Bandia, recycled art and the end of dance

It’s been a while since my last post, so I’ll have to keep the updates brief.

We’ve finished up our workshops on dance and djembe, and I certainly would have liked another week of djembe. Near the end of the workshop, something “clicked” and I felt very comfortable with all of the different rhythms we had learned, and I was able to really play and get into the music without having to think about it. It was probably as much fun as I’ve had since coming here.

As for dance, I’m somewhat glad that it‘s over. It’s not that I ultimately didn’t end up enjoying myself, but the heat made for a miserable hour and a half of intense physical activity each day. Nevertheless, I after some initial struggles, I feel that I made more progress than I had thought I would at the outset for someone who had, for all intents and purposes, never danced before. I doubt that I’ll be able to take any the specific dances that I learned and bring them back to the US (the motions would be laughable in a modern American club), but I at least have a greater degree of confidence in my ability to dance than I did before.

On Saturday, we went as a group to the Bandia wildlife preserve, where a number of species of wild animals, including giraffes, rhinos and antelope are kept in a vast expanse of savannah. We drove through the preserve in 4X4 trucks along dirt paths, getting up close and personal with a variety of species. While we stayed in the trucks for most of the time, we ended up getting out and wandering into the bush to see the rhinos that were sleeping nearby. We got within about 10 feet of them, and got some great photos, which was quite exciting.

On Sunday, I went to the HLM market with Alicia and Lisa, where I bought a couple of Senegalese outfits that I might or might not ever wear. Following that, Milo and I went to the artisan market along the west coast to try to do some research on recycled art for an assignment for our Arts and Culture Seminar. Ultimately, we probably got a lot of false information, and ended up getting fleeced pretty badly and pushed into buying a bunch of really expensive recycled art that we didn’t really want. Fortunately, we went to the Institute Française today and got some much better information from an artist who creates bird sculptures from materials he finds in the street. Best of all, it didn’t cost us anything.

Tomorrow, we start our three day batik workshop, followed by a Friday trip to the island of Goree (a hub of the West African slave trade). On Saturday, we leave for Ker Sedaro for our first village stay. I don’t know if I’ll post anything before then, but we’ll be in Saint Louis (the former colonial capital) afterwards, at which point I’ll probably have internet access.