Visitors!

Yesterday wasn't the greatest day and the partying continued long into the night as the mosques blared music, which kept the goats and roosters awake and my host siblings came banging through the gate at all hours of the night and then banged the bathroom door open and closed which is right next to my room. I sound like an old bitter woman! Regardless, I lounged in bed for a long time this morning dreading getting up and walking around since today is still a national holiday and I knew lots of kids would be out and about to harass me, which was true.

The long walk to Dioss', while annoying, wasn't too hot since the past couple of days have been really pleasant since there's been a nice, cool breeze and it was totally worth it. While most people were glued to the TV yesterday watching the parade, wrestling, and bad movies Dioss was apparently hard at work because he had a really cool new painting to unveil to me this morning commemorating Senegal's 50 years of independence. We also started Excel this morning, which wasn't much of a success because Dioss really hasn't been writing things down even though he promised me he would. Therefore, I told a few white lies and I'm hoping things will be much better documented now.

What was a success was going to visit another artist with Dioss this morning. I got to meet a photographer that is part of the association and who has some amazing photographs. The photographer is an older gentleman and has amazing historical photographs documenting the presidency of President Senghor as well as really cool fashion pictures detailing the evolution of the weave here in Senegal, obviously these were among my favorites. The pictures are up on my blog.

This afternoon, after Mami finally got lunch ready at about 3:45, I had some very special visitors because Tamar and her mom came to visit! Yay! Tamar had been on my Senegalese mom's black list because she didn't come to visit during IST, which was my fault, but Tamar bringing her mom to our house absolved all past transgressions and my family was thrilled. Everyone loves Tamar since she is the first volunteer that came to our house and has been my most frequent visitor. So, Tamar's mom got to meet almost everyone in my family, see my room, visit the managerie of animals currently roaming around the courtyard, we probably have close to 20 chickens right now, and take some pictures of the bungalow. We spent a lovely afternoon in my courtyard, in the shade, on the benches, coloring with Ahmed and talking. It was great, but what was even better is what was coming.

We went to Massa Massa for dinner and it was amazing as usual. We started to a bottle of wine on the roof and moved inside for some delicious salad and lasagna. It definitely wasn't a bad way to end the night!