Actualités sénégalaises

Home sweet home!

2008-05-17T14:21:00.001-07:00

I'm back safe after an unforgettable nine months! I hope you are all well.

Jamm ak jamm (peace and peace),
Katiana

Possibly the final post

2008-05-05T03:54:00.001-07:00

It’s not over yet

With only about a week left here in Senegal, I thought my cultural experiences, and therefore my blog, were just about over… and then tonight happened. When my sister asked if I wanted to go to the “faux lions” ceremony, I had no idea what I was getting into. We walked over to Wakaam village (I don’t know if I already explained this- it’s the old, more traditional part of Wakaam that still considers itself a village rather than part of Dakar. I live in the newer part only a couple blocks away) and came to a clearing blocked off by two ratty sheets. In front was a woman selling tickets for 200 CFA. After buying the tickets, my sister looked worriedly at my big open pocket with my ticket stuffed inside. “You better hold on tight to that,” she said. I thought she might be referring to my cell phone as I had no idea why it would be important to keep track of a little flimsy square of pink paper. As the little clearing began to fill up (mainly with children and a few young adults), the drummers began to play. Finally several muscular men covered in animal skins and colorful fringe, with elaborately painted faces, danced into the center (the “lions”). Some were carrying sticks and another had a thick, dangerous looking rope. The next thing I new, the man with the rope had a thirteen-year-old girl held roughly by her shirt. He dragged her around while she screamed and tried to escape. He forced her to squat in the middle of the circle. I asked Bineta what was going to happen. “He’s going to beat her,” she said with a smile on her face. At that point I really wanted to leave. What kind of sadistic people would want to sit and watch children get publicly beaten with a rope by fake lions? I was soon informed that her crime was watching the ceremony without a ticket. When the lion looked away, she started to make a run for it and he chased her all the way down the street and through the neighborhoods. After a few minutes, I got an idea of what was really going on.

Basically, these lion guys hop around threateningly and check everyone in the audience’s tickets. If you don’t have one, they drag you kicking and screaming to the middle and make you crouch around a plastic tub of water. While at this tub, you are lightly smacked around by all of the lions. Sometimes they rub mud on your face or pour the water all over you until someone from the audience comes and buys you a ticket. With small children, they grab them and swing them through the air every which way. I was threatened by several lions, being a toubab at all, and had to quickly pull my ticket out and unfold it for them to see. You might not believe me, but it actually is terrifying to have a grown, painted man growling rather convincingly merely inches from your face. The children were all petrified. Several of them hid their faces in my lap or tried to hide behind me and many began to cry. This is what they do for fun!

I thought that all of this was just an introduction to the real show, but that was pretty much it for about an hour. Once, one of the lions even jumped up onto a nearby rooftop to catch the ticket-less kids trying to get a free show. When they ran out of spectators without tickets, they ran past the curtains to the neighborhood beyond and stole children at random from the street. Outside was a group of mischievous boys with a long plastic tube creating a barrier to trap other kids inside so that they would be in the path of the lions when they came. At one point, a man with stilts came in and started galloping around the ring. It was an hour of complete insanity. Sometimes the lions would dance, stomping in a lion-like fashion, and were actually really good. But I think the real point of the show was the public humiliation.

To the American eye, this whole event could seem rather deranged and cruel, until you realize that it is all a game. If you look closely, you can see that many of the lions’ victims who are struggling and screaming are actually suppressing huge smiles and giggles. Except for the very young children (who are legitimately terrified), everyone is just playing along. No one is actually hit very hard. It reminds me a little of going to haunted houses in the US, how people are amused by their own fear. The children outside of the ceremony were actually scarier to me than the lions though. They were all riled up and hyper. Several of them hit me on the head while I passed and I would have hit them back if I weren’t so disoriented by the craziness of the ceremony (friendly hitting is a large part of the culture here… in the US I would never hit a child, but here you almost have to sometimes or you just get taken advantage of). One kid was running around with a flaming stick and other kids were throwing dirt clods from a roof. Out in the soccer field, a fist fight almost broke out between one of the girls who had been a lion’s victim, and some boy from the audience before it was broken up. It was all in good spirits, but it was insanity all the same.

Adorable

I just gave a lot of my old clothes and things to my family in order to make my bags lighter. My sister was so excited by all of my American clothes. She picked out the two craziest-patterned things in the pile (that didn’t match at all) and put them on, with some of my shoes, so that she looked like my closet had blown up all over her. It was all too small for her, but she strutted around like an American princess. She washed herself in the complimentary packet of organic hand soap I had lying around and then kept making up excuses to “go to the boutique” and generally show off her new authentic American scent and attire. At knee-length, I think that skirt was the most scandalous thing she had ever worn in public as she kept tugging self-consciously at the bottom. She kept asking me what everything was: I had to explain that just because it had a picture of an insect on the top, the Burt’s Bees chapstick was not actually to prevent mosquitoes. The hardest to explain were the craft supplies I had left over. Crafts are completely superfluous and unheard of here. I never realized before how much a luxury this large part of my childhood was. Here kids get whipped for doodling in their notebooks because even paper is a luxury reserved for school. The camping-style dried peas my parents sent me as a joke became tonight’s dinner, and even my mom was walking around in one of my old shirts. It was such an entertaining evening.

Reflections

Time is winding down and I am finally finding myself able to be sad about leaving rather than merely excited. I have my finals during the next couple of days, followed by our re-entry orientation and farewell dinner. And then I will have an entire week to laze around and feel terribly emotional about absolutely everything before making the final flight back. I can’t tell you how many times I have conjured up all of your faces in my mind, anticipating every second of my return home, what I will do and say, how I will be different or the same. I no longer sleep soundly because my blood is pumping and my mind is racing, just like before every new adventure in my life. It’s odd that I’m considering my return to normal an adventure, but different is always exciting to me in some way.

At the same time, I know I will miss many things here. I will miss my host dad’s quirky lectures, my mom’s constant smile, and my sister’s sweet innocence (they keep telling me how much they will miss me and how worried they are that I won’t keep in touch). I will miss attractive boys professing their love to me (even though I don’t believe it for a second). I will miss greeting my aunties and my favorite beignet vendor in the streets every day on the way home from school. I will miss huge communal rice dishes and picking at fish with my hands. I will miss speaking Wolof and French all of the time. I will miss being so free of stress and never needing to be in a hurry. I will miss little shot glasses of hot sugary tea and my favorite blue and yellow flowery bed sheet.

Looking back on this experience, I can see that halfway through this year, I was the most depressed I have ever been. But I have also had some of the happiest, most rewarding, and most relaxed moments of my life. I have pushed and stretched almost all of my boundaries, and have come out all the stronger for it. I will always be grateful for this year in my life. I have learned so much, not only about Senegal or Africa, but about myself, about happiness and about humanity.

They tell us we will be depressed, frustrated, and emotional when we get back to the States and find that in many ways everyone there has changed too, and in many ways they haven’t. I think the experts are probably right, so I am asking for your patience and forgiveness in advance during what is bound to be a rocky transition from Adama Ndoye back to good old Katiana Jones. I love you all dearly and can hardly wait to be home again in beautiful Colorado. See you in only 11 days incha’allah!

Only 3 1/2 weeks!

2008-04-21T06:50:00.000-07:00

Funny Names

My all time favorite billboard here is one for a certain brand of bouillon cube (which they put in absolutely everything they cook). It is a picture of an ecstatic Senegalese woman holding her freshly prepared platter of ceebu-jën. Next to her, in bold yellow letters the billboard exclaims, “Toggu Maam!... Cuisine de Grand-mère!... Grandma Cooking!” I guess they mean to say that it tastes just like Grandma used to make, but I love the direct translation. No one in the US would ever buy something sporting the slogan “Grandma Cooking!” Just like no one would be tempted to buy their ice cream at “Creamy Inn.” It somehow sounds more gross and creepy than delicious. On the way back from my trip to Kaolack, I even saw a store called “Shop 2-Pac” that seemed to be some sort of hair salon. Young people really like 2-Pac here so I guess it was good, if perhaps false, advertising.

Kaolack

Last week was the week of my second rural visit experience, spent near Kaolack, several hours south-east of Dakar. Our trip was organized by a women’s rights NGO, called APROFES, which is very active in Senegal. The first night was spent in the city with host families, learning about the work of the organization. The next day, we were driven into the nearby village of Keur El hadji Mabeye to pass the rest of the week. The week started out with a bang, quite literally. As we were driving into the village, the local women’s organization started drumming, dancing and singing, giving us the warmest welcome we had ever received. After sitting around, discussing our objectives, we were led to a small bedroom in the village chief’s house (none of us really sure why except that maybe the chief wanted to show it off to us), followed by what seemed to be the entire village and a tiny baby goat. At nine in the morning it can be quite overwhelming to be in such close proximity to a million wide curious eyes, deafeningly over-excited Wolof conversation, and insistent arms shoving infant children into your grasp as you cower in a corner. Add a small frisky goat into the picture and you can see why we were glad to finally get out of that room ten minutes later.

We basically spent the entire week living life like the women do (but doing, admittedly, less work than they do). We pounded mortars and pestles, watered plants, ground flour at the mill, peeled and cut veggies, swept and cleaned, pulled water from the well and carried it on our heads, and I even plucked a warm, freshly killed chicken. I don’t think I will be grossed out by touching raw meat anymore because plucking a chicken is about ten trillion times more disgusting, especially when the neck is dangling half-off from where it was cut and is bleeding all over the place. The worst part is if you catch sight of the face or the little curled up feet because you feel like it might just come back to life in your hands. Whenever we had a spare moment, we napped and fanned ourselves (it was so hot! One of my friends figured out that our last day there was 114 degrees… and that had day felt cooler than the others), or we shelled thousands and thousands of peanuts (their major crop and so one of the women’s major activities in the village). It’s insane to watch these women shell peanuts. Sitting on the floor or on piles of peanut shells, they take the peanuts one by one in their fingers and smash them against the ground in one swift motion that magically separates peanut from shell. They make it look so quick and easy, but we all had a hard time of it. It takes a lot of hand strength to separate them in one quick blow without hurting your fingers or smashing the peanuts inside. Even with the help of the little wooden blocks that the younger girls held in their palms while cracking, our peanut piles were so much tinier than theirs.

We spent the evenings talking with the women under the stars. It was excellent for my Wolof because the women didn’t speak any French and so just had to repeat things or rephrase them when I didn’t understand. I ended up communicating rather well and was finally able to see how much I have learned here. I will be so sad to lose all of my Wolof in the US. When we ran out of things to talk about, they asked us to sing an American song. In my experience, the Senegalese are not too thrilled by typical Western music (which I understand completely since I really don’t enjoy their music very much either), so we knew we had to pick something fun and exciting to entertain them with. I must say that we are pretty much the best Head-shoulders-knees-and-toes performers in the entire world. It was a big hit with the women, especially the second round where you speed it all up. I think we did it at least twenty times over the next couple of days. We’re thinking about forming a band and taking it on tour. We even convinced one of the older dignified ladies to join in the chicken dance with us one night. It was a blast.

By the end of the week, we were all tired of performing for them, but were sad to leave their warm hospitality. As our car pulled out of the village, hundreds of children were pressed against our windows trying to shake our hands and screaming goodbye. They chased our car as far as they could, shouting and waving all the way. I can’t even explain how purely happy that moment was. My friend, Spencer, once said that he wished that whenever he came home, there would be mariachi music playing in the kitchen because it was so bright and cheerful to hear at the end of a long day. But I think that in the absolute happiest world there would not only be mariachi music in the kitchen, but also a hyped-up troupe of excited smiling children running after your car every time you pulled out of the driveway, screaming goodbye until you drove out of sight. Unfortunately, it’s probably against the law to keep hundreds of sugar-fed children in your garage, which is probably why there will always be a little bit of sadness in the world.

The end of March

2008-04-06T04:44:00.000-07:00

Mbeubeuse

We went on another nasty but informative environment field trip to Mbeubeuse, the landfill in Dakar. It’s the only landfill here and is basically just a dried up lake turned into an unregulated dumping place, unlike the landfills in the US that are lined to avoid ground water and soil pollution and that sort their trash to make it more sanitary. Garbage is a huge problem here because there is no efficient garbage collection. Trucks come into neighborhoods but can’t fit down the small streets so they just park on a central road and honk their horn loudly for everyone to come and bring their trash. People who don’t feel like bringing their trash out simply burn it in the street. Mbeubuese is full of every kind of waste: solid, liquid, and biomedical waste (the most dangerous kind). This dump pollutes not only the ground water, infecting and killing all the vegetation, but also the air (the heat from the sun on the garbage creates methane gas that is released freely into the air… in the US they isolate the garbage that creates methane gas and then collect the gas to reuse it). We walked all over this massive pile for hours in the hot sun, with only face masks for protection. I really don’t think it was very safe.

One of the most interesting and depressing parts of Mbeubeuse is the “Recyclers’ Association.” There is a group of hundreds of people, just recently organized into an association of sorts (though some are just homeless children), who work informally at the dump. What they do is collect and sort recyclable materials to resell to businesses or people on the street on a personal basis. Most live on the outskirts of Mbeubeuse and just come there every day to work, but others live right on the trash in little houses constructed out of this very same garbage. All around the “houses” you see piles and piles of empty plastic containers, shoes and clothes, cans and glass bottles, and even used fake hair (an abundant product in this country where nearly everyone’s hair is actually just fake braids… it’s not uncommon to see chunks of it blowing around in the street like fuzzy tumbleweeds everywhere you go). The piles of hair were really gross but I have actually seen them being reused. My sister has a huge bag full of fake hair that she just picks apart and separates to reuse when she wants to change her hairstyle. The other day, at an auberge, a girl in our program threw her pillow down to the ground, frustrated with how oddly lumpy and uncomfortable it was, only to reveal that it too was stuffed full of fake hair… disgusting but economical I suppose.

If you have ever seen the movie The Labyrinth, the dwellings in Mbeubeuse were exactly like that. The recyclers make a fair amount of money each day but are looked down upon because their job is considered to be the lowest of the low. I won’t even go into how dangerous it is for their health to spend every day crawling over trash without any protection, but they are just glad to have a job and an income.

We were all disgusting looking by the time we got back home from Mbuebeuse. According to my friend Marianne, her family wouldn’t even talk to her until she got into the shower and her mom’s friend even threw up a little after seeing her.

Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup

My friends, Marianne and Katie, came over to help me try to make grilled cheese and tomato soup. My host mom and sister had both gone to Tivaone for the Tidiane brotherhood’s big religious festival that coincides with Mohammed’s birthday. It was apparently also my host dad’s birthday, so I wanted to make something special/actually try to cook. I knew it had to be something simple because cooking resources here include a) some pots and pans and b) one large propane tank. We had a fantastic time preparing the food, though the sandwiches were too buttery and the soup was too watery. It was a good enough imitation though to sate our hunger for American cuisine. Unfortunately, my host dad didn’t even show up. Right when we started cooking, he said he had to drive to the airport really quick to drop his friend off at work and that he’d be right back. It takes twenty minutes at the most to drive to the airport so we figured he’d be back in forty. About an hour later, we were done cooking and there was no sign of him. I called him and he said he was on his way. One hour later, we had to just eat without him because Katie and Marianne had to get home (it was about ten o clock and we had class early the next day). Still one hour after that, my host dad finally showed up, wondering where everyone had gone. Apparently on the way back, he had decided to go and pay a “quick” visit to his brother-in-law as well as stop at a boutique and a fruit stand. I really should not have been surprised. To him, this was perfectly natural behavior. When you say one hour here, it means three or four. He was actually surprised that the girls had gone home and that we had already eaten and that the sandwiches were now cold. He was also really disappointed since he had purchased melons and coca-colas to share with them and make it a truly festive occasion. I know it was just a cultural misunderstanding but I still think it was slightly rude of him since he knows that I never stay awake past 11pm on a weekday because I’m physically incapable of waking up at 7:30am if I do. He did seem to like the sandwiches, though he didn’t even try the soup (the Senegalese are really not into soup, but they are really into cheese since it is an expensive luxury that they can hardly ever buy). In fact, everyone liked the sandwiches (which made my mom and sister rather annoyed that they weren’t even here) and now they want me to make them again. We’ll see if I do though because it actually is expensive to buy good cheese and I hate having to light the huge propane tank with an old broken lighter. Cooking here is so different and so much more complicated than in the US. They don’t even have a cutting board, but cut things into their palm sitting over a huge bowl. They crush things together with a huge mortar and pestle. I also never really realized how much I depend on pre-made packaged goods. When I was brainstorming dishes I knew how to prepare, almost all of them involved something that came in a can or bottle already made, products that can only be purchased at the expensive little french supermarket. I now know for sure that I would be a terrible Senegalese wife.

Perfumed Pits

I had another wonderful cultural moment the other day (a moment where I was glad I was the only American present because if I had been able to make eye contact with someone like my sister, Emily, we both would have burst out laughing uncontrollably). My host mom, sister and I were sitting around the living room, trying not to slide off of the fancy new couches while watching TV. All of a sudden, my host dad walked into the room with a bottle of perfume spray that the Senegalese like to spray in their armpits on special occasions (on normal occasions they go without, making most of my hot stuffy bus rides more unbearable with the pungent stench of everyone’s B.O.). He then walked up to my host mom and, without a word, gave her shirt a couple of generous puffs of spray in the general direction of her pits. Then he continued around the room, a couple of puffs for Bineta, and then some for me, surprising me out of my television stupor. When I turned around, both my sister and her mom were holding up their arms, sniffing at their pits, and sighing in grateful satisfaction, complimenting my host dad on his choice of armpit spray and asking him where he got it. It’s not the first time I had been offered the spray. Once, when in the presence of one of my aunties getting ready for some celebration (half naked as usual… I have seen enough old lady boobs to last a lifetime here), the pit spray got passed around to everyone in the room in what I took to be a display of astounding generosity. But this was the first time I had had the spray so casually forced upon me. I just couldn’t stop thinking about how natural this all was for them, wondering what a house-guest would say in the US if I perfumed their pits for them in my living room. Unfortunately, I wasn’t too thrilled by this particular headachy after-shave-like scent even though everyone else seemed ecstatic (a little TOO ecstatic in my opinion since my host dad then decided to spray it all over the entire house, including my bedroom, meaning I had to smell it for the rest of the week), but it was a fantastic Senegalese moment all the same.

La Lutte

Last weekend we went to Sine Saloum, about four hours south of Dakar, for another cultural trip. The best part of this trip by far was the traditional wrestling match we watched on Saturday night. Basically the first hour of this match is full of fairly well-built Serer men wearing nothing but diapers (like sumo but with a little more coverage and made from fabric with African prints) and, get this, designer tennis shoes (don’t ask me why) dancing around to prepare for the wrestling. When the wrestling starts, the shoes come off and the gris-gris come on (purchased from the marabouts to ensure a successful match). The two men go at each other, pretty much however they want, and try to flip each other onto the ground. This can take five seconds or twenty minutes depending on how well-matched they are. Afterwards, the champion holds his arms up in the air while the loser writhes on the ground in anguish, thrashing around uncontrollably, sometimes even crying. At first I thought this was just an extremely dramatic over reaction to their depressing loss, but, as our director later explained, they are actually in trance, possessed by spirits until their gris-gris are removed from their body by the team of pre-teen boys that sit on the sidelines (ready to physically constrain the madmen so they can pull the gris-gris off before anyone gets hurt). It was a pretty exciting event. My favorite part was when they let people in our group try to wrestle. I’m absolutely positive that they let all the toubabs win since they were all obviously well-trained wrestlers. I think we all got a kick out of seeing our friends in diapers, though. In the professional matches on TV, the wrestles have curdled milk dumped onto them, some sort of sacred ritual to help them win. I’m really glad they didn’t do that in Sine Saloum since I’ve always found it rather disgusting.

Spring Break

2008-03-25T03:46:00.000-07:00

Last week was spring break so Pauline came to visit me from France. It was so exciting to finally be able to show my world to someone and to have someone who will truly be able to understand what I am learning and experiencing. It scares me that so many people do and will form all of their opinions and perceptions of Senegal (and possibly even the African continent) around the things that I write and say. It is a power that I fear because I know for a fact that it is completely impossible for me to convey this experience exactly as it is. That’s the problem with communication. Something is always lost in translation. If only I could skip a step and put my thoughts directly into your mind. Also, like the news media, I tend to mention the more negative events as those are what stick so strongly in the head. There are so many more positive everyday happenings that just aren’t as interesting to hear about. But I’m just rambling now… back to Spring Break.

