WAIST/ SB OH-'11!!

The West African Invitational Softball Tournament (WAIST) is an annul event held in Dakar, Senegal. Peace Corps Volunteers from all over West Africa travel to Dakar, the largest and most developed city in West Africa, to play softball and party for 5 days. It’s kind of like a spring break for adults who have been living isolated from people like them for months and months and then thrown into a crowd of 250 other volunteers and ex-pats. Then shove ten drink tickets into their hands per night and I’m sure you can imagine the shenanigans that go on.

The day we left we woke up at 5:00 am to catch the first ferry across the river. We successfully got across after the ferry and found the bus that we had rented to take us there….but one very important thing was missing…the driver. Turns out he was on the next ferry, so we sat there in the dirty, crowded Barra car-park for two hours listening to the Wolof speaking volunteers yell at him on the phone and bitching about how nice it would have been to sleep until the sun came up. He FINALLY showed up and after thirty minutes of maneuvering the bus around gellys in the carpark we were off! We reached the Gambia-Senegal border thirty minutes later (what a gigantic country we live it) and girls selling peanuts and oranges immediately bumrushed our bus and began climbing in. We eventually got them off, somehow managing to greatly offend them. As we were sitting there on the bus waiting for the customs officers to finish their tea and start looking at our passports, we were having a stare-off with the girls. They started yelling insults in Wolof at us and the Wolof volunteers started yelling obscene things back. I began to get nervous when one of the girls took her orange peeling mini-machete and slid it across her throat in a throat-slitting gesture and then pointed at us. Apparently the “smiling coast” nickname for Gambia doesn’t apply to the border.

We started driving into Senegal and very soon the road got worse, and worse, and worse, and then unimaginably worse. We were going so slow that I could have easily out-walked the bus. The road had 1 foot deep pits all over it, among other things, and we had 7 hours to go on this mess…trying not to hit our heads on the ceiling the whole way. I’ve heard that Senegal keeps this certain road this way for political reasons but COME ON!!! At that rate, Gambians could walk into Senegal faster. Anyway, after 16 hours of travel total, which would have been the equivalent of a 3 hour trip on a highway in America, we were there. It was 9pm and we were exhausted. We checked into the hostel and passed out.

The next day we decided to see Dakar. No games were scheduled for the day and registration wasn’t until 6 so we set off to see the city. First of all, I would like to say how surprisingly city-like Dakar actually was. After being in a country that has almost no buildings taller than two stories, it was overwhelming to see skyscrapers, paved roads, restaurants, streetlights, and so on. But just when I would begin to forget I was still in West Africa my cab would get stuck behind a donkey-cart.

I was with seven other volunteers and the first thing we decided to go see was the mall. Yes, Dakar has a mall. We got a cab there, walked in and just stood there staring for five minutes. I could hear murmurs from my friends; “It’s so shiny”, “look at all of the white people”, “what are those moving stairs?” and “I’m scared, lets go home.” After we got over the initial shock and hesitantly stepped onto the escalator, we went crazy. We ran into the Apple store and got to play with the new iPad, which none of us had gotten to see yet. We went into a pet store where I found a real gigantic monster bunny that has given me nightmares ever since. There was a candy store, and a supermarket with rows and rows of ice-cream. My strategy for my time at the mall was to walk as slowly as possible so that I wouldn’t run into one of the many overly clean glass walls.

After the mall we walked down the Corniche to the statue. Apparently during the day the Corniche is perfectly safe, overlooking the extraordinarily creative pickpockets that roam it. I hear that one of their tactics involves tugging at your pant leg to distract you while the other pickpocket takes your things. I practiced this on unsuspecting friends the throughout the day. They didn’t find it as funny as my accomplice and I did. We were also told not to step foot on the Corniche after the sun went down if we wanted to avoid being stabbed. But aside from that, the road was absolutely beautiful. Cliffs, beaches, gigantic elaborate mosques, palm trees, surfers, and sidewalks the whole way down. During the walk Casey decided that since some of Senegal is above us that it is kindof like Canada, and the Casamance below us is like Mexico so the rest of the trip she called Senegal Canagal, and the Casamance Caxico and only spoke in a Canadian accent, yelling “round-abut!!” whenever she saw a round-about on the road. I will say that the statue was pretty impressive, but so wrong in every way. I was surprised how bare the woman’s legs were, and that the man was holding the baby. Anyone who has even spent one week in West Africa would realize how culturally inappropriate it is. I won’t go on a rant about it, but I totally agree with the Senegalese people on that statue.

