Where the house cats run wild and the cactus grows free

Hey everyone! Thanks for all the comments and encouragement, it is helping me so much!

Anyway...It is kind of hard to keep up the blog, just becaus there is sooooooo much to write about, so some of this stuff you'll be getting in time lag....other stuff you'll just have to wait til I get home to hear about, but I'm doing my very very best.

The other day we went to Goree, an island off the tip of the Dakar peninsula. It is this cute little island with just over a thousand inhabitants. It is a huge tourist destination and I heard some people describe it as having a very caribbean feel. I wouldn't know, but it does have a fun atmosphere with amazing buildings (white with red tile roofs) and lots of bright colors. Upon arriving on the ferry, we began a tour of the island with a local guy wearing aviators and a Che Guevara tshirt. First stop was La Maison d'Esclaves (House of Slaves). Back in the day, this island was a major part of the slave trade, seeing as it is on the very very western coast of Africa. It was used as kind of the send-off island for the Africans who were being shipped to the Americas. This "house" was used as a holding building before the people were literally packed onto a boat and shipped off. We saw the little rooms where they kept the men, women, and children (all seperated), and heard about how they went through this weighing process and stuff to make sure they were good enough. It honestly sounded like a factory farm or something where they would pick out the best cows to be sent to the meat packing plant. The rooms where the men were kept could not have been bigger than your average dorm room, and they said they would keep 15-20 men in there. It was definitely way intense to see part of the Slavery story from the other perspective...

Next stop was the only church on the island. It is, in fact, the oldest Catholic Church in Senegal: This cute little one room building with wooden pews that you couldn't sit more that 50 people in at one time. The colors inside reflected everything else on the island: bright and beautiful. It is still used for services to this day, but don't worry they have updated the building since the 1700s with electricity and things like that.

Next we walked up to the highest point of the island where you can see Dakar and in the other direction the endless infinity of the ocean. (America lies somewhere out there...actually, on another excursion we were at the point farthest west on the African continent, and were told that if we wanted to swim home, that would be the place to jump in. Though tempting, I decided to stick out the rest of the three months instead of drowning somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic) On the trek up the hill, the paths were lined with brightly colored paintings and other art work that Senegalese make their livings off of. And by this point, we were being followed by a couple of guys trying to sell us these musical instruments. It was like our trip was being turned into a musical...At the top of the hill, there is this corner where an artist works and creates these beautiful sand art things. We got to peek in and see a demonstration: He explained that all the sand they use is naturally colored, and each color comes from a different beach somewhere. They were all these beautiful reds and browns, blacks and greys, and the pictures were gorgeous in the end.

Then it was time to trek back down the hill and head to the history museum, which in all honesty was not your typical museum. It was this circular building, with a courtyard in the center, and all these rooms connected to each other with random artifacts and info about Senegal's history. It was pretty cool, and somewhat informative, but at this point we were all sweaty, hot, and famished. Time for lunch! We ate at this little restaurant, where the food was good and plenty, the water cold, and the cats numerous. No joke, this island has seriously been invaded by a troop of wild house cats. We didn't really notice until we were sitting down and all of a sudden they were surrounding our feet. Short ones, skinny ones, tall ones, fat ones, and every color too. It took them til the end of the meal to realize that they were indeed not going to get any food from us. When we finished we went and hung out at the beach, most of us were too tired to really do anything, but some went swimming and others went shopping. As the rest of us sat there, vendors and merchants would park themselves next to us trying to sell us everything from earrings and necklaces to baseball caps and tribal masks. I was actually really tempted to buy this one tribal mask, because the vendor was super persuasive and offering a really really good price. But common sense got the better of me after I realized that it would take up a quarter of my suitcase and add 10 lbs of unnecessary weight. So sorry Tim, no tribal mask for you...

That's all I have time for right now, I do realize that this is a lot, but you wouldn't believe how much more I could talk about.

But just so you all know, I am still alive and kicking!

more later, much love

amb