Pauline did amazingly well adapting to life here. I know it took me much longer than a week to get to the point that she was at by the end of it. She was even using Wolof phrases and bargaining during her last few days. I spent the first couple of days just showing her around my neighborhood, my school, and insane Marché Sandaga.

Most of Tuesday was spent in a broken down 7-place going to the Lompoul desert. As soon as we started driving, black smoke started pouring out of a hole right next to Pauline, just above the tire. I think both Pauline and I were envisioning our deaths right there and then, but the driver didn’t seem at all worried and told us it would pass. Pass it did and we had no other problems (besides the stifling heat and cramped conditions) until I felt something tickling my right calf. I had to completely shift my body to even see my calf in that crowded back seat, and was terrified to discover a huge cockroach making its way up towards the opening of my capris. I jumped, brushing it off, and had to do some severe mental concentration to not freak out since I knew I wouldn’t be able to move more than a couple inches for the next two hours. The man on my left scoffed at my reaction but I could see him secretly shifting a little every now and then to try and keep his feet off the floor.

Since Lompoul is a small village, there are very few people actually willing to take you there. We got dropped off at this tiny little gas station in Kebemer, having no idea where we were or exactly how far from the village. Because of this confusion, our fatigue, and the ten or so men crowding all around us to buy whatever it was they were offering, we ended up paying WAY too much for a cab to the village. I was ashamed that I didn’t even try to bargain, but you really have to prepare yourself for things like this. Without the proper emotional and mental preparation, Senegal can be pretty hard to handle sometimes.

The desert was just as beautiful as the last time, though the beauty was slightly tainted by the presence of the most obnoxious people I’ve met in a long while. First of all there were the usual inescapable and relentless Senegalese men with their desperate proposals, unceasing sugar-coated invitations to tea, and stifling dialogue in French/Wolof/The five English words they learned from TV… teach me English and I will teach you Wolof, take me to the US, marry me, I love you. I could recite this conversation by heart; I’ve heard it so many times with the exact same words in the exact same order, you’d swear the entire young male population had read the same book on “How to Court a Toubab and Fail Miserably.” Pauline and I literally power-walked ahead of our “guide” so that we could get two seconds alone to enjoy the dunes without his idiotic flirtatious banter. He kept insisting there were lions (maybe to scare us) which was the stupidest thing I had ever heard as it is a fact that that part of Senegal is quite sadly vicious-jungle-animal-free.

The second, rather more obnoxious people were the group of old retired French vacationing in Senegal. Pauline and I saw from the start that they would be a pill. In the village, waiting for the 4x4 to pick us up and bring us into the desert, these people were already complaining… the 4x4 wasn’t there when they arrived, why wasn’t everything structured and on time (um… hello? It’s Senegal.), whine whine whine. The worst part was their tone of voice… so condescending towards the Senegalese and then sickeningly sweet and overly polite to us, the fellow white people. It made Pauline and me so angry, I immediately wished we could change camps. Pauline and I felt so bad for the innocent workers at the campsite that we tried to counteract them by being as unobnoxious as possible. I got a secret pleasure in being able to talk about how incredibly rude they were in Wolof to our Senegalese hosts. In the end, we were able to avoid them until dinnertime, when we had to eat the couscous together (which the aforementioned ever-present “guide” told us afterwards was dog and not goat…. not likely, but not funny). As soon as they learned that I had been studying in Senegal, living, speaking, and traveling (they had their own shiny new, expensive-looking car to drive around in) like the Senegalese, I could see in their wide fascinated stares that they thought I was completely insane. They were the kind of uptight Bourgeois “intellectuals” that passionately debate and condone the horrors of slavery and colonization while unconsciously embodying the very colonizers they loathe.

After dinner, we hid behind our tent so that we could admire the billions of stars while avoiding further Senegalese tea invitations. In spite of all of the people around us, it was still a fabulous trip. The sand and the stars were gorgeous, the camels were as excitingly awkward to ride as ever, and the couscous (whatever it was made of) was surprisingly good and full of fresh veggies.

The next day, we hunted down some more 7-places to St. Louis (helped by several very generous and good-willed Senegalese) where we collapsed in a not-so-nice auberge (we were just grateful that there was a shower and a toilet that sometimes flushed). We spent the evening walking around, bargaining for souvenirs. I have to say that this visit (my third) to St. Louis made me really dislike it. It’s mainly the people there; they despise tourists and aren’t afraid to show it. Every time Pauline tried to take a picture, even though no people were even in it, someone would yell at her, telling her she wasn’t allowed to take any pictures of them without asking first. Even later, in a boutique, after Pauline had gotten the consent of the boutique owner to take a photo, the woman in line in front of us turned around and started yelling at us until the owner confirmed that we had indeed asked. I guess I can understand their oversensitivity to the photo-taking. After all, when you go to Germany or France you don’t go around taking pictures of the everyday German and French people going about their lives… Look! It’s a German man tying his shoe!... but Westerners find “Africans” all the more exciting, turning an everyday woman relaxing in front of her house into a bleeding heart image of poverty. It’s really quite demeaning. Unfortunately, it leaves innocent people like Pauline and me, who just want to take a picture of a freaking bridge, feeling negative and depressed.

I was relieved to come back home to Dakar the next day and just lay on my bed underneath the fan (a daily ritual now for Pauline and me because of the heat). We walked to the lighthouse and spent a day at Gorée Island with my sister. The House of Slaves museum was significantly more moving for me this time around as I was prepared for it and no longer in a group of forty-nine other Americans. Pauline picked out some fabric at Wakaam market and had a Senegalese dress made by our tailor. Little did we know, my family was having two other dresses made for her as a gift for when she left. Now Pauline has quite the selection of beautiful clothes she probably won’t be able to wear in France, which just means she has to come back now. J I had so much fun with Pauline here and was so sad to see her go, but it was a satisfying week overall. I think Pauline really enjoyed Senegal, which is the most important thing. My family loved her and my host dad still talks about her. He has come to the conclusion that all French people are incredibly short (Pauline is only 5’3” I think).

OCI Conference

Hovering over the end of Spring Break were the hasty and overly-secured preparations for the OCI, a global Islamic conference held every couple of years that was about to take place in Dakar. Because so many powerful world leaders would be attending this conference, President Wade was putting billions of dollars into making his country look good. His projects were, of course, quite controversial. Basically what he decided to do was to completely redesign and develop one tiny part of the city, the part that the conference participants might see. At this moment, if you were to drive along the coast, you would think that you were in a rich and classy resort town. Newly planted palm trees line the perfectly laid cement, eerily absent of traffic. Murals and large excessive statues abound with fancy bridges and hotels everywhere that hadn’t been there only weeks before. Unfortunately though, after you drive about three minutes to the east, you are back in the midst of poverty…trash-covered roads that are falling apart, vendors all over the place, decaying dirtied buildings or those permanently under construction because of lack of funds, pollution of everything everywhere. Every few miles in the fancy part, there is a huge billboard of Wade’s face next to the logo for the OCI and a message that says “Welcome” in French, English, and Arabic.

All of the educated people I spoke to were upset by Wade’s behavior. So much money was wasted in covering up Senegal’s major problems rather than solving them (his methods were also shockingly undemocratic and terribly political, giving all of the building contracts to his own son)… so much money put into a conference that had no visible benefit for Senegalese society overall. The Catholic’s were especially upset. The government news station had a new 24-hour OCI/Islamic focus. In order to keep the students from protesting at school during the conference, Wade, at the last minute, declared two full days of the week national holidays. We were annoyed that we still had class, but it was our teachers’ form of personal protesting by refusing to take the holidays off. We wouldn’t have been able to go anywhere anyway because the security was ridiculous. Huge parts of roads had been blocked off, several gas stations temporarily shut down and drained of gas, and strict curfews initiated. Within a huge radius of where the conference was taking place, no one was allowed without a badge that said they were a resident in the area. It was all crazy, but also nice because there was hardly anyone in the streets or on the bus to school. I think the worst part is how disappointed all of my professors were in their president and how terribly unsecular and undemocratic he had turned out to be (though I doubt they voted for him in the first place… its just that the uneducated population is so much larger than the educated population, whoever they were voting for probably never had a chance).

The week after this conference, I came home one day and found my house completely transformed. My host family had purchased the couches my host mom had pointed out on the TV in addition to a DVD player and a digital camera (which I showed them how to use). The couches are rather ugly in my opinion, tan and leather, but stiff, taut, slippery leather, with an intimidating, no-nonsense look about them. It’s impossible to get comfy or to see the television when you are perched on top of one, but my host mom is ecstatic so I did my best to match her enthusiasm for them. I guess she didn’t want me to buy them for her after all, which is a relief.

The next day, in a car rapide, this Senegalese man sitting across from me was wearing a T-shirt that said “Greeley Jazz Band” and it made me laugh so hard. I’m sure he bought it second-hand at one of the markets. You just never know where your donated clothes go… it was hilarious.

Would you like an insult with that beignet?

2008-03-17T06:50:00.000-07:00

Slightly Depressing

As I was walking past my favorite beignet sellers today, I called out the standard Wolof greetings to them as is deemed polite in this country. As soon as I opened my mouth, this middle-aged gap-toothed man buying beignets turned around and started berating me about my Wolof. He kept saying that my accent was so terrible that it was hurting his ears and I should stop trying to speak Wolof. Then he used one or two random words in English (with a terrible accent of course) and looked so proud of himself before he continued with his tirade. The beignet ladies tried to defend me but this man was relentless. I like to tell myself that he had a bit of a smile in his eyes the entire time and I’m pretty sure he was just pulling my leg, but it still made me a little sad. At the end, he asked me how long I had been here. When I told him seven months, he said “Felicitations,” and then smiled and walked away. I really do think it was just his kind of humor. I know I have a horrible accent because we don’t focus a whole lot on phonetics in Wolof class, but I’m still trying. I think it was rude to point it out so dramatically, but I guess I’ll get over it. Still, I hope I never see him again because it’s no good for my Wolof-speaking self-esteem.

This is where I live

2008-03-11T09:15:00.001-07:00

I finally posted some pictures of my house here in Dakar:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2087265&l=6f9ba&id=
42106444

Chef Adama

2008-03-11T04:53:00.000-07:00

Stovetop Stuffing

The other week, I cooked for the first time for my family. From the beginning I have told them that cooking is something I don’t enjoy doing (mainly to ward of their husband suggestions, but also because it’s true), so when I pulled out the box of Stovetop Stuffing my mom sent me, they practically threw me a party. I’ve never made stuffing before, but I decided I could probably handle it since all you need is boiling water and some butter. My host mom opened up the box and stared at the little dried up squares with suspicion. She popped one in her mouth and then looked at me a little skeptically, but I assured her it would be tasty once it was cooked. Everyone gathered around me while I was preparing it and it started to make me a little nervous… so much pressure you know. My host dad was even using his cell phone to take a video of it. I’m pretty sure he was running late to work, but decided that watching me cook and then eating what I had prepared was much more important. Anyway, I ended up grabbing the scalding hot iron lid of the scalding hot iron pot with my bare hand, causing my host mom to laugh hysterically, confirming the fact that I really should not ever be allowed to cook things. I was the teensiest bit proud of myself though when I saw the finished product. It looked so fluffy and delicious and smelled just like Thanksgiving. I never thought that someone could ruin Stovetop Stuffing, but after they put it together with funky meat parts and intestines, I just about threw up. Needless to say, I ended up eating most of the stuffing while they ate most of the meat. They all raved about it the whole time but I could tell that it wasn’t their favorite thing. It’s funny, but I think it was just too flavorless for them. I never would have considered it to be flavorless, but without all of the peppers and spices my family usually uses, I could see their point. It appears Stovetop was not created for the Senegalese.

Xaalis-Argent-Money

Later that night, I was watching TV with my host mom and sister when a commercial came on for a furniture store. When a set of nice leather couches came on the screen, my mom looked at me meaningfully talking about how beautiful those couches were and how much she really wanted them for our living room. It was as if she expected that I might consider buying them for her… like I could afford to buy her couches! I think my family really overestimates how wealthy I am. By my own standards, I don’t go around spending a whole lot of money on pointless things, but here, even the coke or the occasional beignet I buy are excesses in the eyes of my family, showing them that I have money to spend. I try never to have things like this in their presence, and if I do, I always share with them. I don’t think they understand loans and budgeting and expensive university tuition no matter how I try to explain to them. In their minds there is no saving and planning. When you have money, you give it or spend it until it is gone. When you don’t have money, it is given to you by your friends and family that do. In this fashion, nobody is left out as long as they have family. It’s all about a constant giving and taking. Unfortunately, it is hard to adapt to this way of life after the US. I still can’t help getting a little annoyed when they borrow a little money from me and never give it back or when my sister not-so-subtly hints that she wants something of mine because I have too much. And all of this after I have practically showered them with gifts, not to mention payed them more than enough to care for me for nine months. I have to remind myself that it’s just the way of life here, and stay on my toes to keep myself from feeling the guilt that causes me to give too much. I need more fayda or I will end up giving away everything I have.

Another Senegalese belief about money is that you should always do the best you can afford to do. I have started taking car rapides here instead of the bus because in a car rapide, you are guaranteed a seat and a speedier ride home. In Senegal though, car rapides are considered the lesser form of transportation. They are much cheaper and more broken down, and are used by the slightly poorer population to get around. No one in Senegal understands why a toubab, who must have tons of money, would ever take a car rapide or walk anywhere. It is the general opinion that a toubab should take a taxi (the most expensive way to travel) absolutely everywhere, even the tiniest distances, because they can afford it. When people see us hanging out the windows of the car rapides, most end up laughing or smiling because they just can’t even believe that that would ever happen, but some get annoyed and send malicious glares our way. Some car rapides won’t even stop for us when we put out our arms. Once a man passing by caught sight of us inside the car rapide and, mistaking us for French people, yelled out “Ce n’est pas la France, c’est l’Afrique!” Even on the bus, I have heard horror stories of bitter Senegalese who for some reason, just don’t want us to be there. Luckily, these shows of anger are few and far between. Also, as soon as you speak Wolof, you can often manage a smile even from the mean ones. Though it is mild in its form, it is the first time in my life I have been the victim of racism and it’s no fun at all. I can’t even imagine how it must be for some minorities in the US who face this every day. I can suddenly relate to people in the US, for example, who speak very little English, who some think should be evicted from our country for just this reason. How horrible it feels to find yourself unwanted in a place you love, to be harshly judged by someone who doesn’t know you at all just because of your skin or your accent.

Beware of Fecal Sludge

2008-02-26T03:05:00.000-08:00

The other day, I had a field trip with my Environment and Development class to learn about water pollution in Dakar. I don’t think I’ve ever taken a class that made me feel physically ill before this. Every day when I walk out of that classroom door I start choking on fumes I never really noticed before. The pollution that I once politely ignored now suffocates me and makes my eyes water. I notice it everywhere. This field trip only augmented my worries… two words: fecal sludge. The nastiest words I have ever encountered, especially now that I have also encountered their physical form.

The day started out with a friendly trip to the water purification plant. I rather enjoyed this tour as I had never before truly pondered the purification of waste water. The first half was a verbal explanation of the process… first the removal of big solids, then smaller solids, then bacteria and small particles, then chlorination and dechlorination. It was cool to see how energy efficient the plant was. It was located in the lowest point of Dakar so that all of Dakar’s waste water would flow towards it without needing to be pumped. At the plant, it was pushed up to a higher level so that again gravity could be the force to move the water through the different tanks during the cleaning process. At one of the final stages, some of the bacteria create methane gas when they are destroyed. This gas is in turn used to help power the plant. The solid waste is compacted and dried to be sold as fertilizer while the cleaned water is used for construction or for watering some golf course nearby (it still is not clean enough for drinking).

The actual tour starts out pretty gross and smelly (it’s no fun watching the grayish, bubbly churning of mass amounts of what someone once flushed), but gets progressively better as the water gets cleaner. You end up walking through huge plots of the dried fertilizer in the final stage of the tour… which is fine if there isn’t a breeze. All in all, it’s a pretty good system that leaves you optimistic about water sanitation. And then you realize that this water plant (along with only two more) cleans only around 20 percent of Dakar’s waste water. Where does the rest go? You are about to find out…

You can smell Hann Bay before you even see it. A stinging, pungent death-like smell that permeates every part of your being… a cross between someone’s eggy belch and a rotting corpse. You begin to wonder if you should plug your nose and breathe through your mouth… until you find out that you can taste it. You suppress the urge to vomit. As you approach the beach, you can see the fecal sludge at all its levels of decay running horizontal to the water, like a death rainbow. First, a thick whitish snake-like mass (the most putrid part), like swarming maggots, easing slowly into a greener level (not yet completely rotted in the sun)… As you move closer to the water’s edge, the mass gets greener and thicker and moister and deeper until you can see the water, water so blackish and oily, you cannot begin to see beyond its surface. A closer glance shows it to be eerily silk-like. You feel that if you ever dared to pierce the surface, its top layer would tear apart and cling lightly to your skin (like poking a spoon through the thin layer of film that forms over mom’s mac and cheese sauce when you leave it on the stove too long). I swear I have never seen anything so polluted in all of my life. A quick look around reveals several swampy streams of human waste water flowing slowly into the sea… and you wonder how in the world a place like this can exist.

The saddest part is the people you see, living and working in this mess, unaware of the dangers it must be presenting to their health. There were men up to their waists in this mess, pushing their boats out to sea. There were houses only inches from the toxic waste with children running around. I even saw a pair of dogs curled up happily, napping in a warm pile of greenish sludge. There were no fish. Apparently, this bay was voted one of the Top 5 Most Beautiful Bays in the World in the 1970s. If you kind of squinted past the rotting fecal matter to see all of the colorful boats bobbing in the waves (and if you had no sense of smell), you could almost see how maybe, once that had been true.

