Je suis arrivé

Initial impressions:
· Whenever I read an article about Africa, and the reporter is writing from Khartoum, or Kinshasa or Abidjan or Nairobi, anywhere on the continent they always talk about how this or that city is mad dusty, it’s always the “dusty streets of Africa” and it’s true, at least in Dakar and Cairo (the two African capitals I have been to, and yes I am moving Egypt back from the “Middle East” to “Africa”) are mad dusty. Contact lens wearers beware.
· I am living with another foreigner, Soizic, a 24 year-old woman from Belgium, trained as a teacher who is trying to find work here. She was here in Dakar for three months before with the same host family, the Sarrs, and liked it so much that she came back. She seems nice but her French is impossible for me to understand, I just hear strong “r”s. It sounds like she is about to spit at me every time I reply “oui” to a question I don’t understand at all.
· Senegalese women are beautiful (OK, people everywhere are beautiful) but they ruin it by wearing way too much makeup and really bad weaves. It’s bad enough that they have to be all colonized and must attempt to look like white women, but they can’t even afford the better weaves and relaxers that black women in the United States get. C’est triste.
· The food here is great. It usually consists of fish, beef, chicken or lamb in sauce over rice, millet or couscous. Mostly fish. Or as my Dominican brain processes it, arroz con carne guisada. As long as there is some kind of sauce and a heavy starch component I can’t complain. Breakfast, however, is no good. It’s more of that French-style, café de manha shit I had in Brazil. Every morning it’s French bread, instant coffee, butter, powdered milk, chocolate and cheese. I’m sorry but I like breakfast. I want a real breakfast, either American-style eggs, bacon, toast, pancakes, sausage, etc. or Dominican-style, platanos, and (yes, Dave, I do like it) salami or cheese. I feel like I can hate on the breakfast here because it is not “authentically” Senegalese. I am trying to not sound like one of those foreigners that complains incessantly about how shitty everything is and how much better things are at home. Shit, if you don’t like where you are, you are a foreigner, you must have some chip if you were able to afford the flight so use that money and go home where everything is better. In general I try to stick to the rule of “when in Rome, do as the Romans do” (and considering the fact that I am learning to squat to shit, and wipe my ass without toilet paper, I think I can be excused for the moment, but more on this later). So as far as I am concerned, the petit-dejeuner is a negative legacy of French colonization along with economic dependency, poverty and bad hair weaves.
· I went out last Monday night with two other young foreign volunteers, one American and one British. First we went to listen to some live music at this club called “Just 4 U” (I love how corny phrases in English are super cool and chic abroad) where this live jazz were playing some standards. The band was decent but the place is overpriced. Senegal is not as cheap when compared to other peripheral countries. A beer at a club here is about $4, not bad considering in NYC they won’t even serve you a cup of coke for $4, but not as cheap as elsewhere. Then we headed to “Africa Star” a dance club downtown that was absolutely hilarious. (Yeah, the after-party, it is nice to know that Dakar never shuts down, unlike Santo Domingo whose nightlife has been destroyed by the anti-youth, anti-fun 2 am weekend curfew. I am still not over the fact that it was 2:30 AM on a SATURDAY and everything was closed and I couldn’t even find a place to get a fucking pastelito). I thought clubs in NYC were superficial and pretentious, but we got nothing on Dakar. People were straight up dancing in front of the mirrors checking themselves out. My favorite part was when one dude who was clearly into himself moved laterally—never losing sight of himself in the mirror—toward a woman that was clearly into herself, and then they coordinated movements (I refuse to call it dancing) while they both looked at themselves in the mirror. Then of course there were the random, sketchy dudes. Would the club be the club without them?
· Last Sunday I went to the beach with Soizic and some of her friends who are also volunteers. They were Belgian and French so I just nodded and said “oui” a lot and hoped they wouldn’t spit at me. One of them had just done a high school exchange at a private school in Westchester and she spoke English. She tried to explain to me a little bit of la vie blanche a Dakar. My first reaction, was, “thank God I am at the beach, if people are confusing me for white then I really do need a tan.” My second thought was, “whoa, if I am white now does that mean I get to have all of the privileges, like no one asking me twice where I am from, or corporate stock or being adulated as the most beautiful beings on Earth by self-hating people of color worldwide (see post above)?” The idea of being white, was positively titillating. Then I realized that everyone was staring at me, and not shy, curious stares, but the kind of “mad hard” stares that you get on the subway when you stare too long at the wrong person’s girl. It could be that I was walking around with four, gleaming beacons of freedom (the white women) but it was obvious that I must have looked like the fifth beacon. Suddenly being white wasn’t so cool an idea (I’d still take the corporate stock though).
· I am taking four hours of French par jour. Three night I had my first nightmare in French. I was buttered and eaten for breakfast in the middle of a giant baguette.