Another Map Mural

Ever since I painted a couple map murals at the primary school near my host family's compound the director of the local Cas de Tout-Petits (pre-school) has made a point of coming over whenever he spots me in the market and telling me how nice one of those murals would look at his school. For months I've been telling him that one of these days I'd come paint a map there, and last week I finally made good on that promise.

Scary and confusingly-out-of-context fairytale figures aside, Cas de Tout-Petits (which translates literally to "the case of the all-smalls") is a pretty decent place. There's a big yard with some trees, a classroom with some little desks, and various charities and NGOs have donated chalk and little black boards and a few books and things like that.

I think the wolf on the upper left is from some sort of folktale but I really have no idea what is with the earless, smiling elephant-man. I decided to put the map where the elephant-man used to be. I really do wonder if any of the kids will miss him or if they found him to be as off-putting as I did.

I painted most of the map myself, which was pleasant. My little host brother Mamadou stopped by to take some photos and ask various questions about maps and America and whatnot, and while we chatted I painted a blue background for the map. And then started to fill in the regions with different sherbet-y shades of yellow, green, pink, and orange. And then realized that on my map Senegal looked like an island nation, which is not exactly accurate.

The inadvertent island of Senegal. 

Then Jubal, one of my PCV neighbors, biked over to hang out and help me finish up the painting. It's more fun to paint with someone, and Jubal knows his way around a paintbrush, too. It didn't take long to wrap things up, and by the end of the day Senegal was no longer an island, I was having sherbet cravings, and the director was super pleased with us.