This is a video taken at a friends house in Senegal on my first day in Senegal. I have a good friend in America, my first year I went to Africa I went alone not knowing anyone there. So my friend linked me up with his family in Senegal. After arriving in Gambia I started to make my own movements and make my own friends un-related to people in America. Idiboy for example, is a friend I met during my trip in 07 in this way.

So on my first day in Senegal, I told Idiboy I'd like to visit my friends from the last year, so this is us going over to their house to visit all of them. Once there we all ate together around one big, huge plate of rice.
















There is a salon business there, and many people come in and out to visit throughout the day. I remember my first year I loved to just sit outside, listen to music and watch all the people go buy. Because the city is really on the move, you see life in abundance. So much activity and interactions amongst people. In America you see movement without interactions; like hundreds of people passing eachother and not saying a word.. in Africa all is intermingled.





This is a picture of my friend Idiboy (and below is a video) at our hotel in Senegal on the day I arrived, Nov. 2nd, 2008.
















I got off the plane just after midnight. I was nervous because I learned from my last trip that they like to rush the tourists coming out of the airport. They want to offer their taxi to you, or offer to let you use their phone, anything they can do to earn a little money off a tourist. Most of them are speaking in French so I can not understand them, and they rush you all at once which of course makes a person feel nervous.

My friend was traveling all the way from Gambia to Senegal so I was worried he may not be there on time. He had called me while I was still in America and let me know he had reached Senegal, that he was waiting for me, and gave me his new telephone number he would be using in Senegal. This put me somewhat at ease the night before leaving. But I was still overjoyed when I saw him picking in calling my name before I had even fully exited the airport.

We rode to our hotel, and discussed our e-mails we had sent to each other throughout the year. I asked him if he had any problems with e-mailing me, he explained sometimes the weather was too rainy for him to respond back to me, or that he'd travel all the way to an internet shop and the computers would be down for one reason or another. He thanked me though for keeping up the communications while I was away, and likewise I thanked him.

He was with his cousin Dawda who was a Senegalese. It was my first time meeting him. On this day Dawda was quiet and reserved, but later he would become very talkative and outgoing. My friend Idiboy was very dissapointed I had not brung the pictures from my last trip. I told him I e-mailed them to him, but he explained that he needed the actual pictures so he could make a photo album. He was quite dissapointed but I tried to comfort him by telling him maybe we could print them off at a photo shop, and showed him some of the gifts I had brought for him. I went shopping a couple weeks before and picked up some clothes he told me he wanted me to buy for him in America. It was a pair of basketball shoes, and a couple pairs of clothes.

This video shows a glimpse of our hotel. I was so excited to be in Africa that I could not sleep at all that night. I wanted to go out for a walk, so as soon as the sun had risen slightly, I talked Idiboy into going out with me for breakfast and walking around the beach to do some sight-seeing.