KO (Senegal)

Hey all! Things here are great. I got here exactly 4 weeks ago and the program is 1/5 over, which kind of blows my mind.

The craziest thing was 2 weekends ago, we went to this reggae concert at the big stadium in Dakar where they have soccer games and werstling matches. Tickets were only 4 dollars, so we couldnt resits even though none of us are huge reggae fans. We got there at 10, and despite the fact that the opening bands started at 8, there were still tons of people waiting outside and a line of people smashed together waiting by one of the gates. so we decided it would be too difficult to get in, so we went to a bar for a few hours and went back at like midnight to only a slightly better situation. we tried to find the end of the line, and couldnt and the senegalese guy we were with suggested just trying to get into the line towards the front of it, which seemed completely impossible. but as we got to the front of the line we realized there were tons of guys more than ahppy to let us in front of them, mostly because it meant that that they would get to rub all up on us while we waited to get in. so we all tried to find places to get in and tried to get in slyly so that the police and military guys keeping the peace with giant sticks didnt notice. so all of the girls got in without too much trouble, but then we had to wait for a really long time for the guys we were with to get in since it was obviously a lot harder for them to find people to let them budge. so we got in and there are just tons of people smoking and the main band didnt even start until 2am. we stayed until after 4 and decided we should leave before the band was actually done because otherwise we were afraid we would be trampled. when i got home at 5am i could still here the music in the distance! it was the craziest thing ever.

the other highlight so far was the wedding i went to last weekend with some members of my host familly. I got to wear a senegalese dress that i borrowed from the nanny who lives in our house and also went to the wedding. there was music and dancing and good food, so similar but also very different to american weddings. evidently the griot, the guy singing, was pretty famous, so that was cool, and every once in a while someone would walk around and hand all of the people in the band cash, which is wierd because overall people are very private with their money.

i think that is about it!