Catching Up.

MARCH 20. ISLE DE MADELAINE, SENEGAL.

Catching Up.
I know I~ve skipped a few things here and there, but i have already had one remark about the length of my entries, so i will just carry on as is.
It was nearly a week agot that I came to Dakar, the throbbing and sweaty capital of Senegal. I~ve been staying with a young French nwoman named Virginie in the posh and Toubab neighbourhood of Mermoz. Consequently, my picture of Dakar has been pas complete, thought it has been a realy nice picture indeed. I could fill pages with records of the events, but instead I~ll just list them and move on to other things. More interesting, or more pressing at least.
-visited a fete celebrating the hopeful inauguration of a building site for a new elementary school. Surrounded by clamouring kids with puffy sores and very premature hair loss, the effets of malnourishment.
-visas visas visas. Guinea, Guinea Bissau and Cote d~]Ivoire.
-Danced till 4 to the sounds of Senegal at Balfort Bar. At the end a drunken man introduced tous les blancs in the audience...
-swam in teh piscine olympique
-visited Isle Ngor and Virginie~s relatives there, the kings of the island.
-Now on Madelaine, a deserted and tiny island, preserved for the birds. It]s beautiful here.

MARCH 25. BISSAU, GUINEA-BISSAU.
The voyage enbatuea from Dakar to Ziguinchour was an absolute, treat, though next time I will certainly spnd the extra 5000 to secure a bed, as there was little sleep to be had in the well-lit anteroom with its reclining chairs, crying babies and strong odour of feet. It wa a solitary journey for me, as I was feeling a strong need for some pivacy. Staying with people has, of course, a world full of advantages, but time to oneself is not one of them, and the experience can certainly be exhausting. The boat is enormous and brand new, a replacement for the one which capsized in 2002, killing over 2000 people, nearly its entire passenger load. Ther was coffee served, and a sandwich of grilled meat which I enjoyed very much. I ate alone, though I did bump into the two overloaded Canadians I~d met in Mauritania, as well as the swiss woman adn her Senegalese escort who had attended the party for the school in Dakar. The boat left shortly after sunset and arrived in Ziguinchour just before noon.
The1000 km of longitude spacing Dakar from Ziguinchour was immediately apparent itn eh new ferocity of the sun and in the style and kind of people. Moving further south has truly felt like becoming more }African^}, as ridiculous as that looks in print. This is just to say that with each km travelled towards the south the landscape and people have corresponded more with my preconceptions of what Africa looks and feels like.
AsideÇ it appears to be no problem for young guinean girls to carry large platters of bananas on their heads while dancing with vivre to some unheard internal rhythm.
There~s more in this entry, much more, but i move on to other things now