A ten year old walking down a dirt road (few roads are paved) with a black plastic grocery bag, sticking out of which is a hoof and lower leg of a sheep that was slaughtered two hours prior.
The majesty of a grey heron or a pelican with a wingspan of 8 feet taking flight in Djoudj, the third largest bird sanctuary in the world.
Instead of luggage in the lower compartment of a tour bus, you see sheep.
On the luggage rack on the top of buses, 8 sheep, each individually wrapped in blue tarp and tied down to the rack as the bus navigates the crater-filled roads at dangerously high speeds.
A local open-air market, and as a consequence, all surrounding consumers walking by, sporting hundreds of butcher knives and machetes.
A Thanksgiving feast hosted by an Embassy employee for 40 people in her downtown home that would have made even the biggest gourmand salivate, while outside the walls of the home were beggars sitting on the sidewalk.
A street vendor who wanted to charge me $14 for a pair of sandals because I’m white, but after chiding him a bit in his Wolof language, walking away with the sandals for $5.
A country whose population is 95% Muslim, selling artificial Christmas trees and garland on street corners all over the capital.
Hearing Black Senegalese yell out orders for Lebanese food--with perfect Arabic pronunciation--in the local Lebanese eateries.
Sitting in a sublime Jazz restaurant nibbling on lamb chops and listening to amazing live Jazz, Reggae, Blues, and traditional African music with a saxophonist whose tonal clarity rivals James Carter.
Going to the West Africa and International Trade Expo and buying beautiful ceramic vases for $6 and $10 from a handicapped artist from the country of Burkina Faso. Visiting boothes from Libya, Syria, China, Egypt, Mali, Nigeria, the U.S., and Tunisia.
Getting excited and spending hours walking up and down the aisles of a brand new French supermarket, because its one of the few places that is clean, orderly and reminiscent of home.
Sara, one of the building security guards and my friend, who literally lives in a tin shack, saving some of the lamb he slaughtered on Tabaski, to give to me as a gift.
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