After we left the statue we went to what ended up being my favorite part of the trip. Trampolines on the beach…what a brilliant idea. We paid 500 cfa (about 1 dollar) to jump on extra bouncy trampolines for fifteen minutes. A friend who got there a couple minutes after we had started jumping said that it was hilarious to see 5 grown people (us) jumping across from 5 ten year olds, it being obvious that we were having much more fun.

We then went to the American club which was open to us during WAIST, and to all Senegalese volunteers all of the time (those lucky bastards) which had a gigantic clean swimming pool, a bar, a grill, hot showers, it was amazing. We spent a lot of out time there in-between games.

That night we went to a bar downtown for PC Senegal’s open-mike night. It turned out to be one gigantic Senegal inside-joke and no fun for us. I heard that Kelsey and Josh snuck on stage and sang The Gambia national anthem so at least we got to represent a little bit. After the first thirty minutes all of the volunteers from Mali, Gambia, and Cape Verde became bored with the jokes we didn’t understand and ended up outside drinking Gazelles. Gazelle is the Senegalese equivalent to Jewlbrew, but a hundred times better.

The softball games started the next day. Each country had an A team and a B team. A was somewhat competitive and had to remain sober and follow the rules. I avoided being on this team like the plague, and thank God they didn’t want me. I ended up on the sloppy B team. It’s tradition for teams to dress up in costume for their games so throughout the tournament we played teams dressed like German boys in lederhosen and drinking beer out of glass mugs on the field, cows with gigantic udders, and Space Corps. We were the bumster-zombies so before the tournament began we walked down the street to practice our Thriller dance in private to surprise the other teams. We did the Thriller zombie dance, or as much of it as we knew collectively with bumster moves thrown in, like the thrusting push-ups and squat-thrusts. What we didn’t realize was that we were on the edge of a college campus and people inside the classrooms were watching the whole time. Eh, at least they got a good show. And by the way, our performance before every game was a hit. The other teams loved it, especially the drunk ones. Our pep-talk from our team manager went like this “no matter what happens, if you see a ball coming your way, just cover your face, I don’t want any of you getting knocked out in this game” and that’s how good we were. After the second day of playing we gave up and made an agreement with the other teams that kickball was more fun, so that’s what we did. Watching the softball, and even playing, was super fun, even for an anti-sports fan like myself…though, I think the beer helped.

Every night there was a different party at a different location sponsored by a different organization. The first night it was put on by the Marines at their compound. There was a date auction for charity that night. We auctioned off Steve-o and ended up buying him back for 30,000 cfa. I think the mustache he grew especially for this event increased his worth by a good 20,000 cfa. The Marine house reminded me of every party I hated in college, but turned out to be a lot of fun. I loved the DJ’s name: DJ Sex. Creative right? The next night was a party at Club Oceanic. It was right on the ocean with a great view and was hosted by Peace Corps Senegal. This party was absolutely ridiculous. George had made me promise before I left that at some point I would stand on a bar and yell “Spring Break Oh- Eleven!!” at the top of my lungs and George, let me tell you, it didn’t happen standing on a bar, I’m far too classy for that…but does a wall count?? I will not go into the messy details of that evening, I’ll save those stories for when you’re older, but I will say that I’m surprised that we all turned up to the games the next day in one piece…more or less.

The next day B team was out of the tournament so we hung out at the pool all day, trying to move as little as possible. At some point we went to Nice Cream downtown to get ice cream. By this point I had developed a cold that I’m sure was exacerbated by the fact that I had been drinking and not sleeping for four days straight. So I was pretty sad that I was actually able to eat real ice cream for the first time in 8 months, but not able to taste it. I got the “Obama” flavor, chocolate with chocolate cookies, and giggled the whole time I was eating it.

That night, the last night, there was a party at the American Club. We had all ran out of money due to a conversion rate that turned out to definitely not be in our favor, so we had to resort back to the gin packets that someone was smart enough to smuggle in from Gambia. We danced the night away pretending that we wouldn’t have to wake up in three hours for that hellish ride back home, but alas 5:30 am came early and once again we found ourselves bouncing our way back to The Gambia. This was perhaps the worst travel day I’ve ever experienced in all my years. Not only was I sick, but also hungover and exceptionally sleep deprived…and the sun was really really damn hot that day. But coming back only took ten hours. I got home and threw my road gifts at my family, told them my body was not well, locked myself in my house, and slept for 14 hours straight without waking up once. Dakar, you almost killed me, but you were totally worth it. See you again soon, I’m sure.