I felt so dirty and polluted after that trip that I had to jump straight into the shower. I scrubbed so hard and even blew my nose to find that even my snot was an abnormally polluted color. As scarring as this experience was, I’m so glad that I had the chance to see this side of Dakar. I have a newfound massive appreciation for sanitation. From now on, flushing my toilet (when I have a real one again) will be a sacred experience with a million implications…

La future

2008-02-13T06:07:00.000-08:00

Last night Mame Tine (the one who cheers so crazily while watching the soccer games) was over at my house using her cowry shells to tell my yaay’s future. This happens fairly often in my living room and my family believes in it sincerely. My yaay suggested that I give it a try. So I put in my five hundred francs… one dollar to see what my future holds. She put the coins with the shells and swirled them around on the carpet before placing the tidy pile in my palm. I had to hold them up to my mouth and whisper, Maangi laaj ci sama jamm ak sama jammu yaram…I am asking about my health and future/affairs (literally: my peace and the peace of my body). This was the hardest part for me, though I was trying so hard to take it seriously. I hardly suppressed a giggle. Mame Tine herself was bent over with silent laughter, wrinkled little hands covering her mischievous toothless smile. Toubabs talking to shells are just not something you see every day I suppose. And then it began. More swirling of the little pile… little pauses between each swirl as her eyes darted over the positions of the little coins and shells, occasionally wandering from the shells toward the blaring television set to catch what was going on in my family’s favorite Wolof talk show. With each pause she had a new insight. There is a man that you talk to all of the time. Well, not really. I occasionally talk to Spencer but I avoid conversation with Senegalese men. I got the impression she was referring to romantic love so I decided to say yes, keeping in mind the boy that I last had a little crush on in the US, just for fun. I mean, we emailed a couple of times… that’s like talking. This man, sometimes you don’t know if what he is saying is true or false, but it is true. What you want is different than what he wants. Most likely. This seems to nearly always be true for me. He just moved to a different country. Not true, but he did just move to a different city I guess. He is a man in uniform like a policeman or soldier. Nope, but he did recently work for UPS and that has a uniform right? Not quite as elegant, but a uniform all the same. You are hesitating to talk to him, but it is good. Of course I am hesitating… it’s creepy and stalker-esque to frequently contact attractive boys you hardly know. Extra dramatic swirl of the shells… If you take a length of white fabric, a packet of sugar, and a bottle of milk and give them to someone, like your host mom (nice… she is friends with my mom you know) he will call you and send you something, like a ring. This makes me laugh… a boy who doesn’t even have my phone number is going to call me and propose it seems… a little too much for my taste. I think I might avoid the fabric-milk-sugar thing just in case. There is another man that you talk to a lot…a short man. Oh really? I rack my brain for short men I interact with and can’t think of one. Aziz! My sister cries out, referring to a rather short friend of mine from last semester that came over once. I think that they never got over the idea of me and him after he came to visit me and was even in my room (door wide open) for all of one minute. There’s only one catch… he’s one of the gayest men I know. I’m not sure it’s the time to go into this sensitive subject so I let it be. I guess I did have a facebook message from him that morning. Then Ouseynou comes in (perfect timing) and starts intimating along with my family that the short man of my dreams is actually him (oh great, not again… I hate being courted), inquiring about how many children we are going to have… it seems he’s hoping for ten- one more reason (of a bazillion) that he will never win my heart or body. My womb aches just thinking about it. You will get your diploma and you will find a job by a body of water. You will make lots of money. Cool. Who is more rich, your dad or your mom? Dad, I suppose since Mom isn’t working full time anymore. Your father is extremely wealthy. Well, wealthier than the Senegalese, by far. Good guess. But he has an enemy at work. To get rid of his enemy so he can be rich again, he must make a sacrifice… I suddenly imagine my dad trying to cut the throat of a goat on the back lawn… but you can make it for him. Sorry lady, there is no way I am slitting any throats, even for my dad’s business ventures. You have to take a coin and put it in your palm, pray over it, and throw it into the sea. This will be the sacrifice. That’s more like it. It seems that this is the end of the reading. My sister informs me that I shouldn’t throw the coin into the sea, but give it to Ouseynou because he will pray over it and it will still be a sacrifice. Seriously, sometimes I feel like they are all teamed up to get the most out of me as possible before I leave. I love them to death though and I understand. I do have so much more than they do and generosity is expected of me (as of all wealthy people in this culture). I feel like I have done more than fulfill that duty though, so I think that that coin will still be going into the sea if it goes anywhere. All in all, it was a rather entertaining way to spend the evening. I have talked to others here who have had their fortunes told and I really don’t think that it is possible to do believable fortune-telling across cultures. Senegalese futures are based on Senegalese assumptions like American futures on American assumptions. A really fantastic fortune-teller would be an anthropologist I think, who studies all sorts of cultures in depth and would know how to tell people what they wanted or needed to hear.

Apparently Mame Tine’s powers will be employed again quite soon in my home. My host dad has been having crippling ankle pains. He finally went to the doctor and had a blood test. It seemed he was in perfect shape. His conclusion was that it must be because of his family… someone in his family hadn’t been making the proper sacrifices to his family’s spirits. He knows this because he saw his sister the other day, and her ankle was hurting too. He’s going to get Mame Tine to tell him what he needs to do to appease them. He also told my mom that the doctor said he eats too much rice, which really pissed my mom off since preparing non-rice dishes all of the time is far too expensive and she thinks he is just making it up so he can eat more grilled fish (his favorite dish).

Let the games begin

2008-01-28T06:47:00.000-08:00

Looking for things to do

There haven’t been too many exciting things going on these days. A lot of the time I have spent watching the African Cup soccer games. Senegal just lost to Angola today. I am ashamed that I don’t know where exactly in Africa Angola is so I am going to look it up tomorrow. Who wins doesn’t really matter to me because the best part of the games is Mame Tine. She is this little wrinkly old woman, lacking several teeth, who totters around fiestily and tells peoples’ futures with cowry shells. She is a really good friend of my parents and is apparently really into soccer. I could spend hours watching her scream at the television in Wolof. I mostly have no idea what she’s saying but I just can’t help laughing every time while she shakes her fist in exaggerated joy or anger.

Yesterday my baay told me that in the Coran it says that good Muslims must ask permission before they smoke in front of people because sometimes people are allergic to cigarette smoke. They really don’t know about the dangers of lung cancer here. This is the same man that stuck a cigarette in my 8-year-old nephew’s mouth until he saw my look of reproach. He tells me proudly that one day Abdul will be a man and smoke just like his father does. Shortly after, he got a phone call from his ex-girlfriend of 25 years past which he made my other nephew, Tidiane, answer so that she would hang up. Apparently she’s really nice, but she just won’t leave him alone. After 25 years. I guess that when a person can have multiple wives, these things can tend to happen. Poor yaay. In marriage contracts here you can stipulate how many wives you want your husband to take. I wonder what my yaay signed to but I’m too afraid to ask.

Whenever I’m not watching the soccer games I am going to school and trying to befriend all of the new kids. I have two really cool girls that have moved into my neighborhood that I will enjoy hanging out with, but most of the time I have been hanging out with another year-long student Jessie, musing about last semester. We discovered that we have become rather bitter about our situations here. It just feels like we have done everything and seen everything we could in Dakar, and in some other parts of Senegal too. It takes significant effort to think up things that we haven’t done. We know how to handle any vendor or proposing man who comes our way. We barter things down to normal prices using only Wolof. I now splash myself down with ease and half of the time just let the cockroaches run free as long as that running is not happening on my leg. I don’t think twice when my cab driver asks me to pay in advance so he can take a fifteen minute detour to fill his cab with gas. I can sit for hours in front of a blaring television surrounded by blaring Wolof conversationalists without speaking or paying attention to anything in particular. I can lie in my room, for that matter, staring at my walls for half the day in perfect contentment. I was about to say that I was even used to the power going out all of the time but changed my mind when it actually did just go out… oh the irony. Three cheers for battery power. We’ve eaten all of the meals, listened to all of the Senegalese music, and been to most of the clubs in Dakar…

Helping out the new kids makes me feel almost like I am stealing from them. I am taking from them the chance to discover and experience things for themselves. It also makes me feel hardened. I see them, their skin still not cancerously freckled from the sun or wrinkled from the wind, no layer of dirt on their feet or jammed in their toenails that just won’t seem to go away, and for the first time in my life I feel hard and tough. And for the first time in my life I feel old. It really is complicated I guess, since I am saying all of the time how much younger I have felt here, based on my child-like position of non-fluency in the language and lack of general knowledge to help me get around, but now, in the presence of this new fresh and stylish fruity-scented femininity from the States, I can see that I have aged like the smelliest of cheeses. I’m not sure I really mind though. Some people really like smelly cheese. Like the French.

sickness... gross.

I spent all of Thursday night puking until about 2 am. Friday was the diarrhea portion when I almost passed out from dehydration. Sunday was intense constipation (probably because of all of the rehydrating/diahrrea-stopping meds I had taken the day before). Today is my first normal day. You really just don’t appreciate health until you lose it. I have decided that Senegal is the absolute worst place in the world to be sick. While I was vomiting, my family was considering buying me pizza and hamburgers (food which they consider to be the food of my country, and therefore less harsh on my stomach). After much pain, I finally convinced them I didn’t want and food that night. The next day, I ate only a little white rice and a piece of bread (after much argument again), but for dinner, my host sister decided that I had been sick long enough and that I needed to eat an entire meal in order to regain my strength. So she brought me in a half a small cauldron’s worth of soup (oh Senegalese portions!) and nearly half a baguette and said I had to eat it all. The soup showed her good intentions (we don’t normally eat it), but half of it was oil and huge mysterious chunks of sheep parts floating around amongst a couple of carrots and potatoes. I was so nauseous, I didn’t want any of it, but, overcome by the intensity of her gaze as she sat at the end of my bed, watching every bite, I forced down nearly all of it except for the sheep chunks. I have never felt so sick in all of my life. I ended up lying on my side and holding my aching stomach, almost in tears, before she believed that I couldn’t eat any more. She said that was fine as long as I drank the entire can of orange soda she handed me. Luckily she left and I only drank half before I set it on the floor, knowing that it would soon be covered in tiny bugs (the kind that you never see unless there is food about or a cockroach corpse to consume), and a good excuse to get out of the rest of it. On the second night, although I still felt a bit weak, I escaped to my friend Colin’s house in Yoff where I spend my night happily eating absolutely nothing so that I could finally recover. Now, I don’t want you to think that my family here is cruel and unfeeling. They were actually genuinely concerned for my health and genuinely believed that force-feeding me was the only way to help me regain my strength. I heard reasoning along the lines of “Even if you are puking, you have to keep eating so that you can have something to throw up so that you will get it out of your system and feel better.” Their ways of looking at things are just completely different, and their insistence actually was proof to me of how much they really love and care for me and want to help me when I am in pain. But I can tell you, that was really hard to see in those moments when I was going through it… all the more reason to take extra precaution never to get sick again.

still cranking them out...

2008-01-21T02:15:00.000-08:00

Racism

I’m becoming so wearied by my baay’s racist tirades. The French are lazy and racist. All other African countries are savages and drunks. Nigerians are all violent crooks. But the US… oh USA, land of dreams… where “time is money” and everyone works all of the time and becomes filthy rich. Sigh. It’s hard to blame his judgments with the knowledge that he might not have even gone through high school. What he knows of the world is based on clips of what he might see on the news, what he hears from others, or his daily interactions with people different from him. The worst thing is that, socially, I can’t really contradict him. The best I can do is to suggest that maybe, possibly, there is the slightest chance that not ALL French or Togolese, or Nigerian, or American people are exactly how he thinks. Today I even dared to bring up the example of specific French people that I know who are not at all racist or lazy. He was just silent for a while, thinking about it and then shook his head, changing the subject a little, saying that he would never go to France if he had a choice between all the countries in the world. I don’t want to make him sound like a bad person; he’s not. He’s terribly kind-hearted and treats me like a true daughter, always trying to teach me things and help me, always proud of my work and accomplishments. He teases and plays with the children. He treats his wife and daughter with respect and works hard during the day, and sometimes through the night, at the airport to earn the money to support them. All the same, I don’t even want to know what harsh words he had for Americans before I came into the house because I’m sure he must have had them. I am so glad that Pauline will be coming to visit, living proof that France is perfectly capable of producing fantastic, lovely individuals.

The label of “racist” is given so freely here to any white person the Senegalese don’t like very much. For example, the girl who lived across the street from me: a perfectly nice girl, sporty and fun-loving with a sense of humor. But she didn’t seem to feel it necessary to adapt her American ways to Senegalese culture. She hung out almost solely with her American friends, drank and went out a lot every weekend, made friends with a man in the neighborhood who apparently was a drug dealer on the side, was physically active, gave her number to men who asked for it, didn’t play hard to get like the Senegalese… a typical American college student. In the end, her host family, who I am friends with, ended up really disliking her. “She was a little bit racist,” they all concluded. Racist? I was surprised. Very American? Yes. Unable to adapt? Yes. Difficult to live with? Yes. Inconsiderate? Possibly. But racist, no, not at all. Or if you imply that you aren’t particularly interested in marrying a Senegalese man, or if you don’t feel like buying the plastic bracelet some guy is trying to sell you… racist, racist, racist. In these cases, I think they are saying it mainly to get a reaction, but it’s still unnerving.

It has definitely been a lesson for me though in Senegal, realizing how much education affects our perspectives and how sometimes, the lack of it can prevent us from accumulating new knowledge. I know it is useless for me to try to change the perspectives of my baay. Only his own experiences and interactions will be able to color and affect his thoughts. Sometimes I think it’s great we only live as long as we do because it seems that, after awhile, people become set in their ways and ideas while the next generation is fighting and pushing constantly against them to make whatever changes they believe whole-heartedly to be right and good. Maybe the only way for things to truly change and move in a forward direction (if you’re more of a pessimist I guess you might say merely different direction) is for the unchanging to die off and leave the reins in new hands. Of course this is just a generalization as I know many older people who are still perfectly capable of learning and changing and have the desire to do it, but still it makes me wonder what challenging idea I might be faced with in the future. What crazy new thing will my children and grandchildren come up with that I won’t ever find it in me to accept? I guess I’m thinking about all of this because I just read a fantastic book by Ayn Rand called We the Living that is all about Soviet Russia. Sometimes I have moments where I can’t believe that, after all of my years of education, there are some things (like Soviet Russia), that I just never learned very much about.

In happier news, I found a summer job in my university’s study abroad office that I am really excited about. I also retook the French placement test to try and test out of French and I was successful! Which, in no way means that I have nothing more to learn about French… I just knew that if this semester’s French classes are anything like last semester’s, I wouldn’t actually learn anything. My time will be used much more productively in taking an additional subject course in French. Today is the Muslim New Year, so happy New Year! Apparently that just means that some family members are going to come over tonight and we are going to eat loads and loads of couscous together. Sounds good to me.

Tamkharit- The Muslim New Year
I’ve decided that Tamkharit is my absolute favorite of all Muslim holidays. I love it because it is more chill than the other holidays were. The couscous doesn’t take as much preparation so most of the day is just spent like every other day. My yaay’s sister-in-law and all of her adorable hyped-up children came over to share the couscous and it felt just like Papa and Tutu’s house on a Sunday night. Later that night, all of the children go crazy. The boys dress like girls and the girls like boys and they go around door-to-door asking for money. Instead of saying trick-or-treat though, they get into big groups, using whatever they can find to make a drum, and create elaborate and surprisingly good drum beats. They stand outside your door drumming until you give them something. We walked around in the streets a little and I just couldn’t stop laughing. Little boys with wigs, make-up and dresses, and padding in their boobs and bum, walking around, exaggeratedly gyrating their imitation hips… little girls with fake beards and moustaches trying to look manly. It was so delightfully confusing; some of the costumes were so good. I think we should change Halloween to make it more like this because it is so much more entertaining than the standard Disney-character costumes. At night we drank a special mixture of hot milk, cheese, sugar, and mint (which is not as disgusting as you might think if hot milky things with unidentifiable chunks at the bottom don’t freak you out too much). Such a fun night. I wish I had remembered it was coming earlier so I could have arranged to borrow a camera (I think I forgot to mention that I absent-mindedly left mine in a cab at the end of last semester and, of course, never saw it again).

2008-01-14T07:20:00.000-08:00

France continued…

After Colmar, I spent a few days with Anne in her Parisian apartment. I got to see my friend Nicholas from last semester who also happened to be in Paris with his friend and we sat on the banks of the Seine overlooking the Notre Dame Cathedral. When some guy started playing La Vie en Rose on his saxophone I just laughed hysterically… it was so cheesily Paris.

Then I went to the house of Pauline’s parents. They were extremely nice and they wouldn’t let me pay for anything when I was there. They kept saying they wanted to do the same for me that my parents did for Pauline in the US. I just love having family all over the globe. They live on the campus of a school since her dad is the principal and her mom is a Spanish teacher there. The house is amazing, like a museum… long hallways and doors leading into what used to be the servants’ quarters. If I were an art major I would explain it all better, but I’m not so all I can say is that it’s the kind of house that sparks the imagination in the day, and becomes incredibly creepy at night with its creaky floorboards, high ceilings, and windows and mirrors everywhere. Suffice to say I’m glad I don’t believe in ghosts. They made me a Christmas dinner and gave me gifts which was sweet of them. It was like an endless two weeks of Christmas… just what I needed.

Pauline and I walked around Paris (Eiffel Tower, Louvre, etc.) and saturated ourselves in delightfully fattening Americaness with Starbucks, Oreos, Chips Ahoy, tacos, pizza, cheeseburgers, and frozen cookie dough. When people stopped us on the streets to get us to donate money to their cause, we just pretended that we only spoke English and it worked every time. Speaking of food though, I feel pretty bad for the French when I eat their Mexican food… it’s really terrible. I mean, it generally tastes good, but it’s not what an American would think of when someone says Mexican food. Case in point- my fajita had asparagus and squash in it- tasty but weird, and everything has funky cheeses and kidney beans and salsa that tastes like flavorless canned tomato chunks.

We went to the wax museum, Le Musée Grévin, which was exciting to me as I wrote a paper on Madame Tussaud last year in my French Revolution class. It’s downright spooky how real the statues look. Just see my photo album. There was a man in one of the halls that pretended to be a statue and then jumped at people when they got real close to examine him. Thankfully, he scared the girl a few people in front of us so we knew it was coming. When we were in front of the Louvre, this bleach blonde American high school student heard us speaking English and shoved her way into our conversation. She just kept chattering on in that way that some people have, trying so hard to come off as self-confident and independent that they end up looking incredibly nervous, annoying everyone, whining about how a florist told her the other day that her accent was horrendous (it truly was, even though that is a mean thing for someone to say). She was just too loud and too cheerful; it was unnerving. Another tourist interrupted her to ask her to take a photo for them so we waited politely for her to return and say our goodbyes. But as soon as she was done with the photo, she turned quickly around, and walked right past us, not even looking at us, to go bother someone else. It was so bizarre. I hope she goes home soon because, like Pauline said, she is the kind of stereotypical American tourist that gives all Americans a bad name in France.

Our time in Tours (Pauline’s hometown) coordinated perfectly with the beginning of the biannual sales of France (they never have sales except for two months out of the year), and so we spent all day shopping and getting my haircut. We also went to Le Chateau Chenonceau, a castle in the Loire Valley that was just gorgeous. It was great until we got to the last room of the ipod audio tour. In the middle of this beautiful room was a huge hilarious tower of fake snow balls with ribbons on it and we just couldn’t resist taking a picture. Then, the voice of the creepy man at the front desk boomed menacingly over the speakers in his little French accent, saying “NO FLASH PLEASE!” It kind of freaked us out. He apparently thought it was hilarious when we had to go back to the front desk to return the ipods.

We visited the American University of Paris the day before I left so I could ask questions about their grad school programs in International Conflict Resolution and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. I’m still not sure if these are the things I will want to be studying in grad school but I thought I’d better take advantage of the fact that I was in Paris to look at the school. I was surprised to find that I really like big cities like Paris and Dakar. I don’t think I could live in one my whole life but probably for a big chunk of it.

On the way home, our plane had to land for forty minutes so that it could be cleaned and the staff could switch off. I don’t think that anyone on the plane was expecting it since everyone was pretty pissed off to have to get off and on the plane again. To this day, I have no idea what country we were in for those forty minutes. I was sort of half-asleep when they were announcing it and so I thought that we were in Dakar. I couldn’t figure out why the plane ride had seemed so short or why everyone was so angry. It was incredibly disorienting. I kept looking for signs to give me clues as to where I was. They were all written in German, English, and something that was either Portuguese or Italian (it’s depressing I couldn’t figure it out because I was so tired and confused at the time), but none of them mentioned what the name of the country or airport was. One sign said that it was an “International Zone” that we weren’t allowed to leave, which I suppose means that we technically weren’t on any country’s soil, but on every country’s soil. Crazy. All I know is that the sandwiches sold in this no-man’s-land were positively nauseating.

And now I am back in Dakar. I lost my cell phone on the plane/in an airport, of course (my new number is 221-77-706-72-65 by the way). Upon entering Dakar, I realized that it is the smells of places, people, and things that really define them for me. I still remember how India must smell from all of the souvenirs my dad brought back. Dakar smells are sometimes unpleasant (like the urine smell of the cab or the burning trash), sometimes pleasant (like my hand-washed and sun dried laundry or the incense the Senegalese love to burn in their houses) but they all have special memories and meanings like my room, my host family, the ocean, and the adventures that await me this semester. Those two weeks in France passed like a beautiful dream, the kind that surrounds you with a contented glow even after you wake up and are faced with reality. All in all, I am feeling refreshed from being in France. It’s harder than I thought to readjust to the lack of luxuries and I think I am experiencing a teensy bit of culture shock again (though a million times less strong than my first time here). In distancing myself from Senegal, though, I realized that I truly have more confidence in myself and my capabilities than ever before and I hope that that feeling sticks with me.

On a side note, I am absolutely in love with feisty little old Senegalese men with no teeth. Another one came over today and inadvertently proposed to me (a joke of course since he was probably in his seventies or eighties), but I tell you, he was so adorable; it was one of the most tempting offers I have ever received. ;-)
Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles! My host dad actually grew some tiny pumpkins! My mom sent me a small pumpkin for Halloween that I carved. Afterwards, my host dad planted the moldy jack-o-lantern carcass in the backyard (seedless, mind you). A week or two later he brought me out to show me that it was growing. When he pointed at some leaves I just nodded and assumed that they were weeds. I had heard of people trying and failing to plant pumpkins in Senegal… and without seeds, I didn’t think it would ever work. But sure enough, today my host dad brought me two very tiny yellowish little pumpkins. I am in awe.

