Monotony

I walked into my tutor's compound today and he was sitting with a group of his friends. I actually attempted to sneak away before he saw me because I didn't want to disturb him and I knew that he would stop talking to them to sit with me, but he caught me and I was right that he left his friends. I said that I would come back tomorrow, but he assured me he wanted to have our lesson, which is really just a discussion where he explains new words to me in French. Regardless, sometimes we have fascinating conversations and today was one of those days.

After apologizing profusely for taking him away from his friends, he assured me that it was OK because his discussions with his friends were monotonous. It was really refreshing hearing a Senegalese person say he gets bored of all the greetings, discussions about the weather, and ceebu jenn. I didn't know that Senegalese people could be bored. Interesting. He said he would much rather talk to me since I asked him questions and could talk about the States. Still, our conversations usually revolve around two topics: food and marriage. Today, we talked about marriage because I haven't been riding my bike lately and he was asking me why since I usually get harassed less on my bike since I can speedily ride away.

Jumba is in his early thirties and has been married for almost ten years and has three kids, which is a little unusual for a man his age. Most of his friends his age are still unmarried. So I asked him how long he dated his wife before getting married, two years, and why he got married so young. That's when the conversation devolved into a discussion about why people should get married young so they don't have a lot of promiscuous sex and get STDs. Yeah, at first I did feel a little uncomfortable with the topic, but he was really matter of fact about everything so it was actually fascinating hearing him talk about the subject. STDs are another reason why he doesn't want another wife.

He explained that he believes men with multiple wives just pick someone quickly to fill the role of wife and don't know enough about the person... aka sexual history. Jumba went on to say that he would never cheat because he wouldn't want to endanger his health or his wife's. It was fascinating just because he had the completely opposite opinion of multiple wives as the men in the Post Office who claimed that having multiple wives allow all women to get married, which cuts down on prostitution, which decreases STDs. Maybe this is TMI, but I found it interesting because it was a conversation about marriage that didn't involve me being a tramp because I'm unmarried in a foreign country/ no one asked me to marry them. Success.

The rest of my day was mundane. I slept in and cleaned my room in the morning, ate two bad meals (followed by lots of snaking from my stash), and lost power three times.

Awesome Moment of the Day:

I walk back into the house after tutoring and Mamy is giving Khady the most amazing 80s inspired cropped and crimped weave while they are watching a Christian cartoon television program about Jesus. I don't know if you are able to imagine how incredibly hilarious this was, but I stood in the doorway for several minutes just soaking in the spectacle. Hopefully I will be able to snap a picture of Khady's new do. It's definitely the best weave yet!