Get Me a Pack ‘a Camels and Akon?

What’d you do for New Years?  It’s a pretty standard (almost obligatory) question for people my age.  In America it usually involves getting dressed up, maybe dinner, and a nighttime of fun.  While I love all those things, my New Years here probably trumps any and all New Years I’ve had at home. 

To begin, as most holidays here tend to do, it got stretched from a single night into a solid week.  I guess I should also preface this with the fact that most of the wonderfulness that was my holiday came from the fact that I was out of my village.   In the past couple of months, for one reason or another, Saare Boyli has handed me mountain after mountain of frustration.  Now, I don’t say this to evoke a pity-party or demand sympathy, but merely to lay the foundation down of why it was so awesome to be out of “Penda Sow”-mode.

So the week starts with an evening in Dakar….and Youssou Ndor! We happened to arrive in the middle of the African Arts Festival and he was putting on a free concert.   Free being the key word here.  We went, and there were (not joking) at least a 100,000 people there.  It was kind of like being at a UT football game, except without Neyland Stadium. I remember walking a solid 20 minutes, entirely through people, without a single break in the crowd.  It was nuts. 

The next day we head to the desert. Deserts are beautiful.  Sure they may be hot, but in Senegal, what’s not?  We got to our “campsite” around dusk, in order to see the sunset.  The skies themselves were an incredible display of colors and textures, but pitted against the giant sand dunes, the whole scene was majestic.  It kind of reminded me of that scene from Star Wars when Luke was still living on the “farm” with his aunt and uncle (you’re welcome, Fred Gattas III).

Anthony Bourdain once said, “Enjoy the moment.  When it’s time to go, ride off into the sunset.”  So into the sun we set…on our camels.  It was about as bumpy as riding a pogo stick and as comfortable as riding…well, a camel.  To make a sort of paradox, we decided to blast early 90s music from someone’s iPod.  What better combination than a pack of camels and a little bit of Boys to Men?

The next day was New Years Eve, and we needed to head to St. Louis to ring in 2K11 with Akon. So, we did.  Note to self: a free Akon concert probably doesn’t bring in the classiest crowd, proven by the intense, mob-like audience. Despite all that, however, we managed to a. survive, and b. have a sweet time. How could you not when Akon is so willing to climb into a giant hamster ball?

 All that being said, it was a much-needed break from the bush.  I was a bit reluctant to let it end, but I do have one awesome thing to look forward to relatively soon…MY DAD’S COMING in 15 hours!