destination: Toubakouta

Last weekend, we took an all-expenses [and it really was expensive. The hotel, with limited air-conditioning and shampoo packets provided, along with the true luxury of real coffee, had an exorbitant price]-paid four-day weekend to a village down the coast from Dakar: Toubakouta. While in Toubakouta, we stayed for 24 hours in a nearby village, watched a man roll around in glass shards without getting cut, and learned to play the djembe. Curious? Read on!

We started off at 8 in the morning from WARC, our backpacks on the roof and warm pastries in our hands. The bus was packed. After several hours, we arrived at the small village where the WARC director was born, and feasted on cieb u ginaar, a traditional dish in Senegal. Afterwards, we went outside to dance to the sound of makeshift drums (bowls, buckets, or other household items), which is something villages apparently do to welcome and send off guests. It’s always a good time—we did it several times over the weekend, and I like to think I got the rhythm down. Slow, slow, slow, slow, QUICK QUICK QUICK QUICK MY THIGHS ARE DYING QUICK QUICK QUICK QUICK!

After arriving in Toubakouta, we settled into our hotel rooms. Later in the evening, we went to a festival of drums, dancing, and feats of amazing magic that I still have no idea how they were done. For example, there was a symbolic depiction of something that I didn’t catch, featuring a man who rolled around in glass. To make sure we knew that it was glass, he took a glass bottle and chopped it up with a hammer, then proceeded to lie in the pile. To top things off, he put his head in it. It was pretty grotesque to watch, but somehow he emerged without scratches. Next up was a guy who breathed fire. Fire is always fun to watch! After a little bit of awkwardly dancing in front of hundreds of people, I retreated to the darkness of my room to prepare for the next morning, when we would be having a “real village experience.”

Once we arrived in the village, I was placed with a family. I realized within the first minute or so that there would be a huge communication problem… the family spoke nothing but Wolof. I was expected to pull out my rudimentary 20 hours of Wolof (and plenty of sign language) to get my point across. Something special I did was pluck the feathers of a freshly-dead chicken to prepare it for dinner… that was a good time! I just closed my eyes and tried not to think too hard about it. (Considering I’m a proud meat-eater, I have an extremely weak stomach when it comes to gazing at the food I’m about to eat.)

I survived the day, somehow, and managed to stumble around on the dance floor like a… chicken… with its head cut off… once again. (That image seems a little inappropriate now that I’ve actually seen a chicken with its head cut off.)

The last thing I’ll talk about was the dancing and drumming we did the next day. The Music & Dance class was finally beginning, and we were all invited to attend. We learned a basic rhythm on the drum. Although my hands turned red, I didn’t stop—primarily because the teacher made an extremely misogynistic remark about how “some rhythms are just for men, since women don’t have the endurance to play the djembe.” That was pretty annoying, so of course I had to show the endurance that does, in fact, exist within my womanly soul.

So, that was my weekend in brief. I put up photos on Facebook, which you can see here.