First post of 2008

2008-01-02T14:28:00.000-08:00

Maimouna’s Wedding

The other day I went to the wedding of my sister’s cousin, Maimouna. It was a lot like the other wedding except more exciting since I knew the bride and her family and got to be more involved. The best part is that I was wearing a wig which was just hilarious, but apparently beautiful by Senegalese standards. The funny thing is that I felt somehow more confident while walking around in that wig, chatting with everyone as much as I could. I think that in the US I would have been terribly self-conscious in such a cheap wig. Maybe I just felt more Senegalese with it on. I always have kind of wished for long black, wavy hair so it was quite exciting to have it for one day. The best part of the wedding was the preparation because I got to spend a lot of time chatting with Yama, who is like a sister to my host sister. It’s fantastic talking with her because she doesn’t speak French very well but is extremely talkative… kind of reminds me of Emily (remember Nutcracker Barbie? Only kidding.). Anyway, she will talk to me nonstop in Wolof and repeat when I don’t understand things whereas my family will try Wolof with me once and then, when I don’t understand, will switch directly to French. I was surprised at how much I understood when Yama was speaking too. I guess I’ve learned more than I thought though listening is always easier than speaking.

France!

I just arrived today in France and it was just as bizarre as I thought it would be. I made friends with the kind and surprisingly uncreepy Senegalese man next to me which made the whole process much more bearable (there was much waiting done at the airport which is always better with a friend). I don’t even usually initiate conversations with strangers but as soon as I sat in that seat and heard the corny Christmas tunes playing over and over I just got so excited I couldn’t possible keep it all in.

I thought that I was prepared for the cold but I for sure wasn’t. I was freezing until I arrived at the Picards to borrow Anne-Marie’s sweaters. I had one fleeting freak-out moment when I got to the airport in Paris and wasn’t sure how to get to the train station from there so that I could take the train to Colmar. I had to stop myself for a minute and take some breaths and remind myself that I went to Dakar on my own and was just fine so surely I could figure out Paris. Sure enough, taking a cab was the simplest thing in the world… so much easier than Senegal! In fact, I wasn’t quite sure what to do at first because in Senegal you have to bargain the prices first and then climb into a backseat that is falling apart all over the place. I forgot to put my seatbelt on until halfway through the ride because most cabs don’t have them in Dakar. I accidentally tipped the driver (and probably a lot too because I forgot that coins can be worth a lot here and so just gave him all of them) forgetting that you don’t do that in France. I remembered as soon as I saw the look on his face of gratitude and mostly surprise. I guess he will have a happier New Year now.

That cab ride was crazy. Everywhere I could see people kissing in the street, riding bikes around, cars stopping for pedestrians and using turn signals, people bundled up in winter clothes, christmasy shops everywhere, and of course the Notre Dame Cathedral and the Latin Quarter… I felt like a kid at Disneyland for the first time! Staying with the Picards is absolutely perfect. It’s so incredibly quiet and peaceful. I can curl up with a book on the couch and look at the trees outside or chat with Jean-François and Anne-Marie (I can actually speak French enough for this! I thought I wouldn’t be able to handle speaking French in France but it is all fine, and I am learning more French here than I ever have in Dakar). No one is forcing me to overeat and the food is all delicious. Today I went with Anne-Marie en ville to window shop and walk around. It was so fantastic to be bundled up, walking around in the cold, Christmas decorations still everywhere. We even stopped in a little café for hot chocolate. And then, last night I took a hot shower for the first time in four months! And when I woke up in the morning, it was because I was well-rested, not because there were roosters and donkeys braying, and talibés begging, and people chatting, and the tailor’s radio playing outside my window. I am used to these sounds now so they don’t bother me as much, but my sleep is certainly still lighter because of them and last night I slept like a rock. This vacation is more than I could have ever asked for. It’s absolutely perfect in every way. I feel like I could stay here for all time and be perfectly content. I just have to remind myself of the things I love about Dakar so that I don’t get too sad to go back. For example, the warmness of complete strangers. If in Dakar you greet someone in Wolof, you will have an instant friend whereas in France strangers seem happier to keep to themselves. When I was in Spain waiting for my connecting flight, I instinctively floated toward the group of Senegalese to talk to them because I felt more comfortable with them than with all of the other toubabs around me. But it just takes time. I am feeling much more comfortable now. I am glad to have the chance to be here because I am considering France as a potential place to continue my studies sometime in the future.

2007-12-26T09:39:00.001-08:00

I am becoming such a good little Senegalese daughter. Not surprisingly, I have been trying my best to fit into this culture so as to get the most benefit from this experience. Part of this fitting in is doing everything in my power to move myself from this elevated position I have as an American guest in my host house and to truly become a part of the family. This entire process has become almost subconscious to me and I didn’t realize until recently, and quite proudly, that I have been fairly successful. Just now, when sitting with my yaay in the living room drinking attaya out of little attaya glasses, I realized that half of my attention was focused on the level of tea in her glass. As soon as it was finished, I took it without thinking (she handed it to me, not even looking in my direction because it was so natural) and took care of it. The other day, the couches of our living room were full of male guests. My baay and I were occupying two of the chairs and my yaay was spread out, laying across the full length of one of the couches. Bineta was seated on the floor. When one more guest came, I got up and sat on the floor so that my mother would not have to move. As a true daughter to my parents, this man, a guest and male no less, had a much higher status than I and I recognized this instantly. I have even started answering the door. These occasions might seem silly and insignificant to anyone else, but to me they are accomplishments. At the same time they surprise me. Katiana, that stubborn American, would never greet strange men or the elderly with eyes lowered and sometimes with a small curtsy. She wouldn’t be so eager to rush to the side of her dad who, feeling a little thirsty but too lazy to get up, called out for one of the women in the house to bring him a glass of water. Adama does it gladly. I really think I have the best of both worlds… I have reached a sort of Katiana-Adama balance where I will do these little things and so be treated with the love and appreciation given to a true daughter, yet I am not permitted to do the laundry (a tedious task that, with ironing, can last several days) or clean the house. I am encouraged to cook if I feel like it (which I never do) but no one insists. Of course, I am not complaining much about being left out of these not-so-fun daughterly opportunities. In order to avoid the guilt of getting the royal treatment sometimes, I just have to remind myself of that little fact that both my family and I like to forget… no matter how hard we pretend, no matter how cold and harsh it sounds, I am technically still paying them quite a bit to do me a service, laundry and food included.

celebrity scandal!
There is a huge celebrity scandal going on right now that everyone is talking about here in Dakar. One of the traditional singers has taken a second husband without divorcing the first. Before understanding this, you have to first understand a little about the Senegalese celebrities, mainly this: almost all musicians here are a part of one caste of people called griots. Though the caste system is not as strict and thriving as it once was (except in rural Senegal of course where not much has changed, including this system), every once in awhile you can see that in many ways, it still counts. Parents will often still consider the origins of their child’s fiancé, based on his last name, before giving their approval. The griots are one of the lowest castes and are the dancers and performers. Their traditional role (that many of them still hold) is preserver of lineages and stories. At all main Senegalese events you will find griots going up to people and loudly singing praises of them and their families and heritage. After this, the person must give them money. This is how society would/does function, with the population accepting the necessity of griots to preserve oral tradition and provide entertainment. Now, many people of this caste are the singers, dancers, and drummers performing on TV and recording CDs. All of this gives celebrity drama such a unique dynamic here. Confined to this one caste, the drama of the performers flourishes between spouses and cousins, aunties and sisters. In a common disregard for civil law by traditional families (who in no way feel loyalty to it as they feel largely unaffected by it), the marriage of the celebrity I mentioned earlier to her first husband was a marriage through Islam, but not through the court. Islam apparently states that after three months of separation, a marriage is officially over. Therefore, this woman, unhappy in her first marriage and separated for over three months, felt no remorse in taking on a second. The problem is that the first husband is protesting that she cannot marry again because they were never divorced. It seems that much of the issue is that she is so much wealthier than he is (he was just a drummer in her group) and she is walking away with all of the assets (including their house) because of some sort of pre-nuptial contract (that I don’t understand since my family says it’s not a civil marriage). Anyway, this issue is all over the TV every day. I watched one talk show that had her husband as a guest, whining away about how she has no right to remove him from her life. Then, yesterday, I watched a concert put on by her and hubby #2 (also a second cousin or something in her family) in which they defended their own decisions and flaunted their love and happiness for the world to see (even singing a little song they made to express their love and make fun of hubby #1).
If my family is a reflection of the feelings of the general public, it seems that everyone is giving their support to hubby #1. My host parents were shocked that there had been a pre-nupt to begin with, that they hadn’t just been into sharing everything from start to finish. My yaay stated knowledgably that in the US this must not happen… I was sad to have to disillusion her. Everyone calls her the “woman with two husbands” (even though this is not technically true) and my baay thinks she should be sent to prison for breaking the law (which wasn’t being followed in the first place). They say that her first husband made her who she is today and she has no right to abandon him. It really is funny how worked up everyone gets up when discussing this. I’m glad no one has asked me my personal opinion because it would not be à la mode. I feel bad for the poor woman, and if she is happier in her new marriage, more power to her. I love how everyone just assumes she has no raw talent… that she owes this man something because she never would have come to anything without her husband drumming by her side. I love how the laws are ignored in the creation of the marriage and then called on in a time of crisis. If you need anything to make you more patriotic (which can still be nauseating if it is a blind patriotism), or at least appreciate what you’ve got in the US, just spend a month or so in a country like Senegal. I don’t think I would have wanted to be raised a woman (in these modern times at least) anywhere in the world but the USA.

Tabaski
Yesterday I got to experience yet another big holiday in Senegal, Tabaski. This is an Islamic celebration that commemorates when Abraham almost sacrificed his own son because of his faith in God, but was told at the last minute to kill a sheep instead. Therefore, every grown Muslim (if they can afford it) must sacrifice a sheep on this day according to the Coran. Apparently a goat works if you really are desperate, but this is looked down upon by society. Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, this means there are sheep everywhere all the time the month before Tabaski. They are being sold at horrendous prices as they are in such high demand. According to my yaay, Dakar ran out of sheep the day before and so people were traveling immense distances to other cities just to find one to sacrifice.
Anyway, a couple of days ago my baay parked his car out front and popped the trunk to reveal two tied-up helpless sheep. I was amused that they were in the car trunk but my baay quickly retorted with the fact that Americans put dogs in car so why not sheep? I didn’t feel like going deeper into this so I just nodded humbly at his self-satisfied look. By Tabaski, there were four sheep tied up in the backyard moaning feebly (two for my family, one for my “host brother/neighbor,” and one for his sibling in France who sent money to have it purchased and sacrificed in Senegal… apparently it is difficult to find places where sheep-sacrificing is permitted in the middle of Paris). At about 9:30 that morning, a hole was dug in the dirt in backyard and one by one I watched, without much ceremony, four sheep throats being cut, filling the hole completely with blood. The little boy children stood by the whole time and thought it was fabulous. After watching one of them thrashing around, head half off and swinging through the air as it fought for life, I had had my fill of carnage. Luckily my friend Fauve was not so sensitive and she narrated the rest to me and took some pictures. In less than an hour they were strung up on laundry lines, skinned, and pulled apart into little cookable pieces. Then, just like Korite, the rest of the day was spent with the women cooking and the men relaxing (this time hiding up in the second story pretending the women didn’t know that they were drinking beer on an Islamic holiday). Fauve and I knew better than to get in the way of the feverish grilling and onion slicing so we spent the day as we were expected to… lazing around being fed heaping piles of sheep meat and sugary beverages, doing some occasional baby-sitting. We sat in my room for awhile drinking hot chocolate and listening to my Christmas mixes to get in the holiday spirit. I wished I had saved my change because on this night, like Korite, children go from door to door in their best clothes, asking for money, and I had to look stingy again. I had a fantastic surprise call from Spencer (which is what made it a holiday for me) with very little call-dropping. I felt very lucky that night when I got out of going to the soirée sénégalaise again because my sister, exhausted from the day, fell asleep early, curled up on the floor. So basically it was a fantastic holiday. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if I let myself become a vegetarian when I’m back in the States and can choose what I eat.
Dakar really is so much quieter now without its sheep. There was a time when you couldn’t escape the sounds of their bleating. Unfortunately, now you have to watch out for chunks of sheep or piles of skin lying around in the street with the rest of the trash. Yesterday, when walking around the more villagey part of Wakaam (in my flipflops no less) I accidentally stepped in what looked like mud but just turned out to be dirt soaked in sheep’s blood. This particular street was covered in it so we had to take a different route to go around it. It was pretty disgusting.
Another unfortunate thing is that all the little children use their money to go out and buy candy and little fireworks. Then, hyped up on sugar, they run around throwing the fireworks at passing strangers and each other. My host sister is terrified of these fireworks-bearing monsters and for good reason. Apparently last year some little girl’s boubou caught on fire from one thrown at her and she burned to death. I’m just staying home in the evenings.

Joyeux Noël?
This Christmas is certainly the least exciting Christmas of my life, but I suppose that is to be expected. I realized though, that what makes Christmas the most exciting and enjoyable is the people around you, sharing in the Christmas spirit and celebrating along with you. This is why, sitting in my living room with my Muslim yaay and sister in front of the TV with them sighing that they were just too tired to go to the Christmas party next door, I was feeling a little down. I almost cried. We weren’t even watching the X-mas specials on TV because my family likes to watch the Wolof music videos and melodramas. When I finally got my sister to get up and go with me to the party, I had no idea what to expect. What I got was a second dinner with the neighbor’s family and the Mass live on TV. Not the best Christmas Eve while imagining my real family back home going to watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” and celebrating being together, getting ready to exchange gifts.
This morning was much better because I went to Mass with the neighbor. It was so fantastic to have at least a little bit of familiarity, and to be surrounded by glowing smiles and wonderful African-style chorale music. I was nearly dancing in my pew with joy. I felt just like a little girl, mainly because I was wearing shiny black shoes (shiny shoes!) borrowed from my sister and because my neighbor (we call her Big Mama) pressed a little coin into my hand for the collection when she saw I hadn’t brought any. Big Mama really is such a character. She is this proud old African lady that totters around, towering over everyone despite that fact that she is nearly a foot shorter than I am. She seems so tough but underneath she has the biggest heart… a smile from her is like rainbows and babies and sunshine all wrapped up in a warm hug. When the little baby next to us was fussy in church, she pulled a little wrapped candy out of her bag to quiet it and in that moment, I loved her more than ever. It was a good morning though I am still sad not to be home. I hope I never spend another Christmas away from my family… it’s just not worth it. I am so glad I will be going to France in a week to spend some time with Pauline and with Delphine’s family. I didn’t really understand when my parents suggested it to me; I thought I wouldn’t need a break from Senegal, but they were right. No matter how much I love it here, this season is the most difficult of my life, especially with all of the free time I have now to think about home. I have never been so constantly sad and homesick. Everything will be fine when the new students come and classes start, but I think I will be counting down the days.
I guess I did experience one Christmas miracle (I’m looking hard for the silver lining here)… last night I ate this buttery mushroom sauce with some chicken and I LOVED IT. I even took more mushrooms after the chicken was gone because they were so good. Christmas miracle or insanity? I’m not sure, but I’ll take it.

2007-12-19T04:58:00.000-08:00

Insane

I’m actually feeling cold these days! It’s about 75 with a slight breeze and I have goose bumps. Yesterday I was wearing socks and a sweater, and last night I slept in sweatpants with a sheet on top of me! I really am going to die when I get back to Colorado winters. I actually kind of like being cold and snuggling up in my warmer clothing. The only bad thing is that the showers get colder and not warmer so I’m starting to dread them and hold them off until I really smell. When I get back to the US I will take the longest hottest shower in the world. I think the new springs semester students might be a little overwhelmed by us yearlings with our unshaved bodies, funny smells, and thick sweaters when it’s clearly warm out, though I know it won’t be long until they succumb to the dark side.

It has been so long since I last wrote in here because I have actually been busy for the first time all semester! Sure enough, I waited until the very last second to write all of my research papers. In fact, I haven’t yet started the research for one of them that is due next week. And do you want to know the best part of all? I’m not in any way the least bit stressed out about it. Senegal has officially seeped into my mind and body leaving me completely incapable of any serious stress. The US is going to kick my butt next year when I have to go back to that lifestyle. I have officially decided though that I will be making some changes when I get back. Though I will still be in Honors and PLP, I will be avoiding too many extra-curriculars. I want to stop focusing on my silly resume and start focusing on things that matter like spending time with the people around me.

Tabaski is coming, the sheep are getting fat…

Tabaski is in the air… field after field that was once covered in garbage is now home to endless expanses of sheep for sale, mindlessly munching away, their abundant trashy fodder lulling them into a false sense of security. I can’t help but be reminded of the Christmas tree farms back home. Though the trees somehow have it better off, I think, for they have already been killed, propped up haphazardly in their purgatory, awaiting an afterlife of tinsel and twinkle lights. What afterlife awaits a sacrificial sheep?

Creepier than cockroaches…

I really thought that things couldn’t get much creepier than cockroaches, but, just as I was conquering cockroaches and getting used to their presence, Senegal decided to throw another one at me… one huge mangy cat-sized rat (and I’m not even exaggerating this time). It now lives in the bathroom by night and scares the bajeezus out of me every time I try to go pee or brush my teeth. I’ve never understood people’s fears of rodents because all of the rats I knew before were soft and tame and did silly tricks. Now I get it. I think what I’m mainly afraid of is diseases. Also the fact that this rat has lived to such a ripe old age (judging by its sheer massiveness) in spite of the thousands of cats that live in my backyard… it must be possessed by unbelievable strength or some freakish higher-rat power. I just don’t want it to touch me, but whenever I enter the tiny bathroom its only way out is exactly where I am standing. It’s been a couple of days now and I’m still trying to figure out how I want to deal with it. For now my technique is to not pee after dark but this gets complicated and uncomfortable pretty quickly. I wish I had never seen the Great Mouse Detective or Rats of Nimm. These are movies that children who encounter rats in scary environments should never see.

17-12-07
I am absolutely exhausted! I have spent the last week and a half in a constant state of saying goodbye with people and hanging out with them one last time. It’s been fun but I really dislike prolonged goodbyes. As much as I have come to love all of my friends here, I selfishly kind of want everyone to just leave quickly so we can all move on to the next thing instead of resting in this perpetual state of sadness. Last night I went to the airport to see off a big group of people and was there until 2:30am because my poor friend Amir was not allowed to get on the plane. He is my friend from Boulder who got hit by a motorcycle last week so his face is a bit scratched up. The airline workers claimed that he was too sick to get on the plane (even though he had a doctor’s note telling him he was perfectly fine for flying) and that he had to go to a hospital to get another checkup and get the doctor to sign a particular form… of course there was only an hour until his flight by this time so he would have missed all of his flights and connections and would have to pay ridiculous amounts of money for the whole ordeal. He was particularly upset because he looks Arab and so gets stopped at airports pretty much all of the time these last few years. Eventually they let him get on after filling out a couple of forms they had but the whole thing was just ridiculous.

The day before going to the airport was just fantastic though. I hung out all day with my friend Jake and his dad. First we walked up to the lighthouse that is right by my house (the highest point in Dakar and so the closest I have come to hiking here in Senegal) and just enjoyed the view and the wind. Then we went to the Isle de Ngor, which is also just a gorgeous, pleasant place to spend the day… sunny but breezy watching the waves and the little pirogues. Afterwards, they introduced me to their Senegalese friend who is called simply “the Colonel.” He is an adorable old hard-of-hearing military man who lives by himself in his little bachelor pad. He seemed so intelligent and worldly but at the same time a bit mischievous. He just loved having company (he kept waiting on us… serving us pastis and snickerdoodles and canned chicken with stinky French cheese) and in many ways reminded me of grandpa. I hope I become friends with whoever is living in Jake’s house next semester so that I can keep visiting the Colonel. With good weather, scenery, and conversation, it was just my favorite kind of day.

I have also come to the conclusion that good dads are all in many ways the same. I have met several people’s dads who came visiting this semester and every time I think to myself, he is so much like my dad… they would make such good friends. I could see it being a demographic thing... I mean university students taking French and choosing (and affording) to come to Senegal often have semi-similar backgrounds I think, so why not semi-similar dads?

