11th to 21st of January, 2018.
First of all, the apartment it is not where he said on CS. He tells me had moved just a few months before. People have not respect for CS and changing information.
The apartment has three bedrooms, one bathroom and a kitchen. I am already thinking I would have to sleep on the floor because in his bedroom there is just one double bed. The other bedrooms are one for his brother, Michael, and another for a guy who is working in the new airport and Henry rents for him. Luckily, Henry says the bed is just for me because he would sleep on the floor. According to him, his guests always would have a separated bedroom but he has just rented the other one for the guy and he really thought I needed help so that is why he decided to host me anyway.
Of course I am a little uncomfortable with the situation: is not nice when the owner of the house has to sleep on the floor for you to be able sleep on the bed.
Henry go out to buy some beers and ask me if I am hungry. I am starving! He calls his brother and ask him to buy a Fatai: the same thing I ate with Elhadj in the night we were at his parents home. By the way, this place here is really near to the Lake Rose.
It takes a little while to Michael arrive with our food. They have a shoes business and they open around noon to closed after midnight. It sounds crazy but is what most of people in this kind of business do it here. When I call “business”, I want to say put a lot of shoes on the sidewalk and wait to sell. It is a open sky showcase.
We talk about some stuff. Even back on the car we were already talking about my different way of seeing everything. The same thing I tell everybody: how I do not want to get married or have relationships, to have kids, my travel plans…
What I remember about my first impressions of him it is someone who try to look better at the eyes of society. Better than he really is. Even his bedroom represented this: so well decorated and clean, completely in an opposite way of the kitchen or the bathroom, which are not dirty but very simple places.
I do not remember exactly what we do the next day but at night he want to bring me to some bars he used to go when he lived in Keur Massar. The information that’s kept still in his CS profile. Of course I would prefer to stay at home but to make him a little happy I decide to go.
In the first bar, the only other women are the waitresses. It is a local bar. He spend a lot of money in a big bottle of local beer. I did not ask. And I even let him take some of mine because (and I would realize that was a very common thing in Henry) he let very clear how much he had paid for it.
While we are there, he tells me that in the next bar everybody knows him. Because he has a lot of friends, of course. And also, how he used to go sometimes in there and pay some beers for everybody in the bar. Which makes him go around there sometimes and just order one beer and have a lot more because people would always pay beers to him. He is loved by everybody. But no.
In the so called bar, he says ‘hello’ to a few people. Four guys in total I guess. It is a big place so it really means nothing. Still, he keeps saying “You see?”. I tell him I do not want anything so he just order a small beer. We sit beside this fancy old guy, who also speaks English. They talk a little bit; Henry is a lot inconvenient (as usual), trying to convinced me (I still do not know why) that the guy is rich; there is some drunk guy doing stupidity (as usual); and we are invited, for the fancy old guy, to go to a wedding next day. To be honest, I am curious about the wedding but my main reason to want to go it is because I think there might be cake and sweets. We leave the bar not so late because we need to take a bus. At that time, Henry keep paying my bus tickets.
Even back on the bar, I realize that Henry is acting different. I do not know if is just because he is in front of some friends or even if it is the small quantity of beer he drank. So, when we get back home and he start asking about my tattoos I knew something not good was to came. I am already in the bed, completely covered with my sleep bag and the asshole is sitting in the chair beside me when he ask: “Lei, can I ask you something?” I said – of course. “Can we have some fun tonight?”. What do you mean about ‘fun’? “You know, I mean sex”. I laugh. I swear that my first reaction is laughing. He could not be serious. And I ask him that before to answer that it is completely out of question. He try to explain that are some women who get shy and do not talk about when they really want something, or that another CS, who also did not say anything but when he asked she said it was OK (what made me really think about how much they really wanted or if they were just afraid to say no, because Henry can be such a jerk sometimes that I cannot imagined someone getting attracted by him). For me it is repulsive. It is my second night with him: he could not wait? Wait a little more until realize I definitely would not demonstrate a tiny single sign, insinuation that I was into him? How he could not get me at all after everything I already had told him? It would be obvious for anyone that I am definitely not a ordinary kind of woman who sleep with any stranger they just meet. He does not convince me of his “good” intentions at all. And if is not because of guys like Ahmed, Oussama or Moulay I would say some really bad things about CS in my profile.
