...meaning I am living in Mermoz in Dakar right now. Things are progressing along smoothly. This week we're doing workshops, and I'm spending the afternoons at the Village des Arts doing sous-verre painting, otherwise known as glass painting. It's unique to Senegal, and incredibly challenging, but a huge amount of fun. The process begins with a drawing, which is the first place where I begin to suck. Then you trace your drawing onto wax or tracing paper. Cutting the drawing to the size of your plate or glass sheet, you tape the wax paper to the front of the glass. Then flipping it over, you trace your lines using a caligraphy pen and ink, thus creating a mirror image drawing. Then you paint the colors on, the only difference from other kinds of painting being that you can layer the colors without them mixing. Only the bottom coat will show through. You have to keep flipping the glass around to see what it will actually look like--it's pretty wild. The past two days I've been painting a traditional boat found everywhere in Dakar called a pirogy, which looks like a long canoe and has bright patterns in primary colors painted all down the sides. I named my boat Oumy Gueye, my Senegalese name, which is perhaps conceited but seemed appropriate. Nothing I will make this week will be good enough to give as gifts even to my mom, so it may as well have personal significance for me!
The weekend was pretty chill -- reading abridged versions of Disney stories and fairy tales to Soukeyna, chilling at a patisserie downtown and visiting the jewelry market, writing a paper on my village stay experience. Sunday night I had a long conversation with Abby where she basically told me she is planning to get a divorce because of Bashir's second wife. She can't live like this anymore, with him gone 50% of the time, and the double standards in terms of how they both can act are pretty horrifying. For example on Friday night Bashir was out with his buddies until about 5 in the morning, while Abby was home after a long day of work with the kids. I mean there's live in help, but Awa is not the same as a parent by any means... It's tricky. But it was heart breaking to see Abby so upset, she started crying even. And it puts me in the incredibly bizarre situation of being simultaneously her close confident / daughter cousin neice... And Bashir doesn't know; he knows that she doesn't like the situation but he doesn't know that a divorce is coming. I don't think it will happen any time while I am here, as Abby said the house in Mermoz is too expensive for her salary (which shocks me given how tiny the house is! It must be because of the neighborhood, Mermoz is adorable and very cutesy) so she is starting to search for other housing alternatives. She and I had talked about Bashir's other wife a couple of weeks ago and she had commented that while she was livid with the situation, she didn't believe in getting a divorce when there are young kids in the house. Especially since Soukeyna at age 5 becomes attached to everything that smiles back at her. But she's clearly reached her wits end. Bashir sometimes jokes that I like Abby more than I like him, that I side with her all the time because I'm a "feminist," but the truth is that I really like them both at times and am beyond frustrated with them both at times. It's like I'm living in a fishbowl of their marriage but I'm not allowed to affect the outcome in any way... That's an awkward metaphor, I apologize.
More later in the week. Hope all is well in the States, and that nobody is relying on an AIG bonus...
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