I am glad that it is winter break now so that I can get back to hanging out with my family. Because of my papers and my saying goodbye, I haven’t really spent a lot of time with them for the last month and it seems to be bothering them. I guess I will be spending a lot of time with them this week because it is the week of fêtes! First there is Tabaski (Muslim holiday where everyone has to sacrifice a sheep) then, a couple of days later is Christmas, followed by a wedding and then the next day I fly to France to celebrate New Years! Eventually I will blog about all of it though my exhaustion is catching up with me and the fêtes haven’t even begun. I think it will be good for me to be so busy though to distract me from the fact that I can’t be home for Christmas…

I was again faced with the differing perspectives on death the other day when my sister informed me that her cousin (married and in her twenties) had died the day before from some sort of sickness. “Oh, that’s sad,” I said. “That’s life,” she responded indifferently. This is not really related except for the fact that it’s kind of depressing in a way, but the other day I was again faced with cow intestines as food and I just couldn’t do it. If only it was chopped up and I couldn’t see through the middle of the little chunk of tube, I might actually be able to eat it, but I just can’t. Luckily I was eating alone this time. I felt like a five-year-old kid when I guiltily wrapped it up in tissue to throw out later that night.

Sundries...

2007-11-21T03:04:00.000-08:00

Touba

I suppose I should talk a little about Touba since I went there over a week ago. Touba is a holy city founded by Amadou Bamba, the leader of the biggest Islamic brotherhood in Senegal, the Mourides. There is a massive mosque there (third tallest in the world) that pretty much is the city. When we got there it was stiflingly hot, made even more unbearable by the fact that we all had to be fully covered (hair included for the ladies) while in the city to conform to their religious laws. While in the mosque, men and women could not take pictures together. The mosque was absolutely gorgeous in the sunlight... huge marble pillars reaching up to the sky, elaborate archways covered in intricate Arabic script. We had to take our shoes off before entering but the floor was covered in a special stone that doesn’t get hot in the sun so we didn’t burn our feet. In the distance, a chorus of men’s voices echoed through the halls, recitations of the religious poems of Amadou Bamba.

The Mourides are a special sort of brotherhood here, rather fascinating actually. Amadou Bamba established Touba as a holy city amongst the corruption of the colonizers and ceddo (a warrior class that worked in tandem with the French to enslave their fellow countrymen). The colonizers were rather afraid of him and accused him of planning a holy war against him like other Muslims with such large followings had done. Basically, they dragged him all over Senegal and exiled him a couple of times, which, of course, only increased his popularity (for fighting the French not with weapons, but with prayer). He is a Jesus-like figure in many ways. There is even a story about him walking on water to perform his prayers. Anyway, when he died, he was buried in Touba. Now, it is the belief of the Mourides that Touba is the gateway to heaven… that it doesn’t really matter what they end up doing in life because if they are buried in Touba, they’ve got a one-way ticket to paradise. As the biggest brotherhood in Senegal, the graveyard is a bit crowded, as you can imagine. In fact, it is said that you cannot go to Touba without seeing at least one coffin. I could go on and on about the Mourides (I’m currently doing my research paper on them), but I don’t want to bore you.

After the mosque, we visited the library of Amadou Bamba which is just chock full of his writings and poems (even one which was supposedly half written in his blood because he ran out of ink once but just couldn’t stop praising God…). Afterwards, we went to visit a female marabout (the first one we had ever seen). Unfortunately, we didn’t have the chance to talk to her and ask questions because she was in the midst of hosting a huge celebration, but it was still pretty cool to see her.

I do have a confession to make- I think I desecrated my first famous religious site. When we arrived in Touba, our tour guide (a pompous ass by the way who just could not stop talking about himself and all of his achievements… so obnoxious) informed us that it was forbidden for women to enter the mosque during their menstruation because it was considered very sacrilegious. I know I wasn’t the only one breaking that rule after 9 hours driving in a hot crowded bus just to see the damn thing… oops. Hopefully that won’t come back to haunt me… inshallah….

Mariage

I went to a wedding reception last weekend which made me sure of one thing: I will absolutely never have a Senegalese wedding. It’s just so darn expensive and exhausting. The first expense is the bride price. The groom has to give money, in addition to lavish gifts, to the bride’s family. Apparently the going rate in Wakaam (note, this is the minimum bride price) is 1 million francs CFA. That’s about 2000 dollars, which is a whole lot of money in Senegal. The wedding ceremony takes place in the mosque, but really only the men of the two families are present. At the reception, the bride stands on this huge stage (extravagantly decorated with giant fake mushrooms and flowers in crazy colors… hilarious) and takes pictures with her bridesmaids and family over a period of several hours. Meanwhile, young women (all dressed elaborately in their fanciest clothing and hairdos) form a massive line leading to the stage (there is a separate, shorter men’s line). One by one, they approach the stage to give their gift, kiss the bride on the cheeks several times, and pose for a picture with her. Bineta and I stood in that line for about two hours I think and when we left, the end of the line was still reaching out the door. The poor bride was gorgeous of course, but practically collapsing from exhaustion by the time we got to her. All of her female relatives sat at tables set up around her on the stage, counting out the money she (actually they, since the money really goes to them) received as gifts. There is quite a bit of competition that goes on to see who is giving more than who and so on. At this time, everyone else is sitting around at tables being fed little cakes and sodas, chatting and socializing.

Later that night, we headed over to the house of the husband’s family where we ate a whole bunch more and waited for the bride to come (with a huge singing procession in tow) to officially move into her new home with his family. The next night, after more free dinner, was a sabar (like the soirée sénégalaise with a group of drummers and traditional dancing). It was absolutely insane. Weddings are pretty much public affairs here so the sabar was packed. My host sister fought to get me a chair but it didn’t do me much good since I had one large-bottomed woman sitting on either arm of the chair (and therefore on me) and several women sitting in front of me, one with a crazy massive hairdo and another with an obnoxiously large golden hat. I got more than one elbow in the face when the side-sitting ladies decided to clap along with the music. Every once in awhile the bride would appear in a gorgeous (and obviously expensive) glittering rainbow of a dress and pose for another million photos with her bridesmaids. Then she would disappear and return about 20 minutes later in yet another dress for even more photos. I think I counted at least 5 dresses, each more sparkly and jewel-spattered than the last. Expensive, expensive, expensive.

At this point I started to wonder where the heck the groom was during all these festivities. The answer? In Spain of course, working his butt off to earn money to pay for this whole crazy thing. Apparently, the presence of the groom is not at all necessary to his marriage ceremony. In fact, even if the bride is in Germany and the groom in Tahiti, they can technically get married in Senegal. This just shows you how much of a family arrangement the whole thing is (though there usually are not arranged marriages anymore-at least in the big cities, villages are another story completely- marriage is still a financial arrangement, a sort of selling of the daughter to a new family). My Gender and Development teacher told us that she was working in the US when her family called her to inform her she had gotten married the day before. She didn’t seem to mind in the slightest, and I think I understand why. I wouldn’t want to be there either posing for hours under hot bright lights with the entire world waiting to hand me little envelopes of money that get passed directly to my relatives. Marriage in Senegal is not really all that pleasant for the bride, just for the families and the guests. Best to avoid it altogether if you can.

La Cirque d’Adama

2007-11-19T03:04:00.000-08:00

I am becoming slightly wearied by my skin color. It is indescribably tiring to have absolutely everyone everywhere you go stare at you and occasionally even drop a comment or two. Even if it isn’t ill-meant, it’s exhausting. I just want to be invisible again. I guess it is a good experience though. Now I know what it must feel like for people with severe physical disabilities (or even people with dark skin in a place like Colorado). I like to think that my behavior on returning to the US will be affected by this new experience but honestly, I’m not so sure. I remember what it feels like when you are in the presence of someone with an out-of-the-ordinary appearance- you tell yourself not to stare but then, in forcing yourself not to stare, you realize your behavior has become obviously unnatural and that you still risk offending the person, so you take a glance or two and just can’t help staring etc., etc., etc. A person does become used to it I suppose. In fact, there are times when I hardly even notice it at all- times when I forget how pale I am until I see a photo from back home and think “Geez, what happened?! Everyone in this photo is so white!” When I see little white French babies in the arms of their expat parents, my first thought is not “Oh how adorable” but “That poor child seems so pale and fragile…” Of course there’s nothing wrong with light skin, any more than there is with dark skin. And I’m sure that upon returning to the US I will eventually become comfortable in my skin again. Sometimes I just wish that I had chameleon-like abilities so I could change skin color at will.

I think I am also getting a taste of what it must feel like to be a celebrity. Wherever I go children want to greet me and shake my hand, staring up at me with big eyes, asking to be in photos with me if I have a camera. It’s like being a Disneyland character except I’m not giving autographs- signing TOUBAB in huge loopy letters- and my costume won’t come off. Also, relationships will always be polluted by the fact that I am ridiculously wealthy (in comparison). At any given moment I have several Senegalese host cousins chasing after me. This might sound like bragging, but honestly, when it’s this easy, it’s really no fun anymore, especially when they are pledging love after only one glance at your skin (seriously, I don’t even bother talking to them anymore most of the time so it can’t be because of my unbelievable eloquence, intriguing ideas, or stunning mastery of the French and Wolof languages… hahaha).

Another Side of Senegal

2007-11-12T03:17:00.000-08:00

Rural Visits

I just spent the past week with a Peace Corps volunteer in a little rural village called Aram. I think that our director, Serigne, was right in saying that this week is one of the most important parts of the CIEE program here. I learned so much about what Senegal really is and what it means to be a Peace Corps volunteer, something that I have been considering doing since high school.

On Sunday we woke up disgustingly early to take a 7-place to Ndioum (about 7 hours north in the Fouta region, practically in Mauritania) where we stayed at the Peace Corps house (each region has a house for the volunteers to go to once a month to meet and get some time away from the isolation of their villages). The Peace Corps house was such a cheerful place with movies, books, air conditioning, showers, etc.: truly a refuge in the desert.

On Monday, Madeleine and I traveled the last couple of hours to Aram (a Ndiaga Ndiaye followed by a long walk) and pretty soon were in the midst of exactly what you may have pictured “Africa” to be when you heard I was leaving. Huts made of mud mixed with concrete and manure, organized into family compounds, skinny dirt-covered children everywhere, scorching hot with an abundance of mosquitoes at night. All at once I remembered what the first week had felt like: not knowing anything or anybody, unable to speak the language (this village was Peule and so spoke Pulaar). I also discovered a worse smell when we were in a little market on the way to the village- Dakar always kind of has a burning-trash sort of essence but this market smelled of dried fish which is pretty much the worst thing I have ever smelled in my life.

Every night we ate millet or rice with a couple of miniscule river fish in the middle to share. The millet tasted a whole lot like dirt and I’m pretty sure most of it probably was. The fish was incredibly fishy but was a treat for them (apparently they usually have just the rice or millet). We were in the family compound of the chief of the village and slept outside in front of our PCV’s (Peace Corps Volunteer) hut. One day we helped pull fish from a net, and sometimes we spent time helping the PCV with her garden, but truly the majority of every afternoon was spent napping (it is so hot at this time of day that no one can really do anything except for lay around in the shade). I also bathed out of a bucket for the first time which is far more difficult than I imagined.

We tried several times to go and visit Dawda Fall, the local doctor who practices a combination of traditional and modern medicine, in order to have our futures told but every time we got there he wasn’t in. His house/clinic is huge though with people all over the place resting on blankets to go and see him. Apparently some people will wait for several days and nights but Dawda Fall feeds all of them every day. He is able to do all of this because he is sponsored by this one rich French lady who claims that he healed her infertility a couple of years ago. One time while we were waiting this crazy old woman kept pointing to my vagina and rambling on in Pulaar and then laughing hysterically. Madeleine and I were extremely confused and couldn’t figure out what was wrong or particularly amusing about my crotchal region. According to Kate (the PCV), she was just asking us if we knew how to say vagina in Pulaar of all things.

On Wednesday, we took a charette to the nearby town of Medina. A charette is basically a large rectangle of wood with two tires attached, hooked up to a horse that pulls it along. You have to sort of perch yourself on the board and hang on for dear life- slightly terrifying and not particularly comfortable (my bum was feeling a bit bruised by all of the bumps), but exciting nonetheless. We went to a wedding which basically entailed more sitting around eating (couscous and fatty milk- it’s actually rather good but it loses its appeal when you learn that it is what women eat in order to make themselves nice and fat for their husbands) just like all Senegalese holidays so far. Though I suppose American celebrations are pretty much the same- sitting and eating and talking- I just understand what everyone is saying so it’s a bit more fun.

After spending enough time at the wedding to politely greet everyone, we moved on to the house of these Brazilian missionaries. They have been in Medina for two years teaching health classes and forming a girl’s soccer team. As far as evangelizing goes, it appears they have been largely unsuccessful as this region is very strongly Muslim (with seven mosques clearly visible from the roof of their apartment). I could go on for pages as to why but I doubt everyone is as fascinated as I am about the history of Islam in Senegal. The Brazilians were just incredibly fun and fantastic people to spend time with. We spent the afternoon making beignets and then eating beef (they buy the good parts of the meat too) and macaroni followed by homemade chocolate cake! It was such a wonderful food vacation. I don’t think I have ever enjoyed eating as much as I did in that moment. Our conversations were a mix of French, English, Portuguese, Spanish, and Pulaar but we could all understand each other and enjoy each others company. At one point Madeleine found a small, dried-up dead frog in her hair (there were millions of frogs every night in Fouta!) and none of us could figure out how to say frog in French, though we knew it in every other language.

After some good power-napping we left the Brazilians to help the PCVs with a girls group they had formed to work on leadership and goal-making skills. It was sort of a Halloween party where they were announcing the winner of a need-based scholarship they had all competed for. All of the girls (around 15 or 16 years old I think) went around and talked about where they saw themselves in their futures. Almost all of them talked about going to University in Dakar, getting married, and then going to Canada, France, or even Japan where they would work or live with their families. It was really great to hear all of their dreams but also a little sad because you know that most of them won’t have the chance to achieve these goals. Like most girls in their conservative villages, they will be married off in the next couple of years and will probably never leave the Fouta region. According to the PCVs, when interviewing the girls for the scholarship, none of them were able to think and imagine very far into the future. They were also unable to answer questions like “Describe yourself/your personality. For example ‘I am outgoing’ or ‘I like to sing.’” The answers they all gave were things like “My name is _______. I live in Aram. I love my parents.” They just had no sense of themselves as unique and valuable individuals.

In many of these villages, girls are hardly ever permitted to complete their education (probably why no women speak French but most men do) and early marriage and female genital cutting (technically against the law in Senegal) are still practiced. The cast system is also still pretty strong here… it’s really crazy to see the cultural differences the farther you get from the big cities of Dakar and St. Louis. It’s like half of Senegal is still a step behind. Aram didn’t even have electricity yet. The saddest thing is that these villages can tend to be kind of stuck in poverty. They can’t attract tourists because they have no attractions for the average tourist… even the trees are becoming scarcer with the increasing desertification resulting from global warming. The health clinic in Medina was essentially a few empty rooms with some benches and a broken down, decaying ambulance (which ironically had the shape of a hearse though it was painted ambulance-style). The sad thing is that I bet the only reason the ambulance is so unused is because no one can afford to fill it with gas.

On the bright side, it was really neat to see all of the NGOs at work in these villages. Almost everywhere we went we could see evidence of multiple NGO projects working on health education or agriculture. Only time can tell how successful these projects will be (more ambulances without gas?), but at least the villages are not completely forgotten.

Back at home in Aram, Kate’s host sister begrudgingly hennaed our feet for us (she was mad that Kate wouldn’t let us pay her for it because we were “family” and it really wasn’t that difficult). We spent the night with socks over plastic bags wrapped around our feet which was incredibly stifling but worth it because it turned out looking pretty cool. I really love the henna because it is a great conversation starter here (people always comment on it). In fact, today at the bus stop my feet inspired a very heated discussion between two older ladies who were arguing over whether or not the Coran stated that as long as henna lasts on your skin, you will be happy. I confirmed that I had indeed been exceptionally happy ever since I had been hennaed.

On Thursday, we helped Kate teach her monthly health class at the primary school (Aram only has a primary school so kids must be sent to other towns if they want to continue their education) talking about which vegetables contain which vitamins and why they are good for you. The school is four classrooms and four teachers. Kate had a lot of respect for these teachers except for one who she had seen kicking a child in the head once as a form of discipline. Kate always tries to incorporate some sort of art project in her lessons since they don’t do art at these schools. It surprised me how difficult it was for the students to bend pipe cleaners into vegetable shapes and fold construction paper, but we just take these skills for granted in the US where we have cultivated this type of coordination since childhood. It was also incredibly sad how fiercely they fought over who got to keep the little strips of colored paper (Kate eventually had to collect them all to stop the madness).

After the class we had lunch at the teacher’s house with his adorable little family. He kept talking about his dream of becoming Minister of Education which was just plain depressing because you know that it is so unlikely that a primary school teacher without a university education and no involvement in politics, stuck in a little village that hardly anyone even knows about, will make it to that position. While we were having attaya, his little baby girl yawned and he proceeded to move the knuckle of his index finger from her mouth to her nose to her forehead until she stopped yawning. Apparently they have the belief that when someone yawns, a bad wind is entering into them and this is the only way you stop that wind… a safety precaution or a blessing depending on who you talk to.

Something that really struck me about Aram was the immobility of the people. We really take mobility so much for granted in the US. Most of these people will never have the means even to take the charette for twenty minutes to the slightly bigger town of Medina to buy vegetables (in Aram they cultivate potatoes and a leaf called hako, so this is pretty much all they have to spice up their daily millet and rice… unless they have their babies weighed and get the oil, sugar, and flour from USAID). Dakar for them is a huge, wealthy, magical modern city that they hear stories about. After about a week, you begin to understand their perspective. Suddenly, Dakar seems to have every luxury you could have ever dreamed of- cars, electricity, running water, food that varies from meal to meal. I think I will always appreciate now the freedom I have to move from place to place… city to city and even country to country. It’s funny, even in Dakar I feel restricted because I have to take cabs and buses and can’t drive myself wherever I want. I always hated driving too, but now I think that will be one of the first things I do when I get back to the US and I will love every second.

Ndepp

I just watched a ceremony called ndëpp which is basically an exorcism done to heal someone with bad spirits. The ceremony was for my aunt here (the one I mentioned before who all of a sudden couldn’t speak and had trouble walking) to get rid of the spirits causing her maladies. Basically this is a four day ceremony that started last night. According to my sister, she could speak again after this first night but the fun doesn’t stop there. This morning (I couldn’t watch because I had class) they sacrificed a chicken and a bull and tonight (as well as every night until Thursday from about 5-11pm or 12) they had a group of hired drummers and dancers to perform the ancient practices. This group of women (which included some of my relatives I think, but I can never be sure since I seem to be related to everyone) would dance around to the drums together and independently and every once in awhile, one would become so possessed by the music and dance that a spirit would enter into them and they would fall onto the ground (or on other people) and roll around uncontrollably. The drummers would gather around them and drum until they lay still on the ground where they rested awhile before getting back up and starting all over again. They were all wearing the same brown-patterned boubous except for the leader (and witch-doctor for lack of a better word), a rather grand and intimidating woman dressed in blue and white. She was the one who got possessed the most frequently and I must confess I was a little afraid of her. When my aunt moved into the circle I was surprised all over again. Every time I had seen her before she was thin and weak and quiet and now, here she was, draped in intestines from the sacrificed bull (they were even woven into her hair) and swinging around its severed tail in a wide-eyed frenzy, arms and legs flailing to the beat, pulsing with the music and then falling to the ground, overcome by the intensity of the moment. Every once in awhile she would pull someone else into the circle (one of her relatives) to join the dance. At one point she pulled in this poor old woman who obviously had a leg problem and could hardly move let alone dance. Several people had to intervene to hold my possessed aunt back and let the woman return to her seat. My all-time favorite part was when the wig of one of the hired dancers fell right off of her head and she had to pick it up and hurriedly pin it back on. I asked my host dad a little more about the ceremony and he told me that these drummers know the exact beat that can make each person fall to the ground like that, even me, he says. He doesn’t go to the ceremonies anymore because he finds them a bit scary. I noticed that there really were almost no men there whatsoever except for the drummers so I guess it’s a women’s thing anyway.

