Mauritania

A couple more updates about the last week:

After the village we stayed in Saint Louis for four days. It's a very strange old colonial city on the border of Senegal and Mauritania. It used to be the capital of all of francaphone west Africa and now is kind of a tourist shell/working fishing village. It was a weird transition because we stayed in a very fancy hotel on the river with ice box air conditioning and hot showers. I wasn't complaining, I just didn't want to leave Mouit. We spent a few days doing "homework", which meant wandering around the city looking at colonial architecture and practicing our wolof. Sometimes I have to remind myself that this is school.

Definitely the best part of our stay was the afternoon five of us walked to Mauritania. Our wonderful bus driver Sam dropped us off at the end of a beach about 3k from the border. It was a beautiful beach, not all that much garbage, not too many people. We dodged fishing lines and crabs and watched the sun start to drop over the horizon as we walked. Then border patrol came cruising by at full speed, nearly smushing us into the sand. They pointed at the trees just ahead of us and said, "that line is the border, don't cross it okay?" Then they sped off without any further concerns or questioning.

So after we crossed the makeshift tree/pilings border, we got to spend the rest of the afternoon playing in Mauritania. I picked up some sand which I have confirmed is from the Sahara desert. We climbed some trees, drew a welcome to Mauritania sign, played some fun games in the waves, looked for seashells, caught crabs. A typical school day.

Straddling two countries

This week I have dance and djembe every afternoon. I love, love both of them. There is no spoken instruction ever you learn so fast. A video is coming soon. 

I went for my first hour long run of the semester today- Christina and I are slowly building up our tolerance to Senegalese heat. Today we explored a quartier we had never been to before. Yesterday we went to a football match in our neighborhood and bought beignets for 5 cents each.