Day 12 - Return to Dakar

Left Saint-Louis today.  Unfortunately.  I’m going to miss that place…. It was just so much more modern than the rest of Senegal.  I was enjoying the modern amenities.  It was roughly a four-hour bus ride back to Dakar, and we more or less traveled straight through.  There was one funny moment about two hours out of the city when we passed a bus from another university in Dakar, and our bus driver recognized the driver of the other bus.  He started honking like crazy and pulled over to the side of the road, and the other bus pulled up next to us, and they both jumped out of their buses and started wrestling on the side of the road.  We were all so startled it took us a minute to determine that they were actually friends.  I don’t think I will ever adjust to Senegalese driving.  It seems as if for them, braking is an absolute last resort.  They prefer to lean on their horns in the hopes that everyone will just get out of their way.  Honking is also their way of announcing when they plan on doing something highly illegal, such as passing a car on the left when there is oncoming traffic.  The highways are filled with Car Rapides, which typically have people hanging off the back of them, holding onto ladders, and occasionally there are vans with people sitting on their roofs.  I saw one car today which had a live sheep strapped to its roof.  It didn’t look particularly happy… By far the funniest moment of the day was when Jaileen decided to give our professor a lesson in Salsa dancing in the middle of the bus as it was driving down the highway.  I was surprised that he actually rose to the challenge.  Wish I had been a bit quicker with my camera so that I could have captured the moment on film.  I’m back with my host family now, it seems that there is a wedding going on next door.  As far as I can tell, that involves a lot of drumming and chanting, with what sounds like blessings in between.  Papis tried to explain something about how important gift-giving was in the Senegalese tradition, but I’m not sure that I grasped all of it.  I’ll have to remember to ask my professor about it on Monday.  My host family has been popping over sporadically to celebrate with them.  It seems to be a more casual affair.  They invited me to come with them, but I declined since I didn’t really bring any clothing appropriate for a wedding.  I’ll have to remember for future travel to bring one really nice outfit just in case, since it would have been cool to witness that.