Crazy Dayz

Monday, March 7th, 2011

This past weekend was the fabled/ much talked about Murder Myserty party. Since watching the movie Clue during the girls' camp last summer, we have been obsessed by the idea. Originally the plan was to use an already developed game called "Murder On the Gambia River," because the context is so fitting. Unfortunately, that game only called for 8-10 players and since my friends and I find it impossible not to talk about all of our ideas all of the time and at length, everyone knew about the party and everyone wanted to come. Katherine took on the task of writing our very own Murder Mystery party concept entitled "Murder Bus," named in honor/ fear of the Senegalese transportation system.

Katherine put in a ton of work on writing everyone's parts for the party as well as keeping track of attendence and we forced the first year SED girls to make dinner for everyone (it used to my our job), so I got to have a LOT of fun. I played the part of a drianke, which is an older, single, wealthy woman. I played the part well and mixed a little bit of Madame Ly into the character. Jackie just so happened to be a diskette aka a promiscuous tweenage girl (she sported pink pants with rhinestones), Tamar was the murder victim, Emily was a bayefall (a sort of religious begger), and the rest of our friends were other stereo-typical Senegalese personalities. To say that everyone's customes were hilarous would be a gross understatement. Pictures will be up soon.

The party came at the perfect time for me. Senegal and I were not getting along well last week and I really needed to get out of Thies. The Murder Mystery party at the beach was just the ticket to the sanity that I needed. Apart from being utterly exhausted from a one day party, my mental state was much better and I was ready to work this morning. Dioss who usually loves to sleep in and finds my preferred meeting time of 10am abhorrent called me at 8:30 and said he really wanted to meet with me. I trekked over to his house where he told me that he wanted me to take pictures of his new paintings with the new camera he bought. He supposedly doesn't know how to use a brand new point and shoot camera, but I really think he wanted me to sit there and take bunch of pictures while he talked on his phone. The taking pictures part was fine. The not fun part was realizing that Dioss has a pirated version of Windows which doesn't have the capability to create Zip files. Therefore, I sat at his computer for about an hour attaching pictures to emails to send to one of his friends who is making him a personal website. In case you haven't noticed, Dioss is obsessed with websites.

I was rewarded for my efforts by an amazing concert. One of Dioss' friends is a fantastic guitar player and singer and sang for a group of us all morning. It was so relaxing and nice. I had to pull myself away from the music in order to make it home for lunch. Dioss' friend played a bunch of Eric Clapton which was great except for the fact that he sang along and knew approximately 3% of the correct words. Still a completely enjoyable and very memorable morning.

My afternoon started out with a trip to a boutique to help out Erin. The sole village volunteer in the Dakar region didn't have any credit on her phone so I sent her some. In Senegal, we use pre-paid credit to make phone calls. People on the side of the street, stores, boutiques, and practically everywhere/ everyone else sells cards of credit. The cards have a scratch off number (like you see on lotto cards) and you enter that number into your phone to put more time on the phone. You can also send credit to other people and that's what I wanted to do for Erin. Usually people send 25 or 50 or maybe 100 CFA of credit to someone. I wanted to send Erin 2500 CFA. This was such a ridiculous idea to the people in the boutique that they wouldn't let me do it. They wanted me to buy a card of credit, which would not help Erin at all. I'm realizing as I'm typing this that is probably doesn't make sense or seem frustrating, but it was.

Confirming with Erin to make sure she got the credit, I left the boutique and headed off to see Madame Ly. I gave her the minutes/ rules and regulations from the artisan meeting a couple of weeks ago. She seems to be really interested in the artisan association still, which is good, but I feel like there's still a little bit of awkwardness between us because of the whole thing with her dying aunt and not being able to attend the meeting. I'm sure this will all pass. I've been busy with Junior Achivement and other things so I haven't had as much time to spend with her lately. I'm hoping to change that later this week and start discussing the next Expo with her. We did talk about creating business cards for her business which she seems very excited about so hopefully that will sooth any lingering whatevers.

Kerry came to meet me at Madame Ly's stand because we needed to do all of our shopping for Junior Achievement. We went to the usually supply store. They know me quite well from all of my girls' camp purchases so the shopping trip was quick. I then hung out with Kerry at his house listening to stories, drinking a beer, and eating Pringles. After that I went home to sit in the dark with my family and watch Ahmed through a huge tantrum.