Skylar on Isle de Madeleine

Skylar says:

Well, this is a pirate ship but I don't mean a real pirate ship.  This is a boat from Spain that came in to steal fish from Senegal, like the fish that are swimming around.  Plus, it was stealing the fish from the wildlife santuary which is on the island, Isl de Madeline.  It was a fishing boat and so the story goes that it crashed into the rocks.  They took away stuff on the boat worth keeping.

Basically, that's what's left of it and that's a pretty good photo of it.  It's rushing with age and as you can see, it's all tipped over.  And that's the best ship wreck I've ever seen, including, well, there was another fishing boat but it just looked like a hunk of steal sitting in the water.  I think you'll like this picture because it has the boat - so like the boat isn't all smashed up so it doesn't look like a big hunk of metal.  It looks like a boat.  So, thank you and I hope you enjoy your day!

Cormerants by Sylia

Sylvia Says:

Today I went to Isle de Madeleine and when I got near we saw a giant rock in the water and there was lots of cormorants on the big rock.  They were black and white and they were flying overhead and on the rock.

Our Walk to School

By Julienne

This year we've moved to a new home and are a little closer to school, enabling us to walk to school more often.  We took these photos on a walk to school over the weekend, so things are a little less bustling than on the weekdays, but here is the flavor of our commute!

Here are Syklar and Sylvia on our front porch ready to go!

Walking down our street

Continuing on our journey to school

This empty lot is for sale for... almost a million dollars!  It's been on the market for a long time...

In front of a place we go for pizza sometimes.  We think this is the pizza delivery car.

We usually buy our fruit from Mamadou.  He speaks English very well (although we do try to practice our French with him, too)- he taught himself from a book!

Here are S & S at Rue de Ouakam.  We cross this street to get to school.  It's a lot busier during the week days!

Paintings for sale on Rue de Ouakam

The local bus.  They are all this colorful!  On weekdays they are packed with people, including people hanging off the back.  Sometimes guys will run and jump for it to get on!

  These guys make furniture with used metal rods and strips of dried reeds woven together.

One of the furniture makers at work.

The local mosque.

This man repairs shoes.  He fixed my ripped-up Keen sandals for something around 40 cents.

This is a friend of a friend, Maguette.  We had gone to the beach with her, then bumped into her on our walk to school.

Street dogs lounging around.

We usually cut through this apartment complex.  It is mostly university professors and their families who live in this complex.  There are often big groups of kids playing in the courtyard.

At the school gate!

Ta da!  The school playground!

Class frog visits our house

by Skylar (with a bit of help from Dad.)

Well, I don't think you knew that I took Kelso home over the vacation.

Kelso is the little black tadpole that is about to turn into a frog.  Our 2nd grade class is learning about the life cycle of a frog so we took him to watch him grow.  My teacher, Ms. Shelly collected him from a little pool of water in the big park in Dakar called Hann Park.

I'm keeping it over the weekend and short vacation because my teacher can not leave it at school.  Kelso is a full grown froglet and is always going out of the water.  Ms. Shelly said we had to change the water when he was staying with us so he would stay clean.  My mom set out water for a couple days so the chlorine evaporates.

To change the water, first you scoop out the duck weed that is floating on top.  Then, you scoop Kelso out with the net and put him in one of the clean waters.  While we were changing his water, he jumped out of the net onto the floor.  And then, we grabbed him quickly and dropped him into the clean water.  We then put the cooling rack back on top of the little tank.

Then, when Kelso was waiting in the little container for us to finish cleaning, he looked up at us and then jumped all the way through the cooling rack and all the way to the floor!

We quickly grabbed him, dropped him back into the water and this time, put a few books on top of the cooling rack.

After cleaning, we put him back with the tank and put it near the window, with books on top of the cooling rack..  We gave him some food and we called Ms. Shelly.

"Hello.  This is Skylar."

"Hello Skylar," said Ms. Shelly.

"Kleso has been jumping out of the net onto the floor at water changing time.  What should we do?  I think we should let him go at Hann Park."

"Well," Ms. Shelly said, "I hope you can hold him back just until vacation ends because I would really like the kids to be able to say good bye to him and have a good bye ceremony."

