5th to 11th of January, 2018.
After I take a shower, me and Ndéye Fatou go to the market. We take a bus and she pays. Just later I would realize how near the market is and we could easily go by foot. But also that is one thing about Senegalese people: most of them do not walk at all. They take the buses even to real short distances and to them is really OK. Ndéye Fatou for example, she could easily walk from her work to her home, just over 3 quilometres, less than one hour walking, and save over four thousand Francs. She refuses. To her it is completely out of question.
At the market, we buy some lettuce, tomatoes, onions, eggs, potatoes and she also buy some peanuts. I buy some fruits. We come back home also by bus.
That night, she cooks some potatoes with eggs, prepare a salad with the lettuce and the tomatoes, and fry a sauce with the onions. We eat all of it with bread. It is really good and I like the taste of Senegalese food. Unfortunately, I still suffer a lot with the the spiciness but I keep on eating it because I want to get used to.
Sleeping at night is quite difficult because of the mosquitoes. The windows have no glass so they came freely at night.
Saturday morning we go to the store. I bring my computer with me and since I could not talk with her boss (I still do not know why she does not pass the phone to me) I send him an mail attached the Decathlon one.
He does not answer me. Nobody answers me.
I eat a bread with Chocopan and drink a small black coffee in front of the store.
When we leave, we go to the market to have lunch and to Ndéye Fatou buy some sport clothes to her son, Babacar, a six years old boy who leaves with the grandparents.
We eat some traditional rice in sauce. It is really good.
Back home, it is weird for me how the girls stay the whole day, almost everyday, without doing anything. Just in their phones or computers. They do not even study that much.
That night, I cook some Spaghetti. I do not think they like that much but they keep saying it is good.
Oh, the most terrible night… It is almost sunrise when I wake up with the most excruciating pain in my stomach. I get up and go to the bathroom. When I come back, I can barely walk, so I start crawling until the mattress. The last thing is that I go blind, everything becomes just a big white panel. I start to sweat cold and the only word I could say it is ‘hospital’. Luckily, I had bought milk in the day before so I drink a little bit even before I went to the bathroom. Maybe because of that, five minutes later I am already better and could talk, see and walk. We decided just to go to the pharmacy. There, by stupidity, I do not check the medicine which guy gave to me, waiting to check just back home: It is Novalgina, a fricking pain killer. I decided not to take it and come back later to try to exchange.
In the afternoon, Ndéye Fatou and I go back to the pharmacy but the guy refused to exchange, claiming it was other group of people in the morning. Moron. We decide to walk to a nearby beach, and because I have my lentils which I cooked last night, I just buy some bread to make a sandwich. She would eat some fish at the beach.
Back at home, after a shower I sleep a little but when I wake up the pain is back. This time, when I go to the bathroom I discover I have diarrhea. When I finally stop going to the bathroom, we decide to go to the hospital, which is inside the University, so no buses. Before going there I take one of the pills I bring with me from Spain against diarrhea.
In the hospital, the doctor, a young man, does not say much, just prescribe me an anti-bacterial and I get an injection with some other medicine. Since the girls do not need to pay because they study in there, I am like a friend and also do not pay, what is a big relieve. I also start to take the medication for the pain.
The followed days are kind of normal with some big disappointments and a few relieves. Somebody stole my watch from the inside of the apartment; sometimes the girls do not look enjoying me being in there (with two exceptions: Djeina and Iaissatú, who are always giving me something to drink or to eat); I have to wake up several times at the night or morning because somebody needs pass through me or simply because I am hit accidentally; I get my money back from the shop, but Decathlon doesn’t make international deliveries, and in Senegal there isn’t a shop with the same model of my backpack, meaning, I cannot get it here. I must find another solution.
I decide to buy a simpler and cheaper backpack, somewhere in Senegal, and then maybe when coming back to Europe to buy a Quechua again.
One day I walk until the Renaissance Monument, this fantastic statue of a man holding his kid in one arm and the wife in another, on the top of a mountain. After that, I walk a little longer until a beach or a good place at the sea to have lunch (a tangerine, some bennas and a Biskrem package). I do not know what is more difficult to find in Senegal: someone who speaks English or someone who can give you information about the places.
On Thursday, almost a week after I arrived at the girls apartment, I find another host in Senegal. It is not in Dakar but nearby the airport from where I would leave the country.
The girls do not look very happy with me leaving, mainly Ndéye Fatou. But I just feel is time for me to leave.
At night, Henry comes to take me. He is with a car and I think it is a friend or something. In the end, it is a taxi and sharing the ride it coast me three thousand Francs to get to his home. A sign that I should have noticed…
10 Years Around the World 