We're Here!

I'm sorry I haven't been able to post sooner. We arrived in Dakar, Senegal a week ago but went straight to a town about 3 hours away (where the internet was, of course, not working) to stay with the family of a friend of ours from Missoula. Our friend N'doumbe is a Senegalise woman getting her masters at The University of Montana in Missoula on a Fullbright scholarship. She'll return to Senegal in May 2008. She was my French tutor this past summer and we became friends. Matt and I took a package over for her and her family offered to host us for a few days. Her sister Mareme picked us up from the airport and the three of us took a taxi to N'dboumbe's hometown of Pute. What was going to be a two day visit with her family turned into five days. And even then it was difficult to leave. We had such a wonderful time with them. They welcomed us into their home as if we were family and we immediately felt comfortable. We spent our time talking and joking with 5 of N'doumbe's sisters and several brothers and friends of the family as well as her mom and dad. Everyone in the family and in the neigborhood was anxious for news about N'doumbe. They served us incredible Senegalise food- rice with fish and vegetables, rice with leaf sause, noodles with meat, potatos and peas....We ate well and were grateful for such a warm welcome to West Africa.

We were in Pute with the family long enough that we needed to do some laundry. The family had made sure that Matt and I didn't lift a finger the entire time we were there. They gave us their biggest bedroom, cooked for us, cleaned for us, showed us around, etc. etc. We were touched by such incredible hospitality. There was no way, though, that we were going to ask N'doumbe's sisters to do more work for us. So we did the only thing we could do. We told them we needed to wash our underwear. I think underwear is one of the only excpetions to the rule of not letting a guest do anything for themselves. People everywhere recognize that handwashing underwear is a very personal or "intimate" as they said, thing. Matt and I were pleased to be able to give them a bit of a break from all the stuff they were doing for us. They set the buckets up for us and got the water ready. I went first. When I finished I asked Matt if I could do his for him. He said he'd do his own. No problem. Well, the sisters thought this was hilarious. A man doing his own laudry when there were plenty of women around to do it for him?!! Crazy. They were busy cooking and braiding each other's hair so allowed it to happen. They really got a kick out of it though. It was all laughs until the father of the family got home. He took one look at Matt bent over the bucket and went crazy. First he yelled at his daughters for not doing Matt's laundry for him. He called Aiyta over and made her finish up the job. Then he talked sternly to Matt for not having his daughters do the job. But the person he was really upset with was....ME!! Huh?! Me?!! Yes, since I'm Matt's "woman" or wife, it's up to me to wash his underwear. I was branded as a bad wife right then and there. The only one who really took this seriously was the father since he's from a different generation. The rest of the family was able to laugh about it. I told Aiyta that she could be Matt's wife now and she gladly excepted the job. As a side note, Matt had already finished his underwear by the time Aiyta took over. She washed his shirts.


Matt and I are now far from Pute. We're in Banjul, the capital of The Gambia. The Gambia is a super small country that is almost entirely inside of Senegal. It was a 7 hour taxi ride and a 30 minute (or so) ferry ride across the Gambian River to get here. We came here for Matt to do research for the article he's writing for Knucklebones on West African games. People have been nice to us here but after having spent time with the family in Pute and then a friend in Dakar (the nephew of a good friend of ours, a Guinean man who we worked for in the Peace Corps) it feels a bit lonely to be here. I'm getting anxious to get to Guinea. We'll probably leave here tomorrow or the next day. If all goes well we'll get back to Dakar, buy a plane ticket to Conakry, Guinea and will fly there soon.


In the meantime we're having a good time getting to know the game players here in Banjul. We've met a group of guys who play African checkers in the shade near the post office each day. They've been friendly and have let us sit with them and watch the games. Matt played a few games with them (which was entertaining for everyone since it's a rare sight to see a foreigner playing with the local guys) and we've got an invitation to play Scrabble at a guy named Lamine's house.


We miss all of you a ton. I'll do my best to seach out the cybercafes wherever we go. I better post this while the internet is still up....