I am very curious about what people truly think of this ceremony here but it seems like it could be a sensitive topic if not approached appropriately. I have trouble believing some of it the same way I have trouble believing those self-proclaimed hypnotists who perform at carnivals and “make” the audience do ridiculous things. Then again, I do believe in the power of the mind and in the power of music (or even the power of repetition or intense concentration (like prayer for some) and unconcentration (meditation if you will) in leading people into a different state. I think that a lot of what I believe about this comes from a book I read a long time ago called Why God Won’t Go Away, which talks about the physical processes in the human brain that are common to all intense spiritual experiences in every religion imaginable. Of course these things can only be explained “scientifically” to a point and after that you must come to your own conclusions, but what most intrigued me about this book a year or two ago was the unifying fact of a common experience that brings together the most conflictual, war-inducing and (to some) irreconcilable divisions in our world.

When I talk to most people about this ceremony they seem to be half light-hearted about it and half convinced that it is a very serious thing. I wonder if they are perhaps embarrassed to talk to me about it as if I would judge them for their beliefs as they have been judged in the past. It is also interesting how ceremonies of this kind relate to Islam (I think I will ask my History of Islam professor to talk about it tomorrow) because according to this religion, things like ndëpp are strictly forbidden… and I would guess that nearly all of the participants were faithful practicing Muslims. It could be seen as yet another conflict in this changing country- a constant pull between the past and the present- preservation of tradition combined with movement toward “development” or “modernity.”

Cultural assessment is always the most dangerous and touchy but also the most interesting ways of looking at a group of people. One is always at risk of sounding ethnocentric when forced to place value on the practices of others. Where is the point where “economic progress” or “human rights” become more important than cultural preservation? This is truly the biggest challenge of studying abroad in a country so different from one’s own.

By the way, this is completely random but, for any of you who do not know already (I’m often the last to figure things out), your ancient anthropology professors (in cahoots with good ol’ Sapir and Wharf) have been deceiving you for years: that whole thing about Eskimos having a bazillion words for snow and Hopi Indians having a language (and therefore a culture) completely lacking expressions of the passing of time- it’s completely false. It’s a nice idea, but don’t believe a word of it.

I found out some more information about the ndëpp ceremony. It is essentially a Lebou tradition (a Wolof-speaking fishing tribe that my family is part of). The Lebou believe that every city/neighborhood has certain spirits that can be either mean or benevolent. According to my host brother, this is how it all happened: My aunt hadn’t been speaking for about a month because she had been cursed by these spirits. One day she went into the ocean and the spirits told her that in order for her to be cured, she must sacrifice a bull and a chicken and have the drummers and dancers for exactly four days. Pretty much all of the details (down to what she was wearing each day at the ceremony) were dictated to her by these spirits. When she came out of the water, she was cured and so proceeded to carry out the orders of the spirits. The dancing and the falling that I saw at the ceremony was an expression of the spirits within each person. There is a certain song for everyone’s spirit and when it is played exactly right, the intensity of it will cause them to fall to the ground. Everyone acts differently after this happens which shows the nature of their spirits. According to my brother, some people will smoke or drink afterwards because their spirits are “toubab.” Others will quickly brush the dirt off of themselves because their spirits are clean, etc. Having a ndëpp can be rather controversial because it is pretty much against everyone’s religion and is also rather disruptive (the neighbors can tend to get annoyed by four nights of inescapable African drum music). On one of the nights of the ceremony, the power went out and rumor has it that this was intentional (no power means no ndëpp). On the last day, everyone gives extravagantly expensive gifts of fabrics, cash, or whatever they want to the family of the sick person and they spend several hours publicly announcing each gift and who gave it. My poor host mom was the one responsible for planning this entire thing because she was the closest living female relative to my aunt. She ended up having to spend millions of CFA to put it all together (you also have to feed at least a couple hundred people every night of the ndëpp), some of which was paid back to her.

pictures of rural visits: http://unco.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2077062&l=e0d4e&id=42106444

2007-10-23T07:29:00.000-07:00

Perspectives on Poverty

Today in my Gender and Development class, we discussed what we thought about Senegal and poverty in general before we arrived and how those views have changed since then. We all agreed that poverty is much more difficult to spot than we’d thought when interacting with people or just walking down the street because of the importance the Senegalese place in personal image. Even the poorest of the poor will put on their best clothes before walking out in the street. Women will walk around with their hair elaborately done, porting a gorgeous outfit and shoes that you know cost more than their monthly income. Like one of the Wolof teachers pointed out, everyone is poor and struggling with financial or health-related difficulties here so it is frowned upon to complain about your own situation. Even on your absolute worst day, when you’re completely out of money to make ends meet, you pick out your very best to wear and put up the image that you are doing just fine. You would never guess that that woman next to you on the bus with her fancy jewelry and complicated braids is actually riding into town to sell bunches of peanuts on the street in order to feed her family of twelve.

Gallivanting in the desert!

This past weekend I decided at the last minute to join a group of my friends who were going into the desert on an inexpensive overnight trip. This is something I had been wanting to do for a long time since I know that I will not be able to travel around very much here- you just have to see the desert if you are going to be in Africa. It was through a travel agency so everything was planned out perfectly for us. We rented out a mini-bus to drive us the four hours northeast of Dakar to a town called Lampoul. From there, it was a ride in the back of a 4x4 pickup… increasingly sparse shrubbery leading into endless dunes of sand! I felt like I was in a movie, especially as we approached the huge tents that made up our encampment. One for boys and one for girls with six or seven luxurious beds in each one (Harry Potter anyone?). Then we went out to explore the dunes. It all seemed so majestic and epic... I think everyone had tunes from Aladdin stuck in their head because I heard more than one rendition of “Arabian Nights” and “Prince Ali” while we were walking around. We ran around like crazy fools and slid down the dunes and watched the sunset… it was exactly how I would imagine an African person reacting when seeing the snow for the first time. When we returned to the camp, they set out aperitifs for us on a big straw mat and we all sat on pillows eating olives and sipping pastis. Then we had a huge dinner of couscous with chicken and wine (Caspian?) and fresh-baked bread (again sitting on elaborate cushions around a short wooden table… the torchlight casting dancing shadows on the tent’s colorful walls and generally just making the moment a whole lot more magical) which was probably one of the most delicious meals I have eaten in Senegal (and one of the top ten best things I’ve eaten in my life). Following the dinner, a campfire was lit for us and some of the guides sang us traditional songs and played the djembe. They made us tea as we looked at the stars. Eventually they ran out of songs and asked us to sing something we all knew. But here is the sad part- we could find almost no songs that all of us knew that weren’t too lame (we ended up singing You Are My Sunshine, Lean on Me, and a couple of Bob Marley tunes… all of which they tried to drum to while we sang… it was a mess, but amusing in its messiness). Afterwards, we went on a night walk in the dunes (leaving lamps to light our way back) which was fantastically eerie. The moon was incredibly bright and the sky was clear. We laid down on one of the dunes and watched for shooting stars which made me miss Caitlin and Jess (the stars are still not as cool as at the cabin because they are so much farther away here). We decided to stay up and watch the sun rise, but that failed when we realized how tired we were and how wonderful it was going to be to sleep with blankets again (and just to need blankets since it gets rather cold at night in the desert). The next morning we groggily hauled ourselves out of bed for the camel rides and discovered a huge spider (that was somehow beautiful to me in its dew-sparkled web despite the fact that its fangs were clearly visible). Camel riding is smellier and bumpier and a lot higher-up than I imagined, but still worthwhile if just for that moment when you think to yourself with disbelief “Hey, I’m in Africa. In a desert. On a camel. Wow.” Also, no one ever tells you how ornery they are. They always seemed so steadfast and gentle (those few times in my life when I pondered standard camel temperament). I am so glad I chose to go on this trip though. It is an experience I will never forget… something I can call to mind again if my life ever starts to feel boring.

desert pictures:

http://unco.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2074625&l=74796&id=42106444

Korite

2007-10-17T06:50:00.000-07:00

Party, party, party…

Yesterday was Korite which is the end of Ramadan. The timing of this holiday is determined by the moon. You would think that this wouldn’t be too complicated to determine, just figure out scientifically exactly when the moon will be in the correct stage, but in Senegal it is far more complicated than that. According to Senegalese Muslims, it can only be determined by the human eye because in the Coran it says that whenever one person (or two maybe to have a witness… I forget) spots the moon with their two eyes, they, and those around them, should break the fast. Obviously there is some dispute over this since different people will see the moon at different times depending on where they are. Apparently there is a moon-hotline though that people can call into to report sightings. From what I have gathered, there are also these religious committees whose job it is to keep on the look out and declare officially, once and for all, when Korite begins. Because of all this confusion, some people started on Friday, others on Saturday or Sunday. The majority, including my family, started on Saturday.

Korite was definitely not what any of us Americans expected. Hearing that it was a holiday, we assumed that it would be a pretty big deal… families everywhere, tons of food, people, and general merry-making. Three of the other Americans came over to my house because they were in Catholic families and wanted the Korite experience. The week before Korite was truly crazy because this is when everyone gets their hair done and buys new clothes for the year (markets and tailor shops everywhere were insane!). Everyone is in pretty good spirits the night before (probably because they know they will have breakfast the next day for the first time in a month). The women begin to pluck and cook all of the chickens they have purchased and make the lakh (local traditional dish of millet and yogurt) for the next day. I have no idea what time they went to sleep but they were up again at 6am to prepare even more food. They even let me peel about a thousand potatoes though I wasn’t allowed to cut them (my mom thought I would do more harm than good with that knife, and she was probably right since I have never been a boy scout or a warrior and so have little to no knife-handling skills). The men are at the mosque in the morning. After the mosque, they go from house to house, saying to their friends “Balmakh… Balmallah… Something long and complicated that I simply can’t remember any more” which basically means “Forgive me… I forgive you… Allah forgives all sins.” My friends came over at about 9:30 so as not to miss anything but from this point onward, we basically just sat around, eating lakh, egg rolls and French fries, and drinking sugary drinks, waiting for something korite-ish to happen. After a few hours of sitting around (one of which was spent pretending to understand this extremely religious, opinionated, and long-winded “friend” of my host dad who just went on and on about religion and Senegalese society- apparently my host dad actually tries to avoid him because he is so long-winded so it made me laugh inside how angry this man was that he hadn’t seen my dad in such a long time. He told me “Your dad is just a peasant…” as an insult to him, which also amused me). We decided eventually to walk around the neighborhood a bit (me in my huge purple boubou again… I really am going to miss being able to wear something like this without looking stupid), visiting some other friends’ houses. Phone traffic was so bad that I missed my host mom’s text message saying it was time for dinner, so we missed out on that by about two hours. When we did get back though we found a delicious feast awaiting us with piles of spicy chicken and vegetables and more French fries that we just couldn’t eat. Then we sat around some more, drinking attaya, getting quizzed on the past tense by my Wolof teacher neighbor, and hoping that at least that night would be exciting because we were going to a “soirée sénégalaise” with traditional music and dancing.

We got all dressed up (which is just as fun in Senegal by the way) in our traditional Senegalese clothes and piled into taxis which took us to a dark and creepy military base where the dance hall was. Arriving at 12:30, we were far too early, practically the first people there though the music had already started. Apparently they have these more traditional-style dances only a few times a year. The musical style is called mbalax, which is hard to describe… sort of jazzy and upbeat with African drumming. The dancing style is also called mbalax and involves a combination of standard body-swaying interspersed with crazy sporadic movement of the entire body (which is just fantastic to watch and difficult to imitate…for me anyway). It always makes me think of popcorn popping if that helps you picture it any better… probably not. The downside is that these soirées turn out to be not-so-popular with the young folks anymore. Most can be found at the more modern clubs, in tight jeans and tiny tops, listening to American hip-hop. Until about 2:30, it was actually kind of like an awkward middle school dance, with everyone sitting in plastic chairs around the dance floor waiting for someone else to get the party started. At about 3, the live drumming began. At this time, girls (and occasionally boys) took turns going out to the middle of the floor and doing the popcorn dance whenever the spirit moved them. This is when I really started fading though. I was so tired that I was actually fighting to keep myself awake in a room full of deafeningly loud African drumming. At one point one of the dancers actually sat on my lap, shocking me from my sleep-deprived stupor (and making my sister laugh for the next hour or so at how scared I looked in that moment). At around 5am, we trudged home in the dark. My sister gave me a huge glass of orange soda when I got home (as if it would be a refreshing little snack before bed) so I forced that down and collapsed until the next afternoon. All in all it was a pretty good day if only for the fact that I got to know some of the girls in the program better.

Party numero dos

It just so happens that when I was walking around the neighborhood on Korite, some people who live down the street (that I always say hi to but have never actually met) insisted that I come to their kid’s birthday party the next day. I had no idea what a Senegalese birthday party consisted of, so I decided to drag Bineta along with me. Luckily, she informed me that I needed to bring some sort of gift and that what I was wearing was not sufficiently fancy. When we arrived (an hour later than I was told, yet still somehow a bit too early), we were lead up several flights of stairs to a huge, open-air terrace of sorts where 30 or so children between 2 and 10 years old were sitting around in plastic chairs, dressed in their Senegalese best. The birthday boy (in an adorable business suit and tie) was sufficiently intimidated by me. During the few hours we were sitting there, a DJ showed up as well as a cameraman and pretty soon all the little kids were dancing in an exact replica of what I had seen the night before… like a soirée sénégalaise, only midget-style. I now know exactly why nearly every Senegalese person I have met is an excellent dancer- they’ve probably been dancing since their very first birthday! When we tried to leave, the adults ushered us into their living room and handed us little Styrofoam plates piled high with fried food (delicious but just too much after Korite and before dinner). I quietly asked Bineta if I had to eat all of it to be polite and she just laughed a little and (sneakier than I thought!) said “I think we should take some of this home for Cierna…” She then started to shove all of our food into my purse and we snuck away without being apprehended.

I spent the next evening hiding in my room in order to avoid talking to my Mom’s thirty-year-old (yet incredibly short) crazy cousin who had come to “talk” to me, his “girlfriend,” because he was madly in love with me since the very first time he met me (the day before for about five minutes in which the only thing I said was “Hi… my name is Adama.”). At one point I had to see him when it was time to eat dinner and he just kept throwing choice pieces of meat at me (not literally, but into my designated eating triangle… a sign of admiration) which annoyed me to no end (I really don’t need anyone else to be shoving food down my throat) so, in a classic display of Senegalese subtlety, I made a point of eating just the pieces my sister gave me and going to bed “sick.” When he persisted, my mother, god bless her, convinced him that I was married with three children so he might as well give up now. I’m so glad that she intervened for me because I have found it is so much more difficult to deal with these advances when the person making them is also related to your family… you have to be so much more careful about offending them and they already know where you live.

New Discoveries

I have discovered three new and interesting things about my host family this week:

1) My little host sister, Dior, was not actually my host sister at all but was only living there for her summer vacation. Now she is living with her Grandmother and I probably won’t even see her very much any more. Sad…
2) My host sister has an older brother who immigrated to Spain about a year ago to look for work (immigration is a big deal here… all of the young men are escaping –and often dying in the process- to Spain or other countries because there is no work for them in Senegal and they need to make money to send home to their families. There are even commercials now on TV sponsored by the Spanish and Senegalese governments to discourage this)
3) My host mom’s dad was the village chief in the 1980s until he died. Now her cousin is the chief. The chiefs are still in existence within Dakar and deal with smaller neighborhood-related issues.
4) I know I said three new things, and this isn’t even about my family, but there are only about 500 doctors in all of Senegal. This one nurse I talked to said that he has worked 7 days a week without vacation for the last five years because whenever he takes time off, there is no one to replace him.

my vacation

2007-10-08T04:50:00.001-07:00

Sama baay am na ñeent fukki at ak juróom ñaar (My father is 42 years old)*.

*(Don’t worry, I won’t reveal your true age over the internet, Dad ;-) I just wanted to share my new Wolof knowledge with anyone who is interested in learning it since it is so incredibly useful in the modern world)

Yesterday, the bus was simply packed with people trying desperately to get home before the breaking of the fast. At one point, I didn’t even have to hold on to the bars because I was so snugly sandwiched between the overstuffed backpack of my American friend and the doors of the bus. Not only could I not move or breathe, I was also being deafened by these strange, otherworldly pained squawking noises on my right. I kept discreetly trying to push myself up on my toes to see what must be the most deranged of babies screaming away, but soon discovered that this godawful sound was actually coming from the tiny little throat of scrawny but rather feisty chicken who was definitely not happy to be there tied up in my neighbor’s sack. And thus began the longest bus ride of my life.

In other news, I’m on vacation now which is not as boring as I suspected it would be. I was pretty pessimistic about this week seeing as how all of the other Americans have gone off to exciting places like Mali, Guinea, or Cape Verde while I’m stuck in Senegal because of a lack of funds. To console myself, I have been making a list of all of the perks of sticking around here:

a) I can practice my Wolof.
b) I am becoming better acquainted with the other three students stuck in Dakar that I never really talked to before.
c) I just watched a marabout eat glass on TV.

A marabout is a religious leader of sorts respected for his (yes, always a man) perfect knowledge of the Koran. But after this basic definition, the Senegalese take it one step further… they have their own twist on the idea of the marabout, believing him to have (I hate to use the word but) “magic” healing powers. Even the most modern of Senegalese, I have heard, will find themselves searching out a marabout in times of true crisis. When you go and see a marabout, he typically already knows what your problem is (a fortune teller too). You can go and see him for any problem- spiritual, academic, romantic- it matters not, he can do it all. By the end of your consultation, you have paid him to give you a very powerful “gris-gris” (a kind of spiritual charm) with specific instructions to follow. My history teacher told us about his friend in college who had had his pencil (the one he was going to use for a very big exam) blessed by the marabout. He had been told that with this pencil, he would not fail… the only condition was that the pencil could not be touched by a woman. Sure enough, come test day, his pencil was laid on his desk when the girl in front of him turned around and snatched it up to borrow it since she didn’t have one. According to my teacher, this friend was very smart and would have succeeded without a magic pencil, but because of this situation, he was too distraught to concentrate and failed his exam. Another typical healing approach is for the marabout to write several verses of the Koran on a tablet, wash the words into a cup with water, and give you the cup to either bathe in or drink. Pretty much every child you see here also has a gris-gris (usually in the form of a string with some beads or pendants on it) tied around their waste sticking out from the tops of their underwear. (I love to see the crazy twists of Senegal- their belief in modern medicine that goes side by side with comments like “she is sick because she plays to many sports [said in reference to my American friend who got the flu one day]” or “He is sick because of bad winds/the sun/the rain.”) This kind of run-of-the-mill marabout can be found in pretty much every neighborhood you go to.

There are also a few, much more powerful/holy marabouts that are the leaders of the brotherhoods that the Muslims (so pretty much everyone) here are a part of. These marabouts have incredible influence on the society because their followers have taken an oath to serve their particular marabout and do whatever he says no matter what since he is so close to God. It is a frequently discussed conflict because sometimes the marabouts will give out official orders of who their followers need to vote for, making things slightly less democratic. As far as I understand, the first election of the current president (in 2000ish maybe?) was unique in that the marabouts refrained from giving this particular command.

Anyway, the marabout on TV was on some talk show and the host was asking him a whole bunch of questions (about what, I have no clue as it was in Wolof and all I could understand was when the host said “xamna” and “xamuma”- “I know” and “I don’t know”) that apparently were incredibly insightful and amusing (my family’s eyes were glued to the screen). I fell into that I-have-no-idea-what’s-going-on stupor until my host mom said “Look, look! He’s going to eat glass!” and sure enough, he took two rather sizeable bites from a thick glass tumbler and chewed it all up and swallowed. I later learned that, what I thought to be a cool party trick was actually proof of his fantastical marabout powers. I love Senegal.

I have spent most of the last couple of days hanging out with a couple of my friends’ parents who are visiting this week. We took them to see the sights (aka more beautiful beaches, good music, and delicious restaurants). The best part about parents visiting is that they never let you pay for anything either. I got really excited that Pauline is going to come and visit me because it will be so fun to show off “my city” in all its colorful fabulousness. I really hope it won’t be too cold for the beach though “cold” here is something completely different. My sister told me once that she was cold while I was still breaking a sweat.

