There are the occasional moments where teranga might feel more like a big plate of ceebu jen is being smashed into your face

My phone got stolen the other night while at a concert.  Do you know what this means? According to the majority of the Senegalese to whom I have spoken about this minor travesty, it means that I have been officially integrated into life here.

Is it bad that this twisted perspective made me feel a whole lot better about the entire experience?

No matter. I now have a new (and slightly cheaper) portable in my possession. This means that if I wake up again with no running water in my apartment (that was yesterday, when I was sans portable), I can call my landlord and tell him about it. Oh wait, I still don’t know his number, since it was only stored on my phone. Oh well. Guess we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Apart from needing to capture everyone’s phone numbers again, my life is pretty much back on track. Still, the past 48 hours were an exercise in frustration management as I was again reminded that the things that I normally take for granted, cannot be taken for granted here.  To wit:

Highways. In your land, they are a handy way to get from Point A to Point B expeditiously.  Here, the Voie de Dégagement Nord, the main- ahem– expressway in Senegal, is more like a paved paradise for enterprising citizens who score random items off the last container ship in port. They use this mostly smooth expanse to simultaneously hawk their wares and dodge speeding death machines that offer no real promise of yielding to bipeds in their way.

Who knew that pesky furnishings such as “walls” and “shelves” were such impediments to commerce?

I took some video as we were driving to the Concert for Peace, Tolerance and Understanding (no I’m not kidding on that name). This was also the night of bonus unexpected cultural “teaching moments”. I call them teaching moments, but here is how I really felt about it:

Dégagement my ass…

Why the bitterness? Well, here are some other things that I once took for granted and have since relearned to appreciate in the past few days:

1. Not having to bribe a traffic cop so that he’ll give you back your driver’s license after stopping you for an infraction that he told you to commit (another day, another blog maybe).
2. Expecting that after the city digs up massive palm trees that died because they were planted in the only existing sidewalks, they will then cover over or fill in the resulting death traps. 
3. Running in shorts (Sure, I can do it here, but I feel kinda out of place if I do so)

Women for the most part in this country wear skirts, dresses and pants that end past their knees. It’s out of respect for the culture. But tell me a bit about hypocrisy when I am out in the 85 degree sunshine and I run right past a taximan who is pulled over and relieving himself in the sand…when I have to look like a damn fool in full leggings in order to ensure that I shield everyone form my hopelessly provocative  knee joints? Sorry, but I have to raise the flag on that one.  

Just so you know, I actually did run in shorts yesterday- because I was fed up. So there I was, out in broad daylight, scandalously exposing my long gifts of good genes to a guy was exposing himself and myself to my tender sensibilities. It’s fun being a girl. 

My shorts and his public urination totally canceled each other out yesterday. So the score remains: Megan 0 Senegal 333 (only half evil).

…and that night I regained my tolerance level recalibrated itself and I returned to the Long Dress Club- because I really do still like it here, and most days I respect how things function, even if I don’t totally understand it.