The wedding would be in the morning and the reception in the afternoon. We should go just to the reception. I confess I do not wake up in the mood to go but Henry insists. My clothes are the next topic: I have one dress, not a fancy one, but do not have shoes. After laugh a lot but not taking any solution (even selling a lot of shoes and having a lot at home, which I could just take one, for one day and then give it back) he says it is OK going with my All Star. I did not give a shit since the beginning but anyway.
Henry is not a smart guy. He pretend all the time that he is but actually is the opposite: he is a very ignorant person. If he was a humble person, I would never say something like that but because he is always trying to look better than everybody else, I have to say the whole truth. So, when he calls the man who invited us and asks for the information about the place, I knew he would do some shit. We take a bus to Keur Massar and if he had asked for the right information, the only thing we had to do it was keep in that bus a lot further, and we would get in the place. But because he is not really clever, we get out in Keur Massar and when he calls the guy again, he is convinced that we should take a taxi. The taxi coast him (yes, him because I refuse to pay for somebody’s else stupidity) two thousand Franc. And when we get there, he still got lost, calling the guy and passing the phone to the taxi driver (for our luck a nice man) instead of talking to the guy himself.
The marriage is… almost not worth it. There are a lot of people and they have to divide them in two different places: a fancy one, well decorated, where probably those ones who came since the church are, and just some tables outside with regular chairs for the other ones. Apparently it is something common here for guests from the marriage invite some friends and at the end there is a lot more people than supposed to be. It is our case.
The food is OK: white rice with fried onions, chicken, Chebujen, a sort of salad and red meat. Unfortunately I just eat a bit of Chebujen. The salad does not come and I am not feeling that comfortable to ask for anything else. The drinks are other story: Coke and Sukita freely, some wine, local drinks like Bissam and a white wine, which is natural made from the Palm trees. We even get some cold beers! It is a kind of “surprise” to the guests. We could have had some more but the workers at the party decide to take some for them.
But what about the cake and the sweets? I see some workers giving some sweets, simple ones, for a few people. So when I come back from the bathroom, I go to the fancy saloon to check. I do not see the sweets but I see cake! We wait a little more and when I realize they are serving the cake just inside, I walk in and ask for a piece. It is really small but at least I had some. If it worth the whole thing? Probably not. I was expecting eat sweets until could not more like we used to do back in Brazil. So we decide not even wait for the evening food and drinks and leave around six. The traffic is impossible and we get back home really late.
I forgot to say but, at this point, we are already eating rice with a sauce that Henry prepared for the third time. The problem it was he put meat on the sauce and after two days the taste of the meat it is almost impossible for me. So after eating that again on Saturday night I decide that next day I would just fry some onions and put in my rice.
Henry asks me if I want to go to the church Sunday morning. At this point, I am divided between going to check how it is or not going. I decided to go.
Again, the clothes subject comes along when Henry tells me they cannot simply wear anything to go to the church. Bullshit in my opinion, of course.
I wear my regular pants and the plaid shirt Ndéye Fatou gave to me.
Luckily, there are just a few people in there. It is nothing different from other churches. The minister reads some parts of the bible and prays. The most different things are: a woman translator, she is trying to understand what the minister is saying in English (if that was English) to translate to French; and Henry trying to correct the minister all the time.
Back at home, I fry the onions under the disapproving eyes of Henry. At night I eat another Fatai.
Monday morning we plan going for my backpack. It is far away from his place and I pay for both me and Henry. It’s a second hand market, of course, and I find a few different options for big backpacks. In the end, I am between a REI one, which is actually more a sack than a backpack but at least I know the brand; and another one with a few pockets, which looks quite old and, because I do not have a rain cover anymore, it would be more vulnerable at the airport. I do not know how I would fell if I had chosen the REI one but I pick the one with pockets and sometimes I regret.
*** Update on 2024: I absolutely adore this backpack now! It was the best decision I could’ve ever made! To this day, it still works just fine, is strong and very reliable. I was right, it is quite old, made in 1995, but is an amazing backpack! The brand is Hiking trails.
There is no Supermarket around here or in any of those places we go by bus. I am really pissed off because I want to buy some yogurt and maybe coffee and milk, some biscuits too. I think because of that, the shops around here do not charge too much more in their products. It is just hard for me because at least in the Supermarket I can check all the prices and always buy the cheapest one without any problem or simply not buy. But in the shops you have to ask the prices of everything and when you decide to leave without buying, people look like not understanding you at all.
