Domaine De Nianing Dakar

... and we had to take all of our stuff from the overhead lockers (that's what they call them) and put them in our lap so that security could make sure no one intentionally left a bag on the plane and got off in Senegal. Finally we were ready to go. They had to spray the plane once the doors were closed in order to kill any bugs that might have come on board.

The flight was off and only 8 more hours till we landed in Washington Dulles.

Today is Neptune Day (even though we are technically crossing the equator tomorrow) and it has been a great day! This morning everyone was awoken to crew members bringing in the day. They had drums, cymbals, and any noisemakers they could find which they used to wake us all up. The crew was dressed in tinfoil and they went from deck to deck making noise for over an hour. I got up after their first go round and went to ...

... au Musée. J'avais toujours 500 FCFA sur moi, dont 300 c'était pour l'aller-retour en bus jusqu'à l'embarcadère. L'île est toute petite (300x900m) mais fascinante, avec une histoire immense pour une si infime taille : d'abord occupée par les portugais, puis par les hollandais et finalement laissé à la éternelle dispute entre France et Angleterre, la France l'ayant évidemment obtenue après les accords de je ne sais plus quoi. C'était un point strat ...

... de 36h à parcourir à peine 500 km, mais on était finalement arrivés à la capitale. Dès que l'on avaient franchi la frontière j'ai remis tout le reste de l'argent que j'avais à Bourahima, premierement parce qu'il m'avait éviter de perdre je ne sais même pas combien de temps à la frontière où certainement la somme allée rester avec les policiers, deuxièmement parce que il ne s'attendait pas a rien de moi une fois le débat du voyage rémunéré achev ...

... as i get to learn how to juggle!!! i am actually getting somewhere which I am pretty proud of infact. Get to watch the kids do shows next week which I cant wait for! Spent the weekend of the 6th at the petite cote which was gorgeous. So nice just to get out of dakar for a bit and relax ont he beach. Had crepes for breakfast which was a complete luxury. The hostel where we stayed had such a family feel to it they charged us about 10 pounds for the whole weekend ...

... animals and they needed to be taught like that sometimes i was like errr... On Thursday I turned up at schoool and was the only teacher there... Turns out the other teachers were on strike... so I got to go home early and went for a lush mexican dinner in a proper posh restaurant with Naomi. Friday was strike time aswell so I had a day off which I spent playing with Binet's god daughter who is the cutest little girl ever. She is so ...

... 500 dernier prix, mon ami, il y a des autres taxis qui vont le faire". With the hangdog expression of one of the numerous tethered goats loitering at street corners waiting for the chop, he grunts, languidly flicks his wrist to indicate that i should get in the back, and revs the engine .... which seems to be mis-firing and pinking and stalling all at the same time. I wrestle open the door just managing not to pull it off its rotten hinges, and allow myself to sink into ...

... really, as it is TOTALLY obscured by shanty and a crowded overflow of stalls and street traders PACKED around it v tightly .... and if you raise your eyes to look at the architecture it is likely to be at the expense of your wallet or watch or possibly even the shirt off your back ! You just KNOW as you are walking in their that it is a bit of a Fagan's den .... nonetheless, wonderful sight of cloth stalls next to a pile ...

... until the first crops come to harvest. This is our mission, mission impossible. It's a way of life. Still the French implant their patisseries and boulangeries on the cuisine and their breathy 'je t'aime's and syrupy love songs on the airwaves without the slightest trace of self-consciousness or irony at the juxtaposition of such fluff in deepest darkest in-yo-face Africa. It takes all kinds. I wish they'd implant some of it in Mali.

... Senegal - on an dodgy pirogue (long tailed boat) with 50+ others, which made the car journey to Rosso seem safe.  The town on the other side - Rosso-Senegal - was also a complete hole, perhaps even worse than its namesake on the other side of the river.  What is it with border towns?  You'd have thought that governments would want to make them appealing to the new-comer rather than allowing them to be the most unfriendly, unplesant places in the country.  (How does ...