This cybercafe smells vaguely like a portapotty. The city doesn't have the right infrastructure to deal with all the waste of the population, so sometimes it smells like piss and shit, especially when it rains. All the water in the gutters reeks, I mean a lot . Speaking of stank, I cleaned the bathroom adjoining Adie and I's room last night. It is constantly wet and was stanking really strongly of mold. Now its mo betta. Even the cockroaches would stop every few steps and put their antaneas into their mouths with their little arms to clean them off. People think cockroaches are so dirty but they really take a lot of time to clean themselves before wandering around. And they move a lot like crickets. And they're terrified of getting killed-if you get even close to touching them they run like mad.
Oh, there is a mouse or a rat in the room as well, it likes to eat out of the 50 pound bag of rice we have chillin open in the corner. I hope it doesn't piss in there much but I guess the rice is boiled so it doesn't matter that much, hygenically speaking. It's terrified, too. I always just catch a tiny glimpse of it running under the bed or intoa hole in the cement walls. At first I wasn't sure if it was a lizard or a rodent cuz I only heard it and I could tell it was big (there are really cute lizards like the size of a 6 week old kitten here), but now I've seen it many times, briefly. I think it's a mouse cuz the rats here are like the size of guinea pigs at least. I've seen them dead on the road. That and dried fried flat toads.
Anyway. So I cleaned the bathroom cuz I couldn't deal with the stank anymore. Adie is out of town, up north in St. Louis visiting her grandmother for a few days so for the first time I had the room and bed all to myself and it was GREAT. I tried to use the opportunity to masturbate but it was too hot and I wasn't really in the mood. So I got to sleep nekked though, and to sleep with the pillow I like best. I also moved the planks that hold the bed up around, so that they were all in a row where our backs are instead of all spaced out cuz my back has been having some serious issues as a result. Now they are spaced out by where are feet are, an area that doesn't need much support. (I'm glad I got some practice sleeping on hard things by spending half my summer on Jordan's floor.)
When I woke up this morning I could turn the light on instead of creeping around in the dark. I also discovered that the reason the floor is always wet is because the toilet leaks, which I could never know before cuz I was sharing the bathroom and didn't know if Adie had just taken a shower or what (I'm gone most of the day, and the shower is just a spigot attached to the wall and the floor is dropped about 4 inches from the rest, but there is no curtain to stop the spray). But I dried that shit all off last night and it was a mad puddle again this morning, so now I know. Leaking toilet. I wonder if I could find some apoxy here and fix it or something? ....
Did I mention it's fucking hot? Well it is. It's about 90 degrees and 60 - 90 % humidity all the time. It feels like far more than 90, and the whole damn day is hot - it seems like the sun is different here, and I suppose it is. It doesn't really matter that much about it being noon as a high point in the heat like it does in the Midwest.
I found out a little bit about my internship that I'll be doing in a few months; it's on an organic farm up north. I'll be doing everything from planting to picking to selling goods at the market to finance/office worrk. And I'll be carrying bushels of produce on my head! I'm excited. I have a bunch of questions about the management structure and mission, etc., of the farm that the academic director is going to research when she does a site visit with the people next week. It's up north, which I guess is even hotter than it is here in Dakar. That makes sense coz Dakar is in the middle of the ocean - Senegal is like a face profile in the ocean, with Dakar as the nose.
Anyway I watched the weather last night to see about the region and it was 40 degrees Celcius which is like 104 degrees Ferhenheit there. Shitballs! Well it's supposed to get even hotter during October, but then will cool down a bit. So hopefully by the time I'm out there (early November through May) it won't be as bad? Plus the rainy season, although late this year, will be over by then so the heat will be more of a dry heat than it is right now.
Right now my big complaint is that my classes are mostly below the level of competence that most of the students have and our homework feels largely like busywork. For example, I have an eight page paper due on some really basic concepts about sex and gender. I dont know how I'm going to bullshit for that long on a topic I've covered in much greater depth than the paper is looking for, especially since so many previous classes have concentrated on "economy of words."
Especially frustrating is my International Development Theory class. The professor talks in circles that are very trying to follow and reiterates everything he says with an economics graph. Some people complain cuz they can't understand the graphs, I'm complaining because I understand the graphs and it's boring to listen to him say the same shit twice, or thrice, or um fourice whatever that would be. And there is some HUGE communication problem with him whereby he doesn't listen to what you actually say and his response twists what you've said around until he isn't addressing your comment anymore and is instead off on another of his hard to follow tangents. And his voice is really squeeky, which adds to the annoyance of listening to him. And he is really bad with his pronouns - he always always says he and him in examples that could clearly be a s/he/co situation. We all don't like the class, he's very intelligent but damn he is a poor professor. I spend the entire class drawing pictures of people stabbing butcher knives through their heads and forks in their eyes or beheading each other with scissors. I guess that part is fun, I do like to doodle.
Oh, so who is we, anyway? Well we are twelve girls from different parts of the States but mostly MN and the Midwest. There are three girls that were born elsewhere - Nigeria, South Africa, and Peru. We all get along really well for the most part. There is a 13th member of the crew, he is a boyfriend of one of the girls. He isn't in the MSID program so he's not taking classes, instead he's looking for a place to volunteer while here. He comes along for field trips, though.
There are only 4 of us staying for the academic year, the rest will be going home after fall semester. Sometimes I wish that's what I was doing, but not enough to really change my mind and tickets and such. Just psychological laziness, since I am definitly still adjusting. Those of you that have written me in the past few days, I'll get to it but some cybercafes allow me to check my University email and some don't - this one doesn't so I have to wait to go to the one near where I live to check and respond, etc.
Mmm...I think thats all the energy I can handle spending on typing emails today so I hope you all are doing lovely and I'll have to tell you about how to count and say numbers in Wolof next time cuz it's a pain in the ass, involving things like being able to multiply 17 by 5 very quickly.
Lots of love eat granola for me and I'll have a mango for you,
kelly
