree that’s swung with the aim of knocking down a two-liter bottle filled with water on the third backswing.

The longer we spoke with the Captain, it became increasingly clear how genuinely lonely he was. He had followed his dream and was living on his family’s land, sewing canvas for sails like his grandfather had done. Yet I couldn’t help but imagine myself in his shoes and how 17 years of living in a house by myself in the South Carolina Low Country would wear on me. A bit chilling not unlike the feeling one gets if you accidentally start to give Napoleon Dynamite any serious thought.

We eventually made our way back out to the car by way of a number of warm and heart-felt goodbyes and booked it back to Atlanta trying the whole way back to debrief a bit and process what we’d just been through.

Drink, Sleep and meet Randy

8/6/05 New York, NY to Cooperstown, NY

This morning we slept in, since our most tentatively scheduled interview fell through. We totally needed the rest, since we’d been taking full advantage of the New York City nightlife, which tricks you into thinking that it is not actually that late, even though it’s 5am and only about six hours away from the next interview.

We grabbed some pizza from the corner store and tripped just up the road to the obviously superior portal out of the city, the George Washington Bridge. We’ve learned our lesson about the traffic to the Holland tunnel, and won’t be taking that again. The no-stress Saturday drive up to Cooperstown we had anticipated proved mostly true, minus the Land-Rovers-on-vacation that seemed to be crowding Interstate 87. I wondered how many stockbrokers sat anxiously at their steering wheels, convincing themselves against reason that they were going on a damn vacation, and that they were going to HAVE A DAMN GOOD TIME. Joke’s on them though. I’ve got a hatchback civic strapped to my ass that some folks refer to as the roller-skate. I know exactly where I stand, and it ain’t on Wall Street.

The rural drive through the Catskill Mountains is one of most picturesque I have ever taken, and since the sun was shining, everything looked even more like a Winslow Homer painting, complete with black and white spotted cows. The 228 mile drive takes between four and five hours, putting us into Ommegang Brewery at about 6pm. Although we’d missed our appointment (by several hours) and Brewmaster Randy Thiel had to leave for dinner, he graciously gave us squatter’s rights, offering to let us camp for the night on the property. We were thrilled, since we weren’t sure when we were going to have the opportunity to camp again, and eagerly accepted the accommodations as well as the two bottles of delicious beer he said would keep us warm.

We spent the rest of the night regrouping (we hadn’t put ice in our cooler since the beginning of the week, so we desperately needed to throw out the Havarti in there and clean off the beer bottles it had oozed onto) and talking around the campfire Mike built.

A Conspiracy of Jews

8/2/05 Washington, D.C.

Interview with Bob Boilen, and Jerry terHorst

Our meeting with Bob Boilen, director of All Things Considered and All Songs Considered, was set up for 2:00 in the pm so we had a bit of time to tool around the capitol. Of course, it develops that it takes half an hour at least to get from one place to another in the District, even if it looks like it’s just across the street. Something about confusing and thereby stymieing any potential invaders… So after riding the metro into town, walking down the mall and inquiring at the National Gallery of Art about the giant shrine made completely from tin foil it was already time to grab a bite to eat on our way to NPR. It was a bit disappointing because the shrine wasn’t actually at the National Gallery of Art anyway, and the building that housed it was closed for renovations. We had a bit of that feeling like one can only imagine Mario felt after discovering that the princess was in another castle. Poo face.

Bob came out to meet us once we got to NPR and though I generally have no appreciation for celebrity, I couldn’t help but get giddy about meeting Bob Boilen. I mean, this was Bob Boilen. How many nights had I tempted the fates by listening to that classic NPR voice late at night while trying to stay awake and write papers? And here he was, only completely welcoming and, well, interactive. He gave us a great tour of the place and after his great words of wisdom (he started early in his career with music, at one point putting together a piece that was using state-of-the-art synthesizers to summarize the whole of music from the beginning of time till the end of time) we got to see a live taping of All Things Considered. I don’t know how I was able to sleep that night after all that adrenaline pumping from walking around NPR - perhaps better known by writer David Sedaris’ characterization as “a conspiracy of jews.” Let’s take a moment and reflect on our own favorite NPR moments. Ahh…

Well, after we left NPR we drove back to Alexandria and made our way to Jerry terHorst’s home. Mr. terHorst was, among many other jobs in the press, press secretary for Gerald Ford, but resigned shortly after Nixon was pardoned. A short tour, but an interesting fellow nonetheless. It was great to have the balancing perspective of this guy who’d accomplished such a great deal with his life and was happily slowing down to retire.

The main message I took from Boilen and terHorst is to watch out for Guardian Angels. The folks that are the shakers or guides in our lives that provide a surprising amount of aid or encouragement to push beyond what was previously possible or outside the realm of possibility. Unfortunately our camera battery died shortly after sitting down with terHorst, we had no time to recharge after leaving Boilen’s office. But he told a story about a school teacher that stopped several times every week to talk about his life and ended up working out a scholarship for Mr. terHorst to go to journalism school.

We were pooped so we headed back to Gretchen and Tim’s apartment for some R+R for the next day’s bumming around town.

Just Go!

8/1/05 Atlanta, GA to Washington, D.C.

After staying up late chatting with buddies that had just gotten back from a Palestinian solidarity conference and pretending to look at the map for the next day, we gave up and went to bed. So – first thing Monday morning the road was ours. Well, kind of. That is to say that it was ours after getting up a bit late, cleaning the car, packing the car, icing down the homebrew beer, stopping to buy groceries, then to buy a radio adapter for the iPod (insurance for our sanity and friendship), picking up the camera from school, and finally hitting the road… and then stopping for lunch. We really had every intention of starting out first thing in the morning… Honestly we did. But already the road was lending itself to metaphor. Here we were with this batch of new experiences and new relationships and new dynamics of old relationships rolling our way - but this seemingly infinite number of minor logistics were compounding to block our path.

Well, once we hit the road we plodded along the 653 mile trek up Interstate 85 through South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and finally up to Alexandria, VA without much event, calling to touch base with Bob Boilen of NPR and Jerry terHorst for the next day’s interviews – our first of the trip. We pulled in to our recently married friends Tim and Gretchen Fry’s new apartment in Alexandria sometime after midnight.