Whew

Spent this morning at the Musee d'IFAN, which is one of the first museums ever created in Africa about black Africa. Not quite up to the standards I've come to expect after frequenting the Met and the Museum of Natural History, but it was still fascinating. The featured exhibit was all about fertility, mostly as represented by wood carving sculptures of women. I'm particularly fascinated by the completely different way beautiful breasts are depicted here. None of this large and round nonsense we have in the States, or any type of single ideal boob. Breasts are sometimes supple and sometimes incredibly flat and droopy, pointy, elongated, sometimes sticking straight out. It's refreshing to see art that embraces so many different body types. The permanent collection in the museum is a series of lifesize scenes of different traditional African rituals -- a female puberty ritual from Guinea Bisau demonstrated by mannequins in traditional costumes in front of a replica of a local hut -- a celebration of the learned art of land cultivation in a rural Mali tribe -- others that were not from West Africa too but I can't remember them all now. There was also a modern art exhibit in a back section of the museum, which featured a challenge from the Guethe Institute (I'm sure I'm butchering this name which is embarassing, but I'm trying to speak of the big German art museum) asking artists to make daily objects out of other daily objects. I can't remember if the artists were African or not, but the pieces were pretty cool and it was at least fun to see some modern works, given that I feel a little more knowledgeable about that branch of art than everything else I've been seeing lately.

After our morning excursion, I adventured out with five other friends into the craziness that is downtown Dakar. We were searching for a restaurant highlighted in our guidebooks (thanks again for mine, Freddie and Henry!) but trying to find anything with only an address here is almost a lost cause. Most streets aren't labeled, and as soon as you stop to look around for any marker of location it takes mere seconds for vendors to literally surround you and shove their products at your hands. It certainly makes it hard to even pretend to be a local. After asking about 10 people (this is of course after we had originally gotten directions from our French teachers before even leaving the museum) we finally found the restaurant, which was a lovely little oasis from the busy Dakar streets. I was able to eat real food (!!) though not in huge amounts. But it's probably good that I'm slowing down in my eating; at the rate I was being asked to eat last week there is no way I could return to the States anything other than obese. In particular the avacados and shrimp salad (a common dish here, though sometimes the shrimp just comes inside the avacados and there is no lettuce) was delicious. There was even a kora player accompanying our meal, which was lovely, even though he was not nearly as good as the guy from the Theatre National who played for us early last week. I'm guessing from this experience as well that the quality of the kora itself (imagine an instrument half way between a guitar and a harp) also has a great deal to do with the sound... it seems like there might be a lot of variation in how nicely the strings resonate.

The rest of the afternoon was spent exploring two markets -- the marche Sandaga and the marche HLM. Markets here are even more exhausting than the streets. It's impossible to pause for even a moment without being swarmed. Even if you see something you like, it's better not to touch or discuss unless your semi-interested in actually buying. I was kind of looking for a pair of sandals, but it just wasn't worth the trouble of engaging with the salesmen. It's ridiculous how quickly one can tire of this kind of consumer relationship -- I'm now realising everything I've come to appreciate about US commercialism. For example, unless it's a $50 bill (and frequently even then!) it is guaranteed that you can get change for a too-large-bill at any restaurant, gas station, taxi, ANYTHING. Here, it is almost impossible. And the only way to get money out of ATMs is to get big bills! But the entire way money is treated is different. Even standard things can frequently be bargained down, like powdered milk in bulk or laundry services or shampoo if it's purchased in boutiques. I'm sure I could be getting great deals on some of the things for sale at Sandaga, but it's almost better just to walk by with a purpose and take in how many people and things are condensed into such small spaces. Le marche HLM is the largest fabric market in Dakar, and it's true that the fabrics there have incredible colors. I'm going to ask Abby to take me back, because I couldn't tell how badly I was getting taken for a ride by the vendors. Mostly what the women wear here is known as wax, which is a not very soft fabric coming in bright colors and big patterns. There's a lot of orange in women's wardrobes here, and a lot of green. I love how bright all the colors are; it is impossible to wear something traditional and not to make a bold statement. Even though HLM was less busy, it was also exhausting and I was ready to leave after 45 minutes.

I'm going to head home soon, hopefully to learn how to do my laundry by hand as I am now completely out of clean underwear. (Side note: this blog has become increasingly blunt, perhaps you've noticed. Consider that a direct trend of how blunt life here has become for me -- we talk about details of our health, details of our homestays... none of us have personal space or privacy anymore, so very little seems inappropriate to me these days.) Maybe live jazz later, maybe going to a local bar for a chill drink... Tomorrow we are going on a small safari in a national wildlife preserve (!!) and then spending the day at a beach a couple of hours outside of Dakar, and then tomorrow night the whole program is trying to go to the National Ballet (which is not the same thing as what we call ballet in the US -- think African dance) and then out clubbing. The drummer from our dance workshop this week is actually performing at a club, so hopefully we will meet up with him during his show. I got his number just to make sure -- seriously, the Senegalese men love me. Maybe it's just because I do a lot of smiling to stall while I search for the correct French conjugation of my verb. A tout a l'heure. (See you later.)