Peeing Bats and Smoking Rotarians

First a bit of catching up from yesterday. We visited the weekly market at a central village. Think an outdoor Wal-Mart crossed with Stampede for 1 day a week. People travel 15k by foot and upto 100k by bus to get to this market. They have everything from tabacco, fruits and goats. People rent stalls from the community to sell there wares and then spend that money buying what they need - great demonstration of basic economics at work. At 4pm, everyone leaves and just the billions of plastic bags are left to blow in the wind.

For our travels back to Dakar today, we shared a van with our French couple friends, with a stop at the world's oldest baobab tree and at shell island (Isle de Coquillages). When we drove up to the baobab tree we all had a silent groan - we had driven by this tree yesterday and it is surrounded by hawkers with tourist knick knacks. We hire a baobab expert for a talk on the virtues of the tree. He then climbs through a little hole in the base of the tree and invites us in. The hole is just above waist height, so you have to hurl yourself through it. I am last through and am not overly impressed once inside. We are standing in a "cave" carved into the middle of this huge tree. I hear something flapping around, look up - bats. There are several bats flying around. Guillome (the man in the French couple) is looking up and gets bat pee in his eye! Who needs that??? Kim asks me if I need a photo of the bats - she got a look that didn't require words or translation. Once we emerged from the pee'ed on bat cave, the hawkers begin their pitch. Lucky for me they didn't speak a bunch of english so I just played ignorant - not too difficult for me! When we get back into the van, Guillome fired a shot at the driver - he didn't warn us that there were bats that pee'ed on the tourists in there!

Next was shell island. Imagine an small african village on an island where all the streets are made from sea shells and there is a connecting island where there is a cemetry that is made of sea shells. Riveting.

Back in Dakar tonight and time to go to a local Rotary meeting. Start time is 7pm, so punctual Kim and I are at the hotel by 6:45. No one else is to be found. A couple ladies show up at a few minutes before 7. They decide the meeting room we are in is too small, so we move to a larger one next door. By 7:10 there are 5 or 6 Rotarians there (3 of the women are smoking at an open window, talking in French about how they shouldn't be smoking in front of guests). They eventually get the meeting started with 9 Rotarians there. I say a few words about my Club and they introduce themselves. The meeting tonight had one of their Club members giving a presentation on member recruitment. That was all well and good, what was really entertaining was the complete disinteret some of the members showed at being there. They were smoking non stop (which is just funny to even consider smoking indoor these days), talking amongst themselves and playing with their cellphones. Rotary Clubs are different every where, but this one was a new one for me!

Off to Bamako, Mali tomorrow to finally meet Kim's good friend Dicko!

Tout a l'heure! (My favorite French expression of the day).

gm