That night, going back home, me and Henry start a conversation about human beings being an animal. I already met a lot of people who do not know that and even get offended when I tell them that. There are of course a lot of reasons why people would agree / disagree with this. Some people simply hadn’t studied this topic as children, or don’t remember, or just don’t believe due to their religious principles. What I don’t understand is: even if we were created by a god, how shall we classify ourselves them?
Henry let his beliefs to guide him when it comes to his “opinion”. And he also believes that knowledge is dangerous, and can make people go crazy, as a Mathematician guy he keeps bringing up. So it is a very difficult conversation.
The next few days are also very difficult, with Henry’s attitude just worsening everyday.
We go to the beach Friday morning. In the beginning, he tells me it would cost us one hundred Francs to go there. At the moment, I do not realize I suppose to pay for him too. At the bus, when I have to pay three hundred Francs for both of us, I start to get piss off. When we leave that bus to take another one, I am really upset because in the end, the trip to the beach would cost me one thousand Francs. Just for going to the beach? No way. I am just thinking in how much food I could’ve bought with that money. I wish I have had the choice, if I knew the correct amount, and that I would have to pay for both of us, of course I would rather to go. I mean, I understand paying for him coming over with me to buy my backpack but going to the beach is something he also would “enjoy”.
He notices I am pissed off, so when we get to the beach he gives me a ridiculous speech, which is basically throwing in my face how much he has spent with me since I arrived. Everything that I had presumed about him it is right. I even discover that he use to have another CS accountant but for some reason he deleted. The first reason that comes to my mind it is because he had had some really bad reference and decided to delete.
We walk on the beach and I decide to take a bath to try to wash away the bad feelings of him. The water is pretty cold and the weather, with a weak shiny sun, it is windy. The waves here in Senegal are so big and strong that to someone who do not know how to swimming (yet!) it would be too danger, so I just play around a bit.
Back to the beach, Henry shows me some photos he took of me. On bikinis. I start to think that would not be a good thing. Again, I am right.
At home, after taking a shower, we eat good Nigerian soup that Michael cooked. It is basically a sauce with fresh toasted peanuts, onion, palm oil, spices and herbs, and in case you eat meat, meat or fish. To eat with it, you use some floor, a mixed of Rice and Corn grain, put in hot water until turning into a kind of bread uncooked. But of course in this case, the water cooks que flours. You use your hands to make some small bolls, which you dive on the sauce and eat. It is really different and I like because of that. It tastes great too!
At night, Henry starts to take some photos of him, for no reason, and ask me to take some for him. Then ask me to take some with him. It is when I see my pictures from the beach. A lot of them and all just of me on bikinis. A long journey of asking him to delete all the photos started. He “does not understand” why I do not like to have photos like that and then why he could not keep them. What? Yes, what a prat! He even dare to say it is his camera! Laugh. I say it is my body and he took the photos without asking my permission. I feel really uncomfortable with someone, who I barely know, having some pictures of me on bikinis, when even I do not have. After some long minutes, he finally delete the pictures.
Saturday, Michal’s daughter, B., comes to stay for the weekend. She is seven and is really beautiful and full of energy. We have some fun together and she seems happy to spend some time with me. But what surprised me the most Henry’s behaviour with her. He is so rude and mean, saying he would beat her all the time. I mean, it is not a surprise coming from him, but she is his nephew! And she is just seven. Later, when I ask him why he did that, he gave me the excuse that she is a bad girl and deserve some tough conduct.
After printing my bordering pass and the booking reservation to Kampala, I finish packing. The backpack is fine and actually still have a lot of space. I even could put my mattress inside! But I still really miss a rain cover. Maybe in the future I could by some kind of cover. Now I am just concerned about the airport. Should I cover all the bag in those plastics machines? Should I trust that nobody will try to steal a very old backpack from someone probably really poor? In the end, tomorrow I will decide based in the price of the packing thing.
The guy who is renting the bedroom from Michael is working in the airport as I mentioned before. When we ask him if he works on Sundays he says ‘no’ but offeres to drive me there anyway. Henry said he will come with me.
I will cook some potatoes with green beans for lunch, bring a sandwich for Monday morning and some delicious chocolate with coconut biscuits as treats on the flight. We leave at 10 a.m.
10 Years Around the World 