I have a new language partner that I will be meeting with once a week to practice French and Wolof and to help her with her English. Her name is Aminata Tall and I already love her. She is 22 and studying management at my university. I like the fact that I can ask her questions about being a woman in Senegalese society and balancing work and family. I feel like I can ask her religious and political questions that I would not necessarily bring up with my family for fear of offending them. I am really looking forward to our next meetings. I also signed up for the thespian club on a whim. Normally CIEE students don’t sign up for Suffolk University activities even though we are encouraged to, but I think it could be a rather fun way to get to make some more Senegalese friends and distance myself from the comforting American bubble.

Land of Teranga

The little slogan of Senegal (in all of the tour guides and on the lips of all of its citizens when there are tourists around) is that “Senegal is the land of teranga.” Teranga is the spirit of an unconditional welcoming of strangers. Though my family and friends here have certainly had a welcoming nature in my presence, I don’t think I comprehended the full power of this concept until yesterday morning.

I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but about a week or so ago I broke my violin. Not being of very good quality, the pegs used to tune it are unbelievably impossible to turn. Usually in this case, you will end up turning too far, thereby breaking the string but (just my luck), when I tried to turn it the string stayed strong and the peg broke in two. I was understandably sad about this recent development seeing as how I had only had the chance to play it three or four times since I had made the sketchy exchange to obtain it.

Anyway, it just so happens that my Wolof teacher, Kéba is also a musician, and my neighbor, a friend of my family, and therefore my friend too. He basically told me that he “knew a guy,” apparently the only person in all of Dakar who played the violin (it’s not a popular instrument here- just a European thing- an “instrument of the elite” as someone told me). Kéba had been meaning to visit him eventually to get his phone number after he left his cell in the cab so we arranged to go Wednesday morning to La Maison de la culture where this violinist worked. After an endless sweaty bus ride, we finally arrived only to find that William (this is the name of the violinist… and you have to say it with a “v” sound instead of “w” or it just doesn’t have the same effect) was taking his vacation. In the US, this would have been the end of the trail- we would have gone straight home and waited a couple weeks before trying again… but not in Senegal. Kéba just tracked down some old man who knew William and got his home and cell numbers. He then went to buy a phone card to use his nephew’s phone to call William and figure out where he lived. Then we took a car rapide followed by a taxi to the absolute other side of town where we met up with William in a gas station parking lot. More sketchiness? I hoped so… somehow this crappy violin was turning out to be the inspiration for my greatest adventures.

William looked exactly how you would imagine the quintessential vacationing musician- rumpled comfy clothes, disheveled gray wisps of hair, and some cheap, faded aqua-colored flip flops. After the traditional seemingly endless entourage of Senegalese greetings was exchanged (as well as much warm hand shaking) between the reunited friends, he invited us into his dark stuffy living room (a total bachelor pad with just some couches, bed, and TV- all of this really reminded me of John for some reason) and took out the violin. After a brief glance at the damage he merely scoffed and walked silently from the room. He returned with another violin victim that had been thoroughly dissected (its organs most likely donated to younger, cooler violins), and pulled out a peg which he handed to me. I couldn’t help thinking of the Barbie operations of my youth- I’m sure Em and Ouis would remember especially the ugly Prince Charming Ken who underwent a forced amputation in order to replace the arm of stylish Big Brother Ken (who was really quite a catch afterwards, even when one arm was straight and thin and the other bent and muscular).

William absolutely refused to let me pay for the peg (in the US, I’m sure it would have cost me dearly) because Kéba was “his brother” and I was his friend. After an expensive thirty minute cab ride home, Kéba spent the next hour shaving down the peg to fit it to my violin and expertly repairing the string (which had broken as well in the process) with some wire since I had no replacements. This entire process had taken up the entire morning- about 4 hours- and I had not been permitted to pay for a thing! This teranga thing is really insane. Where in the US would you find someone who would, even though they hardly know you at all, spend their entire morning (while hot and hungry from fasting no doubt) taking you on a mad quest to fix your violin? Or someone who, after only a few minutes of acquaintance, would bestow upon you as a gift something worth a week of food for them? I couldn’t stop smiling and was almost brought to tears on the cab ride home hoping that one day, I would be able to repay these people for their kindness. The system really isn’t like that though it seems. It’s more like that movie Pay it Forward. The best way to pay for this generosity is to show that same generosity to the people that you yourself encounter.

I wonder what the “slogan” of the US is…? Land of the free and home of the brave? Though I suppose the US doesn’t need a slogan to attract visitors since everyone I meet asks me (only half-seriously) to bring them back with me to the country where you can “earn money while you sleep” as one woman put it.

This vacation really has been fantastic so far. I have been catching up on my reading and learning some new songs that I have been wanting to learn for forever. I have been practicing my Wolof and even learned a new, incredibly useful proverb: Gann yomb naa mougnol, which means that it is easy to tolerate the foreigner. This is my new magic phrase for whenever I do something culturally stupid (pretty much every day), and so far has worked every time in lightening the mood. In general, this week has really helped me feel more comfortable around my family while just sitting around and talking (which is a big improvement for me because they do that a lot and it’s harder than you might think to participate in this nightly ritual). I am also having a cool Senegalese dress made for me out of my new fabric and hopefully will learn how to make “ceebu- jën” tomorrow.

Hilarious

Almost every night at about 9pm people start walking around to visit with friends and family. It really is quite nice to sit after dinner and have your tea followed by a refreshing walk around the neighborhood while it’s not so hot outside. Every time that I go on these promenades with my sister there are little children everywhere calling out “Toubab! Toubab! Bonjour toubab! Donne-moi cadeau!” I have become used to this. It’s really rather amusing and sometimes I can throw them all off guard by responding in Wolof. Anyway, what was funny was that tonight, it was an older man who called out to me as we passed. “Eh, toubab! Donne-moi télévision,” he said (roughly translated as “Hey whitey, give me a television”). Like I have televisions lying around to hand out to people. It was the most specific command I have ever received in my life as a whitey in Senegal which just made it all the more hilarious. I guess maybe you have to be there in this culture to understand the hilarity. Bineta and I just laughed and laughed the whole way back (she later told me that she thought he had said “comme en télévision” [which I am choosing to translate as “just like on TV!”] which is possibly even more hilarious). I think it was my second good, natural laugh since I’ve been here (the first was in the fabric market with my friend who collects –of all things!- lingerie from around the world, when she walked straight from the stand selling lingerie to the stand selling baby clothes… probably I am still the only one who finds this funny). It was great though. I miss laughing almost as much as I miss being funny! Pauline would always tell me this and now I finally understand- humor is the absolute hardest thing to master in another language (I’m still trying to figure out the joke they told me the other day about big ducks and baby ducks and little boys… I just didn’t get it). And no, Pauline (if you are reading this), as of yet I still do not count my panties in French. The day that I do, you will probably hear me celebrating even from France because that will be the final test of fluency.

I have another mystery to solve too! Seriously, studying abroad is like becoming Sherlock Holmes for a year because I never know what the heck is going on. When I was visiting my “aunt” (daughter of the co-wife of my mother’s mother… insane!), it seemed she had lost the ability to speak. She would nod and smile and make affirmative humming sounds without opening her mouth (I can’t remember for the life of me if she had been like this the first time I met her but I think not). After we left, Bineta told me that she was “sick” and that they had to make sacrifices for her after Ramadan that would cause her to be healed. I asked if she had had an accident or something that had caused her to be this way… Bineta just laughed and wouldn’t say anything else. Later at the house she reported all this to the rest of my host family and they all laughed too and jabbered away in Wolof. “She’s sick,” they told me, smiling a little, “we must kill a sheep for her.” I realized that I would receive no further explanation from them and now it’s just killing me… the mystery of the silent woman.

And for those of you interested in pointing capabilities of the six-fingered man: I realized that this is a mystery that will never be solved because it is the left hand that has six fingers and everyone is forced to be right-handed here. Therefore, I doubt he ever feels the need to point with that hand.

Gênante…

Today I experienced one of my most embarrassing experiences so far. Because it is Ramadan and everyone is fasting, my family prepares a special lunch every day just for me. It’s usually some form of scrambled eggs and is wonderfully delicious. I know that they go out of their way to make it for me because the children are usually just given left-over rice. Unfortunately, today when the plate was put in front of me I discovered half a cow’s worth of raw hamburger with some scrambled eggs and spices mixed in. I’m sure it would have been exceptionally tasty and was almost ready to force myself to stomach it but I just couldn’t. All of my 20 years of being raised on the idea that raw hamburger could probably kill me (or at least make me incredibly ill) just wouldn’t permit me to take even one bite. Mom, you should congratulate yourself on the powers of your teachings because normally, in order to avoid offending anyone, I have nauseatingly forced myself to eat everything in front of me… including the rubbery, snail-like lunch a few weeks ago that they had no other name for but “fruit of the sea…” (this was the first time I ever felt like I wouldn’t mind puking just to purify my body of such large quantities of what it found so completely unappetizing… instead I just drank about 2 liters of water, had some alka seltzer, and brushed my teeth twice) but I just could not do pounds of raw hamburger. So I asked them in my broken French if they would please cook it a little bit longer because in my culture we believe that red hamburger will make us sick. I tried to tell this discreetly to my host sister but unfortunately, my host parents overheard and pretty soon the whole family was fretting over me and my lunch. I just felt so ethnocentric and elitist and ungrateful, especially when I realized that they didn’t even re-cook the food but instead made an entire new lunch for me. And my host father was concerned that I was waiting too long to get the second lunch, of which I assured him I most certainly was not. I just kept apologizing (but they wouldn’t hear any of it of course because “you are our daughter… it is good for you to tell us when you are afraid of something”). Half of me still wishes I had never brought it up. It was different with the canned peas in mayo (a less-than appetizing casserole we had for dinner one night) because I knew it would not be wasted and that it was only half the meal so they wouldn’t have to go out of their way to make me anything else.

It probably didn’t help that I spent this morning cleaning out my closet which is one of the preferred breeding grounds of my cockroach friends. Their little eggs (or turds… I’m really not sure what they are) were sprinkled all over my toiletries, and the medium-sized teenage cockroaches (who I like to call “teenage mutant ninja cockroaches” because of their fearless feisty natures) would pop out of nowhere and scurry all over me and my belongings. Closet-cleaning in Senegal (or any sort of cleaning of the darker spaces in my room here) is just one of those distastefully necessary tasks that leaves you with that creepy feeling afterwards of tiny creatures crawling all over your skin for several hours. My tolerance for gross and creepy things has most certainly increased since I’ve been here but not quite enough for more than one experience a day. It really is quite emotionally and mentally draining to build up the self-control to overcome your fears… and as Spencer used to tell me, I have far too many ridiculous fears that need to be overcome.

It really is amusing how much a part of their lives cockroaches are here. The favorite TV cartoon of the little kids in my house is the Senegalese version of “Tom and Jerry” but instead of cat vs. mouse, this fifteen-minute cartoon battle is cat vs. cockroach.

And more pictures here if you are interested:
http://unco.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2068643&l=caff5&id=42106444

Monday is globally gross

2007-09-24T10:52:00.000-07:00

Keur Moussa and Lac Rose

All in all I haven’t had many exciting things to write about lately because I have reached that point where things are really just starting to feel normal most of the time. Truly the most exciting thing I can think of from the past week is that I just realized that my jolly ol’ phonetics teacher has six full-sized functioning fingers on his left hand instead of the usual five. Unfortunately, once you realize this, you really can’t stop looking. My new mission is to figure out which finger he uses to point with (Senegalese often point with the middle finger, but he has no middle finger… oh the mystery of it all).

In other news, I did take a fun little trip today to a couple of Senegal’s tourist sites- Keur Moussa and Lac Rose. Keur Moussa is a monastery located about an hour outside Dakar. It really was such a peaceful place. I love to soak in the tranquility of holy places like convents and monasteries- that impenetrable yet comfortable silence of those confident in their faith. There were gorgeous shade-giving trees everywhere and birds singing… really everything you would imagine a monastery to be. The church was small and simple, decorated with pictures of the African versions of the New Testament characters (yes, Jesus was black too, not white and bearded with piercing blue eyes). I must say that mass was a bit harder to sit through in French though, and there was a whole lot more head bowing and incense. The best part about it was the chanting of the monks- sort of a mix between Gregorian chanting and traditional African music. If I had to pick one place to be a tourist, I think it would have to be in a church because no one is bombarding you with cheap cloth and jewelry… everyone is kind to everyone because every one is feeling so gosh-darn close to Jesus. I was slightly annoyed that some of my companions felt the need to whisper loudly in the chapel right before mass, breaking everyone’s silence and pinpointing us as the obnoxiously rude Americans. I find I have an unusual appreciation for sitting in complete silence for extended periods of time, even if it’s in my own room, which means, unfortunately, that I have become progressively worse at “chatting” over the years. Maybe I should become a famous Yogi so that I will never have to open my mouth except to say exceptionally wise things to my adoring followers- things like my Senegalese monkey proverb… “Oh revered Katiana, what is the meaning of life,” they will ask? “Ndank ndank, móoy japp gólo ci ñaay, of course.”

Lac Rose was rather disappointing I must admit. It is called Lac Rose (pink lake) because, honestly, the water is actually pink. And there ends the coolness of the colored lake. It is also known for it’s saltiness (saltier than the sea), but even this is less cool when you’ve already seen the Great Salt Lake of Utah (which- despite its apparent lack of color- is bigger by far and has tourist shops that sell Christmas ornaments made out of salt- pretty much the coolest thing ever). There are no tourist shops or even restaurants at Lac Rose- just a lake and a handful of persistent jewelry vendors. I think our stay there lasted under 10 minutes… just enough time to take one or two pictures and beat it before we were forced to buy any silly straw hats or plastic beads.

The true adventure of this trip was the transportation- a completely new way of Senegalese travel that I discovered today. It’s called a “sept-places” and it’s basically the most beat up old station wagon you could imagine that sits seven people plus the driver. There is a HUGE lot of these cars in various states of disrepair that constitute (surprisingly) one of the safer ways to travel longer distances in Senegal. Like most things in Senegal, the rules are there are no rules. You basically show up in this massive lot, try and find a sign that says your destination, pick out the least dilapidated vehicle you can find and then bargain a fair price with the driver to take you where you want to go. That is, of course, as long as you don’t get surrounded by all of the rest of the people in the lot who are getting paid to hassle you and bring you to the driver they are working for. That is also assuming that there actually is a sign for your destination, and also that you possess semi-decent French/Wolof bargaining powers. Without going into too much detail, it’s safe to say that this was not an entirely stress free experience for us. After much commotion and less-than-high spirits (it was about 6am), we crammed all seven of ourselves into one car for only a mildly expensive price.

The driver was a generally nice guy but we all couldn’t help but hate him a little when we realized he had absolutely no idea where he was going. We ended up in a completely different town and eventually we found that we were giving him directions around Senegal (I was actually kind of proud of how knowledgeable we were becoming about our whereabouts). At the end of our trip, he couldn’t even find the Place de l’Independence (the absolute most central and well-known point of downtown Dakar). When he got pulled over (this happens rather frequently, though I’m not sure why because I always kind of figured that there weren’t any actual/enforced traffic laws here), we just got out and ended up walking there ourselves to make it faster and to put him out of his misery. We then proceeded to eat at an overpriced fancy-touristy restaurant downtown that was worth every penny if only for the air conditioning and the sparkling clean all-American toilet (with TP even! And hand soap!). I didn’t even really have to pee but I spent at least 10 minutes soaking in the glory of that bathroom so as not to waste the opportunity.

And now I am home sweet home and turning in early so that I can actually wake up for school tomorrow. Inshallah*. As fantastically fun as it all is, sometimes Senegal really wears me out.

* A note about “Inshallah”- this word, translated as “God willing” is one of the most commonly used words here. It is plastered on car rapides and restaurants (Inshallah Chwarmas! Fast Food! Inshallah!) and is peppered throughout nearly every Senegalese conversation. Though I understand the faith behind this word- that nothing will happen unless it’s the will of God- it really freaks me out sometimes with its pessimism. The worst usage is when you are saying cheerfully “Seeya tomorrow!” and the other person responds with “Inshallah” as if saying “Ya, I just might see you tomorrow but maybe not. Honestly, you look like you might not last the night. You never know when a piano or an anvil will drop from the sky to crush you on the way home, or when the ground will open and swallow you whole. So you can just go on pretending that you will see me again but don’t count on it.” If I ever create a horror movie, there will for sure be a scene with a devastatingly beautiful damsel innocently wishing her villainous cousin goodnight/see you on the morrow. “Inshaaaaaalah…” he will murmur with an evil glint in his eye and a dagger hidden up his sleeve (insert evil cackle of choice here).

I just sent this email to my Grandma who was interested in the effects of Ramadan in Senegal so I thought I would just post it here in case anyone else is interested. Please let me know whenever you have any questions about life here and I will answer them the best that I can. I hope you are all well! Joyeux Ramadan!

Ramadan actually has a huge effect on Senegal because something like 94% of the population is Muslim, my family included. They keep trying to get me to fast too but I am hesitant because I don't want to get dehydrated here where it is so hot. I might try just one day to see what it's like. It's funny to see the effects on daily life: all of the teachers and people you see around town can become fairly tired and grumpy towards the end of the day because they haven't eaten. Apparently a lot of car accidents occur at this time too because of the lack of food and water in people's bodies. You have to be where you want to be by 7pm because at 7pm the city pretty much shuts down while everyone breaks the fast. Traditionally here, you break the fast with a fig and/or a cup of coffee or tea. You then eat a dinner with a lot of rice to ease out of the fast, followed a few hours later by a second, smaller dinner (usually fish). Sometimes my family doesn't warn me when there will be two dinners so I end up eating far too much (especially since I haven't been fasting). :-) You have to be careful about eating and drinking in front of people on the street because it's just plain cruel. I heard that this is a time for splurging as well. People have a tendency to buy things they normally wouldn't because they are hungry and anticipating the end of the fast when they can eat whatever they have purchased. Our host families are required to provide us lunch even though they are fasting and this makes me feel a little bad sometimes so I try to stay at school and eat on my own. The women in my family go in and out of fasting. They don't have to fast when they are ill or menstruating so they often say that they "aren't feeling well," blaming it on the wind or the heat so that they won't have to fast that day. Children don't fast either so I usually eat with them if I am home at lunch time. At the end of Ramadan, there is a big crazy celebration called Korite that I am really looking forward to.

2007-09-13T09:01:00.001-07:00

Senegal vs. Burkina Faso

On Saturday we went to an important soccer match between Senegal and Burkina Faso. It really is crazy here how obsessed people can be with soccer here. Pretty much every young Senegalese man I have talked to has said that it was their dream to be a professional soccer player. Little boys play it constantly in big dirt fields or in the middle of the street. It is still only for boys though. When a couple of us Americans mentioned how popular a sport it is in the states for girls, the Senegalese man and woman we were talking to were shocked and surprised that a girl would enjoy that sort of thing. The intensity of the energy at the game was almost overwhelming. Every time Senegal scored a goal, the crowd would explode with excitement. The man next to me would do this very elaborate little dance standing on his seat, practically falling over because he was so into it. I think that one of the things that added most to the energy was the constant African drumming throughout the game, beginning to end. Most everything else was the same except that instead of hotdogs and ice cream, people were selling nuts and sandwiches. One man was walking around selling cigarettes and washcloths (for wiping sweat off your face) that were more popular than you might think.

All through the game there was a mini battle going on between the people sitting in the upper seats and lower seats because the people in the very front refused to sit down for the game. As a result, the people behind them had to stand up to see causing the people behind them to stand up, etc. until everyone in the entire seating section was standing. This really irritated most of the people in the back half who wanted to sit, so they began throwing empty bottles and cans down at the bottom half. Of course the bottom half people took them and threw them back. Pretty soon empty bottles became half-full bottles and the gendarmes/police/soldier people (who are everywhere all the time) had to intervene. In the end, most of us were going for the crouching/half-standing pose (which is rather uncomfortable for long periods of time) in order to see while avoiding the anger of those behind us. All I can say is that I’m glad these people are Muslim and don’t serve alcohol at games because people are already riled up enough.

After the game, everything was even more insane. We had to walk an hour away from the stadium just to get out of the crowds of elated people (and pickpockets) and to find an empty taxi to take us all home.

