New Baby! /and/ the muttons are coming....

I wrote the below entry yesterday but the internet was bad so I couldn't publish it. As an update, I spent the evening at the hospital with the new baby "Madame X" for now, which was fun. Today I am tired, but am pretty much done with my papers!

Surprise! There is a new baby girl in our house (that is, my host family.) I'm pretty excited. I went to sleep last night at my usual golden hour of 10pm and everyone was sitting on the couch watching tv as usual. They had even just finished a bottle of fanta cocktail together, including my host sister who was pregnant (I was slightly bruised that I wasn't offered any, but that's beside the point). I slept through the night, besides some mosquito bites, and only heard the baby (Khadidja, who is almost 2) cry once. Then I wake up in the morning, take a shower, things are quiet, and as I'm drinking my tea my host mom says "Degen had a girl!" to me. I can't believe I slept through her going to the hospital and I can't believe it was such a fast delivery. That means it was far less than a 12 hour process. In any case, that means I will be here for the naming ceremony, which happens one week after a baby is born and is when its name is revealed to everyone and gifts are exchanged and there's food and it's an all day affair (7am start cooking, 8-10 guests arrive, men leave at around 5-6pm, women leave around 10-11pm). And it will be right after Tabaski so I won't have homework to do-praised be. For me, today is the last *real* day of class, and tomorrow I just have one class, while Monday I have Wolof class then my French written final (the last of three parts) and the rest of the week off because of Tabaski and how my schedule falls. Then Monday the 15th is my Wolof exam, my 3 papers will be handed in, and hopefully I'll scamper down to Joal-Fadiut on the Petite Cote for a couple of nights to see former President Senghor's (and my host mom's) birth place before leaving on my jet plane.



In other news, the mutton (goats) for Operation Tabaski are on every street corner. Their smell is actually fairly contained but I try not to get too close. The men who guard/sell them sleep in tents beside them so none get stolen. On TV, companies like the cell phone giant Tigo are giving away goats if you text a certain number. Come Tuesday blood from thousands of goats will be running in the streets. I have great anticipation.



In class yesterday a rapper named Matador came to speak with all of the students in my program. He and the group he's in, BMG 44, are very political and well known in the Dakar rap scene. They are musicians, and also work tirelessly in the (poor) suburbs of Dakar with kids in order to help them stay in school, get them off the streets, help them become musicians, etc. It's really cool. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b2I-bXW7Y0 That's a video interview with him, but there are other videos with songs, mostly in Wolof. The rap he performed for us was Xippil Xool-open your eyes and see. Part of the refrain was "your sleeping, open your eyes and see"-of course a social message! Although the American rap videos on TV here are not so quality, most Senegalese rap is political and deals with social issues and what's going on in people's lives. It's good stuff. Here's the page for BMG 44: http://http//www.myspace.com/bmg44



Speaking of music, I went to St. Louis this past weekend, the old colonial capital of AOF- l'Afrique Occidental Francais- French West Africa. It had a bit of a New Orleans feel because of the architecture, though there aren't all the rich people to keep it as nice, though it was bright. There were more toubabs than I've seen anywhere-which is mostly bordering-elderly Europeans, but also random young men. Four of us spent nearly two hours in a music store, and between the 4 of us purchased 15 CD's. The way it worked was that CDs (a healthy collection of reggae, blues, funk, jazz, rap, and of course Senegalese and West African music of all genres) were prohibitively expensive (even for Europeans) so the guy burns them for us on his computer for $5 each. Not a bad deal! He even made special order compilations. So we're all going to burn them from one another. Very exciting.

Our hotel was on the northern tip of the island (the oldest part of St. Louis is an island in the Senegal River, with bridges on either side) and sat on the river. To the north we could even see Mauritania (we think). On Saturday we visited a bird park, took boats down the river, and saw hundreds of migrating pelicans. On Saturday night we went disco hopping and danced with some Mauritaneans in full white kaftans. The next day I managed to get to Sunday mass for the first Sunday of Advent. The old French colonizers used to worship there