More Monkeys! Senegal Wins Again!

I saw more monkeys today!! But that was more a result of the fact that I went to the zoo this morning. Leila and I took our host siblings to the Dakar Zoo. We were there right when it opened at 10am, which was nice because it wasn't too hot yet and there weren't many people there yet either. So we saw lions, tiger (just one), monkeys, birds, crocodiles, porcupines, a camel, an ostrich, and various other animals. It was not a fancy zoo and many of the cages/pens weren't labeled so we had to guess what exactly we were looking at (easy when the animal is a tiger, a bit less easy when the animal is the strangest looking bird you've ever seen). The wire fences for the camel and antelope, two separate areas, had been damaged, probably by the animals themselves. So the broken wire had made holes large enough for the camel to stick its head out of the cage, which was convenient for petting it. Same with the antelope, although the kids didn’t try to pet it. One of the monkeys got a bit perturbed while we were walking by and flung a large fruit at Fatou and Dany's heads, but it just BARELY missed them. It definitely would've hurt too, because he threw it quite hard. The fruit went through the mesh wire (which simply was made with large holes in it) and right across the path. We arrived at the lions' cage right as the zookeeper was leaving it. So, I got to watch him put two padlocks on a door that was supposed to keep the lions in their cage. I was a bit unnerved to see that the padlocks were not very large, but the lions didn't make a break for it while we were there at least.

By the time we had left, it had gotten quite hot. So I spent much of the afternoon drinking water and napping in front of my fan. It really was terribly warm today, hotter than usual. I studied Wolof for a bit (Amnaa benn mag bu jigeen) and went to a telecenter in an attempt to connect my laptop and upload some pictures to this blog. But, the connection at the center was too weak, so I couldn't.

This evening I went to the Senegal vs. Mozambique women's basketball game. Senegal has been playing different African countries about every other day this week, and they’ve won all their games, at least the ones that I'm aware of. We've watched parts of the game here on tv at the house. The Kalamazoo students from the Baobab Center went last week to one of the games and loved it. I went with Laurent and his friends. The stadium is in fact about 2 minutes from my house. It's a large circular building, but it is much smaller than any other arena I've been in. It was absolutely packed with people and hotter than hot. I think if there were American basketball players they would have passed out. No air conditioning, so it was well over 90 degrees in the building. Instead of pep bands like the ones we're used to in America, the basketball games in Senegal have drummers. There was a set of drummers near me, and then another set by the other basket. They played with only one break throughout the entire game. It was as loud as a concert. I had to yell into the ear of Louis, who I was sitting next to, so that he could hear me. The vendors who sell cold drinks walk around with a bowl filled with drinks balanced on their head, and they walk up and down through the seated people, not just up and down the aisles. The energy in the room was absolutely amazing. And, I'm happy to report, Senegal won again!