damn, put a word like clittoral in your title and you get 73 hits in one day. and all of this without advertising... laahilaay.so my life in brief: thursday through sunday (the 16th through 19th) i am sick and not eating or leaving my bed cuz im nauseus (spelling?) and headachey and sleeping a lot; if i werent such a non-puker i might have thrown up a few times. its no huge deal, im just sick not dying but my host dad freaks out and calls honorine (my directrice) about 6 times a day until she takes me to the doctor who gives me some anti-parasiticals and body ache/head ache meds. only he (my host dad, not the doc) is frustrated with her cuz she came about 6 hours later than she said she would. personally im used to this from honorine and i like her and it doesnt really bother me; i know she is very busy.
but my host dad started yelling at her about it in front of me and this is apparently very disrespectful of him (he is kind of an ass sometimes) and she told him not to talk to her like that in front of me and now they dont like each other. (in her words, i hate him; he didnt talk about it but he holds grudges in a certain im a man arrogant kind of way). im pretty much all better by sunday, except i (still today) have a mild cold that may or may not be attached to the original malady.
monday night i went out dancing with my djembe teacher paupis. he said he would be by at 10:30pm and we would go out. well he didnt come until 1am and since adji told me it was cool to have him come knock on the door since yaay (my host mum) knew i was going out (he was going to just meet me outside) and such i invited him in the house to say hello to yaay and adji (host dad; pappa, was asleep already).
well when they came adji was on the phone with someone for a long time. i knew she kinda liked paupis so i wanted to wait until she got off so they could say hello to each other and all that...but she took a long long time. paupis and his friend lamine (not to be confused with my bro lamine, who during the week is generally at the university). then yaay asked me to come see her (she was not in the living room); she asked why we were waiting and i said i wanted to say goodbye properly to adji instead of just being like okay see ya. she accepted that and we continued to wait.
then adji finally gets off the phone and comes in, and then the mom calls me again. this time she is angry and says that if i want to go out thats no problem but if someone meets me here they must meet me here and we must leave immediately. so i apologize and say i didnt realize and walk into the living room where paupis are in the middle of basically a couch cushion fight which kind of irritates me cuz i would like to have paupis welcome in the home and if those two are so obviously flirting that both wont happen and reflects badly on me for inviting him. hello its called subtlety..
anyway i say, nu dem, uh? (lets go, eh?) and adji and paupis continue to very loudly and obviously flirt the whole way to the door until yaay yells at her (adji, degage-toi ak kiiy fii). thanks adji, this is already a bad situation.
well i have a good time at the club except paupis seems to confuse me dancing in the way i do with me being interested in him and is really touchy feely in the cab on the way back; not anywhere "inappropriate" but it is still inappropriate coz of the circumstances. this does not make me happy - he knows i have a exclusive relationship-boyfriend and in addition i know adji likes him and i know that he told her he likes her. so hows he gonna think he can play two sisters at once like hes so special that i would bother adji over him? what the fuck ever, dude. we'll see if i keep taking lessons from dude or not.
so the next day i take the host mom and dad into a room to try to explain that if i disrespect their house its not that i want to, its just that i dont one hundred percent know the rules. i thought yaay would have been happy that she could meet the peeps i was going out with for the night. well, i think that yaay misinterprets my trying to apologize and make things all cool with my trying to argue with her. in addition; apparently she hadnt said anything to pappa coz hes such an anal freak so he is just finding out and he is angry at me since evedently unless the family knows a person very very well they are not even supposed to enter the hallway to the living room, let alone sit in it. fuck. plus hes then likely angry at yaay who is frustrated with me for having basically narced her out unintentionally. fuckfuckfuckshit. its also lamine's (my brother, not paupis' friend) birthday, but the tone in the house is somber coz of all the problems and i have to actively keep myself from crying during dinner.
well shit. i dont want to be in the house so i go spend the day with my boy and his friends in medina on wednesday. things are maybe getting chill again? then on thursday i sneak into the dining room by pretending to be an exchange student at the university and eat with my bro lamine (the food was better than U Dining thats for sure) and his friends. we stood in line forever and i was afraid it wouldnt work, but when the dude asked me for my ID card I just blinked and acted like i didnt understand and lamine talked to him and he let me in. gotta have mini adventures in all this daily living, right?
