Weekend Round-Up

I spent most of my last actual weekend in Dakar engaging in the Senegalese national past-time: waiting. The archbishop of Dakar was ordained as a cardinal on November 27 and was coming to celebrate Sunday mass in a stadium. My maid used a portion of her meager salary to purchase tickets for the two of us to go to the Welcome ceremonies on Friday, while Maman took care of the Sunday arrangements. Friday afternoon, we arrived at the stadium at 3:30 pm. The cardinal was supposed to arrive at 5:30 pm, but did not actually enter the stadium until 8:22 pm. The ceremonies took three hours: dancers, middle school pom-pom girls, and a high school interpretive dance regarding Christian Africa. Yes, readers, I sat in the stadium for 8. Freaking. Hours!!! Saturday, I finished my history paper and celebrated by going "en ville" with Jen to buy gifts at Sandaga. After dinner and a little studying, I went out with my friends to a club that holds a "Once a Month" Party. Sunday morning, I awoke after too few hours of sleep at 7:15 am to get ready to go to 10:00 am Mass. This time, the cardinal arrived at 10:30 am and the service began at 11:00 am. Considering how many people were there, it was a surprisingly efficient affair: the service was done by 1:00 pm and Communion took 20 minutes! They had deputized most of the local priests and things went smoothly. I went home, passed out, ate wonderful yassa poulet (chicken with a delicious onion sauce over rice), passed out again, and finally woke up at 6:15 to call my family and be productive again. Though I spent a total of 13 hours in a stadium, it was still a wonderful weekend. One of the side effects of having to wait so long is that I had to be very productive when I wasn't. Now if I can survive the rest of my two finals week and a trip this weekend to Fatick to do a survey on malnutrition!