11.05.04 - 16:46

so here i am in selibaby! the jazz festival in saint-louis was bien passé. the music was fantastic - even though it was jazz, which i confess has never lit my bunsen burner. i went to two nights of performances. they featured: the official saint-louis jazz band (consisting solely of white european guys), a great afrojazz group with members from sierra leone, belgium, and togo, a funky swiss band, and another White Guy band featuring an incredible scat singer. are you noticing the large amounts of toubabs, though? (toubab = white western type) ironic, given the birth/history of jazz and the venue.

we also saw a great senegalese band for free. brilliant. it's very fast, caffeine-inspired music. the beat is almost impossible to count; you have to feel it instead. annika and i danced with some street children, darting through the crowd to lose them when we had had enough.

saint-louis does, indeed, remind me of new orleans (not that i've ever been there; i just mean that it seems like the new orleans that Anne Rice depicts. yes, i've been reading A LOT.) it has the same gracefully decaying antique architecture, the same aura of devil-may-care euphoria (some women wear TANK TOPS. and they don't even cover their heads!) there are a myriad hole-in-the-wall bars and restaurants. during the fest, many of their walls pounded with live music.

i also swam in the ocean (o! water!) and ate pastries (like manna from heaven; i gorged myself.)

this was saint-louis.

now, after a long senegalese taxi brousse ride (they only allow as many people into the car as there are seats. o, luxurious...) i am in selibaby, the capital of the guidimaka, visiting jess 'n' scott and brandon (whom you may remember from a much earlier entry he wrote on this site about selibaby.)

selibaby is hot, but there are electric fans and luscious mangoes, so i am well pleased. i plan to go home tomorrow, though part of me wonders, what's the point? the people i need to work with in kankossa are out of town and the current temperatures make everyone sick and sluggish.

me too, if you can tell from my disjointed phrasing in this entry. and so i'll leave you all...

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