A quick update

The political situation doesn’t seem to be improving.  From what I could pick up from the news tonight, a graduate student was shot and killed by a policeman at a demonstration this evening, and another woman was run over and killed by a cop car.  ACI is doing everything to keep us safe and secure though, and there’s no need to worry!   They’ve taken to cancelling our afternoon classes lately, which isn’t necessarily that bad…

Monday we took advantage of the afternoon off and the nine of us went to Ngor, a small island north of Dakar.  As it was a Monday afternoon, we were pretty much the only toubabs, and thus, pretty much the only target for venders.  We also were greeted by a group of musicians who played drums and sang for us, which was pretty great.  To get to the island you pay 500 CFA (about $1) roundtrip, and you take a little boat.  It was almost like a motorized canoe.  There’s a GIANT trained pelican that lives on the island.  The owner of said pelican charges for photos of it, so I opted out.  You’ll just have to believe me.  A man from The Gambia approached our group and offered us a tour of the island.  We didn’t really have any plans, so we went for it.  He took us all around and it was very interesting.  The same guy that owns the pelican also has a monkey named Gazou that lives on the island.  Just the strangest thing.  In the end it turned out that our tour guide owns a restaurant on the island, so at the end of the “tour” (it was quite unofficial) we just went to his little restaurant and got drinks.  A woman came by selling fresh fruit, which was great!  Maia and I shared a mango.  Sarah loves fruit and ended up buying one of everything.  Mango, pineapple, cantaloupe, and coconut.  It was all so delicious!

Yesterday during Wolof, our teacher went off on a little tangent and told us more about polygamy and ended up talking about divorce in Senegalese culture as well.  Yesterday sort of turned into “learn about polygamy day” coincidently because we ended up talking about it in French and I talked about it with Mohammad at home as well.  Here’s my little summary: In Islam, men are allowed to have four wives.  They have their justifications and reasons.  It’s economic to have more children; it’s for security, etc.  When I talked to Mohammad about it I just got frustrated because his justification was that God says you can have four wives and it’s really just helping women because there are SO many more women than men in the world.  Whatever gets you through the night.  It’s hard to talk about it hear though.  I get very worked up, if for no other reason than there’s no level of equality.  When faced with the question “well, what if it was the other way around? What if it were one woman with four husbands?”  It’s a joke.  They laugh.  Say it’s physically impossible.  As far as divorce goes, it’s apparently very common and easy here.  If a man wants a divorce, he will have some friends come over, say “I’m divorcing you” three times, and that’s that.  A woman does not have the right to refuse.  If, however, a woman wants a divorce, the man does have the right to refuse.  This would be unwise though, because “the woman might then try to poison the man”.  She is, naturally, the one doing the cooking after all.