Off to Africa: Views for Thought

Yesterday we went to the zoo. I'll tell you about it when I can steal pictures from Alec so you can actually see it. Instead, I think I'm going to skip to going home from the zoo.

Here we were-Victoria, Alec, Matt, Hilary, and I (Gaya is still getting better so Rachel took her home in a car)- standing on the corner leading away from the zoo in the twilight right before the black of night. Behind us lat the cement walls with their murals of lions, tigers, and..... monkeys (no bears, sorry). And in front of us lay the massive trafic jam where we were trying to get into one of those magnificently sketchy car rapides in order to get home. During the day you see all the cars in Senegal, and you see the black stencht that they excrete for a few seconds. In that erie light though, all was visible. Over the line of brakelights was a black cloud- swirling with the wind, growing with each car, revolting with each sniff. We couldnt catch a car rapide on the corner due to the traffic jam, so we were forced to walk up to the next stop- through all the highway entrance ramp that looks like it belongs in modern day france, past the street sellers who were packing up their stands, the children running home, the cars pulling into the few abondoned dirt patches, the stand along "Imports" car vender (Mercedez, Americain, BMW, so on), accross streets where mr Diobe stopped cars before we crossed, through the underpass next to the trash on the sidewalk, past the mounds of scattered plastic that are shoved into the middle of the roads so that cars can still pass, past all the cars still waiting while they belched out the acrid smoke, and past the fading colors that we could still see. Before we finally turned onto Bourrgiba, where we would catch our car rapide, the view was not breath taking, but more and juxtiposition of a beautiful disaster. The break lights reached into the distance against the black night sky. There were the streetlights- not lit up by their own illumination as they stood dead, but rather the cars coming at them and going past them, casting shadows on themselves. The people in their blues, yellows, reds, organges- every single color went along with all the colored fruit, creating a kalidescope of color, the piles of trash flashing in and out of view as they were lit, and all while your throat burned, the slow burn of the mix of cigarette smoke and smog. Yes, beauty in the people and color, disaster in the waste and distruction.