Happy New Year Muslim people!

Well it was New Years day yesterday for all those Muslims out there. We were invited over to our friend Binta's house (woman to the left of Brook) on Monday night for the traditional millet cous-cous and a yummy meat sauce, not dissimiliar to what is pictured here. Actually Binta put sheep, chicken and fish in her sauce, plus vegetables. It was one-stop-shop for all our protein and vegetable needs. It was very tasty but rich. We all eat together around a communal plate. Afterwards we had some tamarind juice and Binta let two twin, baby sheep out of the pen and they were running around and doing lamb leaps. They were very cute, despite the fact that most sheep in Senegal are not very appealing. These baby sheep were 2 months old. The dog in the compound was making sure they didn't go back into their pen at first... he wasn't even a sheep dog but he seemed to know the pecking order. The baby sheep listened to him and ran the other direction when the dog blocked their way.

Binta is going to open up another restaurant in town. Something between an expensive toubab restaurant (like our famous "Best Burger" restaurant) ((great name, huh?) and a hole in the wall that most people eat at. She plans on having fonio as her speciality, get some good fish from Dakar and have omelettes, steak and some salads. Outside of the fonio, it's what Best Burger has to offer but she plans on being better than them and having cheaper prices. She does cook very well. She was even talking about having ice-cream. She took a couple lessons on how to make ice-cream over at my house and wants to get her own machine. I think that's cool.

Hopefully over the weekend, I can go over and see the restaurant in its unfinished form. She is working on getting it set up. I guess the sanitation department (who knew!?!) said she needed to put a toilet in the establishment. I can't believe there are any standards like that here at all, especially given the state of some of the 'hole-in-the-wall" establishments. Maybe those places are just let under the radar screen. I'll have to ask Binta. It'll be exciting for her new digs though. She is even talking about moving closer to us (the new restaurant is right around the corner from our house) to manage the restaurant. That would be neat.