Barbie Girl

The song "Barbie Girl" by Aqua is a song that I'm embarrassed to be familiar with, but that I haven't heard in a long time. It was a middle school anthem which, thankfully, had fallen out of rotation until today that is. Mami loves to listen to music on her cell phone and this practice only increases when we don't have power and lately we never have power. Today a group of us were laying on the living room floor staring at the ceiling and listening to music on Mami's cell phone while waiting for lunch. All the usual/ highly inappropriate songs ("Rude Boy" by Rihanna, "Teenage Dream" by Katy Perry, other rap songs the lyrics of which no one understands, but are offensive) played and then came "Barbie Girl" by Aqua. I was silently laughing to myself until I started laughing out loud and crying because Ahmed knows every single word of "Barbie Girl." No joke. Or at least he knows the lyrics as well as a 5 year-old Senegalese child who doesn't speak English knows the lyrics to "Barbie Girl." It was epic and I'm hoping to capture it on video in the near future.

Since Dioss is always anywhere except his house and Mme. Ly was selling at the market today, I literally had nothing to do. Especially after I made several phone calls to the women's group and Lycee Technique and they had no interest in doing anything today. Therefore I stayed at home and read, stared at the ceiling, talked about how we have no power or water, and counted. Ahmed and his friends LOVE when I count to five and they race from the porch of the bungalow through the house and back again. My integral role is to count and then proclaim a winner when that winner is Ahmed of course. After what seemed like hours of counting to five I created a sweet obstacle course out of 10 liter water jugs and dirty dishes I found in the courtyard. I showed the boys how the obstacle course works and got really excited about it until I was told that it was a bad idea and that really my only role was to count to five. Fail. At least sometimes they let me count to six or ten.

This morning I did run to the post office where I had two letters from Shirley! Shout out to Shirley! Thank you! The best part about these letters? One was postmarked Nov. 22 (that happens to be 8 days ago) and one was postmarked Oct. 1. Nice, at least I got it!