Livin' it up.

We love our apartment here in Dakar. There's just so much SPACE. After living in Sevilla, Spain, and Berkeley, CA, we've gotten used to constricted movements: stand up from couch, walk two steps to kitchen, open fridge, turn 90 degrees to your left, turn on two-burner stove.  But here, you could do cartwheels and jumping jacks!

Our courtyard: our pathetic little tree, door to the kitchen, and on the right a space for washing clothes

And, a first for us - we've got a kitchen table AND a desk, meaning Jonathan won't be working in the living room and we won't be eating hunched over a coffee table (presumably, although we've yet to conform to this novel idea, partly because there's been nothing worthy of sitting to eat, as I've yet to find pots, pans, or silverware. We've been using Jonathan's Leatherman pocket knife to open tuna cans and cut tomatoes, and we go to a little boutique every morning to get a hard-boiled-egg sandwich.)

We purchased most of our furniture from a journalist who moved to Afghanistan, and a little bit from another journalist who moved to Sierra Leone.  We were still in need of somewhere to put clothing, though, and so Naomi and Ricci took us to a man who makes shelves and armoirs on the side of the road.  There we described what we wanted based on the one he was displaying and some baskets down the street.

Our socks and underwear baskets and dirty laundry basket:

We paid half then, and the rest when we picked it up Saturday. I explained where we lived, but the horse-cart driver wasn't too sure, so I hopped on what little space was left on the cart, and off we went, me directing the way, Jonathan running to the bank to get money to pay the horse cart driver. Everyone stared at me, some in disbelief, others in sheer joy, shouting "Africa woman! Senegal woman!" I even got a "woo-hoo!" of approval from a 50-ish French guy driving past on his scooter.  Me riding on the horsecart seemed to invigorate the neighborhood. I'll have to do it more often I guess. Or perhaps it was just my 15 minutes of fame.

We also needed a fridge, so Theo (as in Theo and Naomi, the people that found our apartment, moved all of our furniture from its previous home, and hooked up our internet and electricity before we got here, ) took us to Grand Yoff, the neighborhood you go to if you need a refrigerator. After hours of walking, negotiating, and finding a bank, we finally found one:

SEE MORE PICTURES HERE.