Leaving Saint-Louis

Tomorrow we leave Saint-Louis to go back to Dakar. I am really sad to be leaving! Saint-Louis is wonderful. It's made up of two islands and few bridges in between, and it's divided by the Senegal River and bordered by the Atlantic Ocean. The roads here are wider than the ones in Dakar, and there are definitely more sidewalks. There are also fewer people, and, consequently, fewer people hassling you and asking for money, your number, or your hand in marriage (and possibly all three) than there are in Dakar. There are, however, a ton of goats in the road, just hanging out, enjoying the trash piles or climbing up on their hind legs to eat leaves out of trees. There are also some really cute kittens who seem to live down the street from our hotel. But our program says that there is to be no petting or cuddling of animals while we're in Senegal. So no petting the cute stray kittens. The buildings here are also pretty - old colonial-style buildings in bright colors with wooden shutters, and last night, we discovered an amazing Vietnamese restaurant where you can actually get a grenadine in Senegal that isn't just a cup of syrup and uncarbonated mineral water.

Add to this the hotel with its air conditioning, western-style showers, and bread and pastries for breakfast, and it's easy to see why returning to Dakar, with its traffic, pollution, multitude of people asking after money/phone numbers/marriage, narrow roads, absent sidewalks, busy markets where your backpack might get stolen, and generally crazy noise level, is a little difficult to get excited about.

But - I've now been here a month, and I'm realizing that the rest of the program is going to go by pretty fast. Which is good, because it means that in no time I'll be home and getting ready to go back to Smith, but it's also bad, because it means that I really need to finish my book for French class, and it also means that in a month and a half I'm going to be working on my independent study project, which resembles nothing I've ever done for school, except for maybe interviewing people for the Sophian.

I hope that I have another chance to come back to Saint-Louis someday. Going back to Dakar won't be fun, but I'm glad I got the chance to come here and see a calmer, quieter side of Senegal. And I'm glad that after spending three days in a village, we got to visit such a relaxing place with both TV and the nicest bathrooms I've seen since I got here.