Cultural Day

We had our second cultural day with a Sengalese believer. The original plan was for us to drive to his house and pick him up. He called us and said "I am coming", I quickly said "to your house or my house." He said yes I am coming, me - Okay, got that - your house or my house? His answer - yes. So I said - we are meeting you at your house right? Yes I am coming. Hang up. I then tell Ron I think we are meeting Papa at his house, but he could be coming here....Ron calls him and asks if we are meeting him at his house - Yes I am coming...We then determined that he was not at his house, but was going to his house!

After sorting that out, we met him on the street by his house and he told us to park, and we would be using public transportation. Ok.....So we starting walking and went to the main street and waved down a "taxi" called a klondoor - a private car driven as a taxi - we never knew how to determine these, but quickly found out they do 2 little honks. They are much cheaper than taxis and they cram in whoever and drop them on route. So after taking our ride to a market, we wandered around to various indoor and outdoor markets - saw and smelled lots of interesting things. We wanted to eat lunch so we stopped at a "restaurant". It was a room with some tables with a bowl of spoons on the table. They were serving ceeb with fish and yassa. Yassa is normally rice with chicken and onions, lemony. Knowing the fish would be bony or the fish head, I opted for yassa. Well they tricked me and my yassa was served with a whole fish on a bed of rice. Ron had small bits (albeit with lots of bones) of fish. I will next time clarify! After that we got on a car rapide - a van with lots of people in, and then another klandoor. It was a fun day filled with lots of new experiences! We had some good opportunities to practice our language.

I know there are some that wish there were more photos of the things we see and experience. But we hope you can keep in mind that we are the only white people around at times and if we were walking around just taking pictures - we would only be tourists. It is really not easy to take pictures! We will try, but most importantly we want to be culturally appropriate at all times. We don't want to be tourists. We want to be accepted, and we don't want them to feel that they or their lives are spectacles. But we will try whenever possible and acceptable to snap a photo!