Countdown to Korite: Korite, the celebration of the end of Ramadan in Senegal, is around the corner. Duma and I have been on a mini-mission to prepare our wardrobes so that we won't stand out within the inevitbale waves of festive 'boubou bling.' First stop was a trip to the fabric market, Marche HLM. This was on Friday and we had just missed an intense thunderstorm in the morning, so the whole market was muddy and crowded with other last minute shoppers. We waded through the mud, carefully holding our purses against our bodies out of reach of pickpockets (crime rises around the holidays) and trying to avoid completely submerging our shoes and feet into ravines of mud and dirty water. Finally we made it to a booth with a good selection of wax fabirc, the traditional printed material we'd been looking for (much if which is actually imported from Indonesia via Holland). After perusing all the different patterns we each settled on two fabrics and negotiated a pretty fair deal with the vendor: 4,000cfa ($8) per 6 meters (required for making one full taille base outfit). Once we secured the fabric we made a bee-line out of the hectic marketplace, jumped into a cab and headed for a tailor near our apartment. We had to visit a couple of tailors before finding one willing to take on yet another two orders to be finished before Korite (which is either Wednesday or Thursday, depending on the moon cycle). Fortunately we were able to find a tailor closeby who sat patiently as we poured over photos of taille base models, sketched our own quirky ideas, and finally settled on mixtures of traditional and original designs. We will see how they turn out. Third stop was to Duma's former hostfamily's home today to get henna (Foodan) done on our hands. Again, all in the spirit of Korite.

We waited for the foodan artists for two hours, during which we sat in the living room and alternately read and laughed aloud from a David Sedaris book and responded to the interrogations of Duma's senegalese brother, Doudou, who is not convinced we have given Islam fair enough consideration. When the foodan artists finally arrived we had our hands drawn on and sat drying them for another hour wondering where Sunday had gone so fast. That is how time goes by here...when you are watching, it ambles slowly by, but the moment you turn your head, it disappears. Hopefully our weekend of Korite prep will not have been in vain. I know we are not at the point of being able to compete with true boubou bling, but at least we hope to not look like American students caught off guard by the glam of Senegalese fashionistas. I'll let you know how we do...