This post, as it turns out, is not about the monument…but please keep reading!
I know, I know. I owe you, my running cohorts (and a few select others), a blog update.
I recognize my fellow runners here because I know that they are the only ones reading my blog (and that’s okay with me!). I say this because I have been ceaselessly irritating my fantastic reading public by asking for a pittance (really, just a buck!) to help me fight brain cancer, and I haven’t gotten any contributions in that amount. Ah well, I guess the silver lining is that I can now start crafting my blog entries in such a way that they resemble the crass conversation topics of our long slow runs! (Dad, you might want to stop reading this now…)
I am pretty tired this evening, but comme d’habitude (as usual) all I need to do is ask myself, “do you think you’re as tired as BethAnn?” I like to ask myself this in order to remind myself that I need to suck up my pansy-ass fatigue and get on with things.
So with that in mind, today’s post is brought to you by Team BT, in all its glory and inspiration:
This was taken a few days ago, and I stole it from her Facebook page. Have I told you about my awesome friend BethAnn? Of course I have! I am NOT, however, going to be the one to tell her that the Easter Bunny isn’t real; she runs much faster than me, and I eat too much Easter candy to get away from her should I ever decide to spill the beans on this subject….
But I digress. I wanted to give you a good write-up of the weekend’s Independence Day celebrations! Senegal turned 50 this weekend! Aren’t you excited? No?
What, are you Senegalese or something? It didn’t seem like many people here were all that amped about this auspicious occasion. Kind of disappointing, until you remember that the Senegalese aiment discuter, so there was still plenty of talk to be had about what was shaking around Dakar…
First, some self-centered reporting, then we’ll move to highly-superficial national coverage:
You all know that I finally moved in last week (Alxamdulilaay), and now have a spaceship that doubles as a shower. This is most excellent, if not completely unnecessary. It’s a pity, however, that my spaceship does not have a big red button that can send me airborne (oh Aja, you called that one!). It’s a pity because I don’t have a car here, and it is kinda difficult for me to get mass quantities of wine groceries at any given time. Especially after just moving in to a new place.
Cue an excellent and sane fellow American toubab who I met thanks to a random Officer Candidate School connection that was made waaay back in 2000. This toubab is not only équilibrée (trust me, they are few and far between in this world), but she also has a car!
And with that in mind….
….to the Casino Supermarket!!
$160 later, I understand why Costco was such a good idea
Okay, I was going to seamlessly transition from boxes of shelf stable milk to more pertinent subjects that include the fatwa placed on the Monument to the African Renaissance, but I can see that this post is already quite lacking in the department of lucidity. Sadly (or happily, depending on whether you are already bored), this is my cue to go and sleep for a few hours, before I wake up tomorrow for another day of randomness. There’s always randomness here in Dakar.
But don’t you worry, I really DO want to talk about this crazy monument some more, only because I love this country and the stuff that goes down around here. Until then, I will leave you runners with a photo taken by the amazing Caitlin (merci encore!) that shows some of the cliff road that currently functions as my church each Sunday morning.
It’s gotta count for something if I run buy a large mosque, doesn’t it?