Shop 'Til You Drop

Shopping for hours upon hours would usually be my preferred way to spend a Saturday. But, when I indulge myself in this fantasy it's at an air-conditioned mall with a smoothie in my hand, a credit card, and beautiful, sparkly things to buy. Today I went shopping in the main market in Thies. It doesn't exactly fit into that fantasy. As the camp approaches so does the last minute shopping frenzy. I had a long list of things to buy today and found most of them.

After walking from my house across town to the market, my first stop was another visit to the paper supplies store where I bought name 60 tags, envelopes, and 50 notebooks. With my bag bursting at the seems I went deeper into the market to look for the babies stores I was promised that I would be able to find. Now that I was actually looking for them I realized that there are a million baby stores. At store 6 I finally found a baby mosquito net. It pops up just like a tent and is blue with white lace for a trim aka it's hideous, but when I brought it home Jeenaba was over joyed and there was a big to do as she showed everyone the new mosquito net for the baby. While everyone was sitting outside during the blackout this evening, she brought out the net so the baby could sleep under it. I'm hoping this is a sign that she's actually going to use the net and that it wasn't just a show for me since it was the new toy for the day. We'll see. I'm definitely going to keep reminding her to use it since there are a million mosquitoes right now.

At this point, I'm walking through the market with a bag full of paper supplies with what looks like a lacy blue umbrella also sticking out of bag. I wasn't drawing any attention to myself... Then I bought two soccer balls. When Katherine and I visited the University of Bambey last week we learned that they were not going to be providing us with bed nets even though they had previously promised us nets. The vast majority of Senegalese people I know don't sleep with nets because they don't like to, but we are trying to promote health and wellness at the camp so we wanted nets. In lieu of nets and because the University grounds consist of a mosquito infested swamp we need a ton of mosquito coils and spray. I thought this was going to be the easiest purchase on the list and was planning on buying out one of the big boutiques in the market, but I couldn't find any anti-bug products. Every single boutique seemed to be sold out so I ended up going to one of the super markets and buying out their supplies. 150 coils, 5 huge spray cans, and a ton of matches later I stumbled out of the store and into a cab.

In the cab I was praying that I could walk into the compound unnoticed, but, of course, Mami was sitting in the courtyard doing laundry and couldn't believe her eyes when I walked in loaded down with mosquito products and a million other bags. She thinks I'm really weird. I still have some more stuff to pick up, but I will be doing that next week and then I have to figure out how to get everything to the garage and into a sept-place to Bombey!

The rest of the day was very calm. We didn't have power for most of the day so everyone slept. The baptism for the baby is tomorrow and I was told to charge my camera because everyone wants their picture taken. It will definitely be interesting.