we hang out afterwards and drink tea in their overcrowded dorm room, then lamine and i and his friend abib go dancing at a different club, niani, which ends up being a lot of fun. the dj at niani on thursdays is gooood.
except abib tries to get me to be his girlfriend and when i explain i have a boyfriend and i dont want anything but friendship from him that doesnt matter; im supposed to give him a chance or some shit and i say no and no and no until finally he gets mad and says, as you wish. (comme tu veux) how the fuck are you going to give me a bad attitude for not responding to being hit on? its not my job to please him and say yes, its his job to be respectful and mature about my disinterest. piss off!
later he apparently has realized that dafa yabati (he was being a scumbag) and asks me to forget about all of what he said. i agree to, though im wary and i ask lamine later in the week to tell his friends to leave me alone. he is surprised and says he didnt realize abib was saying that shit to me. actually his other friends seem like nice kids except a few.
lamine's parents dont know he was out, since he lives at the university he can do what he wants pretty much. i come back into the house at about 5 am and knock on adji's window like normal when i go out and she cant and she lets me in.
well the next morning pappa has made up a new rule and he is telling me very sternly that if i go out all night i need to stay out because its not fair for adji to wake up at 5 am and let me in. i agree, but im pissed that he's pissed since i was told originally that the way i had done things that night, and how i always do it, it what i should do. i try to explain that i actually thought of that but was worried they'd be worried that i didnt come home so i never did spend the night somewhere... apparently thats not a problem.
i talked to adji about it and she said it didnt bother her at all to let me in and if she was me she'd go out every single night of the week. well im fine with staying out all night but i really dont think getting angry with me about a rule that changed without telling me about it is fair. so he can piss off and keep his grudges, im going to be nice and repectful and if he wants to give me dirty looks and barely say ca va to me thats his fucking deal.
anyway during all this i was thinking about my options. i looked into getting an apartment with this girl i know for only 50,000 CFA/ 75 USD a month (i pay 100,000 cfa for the family stay) but apparently its forbidden by the program. honorine, who now hates my host dad, told me i could switch families and she would stand up to him and tell him some reason why. my boyfriend even offered that i could come live with him and his aunt; and his friends offered that i could rent a room in "the ghetto" with them and they could be my new family.
but...i really like my host siblings and my host mom is still really nice. shes laid back. she got angry but she doesnt hold grudges like pappa does so were all good as far as i can tell by her behavior. a new family might be worse, and i definitly wouldnt want to offend the three people in the family that i still like. and..im willing to make peace with the host dad but his getting pissed at me has sort of released all this anthropological distance i was attempting to carry as far as observing and not judging behavior. well, maybe it will chill out. in anycase i dont need to be home very often, just at night really.
this past weekend i stayed home, except to see a movie in honor of MLK bday that was being played at a english bookstore/community center near my house saturday afternoon and to visit ponge and the medina crew sunday afternoon. i was tired of running around and my bro lamine is home during the weekends and im pretty close with him and miss his company now that hes at the U all the time.
today i met all the new MSID spring semester students. there are four girls and two boys; they all seem nice. its interesting to be in position of advisor and remember how scary and new everything was and how tired i was all the time when i first got here. i am very definitly still learning a lot, but in some ways i feel like a veteran, which of course feels good. ive felt so dumb and clueless for so long, its nice to have something by which i can realize i actually know a few things.
of course all my boy-friends want me to bring the girls around so they can meet them and maybe have girlfriends... well two of the new MSID girls live in the part of medina the crew does and i frequent so chances are they'll meet regardless of if i put in some arrangements or not. i tell them that i'll be happy to introduce people, but its not up to me whether they are interested in each other or not.
oh; and my internship doesnt start until february since the group i want to study is in the process of moving their office and wont be ready to take on an intern until then. so meanwhile ive been helping honorine and such with office work and offered to help the new students if they, for example, want to go to the market or have questions or just want to speak english cuz theyre tired or whatever.
