Janet pendulums between fright and hillarity

This is a picture of mangos, not of my experiences today. I could not get the entire experience in a series of photographs.....even if I had remembered to take my camera.

Marilyn and I decided to go downtown Dakar - which is a essentially multiple blocks of outdoor markets, cars, horns, buses, hawkers and beggars. What a delightfully colorful and funny experience. But we had a task, find a parking space and a shop that sells a certain type of material.
We encountered:
-a man selling pillows - all stacked on his head.
-Two little boys under the age of 5 pushing a broken van out of the road
-colorful women's undergarments (where do they try these on I ask?....)
-sunglasses, phone card, slippers, pots and pans, recycled bottles, fruit, Nescafe carts, baskets of spice, used clothes (much of it from our side of the ocean - I could tell by the sayings --as an aside, there was a man in front of us at church wearing a Bob Marley tshirt)
-we were strongly pursued (acousted?) by several men from a cult who were insistent that we give them money. Marilyn was loudly articulating that, "Yes, we agree, There is One God, but we were not going to give you money."

We finally found a parking spot, but had to pay someone to wash our car in order to acquire the spot. Upon exiting the car we began the search for the perfect fabric, by wandering willy-nilly up and down the streets. Actually, Marilyn, stopped often to ask a vendor where we might find this particular material. We were eventually led to a fine shop where we found the material we liked and began "coming to an agreement" about the price. This, somehow, needed to include finding something in common with the other person or showing personal interest. For us, this transaction ended with the shop owner asking us to pray for his shop. Then he followed us to the car to get a copy of the Wolof scriptures. I could not believe that Marilyn was standing beside our (clean) car with 7 men straining to see the book and listening intently as she showed them the account of Abraham. It was unbelievable. Oh, and then I was very nearly hit by a taxi.

It was a great adventure.