Tad's Life

Sunday is Election Day here in Senegal. The people will be voting for a new president. In the US, a time like this would be filled with lots of talk and advertisements and heated conversations at work and ceaseless news coverage on radio and TV. Senegal has all of that, plus the added complication of crowds of partisans fighting with each other with batons and rocks! No one had died as of yesterday, but some were hospitalized with serious injuries.

You can look for such news on line, I'm sure.

In the midst of that, we've had a regular sort of week. Well, then again...

Yesterday afternoon was "Parent-Teacher Conferences" at DA. That meant that Jane and the other secondary staff were in the library at tables available for discussing with parents their child's academic situation. That can occasionally be stressful for the teachers and parents, of course, but usually is encouraging time.

I came late in the day to play the parental role and talk to Jonathan's teachers. He is such a good kid that we mostly spent time talking about what a good kid he is. The teenage / puberty transformation into a brooding rebel may come some day, but for now we're just enjoying this boy.

So, Jonathan had a half-day of school and just hung at school playing with his buddies. He hoped to stay for a soccer match at 4:30, but we disappointed him immensely by refusing. Yesterday was the last day of legal campaigning, so that made it the most likely afternoon and evening for violence to erupt somewhere. We didn’t want to be out on the road and find ourselves in the middle of a riot. We did that once when the girls were little. We’re not interested in repeating the experience.

Especially after Wednesday’s incident. I took Jonathan and the Demars kids to youth group that night. We left for school at 6:30. In Ouakam we drove past crowds of people dressed in the colors of Idrissa Seck and his party. They were waiting for him to come later that evening for a rally. A half-mile down the road, in Mermoz, on the “Ancien Piste” there were a whole group of taxis parked near a very popular religious leader’s center. They all had President Wade signs on top. Around 9 o’clock we were coming up to that same area and found ourselves being directed to detour through a neighborhood. As we passed the Regal restaurant we could see signs of a riot and lingering crowds near the marabout’s place. It turns out we missed a major confrontation on the road we take every day by only an hour. [See Government Supporters Attack 15 Journalists ]

On Monday of this "regular" week, there was no school. No, not the elections. Softball. WAIST (West Africa Invitational Softball Tournament) finals were that day. Jonathan doesn’t play on a team, but we did go to watch a bit. There was some great softball. In the end the student team of high school boys from Dakar Academy won the championship, defeating both the staff/parent team and the tough Senegal A team.

So, that and the opening of our new "Discipleship Experience" training program (see the Phare blog) and a radical new idea for redoing Apartment B and all in all it was a normal kind of week!