Bachata!

Over the weekend I had dinner at a restaurant by Ngor beach, La Madrague, with Caitlin and Alex two rising seniors at Harvard in Dakar for the summer doing research. I ordered some wack food ( I though I was buying fried calamari, but instead got some weird fish stick thing, the kind of "food" they hand out as public school lunches), but I loved the place because they were playing bachata. Somehow someone who works at the restaurant (I asked who) bought a bachata mix CD featuring Aventura, Frank Reyes, Luis Vargas and a couple of other famous bachateros, although the selection of songs seemed somewhat random. They played the CD several times, so somebody at the restaurant must be feeling it. I just couldn’t believe bachata in Senegal! How cosmopolitan are the people here? I could never imagine a fancy restaurant in the “Land of the Most Self-Hating Black People on the Planet” playing any music that was self-defined as African (merengue remember is Indian music, the Tainos were playing it when Columbus arrived). Actually I can’t even imagine a fancy Dominican restaurant playing bachata. Hooray for Senegal!