One Monkey

Patas Monkey...I am pretty sure this is the offender

I must have made one too many jokes about japp golo bi (trapping monkeys) in language class, because one tried to attack me today. I am not kidding I was walking with my sisters to the beach and one was by the restaurant we always cut through. At first I was super excited to see a monkey. I knew there were some in the reserve, but I was told they are hard to find, since they are "scared" of humans. Well that has bull crap!!!! My sister pointed out the golo and then it started to walk towards us. I yelled "At Cha" at it when it started to get too close and waved my nalgine at it. Maybe that was my mistake, because it immediately jumped on me. My sister (Miriam) and I proceeded to scream and flail. I guess that scared it, because it immediately left, but it also meant all the Senegalese at the restaurant came running. I swear I heard one of them yell something like about golo and toubab (ie oh no!!! A monkey is attacking the white person). This all happened very fast; well, once the golo actually jumped on me, so all Miriam and I could do was laugh and assure the onlookers that it did not bite me. I do not know how to day this in wolof or french so it came you it's good, golo did not eat (in wolof).

After this fun adventure we continued onto the beach, where we swam and I threw the football to them. This drew a huge group of kids and was pretty amusing until a fight broke out between some of them. It actually wasn't over the football. I had put it away by then. Instead, someone pushed someone and then their siblings got involved. It basically boiled down to a boy (around 10-12 years old) who wouldn't drop it and kept trying to go after one of the girls. Being the only adult now at the beach I felt like I should try to stop it, which is very hard in wolof and also because their way of childrearing is very different. It is more of let them figure it out, and if there is a decent offense you beat the bejeesus out of the offender. Needless to say I was not going to beat the boy, I just tried to get the other kids (mainly my sisters) out of the way so there wouldn't be an all out rumble. Thankfully, some guys working out came along and restrained him, and then another older guy found out what was going on and "kind of" beat him. Take note when i say beat, that's what it look like to us, but really it just a few hits while the kid is cowering away, however being Senegalese and, therefore, innately loud, it always sounds way worse. I will say I am not for beating my kids, whenever i have some, but there method does work pretty well. The kids figure things out for themselves much better and are generally pretty well behaved. They also respect all adults, which is probably because ANYONE has the right to beat a kid here, even if you don't know them.
To top things off, when we packed up and left the beach I ran into a man at the restaurant who insisted on speaking spanish to me. He didn't speak any french and I speak no spanish so I don't really know why he felt the need to try to talk to me for so long. However, I am so used to no knowing what people are saying that it was actually quite interesting to try and converse with him. We actually did pretty well at having a semi-conversation with him speaking spanish and me speaking french/english.
....well that is it...that way my weird afternoon. Now I need to figure out how to make post cards for Popenguine. I mentioned this in passing to Badji and now he really wants to do it. It is a great idea; we just have the problem of finding a place to get them made. He seems to think since I am going to Dakar this weekend I can just do it then, but knowing Senegal it will not be that easy. Either way I am pretty excited to have a mini project and a creative one at that.