Well, things have really started moving along out here. Without giving out specific details, a couple of days ago a U.S company placed an order for a few thousand baskets. Yes, a "few" thousand. We've already started planning how to distribute the workload amongst the different villages, and the next few months promise to be very busy and entertaining. However, this also means that my teaching will most likely come to an end for the time being. For the past few weeks, I have been giving classes in "informatique" to girls who have dropped out of school and middle aged women. The only problem with these classes is that about 5% of my students know how to read or write, and even fewer speak anything but Wolof. At this point, I can work around the language barrier pretty effectively. However, teaching computer classes to a group that cannot read or write has been an exercise in futility. What am I supposed to do when my students can't even type their names into Microsoft Word? Thus, it may be a good thing that I won't be teaching much in the near future, since these students need to learn how to read before they can operate a computer...
Today my closest neighbor and I went to the main village to hammer out some details with our counterpart regarding the order. I brought in 2 baskets that my leatherworkers had altered and we spent the entire morning and part of the afternoon discussing these baskets. Upon returning to Ngaye, I ran into a situation that finally made me lose my cool in this country. Whenever I ride my bike anywhere, I'm constantly assaulted by the typical "TOUBAB!" cry. Other variants include "PSSSSST.....PSSSST......PSSSSSSSSSSSST (repetitive hissing), or "HEY! HEY! HEY! HEY!" or the more wordly "TOUBAB DONNE MOI LE CADEAUX!!!". I've learned to accept these calls, and they really don't bother me. There is one expression, however, that really gets to me. It's "Honk Nop", which translates to "Red Ears" and is usually the most racist term for a white person in this country. I've heard a few times here and there, and it's pretty infuriating when you overheard a banana seller say t her friend "Hurry! Some Red Ears just arrived, let's sell them stuff!". Thus, as I biked through Ngaye this afternoon, a charette driver shouted "HONK NOP" at me while we crossed paths. Livid, I turned around and shouted back "#$&* YOU!", which he seemed to understand. I knew he was simply dropping someone off at the end of the road and would be coming back in a minute, so I stopped my bike and waited. After dropping off his passengers, he turned his charette around and came back in my direction. As he slowly passed me, I shouted at him in both Wolof and English which caught him off guard. When he realized that I considered "Honk Nop" to be incredibly rude, he sheepishly replied "It's not rude...honk nop". At that point I decided to leave and cool off since nothing good would come of this encounter. I don't regret shouting at this person because any sensible Senegalese person I've met knows damn well that it's a racist term, and would never use it in front of me. That said, I probably should have just biked off.
Other than that, things are going well. I've been staying up far too late the past few nights watching live baseball (merci grandma!) on my computer, which has been an incredible treat. Saddly, last night a young picthed named Nick Adenhart faced off against my Oakland A's. A few hours after the game he was killed in a hit-and-run car accident. It's a bit eery since I saw him pitch live just a few hours before his death, and also that he was the exact same age as I am...
Anyways, hope everyone back home is doing well. I'll post some updated on the basket order as we get rolling! A plus tard!
P.S For some reason Blogger wouldn't load my pictures tonight...will have to wait until next post.
The bowl I used to clean my hand out...
