Tuesday, July 06, 2004

4th of july festivities

on saturday we went and saw the national senegalise team play zambia in a soccer match. there were drummers drumming the whole time during the game, which made the atmosphere more lively. the scoreboard in the stadium is broken, but since it's soccer it wasn't hard to keep track of the score. it would've been nice to know how much time was remaining though. senegal won 1-0, but everyone was very unhappy after the game even though their team won. i guess quality of play is more important than a win.

we went to a 4th of july celebration sponsored by the embassy on sunday. guards in front of the area, we had to go through a metal detector, and pay to enter. they were selling american food though (hot dogs, hamburgers, cookies, etc) which was a nice break from the daily thieboujian (rice and fish) normally served at lunch. being surrounded by so many americans again was a bit surreal, we could've been anywhere in the US.

on the way home, nikki and i saw a wedding dance celebration outside of our house. our host sister was in the wedding and invited us to watch. it was similar to the village dancing, a large group of (mostly) females and kids gathered in a circle with drummers on one side. people would go up and dance in the middle for a minute or so then go sit back down. right after we sat down, the lead drummer came over to us and pulled us into the middle of the circle. by this time it was pretty dark, so there's was a spotlight set up so that the video camera could capture all the action. the two of us just stood there, with 100 people staring at us, until another woman came up to dance with us. of course we had no idea what we were doing, but everyone was very amused by our attempt at senegalise dancing. when we went to sit back down the drummer came back to us and told us since we danced we now had to give him money. so we did and sat back down. the next day kids in the neighborhood whenever they'd see us yelled 'toubab' (white person) and started dancing and laughing. so we paid money to be embarrassed in front of all the people. i have a feeling our dancing might be the highlight of the wedding video, the portion the couple shows to everyone. oh well, after that i don't think i'll be embarrassed dancing again.

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