Mr. Blue Sky

Holla. Another day brings new adventures. Today, I became acquainted with how to wash clothes in Senegal. You use three buckets of water, one soapy, and rotate them around, and then you hang them on a line to dry. I was a little worried, though, about the family goat eating my clothes. I see him up on the roof sometimes wandering around, and the thing eats anything it can get its mouth around…these are the things I worry about now. I remember used to worry about things like grades, money, relationships, now I worry about the family goat eating all my clothes. Also, since I have to wash my clothes by hand, I’ve become a lot less strict about how clean my clothes need to be. I thought my college days of “sniff testing” clothes before deeming them acceptable to wear were over, but apparently not. It’s hard to justify always wearing clean clothes when walking to the nearest taxi makes one sweat profusely anyway, so when I am deciding if my clothes are clean enough to wear, I hold them at arms length, and if I can’t smell them at that distance, I consider them clean. Well, clean isn’t really the right word…I consider them wear-able.

The children that I teach are coming along nicely with their English, but it’s very difficult to hold their attention sometimes. Especially since my French is not very good. Thankfully, they are mystified by my guitar. Whenever I pull it out, they immediately are quiet and attentive, so I started bringing it every day, and we sing little songs in English. I try to incorporate music into the lesson because they really enjoy it, and it teaches them new words. When we had a lesson on the weather, I played the song Mr. Blue Sky by ELO on my laptop and we pointed out all the weather words we knew. The adults are much easier to teach, because they are more eager to learn, and have more patience. Most classes, I can give them some paragraphs to read and they write their opinions about it. They like to hear about the US and what my life is like back home. Some of the things I tell them, they find so shocking. They find it strange how independent we are from our families, since most families here all live in the same house regardless of age for their entire lives. Also, I told them that in the US, people get divorced frequently, because this is unacceptable in their Muslim culture. They told me, “When you get married over here, you are hooked for life.” With an attitude like that, I hope they don’t write their own wedding vows.

Here are some pictures of the bats emerging from their roosting trees at sunset in St. Louis. Yes, those are all bats.