"I don't know about it," I said.  "You should probably talk to my mom."

The adults talked bout Kelso and then they decided to try to hold off.  My mom rearranged the rocks so there was a very big place to sit.  There was a problem because now without his tail, he could easily jump out of the tank.  We couldn't leave the books on top because he wouldn't have enough air.  So, we thought and decided to put bug netting on top.

We tried to hold the bug netting on with a rubber band but when we tried, the rubber band snapped.  The tank was too big for it to go around.  Then, my mom had the idea to cut the rubber bands and tied them together to make one giant rubber band.  Then, we stuck it around.

Now, Kelso is happy and he is hungry also but I just fed him, so I think he just hasn't found his food.

The End.

An Highway

Ant Highway.

Two weekends ago, we went down south to Samone.  I wrote about it for muscle beach - the previous blog post.  That morning, I took myself for a run and as I was cutting along back dirt roads and looking for the back of the Delta area where I had done a 12km race in January, I was suddenly stopped in my tracks by - a track.

I looked closely and saw hundreds.  Well, probably thousands of ants walking across the ground. I tried tracing the path one way but quickly lost it in the tall grass.  I looked the other way and saw their huge pile of dirt.

I found it interesting but continued my run.

About an hour later, I was back with my family and some friends.  The children were fascinated by the path and all the ants, keeping purposefully to the highway.  We tried different things.  Sticks across the path created a huge traffic jam.  Then,after a few minutes, we lifted the stick and the mass of ants, a high density surge, flowed forward and several meters later, you could watch the wave continue forward and create another traffic jam as it tried to all pack into the small colony entrance at once.

Then, we tried putting down some crackers.  All ants like crackers, we thought.  No, these ants did not like the food.  We though the pile of crackers would stop all the dilligent works for they would only travel as far as the food.  Instead, the food created its own traffic jam of ants not sure how to get around the new material.  A number of ants ended up going off road - blazing their own trail through the rough undergrowth next to the trail.

Finally, we had had our fun and continued our walk.  Then, about another hour later, we circled back on our way to the hotel.  We stopped to look at the trail and see what was happening.

Nothing.  We figured the heat of the day had caused the ants to leave and so, an empty trail lay with no explanation for its existence.

We looked and found the crackers - still a huge pile we had left.  Our ants had no interest but we looked closely and some some very small ants.  These, presumably a different species, were very interested.  

And so, the second shift of ants did what the first shift did not and slowly cleared up our little gift.

Muscle Beaches of Senegal

We discovered there are two muscle beaches in Senegal.  The first one is located in Dakar.  It is a small stretch of beach below the coastal highway where, at any given time, you can find between 20 and 200 people exercising.  A favorite exercise consists of standing in the sand with your legs together.  You then rhythemical lift your back side.  The upward thrust causes your locked feet to shuffle backward.  

Especially energetic exercisers will drag a path 10 meters long and, after several passes, surprisingly deep.

The other muscle beach is located along a small nature reserve in Samone.  Samone is about 1.5 hrs south of Dakar and has a few hotels and private houses stetched along a beach.  To find this other muscle beach, you need to walk off the main road and follow one of the many dirt paths across the peninsula.

On the delta side of the peninsula, you following the edge of the mangroves around until you find an elevated path installed under the guidance of a local french couple.  Follow this nature trail path in the mangroves and around a few turns until you reach muscle beach.

Here, if you come before it gets too hot, you can see between 20 and 200 fiddler crabs waving their single, unusually large claw in the air.  The white color of their claws work to catch the sun and catch your attention.

A favorite activity, besides waving your massive claw in the air, is to dig a hole.  Like all good crabs, these fiddlers move sideways as they move forward, and you can see their claw emerge long before their eye stalks follow out the hole.

And like all good muscles beaches, everyone on the beach knows who the top of the social heirarchy is without there being any fights.  In Samone, we saw the top crab.  He was waving to us from the little rise in the middle of muscle beach.  We went to greet him but he dove for his hole.  When I looked down at the size of my hand, I realized why he had run away.  I was the new top crab.  If so, why aren't the female crabs running to my side?