Gerewol

Editor’s Note: Ms. Gallagher was set to write a post today, as she has recently returned from the famous Gerewol festival (what, you don’t know about it?). She wanted to talk all about it, but only got as far as posting the pictures. The adventure, which she undertook with four fellow PCVs and a Nigerien “guide” (who turned out to be not so much a guide as a paid-friend-of-a-friend) included four days during which there was no bathing due to lack of water, lots of dancing men in makeup, no silverware save a single fork, one two-person tent that filled with sand during a ten-hour dust storm, gorgeous, haunting chanting and drums at night, biting flying ants, grand grand boubous, one scorpion the not-guide adroitly squashed, bouts of embarassment and fury (of both the acute and the slow-burn variety), amazement, lots of turbans and makeup, an enormous and very public “toilet,” Lulu’s authentic pouf hairdo and resulting suitors, joy, a ride in the back of a pickup with the stinkiest armpit in Niger (causing not one but two pukes-in-the-mouth, we had to say it, sorry, it was really gross), descent into hilarity, 3litersH2O/6people/12 hrs bush taxi = thirsty, and half a dozen thoughts that “ahh, THIS is what I expected Africa to be like.”
So, maybe tomorrow.