Merigoesaround

...and everything was disturbed. Kids impatiently waited for their flooded soccer fields to dry, women cleaned their basements with plastic buckets and men woke up from siesta to blame everybody and his brother for the lack of sanitation in peri-urban Dakar.

For your doses of Nespresso caffeine, the tenderness of your croissants and the Europeaness of your sandwiches. Can't believe you have chouquettes (a fluffy little sugary French cake) . Dakar is also Eric Kayser , the French bakery chain that sells delicious baguettes at local prices (200 CFA = 30 EUR cents).  A pretty democratic baguette. What else could we ask for? A local Apple store? Guess what! There is an authorized Apple reseller at the Sea Plaza, the toubab shopping empire you'll soon read me writing about.

Believe it or not I will soon have 3 equally useless driving licenses. First, I got an Albanian, then a US one that expires this month and soon I'll get a Senegalese bit of plastic that will allow me to drive these bumpy roads. The process of getting each of them has allowed me to interact with the locals in quite a deep fashion. To me, getting a new license does not mean driving...but making new friends. In Albania I passed the written test with an Italian translator sitting by my side (since I do not speak Albanian), in Boston I learned how to drive automatic 1 day before the test, magnificently taught by my friend Ursula. Here in Dakar, Fatou from autoecole Sarraut is finally teaching me the driving code and Mr. Whispers (still haven't understood his name since his voice is too feeble) makes me drive an old sweaty Nissan Sentra every morning at 9am. The car per se deserves some lines: I thought Mr. Whispers had built it himself. It is so old, patched and beaten that so...

I haven't seen fat men around this city. Not that I look at them...but sometimes it is difficult not to do so. The secret for their athletic bodies is simple: sports. No need of fancy shoes, expensive equipment or synchronized power music in your shiny ipod. Draw a circle and run, steady and energetically. As if you were repeating Koranic prayers. Senegalese men exercise all the time, almost daily. They do push ups in the middle of the roads, at the beach, anywhere and everywhere. I believe people here likes to be fit and look good even if many (toubab*) voices tell me that the reason behind the sports' obsession is no other than attracting (often old) single ladies from Europe. (*) gentle reminder, toubab=whites here.

means sharing...so I asked boyfriend husband for his last chocapic cereal spoon this morning. He offered it to me. Reluctantly. I then thought that living together also means keeping with your own life, two does not become one and sharing chocapics is not a proof of true love. BH seems to agree. Location: Dakar

said the German diplomat. I instantly loved the sentence and the many thoughts it brought to my brain: "is it?", I thought. I don't know. Nowhere in Europe could we eat what we eat here for 15 EUR, could we drive the rally-way we are obliged to here or feel so toubab (=how whites are gently called in Senegal) and ridiculous as we feel here oftentimes. I can't yet judge whether Dakar is Europe or not, it has a Mediterranean touch that reminds me of Barcelona, that, and that I feel at home (even without having one yet!), is all I know by now.

We are in the midst of Ramadan here in Dakar and I've learned to eat a piece of banana hiding from the midday look of the taxi driver. He looks exhausted. I do too. I can drink water and recharge energy with a banana. He can't. Imagine fasting and having a foreigner in front of you munching a sandwich or drinking a bottle of iced water. I would hate them. Well, in order to avoid this I've decided to eat and drink hiding. I have also decided with less success to hide my legs and wear loose clothing that dissimulate my Spanish bum. Boobs are fine, I don't need to hide them too much as, apparently, they are associated with maternity so no provocation for locals....but leeeegs, legs are sinful.

I landed in Dakar with a summer storm, the rain was so hard that we had to stop and try to clean the mix of sand and rain (=mud) stuck in the front window of the car on our way home. BH looked tense, he wanted to arrive home before the real storm, he said. I brought the rain and given how hot it is here, locals told me that I brought happiness with me. Dakar is the perfect place to live, to work and to learn. This is my general impression. Hundreds of surprises await me. Today I discovered prayer mats with compasses. And this is just the beginning!

Today is one of those days when I remind myself how important it is to appreciate small things in life. Like a simple unexpected smile. A new lady moved to the studio upstairs some weeks ago. She is typically French. Beautiful, slim, smokey-eyed, blue marine cape-wearing a la Kooples. She wears high heels ALL the time in her 20sqm studio, but other than that she seems very sweet. Others seem to think the same, specially whoever left this rose in her mailbox. From afar, I thought it was mine. Yes! But it was not. Smile 1. I left our building thinking that sometimes a rose might be more important than a diamond. Only sometimes Boyfriend Husband (BH). Smile 2. Here, live from the building of love, another neighbor spreads happiness in the building with balloons in his front-door. A part of me will miss the 108 of Rue Amelot but the excitement of moving to Dakar just provoked Smile 3 in this rainy Parisian Saturday afternoon.

