wednesday turned out to be our first non-work day in over a week and a half. in the afternoon nicole, francis, and i went to visit hann park, which is something i wish we'd done earlier. it's 20 hectare park filled with trees, nice jogging/biking/walking path, a botanical garden (though it was in need of major repairs), a big pond/swamp, a nursery, and also a zoo. surrounded by the craziness of dakar on all four sides. it's an amazing place to spend time, very peaceful. the zoo though was very interesting. all the guidebooks say it's not worth the 320CFA to get in ($0.70) which i could understand when we first went in. random concrete enclosures in various states of disrepair, a camel, some birds. but then we saw the lions (the national animal of senegal). well actually first we saw all these large (maybe cow) bones littering the ground of one enclosure. then the lions. we lucked out and followed a zoo-keeper around, and he entertained us all by playing with the chimps (showing us their tricks), showing us the lions (there were 8 of them in 4 places), crocodiles, tiger, monkeys, pumas, etc. we were about to leave when he called us back. the truck just came with a dead (skinned) cow in it. we got to watch him hack it up with a huge machete, then go around feeding all the animals. watched them tearing at the huge chunks of meat and bone. pretty gross, but fascinating nonetheless. also you're really close to the cages, not those huge buffers they have in the US.
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