[+] Wednesday, May 22, 2002
( leaving )
[ new photos ]
thanks for the loan of the camera Tom!!
not wanting to leave, but too tired to stay. it's time to head back to San Fran, get my stuff and my cat, kiss all my friends on the nose, and go to live with my mum in Sydney.
it's going to be hard. packing, saying goodbye, flying, packing, saying goodbye and flying again.
i know there is a lot less love at first sight where i'm going. and maybe people don't look after each other quite as well, nor can they move their asses with precision timing to super fast beats. but after ten years away from home i'm ready to be an Aussie in Australia for a while.
current plans for the future include reading, watching movies, chasing mum's chickens, starting a fresh squeezed orange juice stand, finding a trampoline to jump on, singing, and possibly doing websites in exchange for dance lessons.
to my beautiful friends in Dakar, i'm sorry to be leaving you. and sorry to be yet another person leaving. if i don't see you in Australia in the next year or two i guess we have a date at Les Ambassades around this time 2 years from now.
to my beautiful friends in San Fran and Sydney, see you soon.
( err )
it's been a while.
i'm still in senegal. still haven't finished all the websites i'm supposed to make. still haven't built the house in Toubab Dialaw, or gone to Mali, or Cap Vert.
but the chicken at Les Ambassade continues to be delicious. people are still unnaturally charming, goats are still cute. i have managed to learn a little dance and djembe - just enough to make we want to come back and do it right next time.
don't much know what to say except... I DO SO HAVE MONKEY FRIENDS! so there!
[+] Friday, February 08, 2002
( x-mas ) x-mas was a low key affair in a beautiful campement in St. Louis with Gaelle, Sylvain and Tricia. we ate, we drank, we spoke french, we wore funny hats, and we traisped around in the mini-desert (soooo beautiful, just like in a movie). oh, and tea with the village chief on the way home. lovely!
the blissmaster moment of the x-mas trip was walking into the iguana cafe, to find them playing playing my favorite kruder & dorfmeister track!! this in a country that plays exclusively youssou, bob marley, eminimen, and craig david!!! the DJ spun great stuff all night, and we danced till we couldn't dance no more.
( nye - or the great crab massacre of 2001 )
NYE back in St Louis, this time with Rivka & Biany. we were a tad suprised to discover our campement was accessible only by boat. normally it'd be fine, but it seemed like a potential hassle for NYE itself.
one of the camp guys told us it was really no problem for the 4x4 to drive along the sand track. so one night we picked him up in St. Louis, and headed over to the Langue de Barbarie to try our luck on the track - no, wait, make that the beach. totally dark, very foggy, Biany's never driven in 4x4 mode before, we're swerving all over the place and massacaring wave after wave of crabs (not to mention some close calls with fishermen). it was horrible. to this day the ghosts of billion crabs continue to mess with the insides of truck.
NYE featured a surreal 5 hour roman-themed dinner with some belgian wierdos. the frenchies tell us this sort of thing is standard on NYE. it was 3am by the time we finally got out of there. and even though i knew in my heart there's no way they'd let my DJ play on NYE i was disspointed to find them playing even crappier than normal music. we danced around a bit, had sweaty men try to rub up against us, then headed back to the river. the boat guy had waited up for us, we were glad. he took us back to bungalow land and we slept & slept.
[ btw, i didn't plan to go to St. Louis twice. i have developed a bad habit of saying yes to Gaelle even when i have no idea what she's asking. i thought she was inviting me to x-mas dinner, but it turned out to be a whole trip to St Louis. but ever since the time i accidentally agreed to do aqua-robics i've been a lot more careful about this sort of thing ]
[+] Sunday, November 18, 2001
a little visit to San Francisco
my little visit to San Francisco was delightful. it wasn't until my last few days in Dakar that i realised how exhausted i was from this crazy year. i fell apart in a pretty bad way. if i hadn't gotten out i'm sure you'd find me wandering the main drag of Dakar doing back-up vocals for the singing tissue salesman by now.
the main goals of the trip were to see Ally and my friends, eat yummy things, and buy stuff at stores with fixed prices. all of these activities proved successful. and on top of that i fixed my laptop, cleaned some of my crap out of Wynne's apartment, sold some stuff on craigslist. and in the interest of accurate reporting i should probably add that i also watched an average of 2.5 awful new blind date shows most evenings. (please don't ask, i don't even understand myself).
being in town for halloween was a good call. we went to some great parties. my costume wasn't really a costume, just my kung-fu suit and my new cat ears. but Wynne was spectacular as a "very tall Abraham Lincon". he made the costume himself, even down to the platform shoes that he made by nailing together planks of wood and sawing them into the shape of shoes. admittedly he almost broke his neck a few times, but it's a small price to pay for such an impressive costume.
i did pretty well on the musical front too. i caught StereoLab (thanks Antonio & Randy), one of my favorite local bands The Court and Spark, Andy's new band Sinombre (very nice!). but the musical highlight had to be the Joe Schmoe show at Sacred Grounds, and not just because i play with them (hehe). it was great to see the cafe full despite the fact we'd kept it pretty quiet. i got to hear all my favorite oldies like Checkout Line, How Far, Stinky Ball of Cheese and Potscrubber Girl, as well as some fabulous new things like Other Girl, and the zen masterpiece My Car. it was just so much fun. too much fun maybe, because now i want to move back and just play with the Schmoes.
F.A.Q. - November 2001
how's Ally?
the big question on on everyone's lips of course is "how's Ally?". well she's pretty traumatised. she was so upset that she puked the night i arrived. towards then end she was all love and kitten kisses. but apparently it didn't take her long to work out i'd left again. her only comment was in the form of performance art - one meticulously shredded roll of toilet paper.
what are you doing?
i'm back in Dakar to work on some sites for Youssou. it's nice here, it's cheap, and i have a job. seems like a pretty good deal. at the moment i'm looking for a nice apartment. and if all goes well i'll have a bunch of friends in town (Rivka, Ceinwen, Hank and Gilles) for New Years Eve.
when will you be back?
i was thinking i'd be back in San Francisco around March next year, but it looks like Youssou has more work for me than i was expecting. so it might be more like April/May. i want to chill in San Fran for a month or two, and then i'll be heading to Sydney to take on an internship in my mother's garden. so far i only know how to chase chickens, but i'm a fast learner. i'm sure i'll be a composting, green-thumbed maniac in no time.
[+] Tuesday, August 14, 2001
N'Goundiane JokoClub Launch Checklist:
[x] 1 fancy illuminated Joko sign
[x] 1 senegalese mega-star and entourage
[x] 1 server
[x] 1 router
[ ] 1 network connection
[x] 2 webcams
[x] 40 journalists
[x] 10 PCs
[x] 10 brightly colored custom-made Joko tables
[x] 100,000 excited Senegalese who want their Joko now so they can become internet millionaires from their kitchens.
Oh well. Looks like everyone had a good time regardless.
[+] Wednesday, August 08, 2001
i'd like to take a moment to introduce you to Ibrahima Ba, Dakar's most talented
singing kleenex salesman.
we were fortunate enough to catch one of Ibrahima's impromptu perfomances in a greasy take-out joint during one of our first weeks in town. back then everything we were seeing was freaky and it was hard to distinguish reality from larium induced hallucinations, so I may never have mentioned it to anyone.
not only did Sentoo's article reminded me about him, they also provided some recordings for your listening pleasure: Ya se got nya dazari (Tchaïkovski), J'ai perdu mon heureux disque (Gluck), L'invocation de Faust (Gounod), Le Messie (Haendel).
