Keur Massar, the monastery with no monks

This Sunday we were planning on taking a trip to Keur Moussa, the monastery were they are known for great goat cheese and gregorian chants. All the guidebooks say to take bus 17 from Dakar to Rufisque, where you have to switch busses. Once on the second bus tell the driver where you're going and he will drop you off at a signpost about 1.5 kilometers away from the monastery. Then to get back, you have to ask around and find a 'taxi clandestine' that will take you to Rufisque were you can catch a bus back to Dakar. When Grace was asking her host brother where one would find 'Bus 17' we were relieved to hear there's a different bus that can take you straight to the monastery. It only cost about a dollar a piece round trip and takes about an hour.  When I told my mom about our plans I was curious as to why she was so surprised that we would be back in time for our tour of the suburbs in the afternoon...

So Sunday morning a little after 8 we headed to the bus stop and make our way to what we thought was Keur Moussa. I know the population is about 95% Mulsim but I still found in odd that nobody we asked seemed to know what we were talking about when we asked about the monastery. Though somebody was kind enough to point out the local Church. After attending Mass-almost 2 hours long with no gregorian chant-it was pretty obvious we weren't in the right place. Happy to have experienced a Senegalese Mass but a little disappointed we didn't find the monastery we boarded our bus and headed back to Dakar.

When I got home my family was curious about our trip and what we were able to do in such a short period of time. One of my uncles, who also happens to be the professor who was taking us on a tour of the suburbs later that day, seemed incredulous that we made it there but couldn't find the monastery.  I told him nobody seemed to know anything about a monastery and the Church we found had no monks. Then he asked how we got there, a taxi? I proudly said nope, we took a bus! He gave me a funny looked, asked my mom something in wolof, then burst out in laughter. After about a minute he explained, 'There's no bus that goes to Keur Moussa, I'm pretty sure you guys were in Keur Massar." So our exciting first trip outside Dakar was actually just a long bus ride to one of Dakar's suburbs, which happened to be included in our tour that afternoon.

What might seem like a wasted morning however, was quite enlightening. I've probably already written more than you want to read at one time and I haven't even mentioned our afternoon tour so I'm just going to give you a short list of the more shocking experiences of our bus ride.

• Detours in Senegal=drive into oncoming traffic
• Busses have no set capacity
• Seeing a LIVE sheep be stuffed in the trunk of a taxi

After our morning of navigating the public transit system it was a relief to have a taxi with air conditioning for our tour of the suburbs. I won't go into too much detail about the different areas we visited, but two in particular are worth noting.  The first is a large green space located east of the city, in which people are banned from building. From a distance it looks like a beautiful park with a small lake, what my prof calls 'The Central Park of Senegal.' Upon closer look, there are piles of trash along the bumpy dirt road that runs through the space and small shacks for the people who farm in the area. Apparently it is only closed to formal construction.

The second thing I wanted to mention is the city's landfill where all of Dakar's trash is dumped. Located just outside one of the suburbs, you can see pillars of smoke from the burning trash for blocks. Lauren and I were trying to take photos from the car so our professor asked to driver to stop. Then he said, well why don't we just go in. Yes, why not drive through all of Dakar's trash.

As we drove through the landfill we started to see little shacks constructed literally in the trash. My professor explained that the people living in the trash work in the landfill. These people sort through the trash pulling out plastic bottles, aluminum cans, fabric, and other scrap metals that they can resell. I guess this is Senegal's form of recycling. Needless to say it was disturbing to see people living among trash not to mention the pollution created by burning their trash.

All in all it was an informative but exhausting day and I was happy to spend the night hanging with my family.

Sorry for the long post, but tomorrow we leave for Saint Louis for two weeks so I probably wont have any updates for a while.