so.. while the us is busy blowing up the free world, my world has shifted a bit this week. i moved to medina with ponges family. first time i ever lived with a boyfriend (we share a room and all). so far things are going very well; i am more comfortable with his family and in his (my) house than i ever was in the house in ouakam. the house in ouakam was isolated and sort of dead and i really dont deal well with authoritarian structures. almost all my friends are in medina and its close to downtown and where i work and to my school institution and there is so much life there. there are tons of people to interact with and as a result my wolof is getting better already. its mo mo betta. there are lots of people in and out of ponges house all the time and his family is extremely nice and when i walk down the street i know a lot of people and i feel welcome and safe. its interesting coz medina is the ghetto of dakar, so you would think i would feel more safe in ouakam which is a suburb. but the people here are generally more down to earth and.. the feel is just more something i am comfortable with. plus medina musically loud all the time; people drumming or rap hits and mbalax blasting until late at night coz someone got married or whatnot. (this is something i enjoy) the only thing is i have to be careful walking to work since i walk there alone, but so far nothing particularly worrisome has happened; and there are so many people around that i dont feel unsafe during the day and im always with at least one of my gangs of guys at night. gang in the sense of a group of friends, lest yea be confused. anyway, in general dakar has less violent crime than, say, the 'Cities. if someone tries to steal from you usually they try to do it sneakily, its relatively uncommon to be robbed by force - though it does happen of course.on the negative side of the move my family in ouakam reacted really negatively to my decision. the father got super angry and demanded all of the money for the time that i would have been there, which kind of shows me what he is made of. the thing about it is that the program is only budgeted to pay one family, not two and honorine (my directrice) had a hard time getting him to give up on it, and in the end he was given half the money anyway. when honorine explained what had happened to ponges aunt (the decision maker in the house) she said that she wanted him to keep all of the money, she had pity in her heart for the old man and she would have taken me into the house even if there was no stippend for it. this is from a woman who has far less materially than the family i was in; there are at least 13 people sleeping in the house, which has 7 beds/mattresses and 5 actual bedrooms. which shows me what *she* is made of.
as far as the war, well it sucks. people here say, bush moy doma romm, kii dafe dof. that translates to bush is a son of a bitch, hes crazy. but senegal is not yet strategically involved in the war and there are a lot of people here who say a true muslim wants peace, they say hussein creates a bad rap for muslims; and there is a lot of publicity here saying senegal should come out against the war and they say the people of the world, including the american people, are against this war. in other words there are a lot who make the distinction between american people and american government. anyway, i dont feel unsafe just because im american. plus i wrote that the war is bad in three languages on my backpack awhile ago, so..
anyway, someone keeps dropping ass here so im going to go. or maybe the wind is blowing in the stank of the sewage canal that runs through here.
