Dakar is empty. I've seen Lexington Center more busy. It's the day before Maggal, the annual pilgrimage to Touba, which is an inland city and the religious center of the Mouride brotherhood. Muslims in Senegal affiliate themselves with a brotherhood, which is a practice particular to Senegal and not particularly supported by other Islamic leaders outside the state. The Mourides are one of the numerically large brotherhoods and they control much of the economy and politics of Senegal. The founder of the brotherhood was expelled from the country in the early 1900s and this day commemorates his return to Senegal. So, a couple million people voyage to Touba and pray together. However, there's only one autoroute between Dakar and Touba, and the drivers are always looking to make extra money by doing multiple trips so they speed, and there's almost always accidents. Also, even though Touba is a very wealthy city because the Mourides have put a lot of money into it, it has a poor septic system and weak infrastructure, so periodically during Maggal or during the rainy season there's a cholera outbreak in Senegal and it often starts in Touba. Some of the students on the other programs have chosen to participate in the pilgrimage - i just hope for them that it's not too physically taxing and that they don't get sick. Meanwhile, there are very few people working the boutiques and food stands on the street in Dakar and much of the public transportation has gone missing. Dave and I went to Ngor this weekend, which is a fishing community on the northern side of the Dakar peninsula. You can take pirogues on a short trip to an island just off shore, which is only inhabited by people working the hostels and tourist shops as well as a handful of free-minded artists. The island itself is beautiful - there's no roads, just paths between houses with stone walls and flowers. One side of the island, facing the bay, has sandy beaches, while the other side has taller cliffs an rocks which have been pounded by the waves into Dr Seuss-like shapes. Mantou would like to go back with me sometime to the mainland side, which I'm looking forward to. To get home, we walked through the residential part of the town, looking very conspicuous as the only toubabs there, but we didn't get lost and made it to the bus stop. We took the most rickety, creaky, held-together-with-string-and-spit minibus. Pretty much, they cram as many people as physically possible into each of these vans - usually about 20 or 25, and then 3 or 4 people cling to the top while hanging out the back door. It's only 100 FCFA or 150 FCFA for the trip - which is about 25 cents. But, despite the aging vehicles, Senegal has an awesomely efficient public transportation system and I am in no way complaining. I'm actually impressed. I've been having a number of political science-oriented conversations with my family, their friends, and others, and I've started to understand a bit more of the reasons why the Senegalese - and people of other nationalities - tend to be more politically aware than the average American. (Setting aside the notion that Americans don't need to be politically aware because they live so comfortably that they have very little stake in the outcomes of political arrangements and issues.) I asked one of my brother's friends if he had studied political science in university and he said no, he would have liked to, but he didn't have the means to continue his studies. However, he said that if one person learns an interesting tidbit regarding politics, he will share it with his friends (over attaya, for example) and they will discuss it, form their own opinions about it, and maybe pass it on. People say that the Senegalese love to talk politics and love to argue. I would say that that's partially true, and that most of the people I've met have open minds and are interested in accumulating more knowledge, particularly in areas in which they are not well-informed. For instance, one of my friend's brothers didn't know anything about MAssachusetts so he asked me a bit about its geography and its food. It seems to me that most Americans are more tempted to just throw up their hands and say that it's too complicated, they can't approach issue X, because they don't know enough already about it. Take the conflict in the Middle East, or Darfur. The graffiti in Senegal is something else - I saw some at Ngor scrawled on a concrete wall saying that President Wade, instead of spending the state budget on the APEs and other international trade agreements that put Senegal at a disadvantage, should put money towards building local factories and supplying agricultural materials. We would never see that in the States. They're kicking us off the internet, so that's all for now.