Funny things happen when you're a white girl in Africa.
Exhibit A: At the beach, a vendor offered to trade his artwork for my sunglasses. I considered it, but I couldn't part with the sunglasses, not even for an "authentic" mask made of the fallen rainforest. It was difficult to explain to the vendor that, just as the masks he sells are symbolic of his ethnic identity, my ridiculously oversized sunglasses are a symbol of my ethnic identity, and I didn't want to go the next five months without any souvenirs of my fellow pretentious hipster tribespeople.
Exhibit B: I showed my very sunburned shoulder to my host family. They had never seen a sunburn before!
Exhibit C: A nasty little man offered me 5000 CFA (about $10 US) to touch my skin. If he'd only wanted to touch my skin, he would have just reached out and touched it. So basically, I was prostituted. Great.
Another girl on the program can totally beat that story, though: a man asked to buy her from her (white male) companion....for the equivalent of about $3. Maybe I'm hotter than she is? I mean, I am worth a whopping $10...
In an effort to blend into my new surroundings, I went to an art fair and bought a very cool African dress. I'm like a chameleon, except, you know, a clothed chameleon.
Also at the art fair, I spent a very long time negotiating the purchase of a fairly large wooden elephant. The sculptor asked for nearly $500, and in all my best batting-my-blue-eyes charm, I couldn't talk him into selling it for $25.
Well, my little monkeys, I'm off to watch the Lions demolish Sudan in the Africa Cup. (What the fuck is Sudan doing playing soccer these days, anyway?! Soccer...genocide...seriously, folks. Prioritize.)
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