Going out

I haven’t really gone out much on the weekends. The first weekend I was here, I went to a party at Moussouba’s boyfriend’s house with Moussouba, Kiki, and Fatima. I think she said they were all his friends from church choir (turns out, Catholic people here just know more Catholic people). There was lots of food and music, so I danced some and listened to people talk around me without understanding hardly anything. They played this game in which someone produced a scarf, threw it around you and used it to haul you out of your chair, tied it around your hips, pushed you into the middle of the room, and forced you to do a dance that prominently featured your butt. Resistance was futile. It was actually pretty fun and funny, and now every time Abibou comes over, he says hello to me from one of his friends.

The next weekend, I went to a music club called Just 4 U with Ryaunte and Andrew, a kid in my neighborhood who’s here on the MSID program, and a bunch of the other MSID kids. It’s a pretty classy place (a Fanta there was 2 000 francs; at WARC, they’re 200) and it attracts big names in the Senegalese and international music scene. I liked the guy who was playing, even though he was singing in Wolof and I couldn’t understand anything, and I had a good time, but man, I am totally lame. This leave at 11 PM, come home at 4 AM thing is going to take some getting used to.

Two weekends ago was the failed SuperBowl endeavor, but this weekend Moussouba took me out again. Abibou’s choir was doing a concert followed by a soirée at their church in Yoff, so we went to that. I let Moussouba do my makeup, and she decided that the raccoon look was going to be good for me. I was slightly hugely horrified when I looked at myself in the mirror and saw how much eyeliner she had put on me, but she, Fatima, and Anita looked satisfied. They said I looked really pretty, “Ils sautent!” (Your eyes really pop!), so I didn’t say anything. I figured I wasn’t going to see anyone I knew there and it was going to be dark anyway, so there wasn’t much harm in going out like that.

We left about an hour after the concert started and our taxi got a flat tire. Moussouba and I staying in the car while the driver changed the tire. I wanted to burst out laughing and explain to Moussouba that in the US, no one would wait for their taxi driver to change a flat when they were already late; they would get out and get another taxi. But I didn’t.

The concert was pretty much just 20 kids who really love Jesus singing and dancing about how much they really love Jesus. It was about 11 PM when we got there, and I admit that the combination of the time, the Wolof lyrics, and mediocre singing were putting me to sleep. I was really happy for the concert to be over. The party afterwards was fun. There was a DJ and dancing, which kept me awake. The DJ played huge block of fast dance music and then a similarly huge block of slow music. The slow music is fine, because Senegalese guys will ask strangers to dance and they all dance really well, but every single guy there must have thought that I’m a moron. They all tried to talk to me, and even though they’re spoke right into my ear, the fact that it was French, I couldn’t see their faces, and there was loud music playing meant that I never understood what they were saying to me, even after the second or third repetition. I was also a little self-conscious about my dancing. In the US, the point of slow dancing, at least in high school, is pressing up against someone for 3:47. In Senegal, you’re actually supposed to bring a little bit of rhythm and movement. I have no idea if I was doing well or not. One guy asked me where I learned to dance like this, which seemed like a compliment, but another one dropped me as soon as the song changed, which didn’t.

It was closing in on 3 AM when Moussouba got hungry and tired, so we left and walked to Abibou’s house. She had a snack (leftover meat and bread from dinner) and we hung out for a little while watching music videos on TV before catching a taxi home.