Mango Madness/Goree

This won't be a long entry, but here are a few photos. I can't get all of my photos up on facebook because these computers aren't compatible with facebook's uploading program, so you'll have to settle for these! If you know my family, you know that we aren't very renowned photographers, that is if we even remember to bring the camera anywhere. Add that to my self conciousness around looking like a privileged tourist and you have me-who doesn't take as many photos as some others. ---Note: okay so I can only get this one photo up, it's a view from the balcony outside a classroom at school. This is the center of campus. Note the Senegalese flag in the center and the ocean just behind :D---

As I mentioned previously, the computers here cause me unending frustration, but otherwise I try to let things slide.

A little while ago after class I was excited to eat a mango I bought yesterday because my fruit and vegetable intake is very low, and I went to open the skin when a little white worm started crawling out, so I immediately dropped it and threw it away-simultaneously grossed out and dissapointed. However last night I did get to have some bueye, which is a smoothie-like juice made from the fruit of baobab trees. It is delicious and tastes sort of like banana and strawberry combined, along with some orange.

This weekend at Goree Island was great. A cheap ferry takes you out (cheap for students anyway) and the island is carless and has winding narrow dirt streets. It's famous in history for being the headquarters of slave export in the Senegambia region, and we went to the Maison des Esclaves- the building where 300 Africans at a time were kept before being shipped out to the new world. The upstairs of the building is where commerce and trade deals were made by white and Afro-European (mixed race) merchants. We saw the cramped rooms where people were kept, and the "door of no return" where boats could pull up to load their "cargo"-never to be seen again. It is open and looks out onto the ocean. Despite the deadly history of the island (there are also WWII era cannons at various points and an old fort turned into a history museum-once the island was even bombed when the Vichy regime and the free French were fighting) it's extremely picturesque, colorful, and peaceful. Theres a little beach where we all went swimming, a church, and many many people selling tourist items who follow tourists around trying to sell them things. Since I've been to some concentration camps in Europe, forts in the US, etc. I thought of how much this place contrasts with those. At Goree, it's about unification and fun in the sun as you check out the architecture and talk with residents- the level of seriousness when touring the Maison was not the same. Maybe they don't think Europeans (and Americans) can take that level of seriousness-it would dampen their mood for buying food and tourist items. It's probably true? On Goree is also one of the most renowned high schools in Senegal-it's a boarding school for girls named after the famous Senegalese author Mariama Ba. There is a church for Catholics on the island, a hospital type building, and at the top of the island where parts of old WWII forts are people have made their homes (inside). Nothing is made on the island and everything is shipped in on the ferry-it seems even the baguettes that people generally eat for breakfast are shipped! (That might not be true).

The first week in October is our "fall break" and I and three other girls have begun planning our excursion. I think we're going to stick to the "petite cote" which is the coast south of Dakar and north of the Gambia. There is one place where the rooms are treehouses in huge baobabs. It's going to be a very nature oriented, riding pirogues (canoes) through the coastal mangroves sort of trip. Very exciting!

Got to get home for lunch-stay tuned.

Amanda