Christmas in Dakar

Merry Christmas everyone!

I had a great Christmas Eve and am having a great Christmas Day so far. I hope that is the case for you as well!

Friday Brenna and I both found ourselves with the afternoon off (yay for early start to the vacation!). When she asked me if there was anything I particularly wanted to do, I said that I wanted to make a snowman… but there isn’t any snow around here. All my friends and family in Bend, Oregon were posting their snow pictures and I was feeling a bit left out. We don’t have any snow here, so we decided that we would try with sand. Brenna met me at the beach and we got started. Sand isn’t as easy to use as snow, so it took us a few different approaches to figure out what would work.

We realized that a tall sandman wasn’t in the cards, so we went with a shorter one. It might have taken us a few tries, but we were very happy with our results! “Sandy” as we named our sand-person, helped us find the Christmas Spirit we had been missing! Sometimes it’s hard to get into the Christmas Spirit when it’s in the 80s outside and you’re far away from your loved ones, so we were in a good mood!

Saturday we decided we’d start the day out at Parc Hann, which is a large park here in Dakar. Originally we were going because there was supposed to be a composting activity that Brenna was going to attend, but in the end it got cancelled and we decided just to go see the park. I had been wanting to go because that is where the local equestrian center is located. We started off our time at the zoo, which was a mistake because it was pretty depressing. The animals were in small cages and the tiger was literally crying loudly, which made us want to leave. I did yell at some Chinese tourists who were feeding one of the larger chimps something. The enclosures were pretty small and not exactly well set up, meaning that it was pretty easy for someone to lean over the rail and feed an animal through their cage (including the lions). So we left pretty quickly and walked through the nice forest towards the equestrian center.

"Coco" on the right is ALL MINE starting in January

Even though it was Christmas Eve there were normal Saturday morning lessons going on, so there were a ton of cute kids running around with cute little ponies. We finally found an office and I asked about riding, to which the man responded that they’d just had an owner put their horse up for lease, if I was interested. YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So I basically got myself a beautiful white Spanish Warmblood for Christmas!!! I am leasing “Coco” until I leave in July, with unlimited access to him and the park trails.  I AM SO EXCITED!!!!!

On our way home, we stopped at the fabric market (Marché HLM) and got some more fabric to have stuff tailored (most people have their nicer clothes tailored here instead of buying finished products). I got 3 different types of fabric for some skirts and dresses to be made. Then I stopped by the tailor because I had ordered some dresses and skirts last week.

My Christmas Dress

Arame (my host family’s house maid who lives there) is also a December baby with her birthday on the 30^th, so we decided to get some matching things made that I offered to her as a birthday present. The tailor had said he’d finish everything by the 24^th, but my host mom was very skeptical, especially because he asked me to stop by on Thursday and show him the patterns again (meaning he hadn’t started). I wasn’t worried so much about all of it being done, I just wanted to wear the Christmas dress to church! So I stopped by at about 2:30, just to see if he wanted me to come by around 5pm, and it was ALL done! Turned out very nice too!

Brenna and I had decided to find a church that was having a Christmas Eve service, since my church wasn’t. I put a call out on Craigslist Dakar and found an Assemblies of God church within walking distance. Brenna came over for dinner with my host family (really just my host mom) before church and we had a very nice dinner of salad and fish. The service was scheduled to go from 8pm to 10pm, and ended up going until more like 10:30pm. It was a very interesting cultural experience, and not what I was expecting, mostly because it wasn’t very Christmas-y. There were some elements, such as the youth performances, that were sort of Christmas themed, so that was nice. It was more like a normal Sunday morning service that happened to be on Christmas Eve. We were both pretty tired, so ended up leaving at 10:30pm (the service wasn’t finished by then) but decided that we were both glad that we had gone.

Christmas Morning we all (myself, Brenna, Colleen, and her friend Liana visiting from the US) decided that we needed something fun to do on Christmas morning when it was still the middle of the night back home, but when we would all be wishing we were home, so we planned a trip out to the Bandia Reserve for a morning safari. We rented a car and driver and left at 8am.

We arrived about 9:15 and happened to be there just as a family with 5 children was looking for a group who would be willing to share the safari truck with them, so we decided to split it with them. It’s always fun to have children with on adventures like this! We got our guide, piled into the safari truck and headed out. The first thing we sighted was a hyena, who is one of the only animals in the park that is actually kept in an enclosure (too mean to be let out amongst the other animals) and a couple of large land turtles that didn’t seem quite awake yet.
Then we went out into the actual reserve, coming first across some buffalo, who the guide told us were not very happy with us being the first to pass by, so we didn’t linger. Then we saw the most adorable baby giraffes! SO stinking CUTE!!!

BABIES!!!!

The parents weren’t too far away. The mother was lighter colored, but the males are very dark (and HUGE!). We were all pretty excited to get to see them out and about. We would soon find out that giraffes would be all over the place! Ostriches as well, although we did get to see one male do a mating dance because there was a female nearby. Some monkeys that are hard to get pictures of, but are super cute, entertained us, and then we turned the corner to zebras!!! Then lots of antelope, of two different varieties. More giraffes… lots of giraffes!

See the elephant?

They don’t have elephants here, but we did see the “Baobab Elephant” which really does look like one!
There was another Baobab that had been a burial site for the local griots (the history keepers/storytellers of African tradition), with bones visible still! Lots more ostriches and giraffes, then a family of warthogs, which were cool to see but too far to photograph. Then we cross another safari truck whose guide tells our guide something in Wolof and the only word I understood was “rhinoceros” and our driver picks up some speed. We come around a corner and see a couple of other trucks stopped and then we see TWO rhinos fighting! Right in front of us! Apparently these are the crown jewels of the reserve, they only have those two (a male and female) and most people who do the safari don’t even get to see one of them.

Apparently they’ve been there for 15 years, but the female doesn’t like the male, so she refuses to mate with him (hence the fighting). We watched for a while and one of the little kids wanted to get closer, not understanding why it wouldn’t be a very good idea… We were very happy with our luck! We then saw a bunch of crocodiles and some more monkeys, much closer this time, to finish our safari. We saw everything we had hoped for, and more! It was a great way to start Christmas!

Just Chillin'

Now I am in a café, enjoying an espresso and writing this blog before I head over to Colleen’s, where we’ve all decided to make one dish for everyone. Liana is Jewish, and Hanukkah started last night, so they’re making latkes, Brenna is making sweet potato and carrot soup while I have decided that I am NOT missing out on Huevos this year, so I’m making my own batch and sharing it with my friends. Since California is about 8 hours behind us, I’ll be having them about that same time, or just after, everyone at Grandma Mert’s.