Vaidehi is Coming!!!!!!!!!!!!

Saturday's are always an interesting day. There's no place I can really escape to unless I want to make up an excuse or tell the truth that I'm meeting a friend in town. Today was no exception. I have a ton of work to do before IST so I spent a lot of my day typing up my notes from all the various meetings this week. I know, I lead a very interesting life. This task took much longer than it should have since Ahmed kept bursting into my room demanding to color, to play, or just to annoy me. At one point I had to lock the door.

When I wasn't attempting to get work done, I was watching tv. Lots and lots and lots of television. My family busted out the DVD player and we watched another movie in Wolof! While the movie we watched a couple of weeks ago was just miserable and I could barely make out words, this one was slightly better. This movie had a much better production value and the theme was raunchy women, which my sisters found hilarious and this entertained me slightly. I really tried to appreciate this movie. I told myself that it's like Friends or Seinfeld for Americans. A show about nothing, just normal life, and how ridiculous it is. I couldn't appreciate this movie for it's "Friends-ness," but I could appreciate the family time I accrued by watching it even though I fell asleep for the majority of the movie...

Side note: This movie was over three hours long, in Wolof, and Ahmed was shaking a rattle in my face for half the time I was awake.

The second ridiculously long installment of television watching came in the form of Vaidehi! Vaidehi is coming! Vaidehi is coming! The main actress in the Indian soap opera Vaidehi is coming to Senegal on January 26th to meet her fans. This was breaking news. Literally. They broke into the news to announce that VAIDEHI IS COMING! I thought Mami was about to either have a heart attack, die from hyperventilation, or start sobbing. All the women in my house were running around screaming that Vaidehi is coming! Yay!

Let me give you the highlights of tonight's episode:
The evil father son combo are at it again. Spreading lies about Vaidehi and the other women. A sister even leaves the house, banishing herself from the family forever, because she can't stand the evilness anymore. Vaidehi feels ill after the showdown and it turns out that she's three months pregnant with her dead lover's baby. Little does she know that her dead lover is actually alive and being held hostage in the same hospital where she just found out she's pregnant! In case you were wondering, the evil brother supposedly killed the lover by stabbing him about a billion times and then throwing him off a yatch in the middle of the ocean, but really, who couldn't survive that? Anyway, the lover, Neil, is attempting to escape from the hospital and just barely missed Vaidehi who goes home and goes to bed. She awakes in the middle of the night to find Neil, her supposedly dead lover, holding a machete to her throat!

OMG what's happening?!?!?!? I can't wait until tomorrow's episode. That is the one good thing about Senegal. A soap runs for about a year and everyday there's a new episode. I'll keep you posted. It's no Marina, but Vaidehi knows how to rock some frosted pink lipstick.

Additional fun facts about Vaidehi:
1. There are never two people in a shot. It's always a tight shot of the face.
2. They cut insanely quickly among the characters faces and there are at least 4 back and forths
3. Vaidehi has three facial expressions: pissed-pretty, confused-pretty, and SHOCKED

All that great television watching was topped off with chicken and salad! And in case you're still interested in the dinner dance... Deenba gave me a bowl with salad in it! Yay! And since it was in a bowl it didn't get drenched in oil from the infamous platter! What a great end to my day. No joke.