Slam Poetry, Clubs, and Hookah

Ana and I had a ridiculous weekend! We made lots of new friends, saw a bunch of new parts of Dakar, and did so many things. On Thursday afternoon, after walking home from school, we met two men outside of the Mariama (right down the street from our houses) named Lamin and Daouda. They are (probably) in their 20s and work at a call center right down the street from where we live. They seemed nice enough and we talked to them for a while. It was Ana's sister Aida's birthday and we wanted to buy her some cake, so we asked the boys where we could go. They took us down the street to a place with DELICIOUS cake.

The next day, Lamin sent me a text message inviting Ana and me to a slam hip-hop/poetry event in Pointe E, another neighborhood in Dakar. At about 9:30, after eating some fish and french fries with my family, we met Lamin outside the Mariama. He took us back to his friend Cheikh's house before we drove to Pointe E. We ended up at an outdoor restaurant with a bunch of Senegalese people in their 20s and 30s. On every table their was paper so you could write out your poetry and rap. Then people started getting up to perform. It was amazing. There was singing, poetry, and awesome hip hop. It was also a sad night. The week before, a rapper had died from some illness, so a lot of the rap was about him and his life. After that, we went back to Lamin and Cheikh's house and ate fruit and hung out until sometime early in the morning, once they started getting a little weird and asking if we were allowed to spend the night out...

On Saturday night, lots of different things were happening in Dakar. There was an outdoor beach party that a lot of CIEE kids went to, a show by one of Senegal's most famous musicians, and lots of clubs. We decided to go to Le Patio, a club close to the airport, with a couple of girls from CIEE and their brothers. Clubbing in Senegal is so much fun but extremely exhausting. It was an interesting dynamic, as most of the people on the dance floor were men. At home, clubs are mostly filled with girls dancing, but here there were so many guys. Also, there were a lot of prostitutes. That was strange. They were dancing with really old toubabs. It was a bizarre mixture of people. The mix of music was great. There was Senegalese music, current pop music, and old school rap and hip hop. Ana and I left early, and we got home at 4am...

After sleeping until 1pm the next day, I got up and attempted to do some homework. I went over to the garden by my house to steal some wifi (pronounced weefee here, and I love it) and I read about 3 pages of the 50 pages of reading that I was supposed to do. Then, we decided to hit up the hookah bar over in Mermoz (the neighborhood that my university is located in). The hookah bar was a really intense experience. A couple of our friends that live in Ouakam, Kiersten and Jenna, were supposed to meet us there but ended up bailing by the time we got there. So, we ate some ice cream and ordered some shisha. While we were waiting for our shisha to come, we noticed a table of 3 Middle Eastern men who were consistently staring at us, both directly and through the reflection in the window behind us. It was getting really weird.

Just as Ana was saying "This isn't how I make friends!" they came over and sat down at our table. Their names were Nor, Reda, and Issam, and it turns out that they are from Morocco... I think. Only Nor spoke English very well, but they all spoke French. We spent the next few hours talking with them, smoking shisha, and eating cheeseburgers. We skirted around some tense topics, like religion and homosexuality, but it was mostly fun. I mean, Issam was a dick, but he admitted it. Plus he was beautiful. We discussed why the three of them don't like Dakar. Nor was forced to come here by his sister and he thinks that the people here are racist. I really didn't feel like getting into the whole reverse racism argument, so instead I tried to say that not everyone here doesn't like white people and that most of the people that I have met have been overwhelmingly kind.

At about 10pm we decided it was time to call it quits. It was at this point that Nor, unbeknownst to us, paid for our entire meal and shisha. When we were clearly uncomfortable about the whole thing, he explained "I know that it is weird for you, but this is normal for us. If we go out with friends, we pay for them." Not really wanting to spend my own money, I accepted this explanation.

Overall, I love weekends in Dakar. This Saturday we are heading to Toubab Dialaw, an artist colony about 2 hours from Dakar that is right on the beach. We're spending the night at a hotel there. Hopefully, lots of pictures and updates will follow!