Home Sweet Home

We moved in with our host families yesterday. The house is actually a lot better than I was expecting, it's not too far from something you'd find in America (except I'm going to have to put a big asterisks next to that statement because there are a few major characteristics about it that you would absolutely NOT find in America). I feel like if it were in the Middle East you'd call it a "compound" but it's not – it's in Africa so we'll call it, umm, big. Really big. It has three levels (I know, that's a lot of levels) which all open onto a main courtyard which has a mango tree and a fountain. Cute image, right? Me, basking in the courtyard eating my mango and lounging next to the fountain—so Africa. My room is right off that courtyard. The top level only has one room (my host brother's—his name is Moussa and I hang out with him the most, more on that later) so the rest of it is this really cool tile terrace. It's one of the taller buildings in this area so the terrace has a really nice view of Dakar. The best part about the terrace though is that there is actually a really nice breeze up there, and when the power goes out, the kids in my family sometimes bring cushions up there and sleep outside. It's right next to this really big Mosque which functions as the main mosque for a large portion of Dakar so throughout the day and at night I can hear the call-to-prayers. The first night I slept here the power went out (obvi) at 2:30 in the morning and I couldn't fall back to sleep. At 5AM there was the first call to prayer so I went up to the terrace to listen. It was amazing because I could hear a bunch of different mosques echoing in the distance, and on top of that, a lightning storm was lighting up Dakar. It was festive, one of those holy-shit-I'm-in-Africa moments.
But anyways, in the time beforehand I was just lying there in my bed for hours trying to ignore how hot I was. But the real problem was that I was extremely thirsty as well, but I had forgotten to ask where the filtered water was before I went to bed. All I could think about was water (incidentally the night before I dreamt about a sandwich and the night after I dreamt about a salad). By 4:30 I couldn't take it anymore so I went to the fountain in the courtyard and thought, hmm, what's the worse that could happen? I'm probably going to die from something or another while I'm here, so I drank a little bit from the fountain (ok it's not like a fountain-fountain that birds poop in it's like one of this Turkish-styled, tile-mosaic water spouts where there's a faucet coming out of the wall plus I had seen other people taking water from there, so whatever, right?). Well then today I was talking to my host brother, Moussa, who sorted a few things out for me:
"What's with all the people coming in and out of the courtyard."
"My father used to be the Imam," Imam being the Muslim version of a priest. Incidentally does that make me the preacher's son? Woah, I'm not sure how I feel about that, plus I think I've already crossed a few too many preacher's-son boundaries and I might get excommunicated before I'm even, well, communicated? "So they're coming to talk to him and pray."
"oh yeah, cause they're always using that fountain."
"That's because they're cleaning off their ablutions before they pray." Yeah, I drank the holy water. Woops. Don't tell anyone…