With boyfriend husband now living with me the truth is that I have lots of extra time. Far seem the days we communicated via long, long, often bad quality, skype calls. Only that gives me a net gain of 1 hour per day. In my skype-free hour I should try to do more things by myself and stop watching what he does while complaining about the fact that he does nothing but read geeky websites, learn how to edit videos online or read too many clever articles on international politics. He is probably doing what he needs to do anyway...but what am I going to do in my extra hour? I am going to blog. Tremble, I am back with super-blogger powers. Tomorrow, national election in Spain.

This happens: Any domestic order or suggestion you give ("we should buy some fruit") is magnified by 10. Boyfriend husband thinks we are already a family of seven with in-laws living at home and all crazy about devouring fruit. Note that the photo does not clearly show an all time ginormous melon hiding under the apples, oranges and bananas... When women fill the fridge with fruit. This happens: Result: smoothie time every day! I am convinced boyfriend husband bought that much because he loves, looooves, the noise of the blender mashing all of those pieces of fruit. Brrrrreeeerrrrreeeeee!

My mum called. With a feeble voice, like trying not to bother me, she asked: "Listen, I need to ask you something. It is not super crucial but I'd like to know". Fearing the typical questions once again, "When are you marrying? Having kids? Settling down somewhere?". I said, okey, mum, "Shoot it". I was wrong. No usual questions. She wanted to know what to do with a box full of white, yellow, black cables I have in the "all meri's stuff" closet full of useless things that I have at home in Barcelona. Any expat reading me knows what I am talking about. Thaaat closet. "I am thinking about giving them away to some African immigrants that pass by the building from time to time. They peel the plastic off and sell it, apparently they get good money". She said. The image of my now useless old computer power cable, unwrapped palm pilot headphones or first external laptop CD drive being destroyed unsettled me. And then, possessed, my eye...

One can scream out of joy, out of pain, out of fear. In 24 hours I heard all those screams. Marrakesh is a magic place for many reasons. For me it represents not only where boyfriend husband works and lives but also a place where we will age, enjoying the house we just bought and are rebuilding to make it our little oriental jewel. Marrakesh was chaos the other night, for one very mundane reason: football. Barcelona was playing against Madrid and Messi scored in the very moment that the evening call for prayer started, a mix of religious joy from the thousands of Barcelona supporters in Marrakesh erupted and elevated my favorite team to Koranic levels. And then I went to bed. I took a plane and before landing in Paris the joy had dissipated. Terrorists had attacked Marrakesh's Cafe Argana, killing 17 people. We later learned that it was not Al-Qaida as we first thought but an Islamist radical from Safi who learned how to make bombs via internet. And the call for prayer was not joy ...

Lately I run. I hate it, I love it, I hate it, I love it. I hoooote it! I might have found a good way to travel, do sports, eat as much pasta as I want, and meet friends via semi-marathons. This weekend I was in Marseille. Ooooh Marseille. There I met my friend Diego , who is like Marseille and the pasta he and Madame Zacci cooked for me. Structurally interesting and tasteful, with a big creative heart, fresh like the mussels you buy in the V ieux Port and a mix of cultures. Where do I run next?

I have spent very Catalan weekends lately. These were not in Barcelona, but in Paris. Coincidentally, I spent a very French weekend in Barcelona, where a bunch of good friends invaded our small house there. These swaps of languages, places and old and new faces might be enriching from a learning perspective but confusing for my emotional inner self. I am worried my kids will not know where they come from. And don't give me the line of enrichment and globalization, I don't take it. At least not today. Anybody with symptoms of feeling from anywhere?

in facebook format. There was something about keeping my love status in facebook unknown that I really liked. But after over nine years with Boyfriend Husband I decided to declare my virtual love to him and changed my status from blank to 'in a relationship'. And it felt good. Very indeed. And then in a totally unrelated thread my sister wrote to me "Meri, who is going to be your facebook friend number 1000". "I am going to invest in keeping my 999", I said to her. But suddenly my dear ex boss (this is no joke) sent a request for friendship. I am still pondering if I will pass the 999 mark. He will wait for the 1999 mark if necessary, my boss has said. Hahaha. So, in less than a minute and without leaving my sofa, I declared my love to my world, I reflected about true friendship and suddenly passed from single to virtually engaged for life. And it felt good.

Tattooed in his fingers, letter by letter, dream after dream. Seen at Marais housewarming party. This is Paris!

...and the 5th of February arrives I wanted to list the good news that fill my life today. Happiness overload. I am not sure if I'll have time in 15 min. First, BH became a civil servant for yet another bureaucracy. One that he has already tasted, the European Union. I don't know anybody more European than BH, a man with refined transatlantic culture though. Sometimes he would say things like "we are Europe", "Europe is us". No brainwashing needed. I think this job might be good for him. Europe is fine but I still prefer Washington DC 100 times better than Brussels. I can't help it. There is something about the US that not even Belgium waffle can beat. Well, maybe French croissant can. So my future household breadwinner has found a job for life, something that in current economic times seems like a sensible choice. This is good because we won't have to worry for our kids' education ever again but it is bad if the boredom of bureaucracies eats him...