My work partner is very amusing only because he doesn't mean to be.
Nearly each morning I bike over to his office and most days I'll get taken from meeting to ceremony to lectures. I use the term taken because 90% of the time I have no clue what's going on or where we're going. I listen for the "on y va" (let's go) and I follow diligently. On a good day I understand more than half of the things he says to me (after several explanations), and since the meetings we attend are in Wolof and not French, I understand on average one word from every two sentences spoken. That's not a good statistic. At times I feel like I'm Indiana Jones, deciphering hieroglyphics. Sure, my life is less exciting but I do ride around in ancient vehicles, flight off creepy crawlies, and spend the majority of my day trying to decode the language here as if the Pearl of Allah depended on it. But I digress.
My work partner comes off intelligent and mindful.
Until he gets behind the wheel.
Then he turns into a cross between a 16 year old practicing on a learners permit, and a 5 year old who stole they keys to dad's truck. In the last month since I've been shadowing him, he's run his car into the ground driving through several sand piles (which, afterwards, another female volunteer and I pushed the car in our dresses), he's backed it into posts, driven the door into the side of a wall, and has nearly ran us off the road more times than I can count while trying to answer his cell phone driving. It's extra humorous/disturbing that his ring tone is a prayer call. The car has broken down a number of times and once, it broke down in the middle of the national road and we just sat there in the dark. He also insists on driving through huge potholes that could be wells, while flying down the road. He, like most Senegalese, lack any social awkwardness. So it's hilarious to watch his reactions when he makes these driving mistakes. Usually, he brushes it off casually...as if nearly driving off the road was like discovering he wore mismatching socks. I guess in Senegal, both hold the same amount of seriousness.
To his credit, during our first journey out of town, he made sure I used my seat belt (at the time I thought he was joking...so I laughed inappropriately). He then attempted to buckle his for 10 minutes before realizing it was broken. So after that, he just drove with the belt across his lap but not bucked to anything. Oh, Africa...
