We tried to visit Air Senegal for flight info but the power had been down for 2 weeks so the guy couldn’t price flights for us. Why he was even there and “working” was a mystery to me.
One little boy started following me and Joe asking for money. I reached into my purse to give them a banana and all of a sudden about 8 of them came out of nowhere. I handed over the banana to the one who reached the highest and didn’t look back, I’m sure they fought over it like crazy.
Joe and I did 4 memorable things today. We bought a passport case that says Guinea-Bissau (and it’s actually very nicely designed!) We got yelled at a couple times for taking pictures of people, we had lunch at the house of our Lebanese friend, and we went to our taxi driver’s house after work. At our Lebanese friend’s house, he had rice, chicken, and potatoes (sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, carrots, etc.) in a lovely semi-spicy sauce. It started with cole slaw made from cabbage. Then there was rice, chicken and vegetables with a spicy sauce made with palm oil. It was a lovely lunch and I somehow was able to eat the whole thing (my plate was HUGE!) Well, I guess not a huge surprise for me. He had a cute little house, still very open, full of flies/bugs, only sometimes working electricity, run-down, but probably considered very high-class for the area. He had 3 girls in the kitchen working for him; cooking and cleaning. He also had a whole bunch of other people around doing odds and ends, including running his store. He has Mercedes for cars (2 of them) and drivers as well. His really cute 19 year old daughter was there too, and she invited a local guy who could speak a little English but was very quiet the whole time. We had great conversation and he helped us out even more with our survey. Along with the typical African dish that we ate, we also had some Lebanese bread and coffee, which was very good (strong and thick but unlike anything I had had before). We left from here to keep working, but I may go dress shopping with the girl on Friday. All of us plan to do something on Friday, so that should be fun and something to look forward to. (PS, still not sure if he’s a drug dealer, but we don’t think so).
At the end of the day our taxi driver took us to visit his family. We drove off-road (which is most of the road system here) through lots of garbage and huge holes until the car came to a stop in front of a lot of garbage piles, huts, and families hanging around outside who looked at us wide-eyed. After walking through some fly-infested garbage and checking out the chickens and pigs, we came to his house with the dirt floor in the middle of it all. There were houses of the same time all around this one, and a large trash pit was in the middle of it all, and the bathroom (which we assumed it was), was behind us. I kissed his wife in the beautiful African dress on the cheeks and said hello to his two little boys. There were two other girls around with their kids (I think?) One of the mothers couldn’t be any older than 18 years old and she had a baby wrapped in a sarong around her back. We played with the kids and amazed them with expensive sunglasses and digital cameras (which we let them play with and take pics of themselves). One little boy was attached to Joe, one of the little girls reminded me of Steph when she was little, such an attention-grabbing drama queen but man was she cute. The little boy rubbed Joe’s hair on his legs and on his chest, probably because daddy didn’t have that himself. There were shoulder rides and lots of laughing as these 2 cultures came together (without speaking more than a word of each others’ language) and enjoyed the day and each other’s company, no matter how strange the situation really was – especially for me and Joe. Our taxi driver doesn’t talk much at all, but he can understand and speak very little English. When he agrees with something, or understands us, he just nods his head and grunts. His wife talks a lot more, in general. No one really tried to even speak to us, and we didn’t try to speak either, knowing we sure wouldn’t be able to communicate much.
It was a great day in general, though; we got to hang out with residents of two completely different classes in a very personalized setting, all in one day. Just incredible.
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