Senegal won by the way. For some reason the Burkina Faso (which is apparently the poorest country in the world?) players were constantly injured. I swear there were at least six or seven. Most of the time you couldn’t even tell what was happening to them, they were just dropping like flies. One would just be running, not even near other players, and a second later he was rolling on the ground in pain awaiting the little men running out with the cot. It’s no wonder they lost 4-1 (if I recall the score correctly).

L’Isle de Gorée

Sunday, we took a day trip to Gorée Island which is supposedly the place where most West African slaves passed through before being shipped off to the Americas. It’s about a 20 minute ferry ride west of Dakar. We went to La Maison des esclaves (House of Slaves) where we heard a very passionate description of the terrible conditions of the slaves kept on the island. In La Maison des esclaves, you can walk around and into the rooms where each gender of slave was kept and see the door they walked through to be put on the slave ships. Through this door, all you can see is the great expanse of the ocean, an eternity of water that carried these people away from their homes to a life of captivity and constant suffering. The value of the children was determined by their teeth (like a horse), the men by their weight and strength, and the women by the size of their breasts and their virginity. There was often an incentive for these slave women to sleep with their French captors while on this island because if they became pregnant, they were allowed to live freely on the island.

The tour guide also brought up the fact that slavery is something that is not talked about as much the Holocaust even though it was just as horrendous. He stressed the importance of telling this story as well in order to prevent history from repeating itself.

I found it rather interesting to see slavery from the perspective of the enslaved. In the US, when we talk about it in history class, the focus is on the lives of the slaves after they arrived in the Americas. Living here, studying African traditions and lifestyles, I can picture the richness of the lives of the Africans before they were enslaved. It really is a much more powerful perspective.

The feelings that this trip inspired were certainly mixed. First there was of course sadness, with that touch of guilt as a white person whose ancestors most likely owned slaves. It seems as if I can never come to terms with these feelings. Even though I personally would never think of enslaving anyone, I feel the need to apologize and make it up to someone… good old Catholic guilt complex. I also couldn’t help feeling disillusioned though because right before I had arrived on the island, someone was telling me that they read a NY Times article about Gorée and how historically, it wasn’t actually the huge slave center its habitants claim it to be. This, of course, does not make it any less important to ponder such a terrible thing, but I hate being lied too and it just felt a bit like a lie. It is also difficult to retain that state of sad inner reflection when the second you exit La Maison des esclaves, you are bombarded by people trying to sell you tourist-quality African jewelry and artwork for horrendous prices. Over all though, I think Gorée (or something like it… possibly something more authentic) should be experienced by everyone. It is such a difference to stand in a tiny stone room where hundreds of women were chained leg to leg rather than just seeing little drawings in a third-grade history text.

I really do think that slavery should be discussed more in the United States. I can’t think of one film or museum that is centered on this topic (as the Holocaust museum is around the Holocaust). Maybe I don’t live in the right state to find these things. Or maybe it is still too painful a subject for white Americans to face, something we would like to think about as little as possible.

Surprise!

When I got back from Gorée Sunday evening, I decided to hop in the shower which was pretty much the best decision I ever made. As soon as I got out of the shower, my host sisters grabbed me and took me to my room where they proceeded to dress me in a huge purple dress (I want to call it a boubou but I’m really not sure of the name) and take me to an Islamic baptism. I was expecting to see a baby and some sort of ritual, but it seems that, for women at least, “going to a baptism” is simply a social event. We all sat around in the courtyard of the baby’s mother’s house chatting (or, if you’re me, saying the ten phrases you know in Wolof and then sitting in silence) and eating. I wasn’t exactly sure, but I think I probably was eating liver because the texture was unlike anything I had ever eaten before in my life. And yes, Em, I was thinking of Doug. It wasn’t horrendous, but it wasn’t exactly delicious either. One little girl kept jabbering to me in Wolof while trying to rub off my freckles (because of their skin type, they don’t understand freckles here or sunburn for that matter… in general people assume it is some sort of skin disease or infection). I met the sisters of my host mom who are all just as lively and fun as she is. They invented a song with my name in it and made me dance which was pretty embarrassing. Dancing is one thing I absolutely despise doing in public. I learned this one Wolof proverb about catching a monkey in the desert and I say it whenever I have nothing else to say because everyone thinks it’s absolutely hilarious. I think I probably said it at least four times yesterday. Whenever someone comes over, I am asked to repeat it so that they can share in the hilarity of the fact that I can only say “Hello,” “Goodbye” and “Little by little, you can catch a monkey in the desert.” I’m pretty good at Wolof as you can see. Anyone who comes over will also most certainly have the opportunity to watch the video on my host mom’s cell phone of me singing and playing the mandolin. I don’t think I will ever sing “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” again as long as I live.

Anyway, I am getting off track- I am not actually sure what happens to a Muslim baby at a baptism, and no one felt like explaining it to me so it is still a mystery. I think the highlights of the evening were wearing fancy clothes and getting to eat beignets which is delicious fried dough (kind of like a doughnut).

Gifts from home

For my birthday, my family sent me a birthday card that, when opened, plays the song YMCA. I showed it to my host family today and they were absolutely amazed that a musical card actually existed and that it wasn’t ridiculously expensive for Americans to purchase for each other on special occasions. When Dior (the 7-year-old) opened it, she actually jumped and was a bit afraid of it at first. It really does put things into perspective that something so small for us is such a big deal for somebody else.

Oh, I have to mention that when I was telling them the names of my family members, I said that my father was named “Michael.” My host sister nodded her head knowingly and said “Ohhhh, like Michael Jackson” which made me laugh a lot. So far, Michael Jackson is the only musical artist (besides Akon (sp?), who is actually Senegalese by the way and has four wives, for those of you who enjoy his music) that she recognized. Madonna, Britney Spears, Disney, even the Beatles- these names are completely foreign to most Senegalese.

Pictures!

2007-09-11T07:36:00.000-07:00

I posted some pictures of my family here:

http://unco.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2068643&l=caff5&id=42106444

2007-09-06T06:55:00.000-07:00

Toubab Dialouw

This weekend we went on one of our program’s scheduled outings to an area called Toubab Dialouw. We stayed at a gorgeous resort near the ocean. The walls of every building were covered top to bottom in shells and in between the buildings there were little paths lined with foliage and multiple hammocks and chairs scattered about that overlooked the sea. You could tell that this was where all the tourists came, but it was nice to get away from the challenges of everyday living in Dakar and pretend to be a tourist for awhile. This pretty much sums up my weekend: eat, sleep, swim, eat, swim, eat and sleep some more, release sigh of satisfaction. Fantastic. On Saturday we had the option of taking a class on pottery, batik, dance or djembe (a type of drum). I chose djembe which turned out to be an excellent choice. That night we watched our teachers perform. I will try to post some video footage of it so that it can take your breath away as it did mine. I really can’t even explain it because when I do, it just sounds corny but truly, African music is like the music of life. I could spend my entire existence just listening to their drumming. It makes me wish most sincerely that I were a dancer like Makena so that I could learn to move like they do.

A New Name

I forgot to mention that I have a new name here. My family decided on the second day that my Senegalese name should be Adama or Adams (emphasis on the second syllable so it’s not exactly like the boy’s name in the US) for short. I think that I am finally starting to get used to it. I am starting to discover though how Rylie, or any new puppy, must feel when learning its name. Often we would be sitting around the TV (me just zoning out of course since I don’t really get what anyone is saying and the TV is playing some godawful Spanish soap opera dubbed over in French) and my host mother would say something to me. “Adama,” she would repeat several times, growing louder and more emphatic each time until I finally remembered that that was a word that I was supposed to understand out of all the Wolof gibberish- a word that essentially meant “me.” On particularly spacey days, she would even have to resort to some snapping of the fingers or the occasional arm waving just to catch my attention. But finally it is beginning to sink in so that the calling of my name and turning of my head are very nearly simultaneous. And yes, I am quite proud of that fact.

Quest for a Violin

I had quite the adventure today getting ahold of a violin. (I am now about to write in “facebook” terms by the way for those of you who may be confused by the next couple of sentences). Before I left for Senegal, I joined the Senegal network and there on facebook marketplace was a violin for sale for only $200 (really quite cheap for a violin). It belonged to a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal who was going back to the US in November and wanted to get rid of it before she left. She ended up sending me her number and telling me to call her when I got settled in Dakar. Deciding that I was quite settled enough to take on this new adventure, I called her up yesterday and agreed to meet her downtown at the Place de l’Independence (basically a big fountain/park area). I wasn’t exactly sure how to get there (many streets don’t even have names here) so I decided to take my friend Meredith along. When I got there, I called this girl up to tell her I had arrived. She was seemed very confused about why I was calling her and telling her my exact location which was when I realized that I had accidentally just called my neighbor and so quickly hung up.

Finally I saw a white girl with a violin that just had to be her. She was very nice and let me try out the violin right there in the middle of the street. After a couple of minutes I left with a violin, and she with a check for 200 dollars. It all had the makings of quite the sketchy encounter except for the fact that she was an earthy-looking glasses-wearing rather short Peace Corps volunteer from Oregon and not a drug dealer with less-than-wholesome intentions.

Anyway, the violin is playing just fine after a bit of tuning and a whole lot of rosin. I think I might try to give lessons to my little host sister (who’s name I finally found out is Dior) because I want to put some more happiness in her life. You should have seen her the other day when I gave her an old shoelace after showing her some string games on it… she was positively ecstatic.

Learning Wolof

Wolof is probably my favorite of all the classes I am taking. Learning new languages is always exciting anyway, but this is especially interesting because it has no Greek or Roman roots. Therefore, every word we learn is completely different from anything we’ve ever heard before in our lives. I have to use little mind tricks to aid my memorization. For example, “It’s hot” in Wolof is “Dafa tang.” Every time I want to remember this, I first think of being hot and needing a beverage… beverage = Tang. The fact that I would never drink Tang, even in the middle of a heat stroke, is beside the point. As you can see, it takes me quite a while to communicate anything until these little connections in my mind fade away and leave behind a bit of actual understanding, which takes a whole lot of time and practice.

There is always the issue though of words that I just cannot say without wanting to burst out laughing. For example, “Tubarfkalla” which basically means “Praise to God/Allah…” but seriously, how could you ever say that with a straight face… Tubarfkalla…. Bahaha! Or phrases like “Yëngu yëngu yaangi nii rekk.” This I can never say without nodding my head at the beginning of the first three words which results in my (and everyone’s) uproarious laughter. My Wolof teacher has to tell me when I’m doing the head nodding thing because I don’t even notice it anymore. I generally avoid situations in which these words and phrases are necessary so as not to offend anyone.

My absolute worst course of all time turns out to be French. We spent the entire first two or three classes rereading a two-page, rather simple text, stopping at every single word that might possibly be misunderstood. Unfortunately, my French teacher doesn’t speak very much English so she spends a lot of time explaining words that are actually cognates in English. I think that my classmates and I are going to have a talk with the program directors about this class because we don’t want to return to the US knowing less French than before. The only good part about French class is that once a week, we have phonetics with this man who is the jolliest person I have ever met… seriously, he’s like the African Santa without the beard and belly. Whenever he is teaching, no one can stop laughing and smiling because his happiness is so contagious. And who knows, maybe my pronunciation will improve rather than get worse here since I’ve never had a phonetics course before.

Irony?

Yesterday on the street, I saw this small boy of about 12 hanging off the back of a car rapide. He was unbelievably thin and bony, his clothes- torn and dirty- draped haphazardly over his sticklike figure. On the back of the shirt in huge, navy blue block letters were the words “MERCI WADE.” Abdoulaye Wade is the name of the Senegalese president. I really do not know anything about his policies or what he does or doesn’t do for the country, but this moment just struck me as potentially quite ironic if I were pessimistic about Senegal’s leadership.

This one is pretty long... you might want to take it in smaller doses

2007-08-30T02:37:00.000-07:00

My Senegalese family

Finally I have a second to write about my new family and my experiences of the past several days! It has been difficult because I really prefer to journal on the computer, but it ran out of batteries. I had to borrow the converter plug thingy from my friend because the one that I have only works for two pronged plugs and not three. I would just go and buy another but it takes so much effort to find and bargain for things here in the markets that I would much rather keep borrowing hers and probably will (By the way mom, please try and send the USB thingy because I have no clue how I would ever get one here).

My first moment with my family was, of course, extremely nerve-racking. Of course, I was the first to get picked up which left me little time to prepare myself for it. I was picked up by my host mother who welcomed me with a huge smile and warm handshake. We crammed all of my luggage into a tiny taxi and within ten minutes arrived at my new home.

The house is rather large but the entire upstairs is under construction (like most of the houses in this neighborhood). Basically, there is a long hallway that is outdoors. To the left is my room and another bedroom where my host mother and sister sleep. To the right is a rather spacious living room with a TV (the Senegalese love to watch TV) and some couches. The hallway opens up at the end into sort of a backyard-looking space where you can find the shower, chicken coop (sans chicken), a small shack (their kitchen), and the toilet.

My first experiences with the toilet were uncomfortable to say the least as it is a Turkish toilet (basically a porcelain hole in the ground) that apparently once had a flusher, but no longer does. Nearby is a bucket of water that you are supposed to use instead of toilet paper. The methods of this fine art of “splashing” as I am choosing to call it, are yet a mystery to my simple American brain. I think that it perhaps involves some dirtying of the hands which I am trying to avoid at all costs since the sink doesn’t actually work. I find that a better technique is to carry around my own TP that I can keep in a bag to dispose of later at school. Then there is the issue of my new cockroach friend, let’s call him Fred. (PS Candice, I keep accidentally writing cock-a-roach just because of you so I hope you’re happy). I was of course slightly disturbed by his presence the first couple of time crouching over that hole, but now I am quite proud to say that Fred and I are getting along just fine (just as long as he doesn’t get TOO close of course).

In my room I have a large comfy (in comparison to those in the dorms) bed, a dresser and a bench/table to put things on. I also have (thank you Jesus) a fan. I am still working on getting into the habit of turning things off unless I absolutely need them as electricity is unbelievably expensive here.

The people living in my house include:

my host mother who is very energetic and, according to the neighbors, really loves fish so I’m glad that I like it too. She speaks a whole lot of Wolof and a very small bit of French but we can usually get our point across to each other when we are talking. She never stops telling me “this is your home and you are truly my daughter. Ask me whenever you need anything or have any questions.” They have a saying here (I forget exactly how it goes) that what the mother does reflects back on her children. I think that this idea largely inspires the kind and welcoming nature of Senegalese mothers that I have noticed all around me.
My host sister, Bineta, seemed very shy at first but now we are getting along just fine. Her French is pretty good. She is 21 years old and used to work at a hair salon but now she is just at home.
My host father (who actually doesn’t live here, just comes here for meals) is also very welcoming but a bit formidable I must admit because he is very obviously the head of the household and a devout Muslim. We had a short but interesting political/religious discussion but I had to be very careful not to offend him until I know him a little better. He also warned me about Senegalese men but I told him he wouldn’t have to worry about me because I am here to study (unfortunately, since my French still doesn’t allow me to truly express myself, I ended up telling him “I am here to study and not to love,” which is silly, but he understood and seemed very relieved.
There are also two little children here whos relation to the family I don’t actually understand completely. The little boy is about 3 I think and his name is Cierna (sp?). I know he is the grandson of my host mother and that he is living here because he is recovering from a recent bout of malaria (which is like the common cold here for children) and is too much trouble for his mother who has a new baby. I loved him at first sight of course. He spent the first twenty minutes I was there singing a tuneless song whose lyrics were simply “toubab, toubab, toubab, toubaaaab!” while trying on every single pair of my shoes. Apparently I am the first white person he has ever seen. His family finally convinced him to call me “Tata” or “Auntie.” The little girl is seven and her relationship and name are still completely unknown to me (Senegalese names are incredibly hard to remember). I love having her around because when people ask me long complicated questions in Wolof that I don’t understand, she secretly nods to me to hint that I should be answering “Waaw- yes” or “Déedéet- no.” Her French is also pretty good since she is learning it in school.

Voilà, ma famille. There aren’t any pets because people don’t really keep pets here. Cats and dogs are pests like rats. Even if someone does have a pet, they would never think of naming it and treating like a baby as Americans so often do.

A new way of living

Like most countries, the pace of life here also differs from that of the US. There is an entire chunk of time each day (that can be from about 11-3) where absolutely everything is closed for lunch including the computer lab and library at school. We are expected to return home for lunch each day which for me means a 15 minute bus ride. My American mind never ceases to criticize the impracticality of this tradition- going all the way to school for one class and then home and then back again an hour later for more classes- but truly it is a good thing. I find that this lunch hour is a great time for family bonding as everyone is present and in good spirits. Still, I think I will inform my family that I will not be coming home a couple of days a week so that I can actually have time to get to a cyber café (thankfully not closed for lunch hour) and use the internet once in awhile. Another difficult thing to adjust to is the way people just sit around. It seems to be a favorite past time, sitting around with friends and family and socializing all day long or even just sitting in silence. I find it even more tiring than running about constantly like we do in the States, but it is probably because it takes so much concentration to understand people and respond appropriately. Sometimes the sitting around is done around the TV which basically exists for background noise and not much else.

People are constantly coming in and out of the house to visit and by now I have completely lost track of who is who. This neighborhood is pretty much just one huge family. I think they even take turns preparing the meal for everyone even though we don’t all eat together. I live close to several of the other American students and occasionally they herd us all together which is rather comforting. Even though we strive to speak French to each other, it is more fun to laugh about it and make the same mistakes together. We had to look up the French version of “awkward” as it is quite the prevalent word in our conversations together.

For the first time since I was very small and inexplicably opposed to eating cauliflower, I have had to force food down to the point of making me feel rather nauseous. It’s not that the food is bad-it’s really quite delicious- it’s just the quantity that kills me. We all eat around a big bowl sitting on a mat on the floor. The rule is to eat in a triangle shape in front of you starting at the bottom of the triangle and working toward the point in the middle of the bowl. The mother breaks up the food in the middle and portions it out to each person. They always give me a fork and sometimes they use them too, but more often they will use their hands. I tried this technique and it is rather like rolling a snowball to tell you the truth, something I have never been very good at.

People are always trying to shove food down your throat because obesity is valued. Apparently there are some women here who even take pills to make themselves fatter, yet somehow they seem to be the skinniest people I have ever seen in my life. My host parents’ goal is to fatten me up to “make my mother proud.” And mom, if that is what inspires your pride, I suspect you will be positively exploding with it when I return to you next year. The worst thing I ate was this couscous (that tasted cinnamoney like instant oatmeal) that was positively drowned in plain yogurt. Truthfully, the taste was rather good but for some reason yogurt just turns my tummy. Of course I ate it all before discovering that that was just my first lunch and that the second was waiting for me less than an hour later. I think I will tell them that I am allergic to milk (very nearly true). We were taught here that white lies are just a part of the culture. You can never refuse anything offered to you because it is very rude so you have to make things up. Even if people know you are lying, it is better than the outright truth of things.

NEWS FLASH: One of Fred’s cousins has just taken up residence in my room. His impending death by spray will give me much pleasure as soon as he decides to reveal himself again. Cockroaches are truly the sneakiest bugs I know, though I suppose my knowledge is limited.

Anyway, white lies are very important. Frequently a strange man will ask your marital status (like today at the bus stop or yesterday in the taxi) to which you most certainly reply that you are married (sometimes I add that fact that I also have several children just for effect) in order to show him you are not interested. This pretty much always does the trick if you cannot manage to flat out ignore people which can also be rather rude, even to strangers.

Fayda and Kersa

I feel the need to bring up another fundamental aspect of this society that I can see acting in the words and choices of the people here. This is the idea of Fayda and Kersa, basically the yin and yang of Senegal. Fayda basically means self-confidence and strength while Kersa is the other half which involves generosity and sensitivity. One must have a perfect balance of both. The example they gave us involved a vendor of tamarinds and an admiring onlooker. If the vendor has too much Kersa, he will just give away all of his tamarinds for free and end up poor and tamarind-less. He must have an equal amount of Fayda so that he can offer the tamarinds, but for a price, to protect his own livelihood. Oh, and I still have no clue what a tamarind is but I am assuming it is fruit. Anyway, it is common here to comment that someone has too much or not enough Fayda.

The Senegalese conception of the US is that Americans have far too much Fayda. They are self-centered and overconfident. I think that this is mainly true of the very successful Americans. Indeed, our society is positively built on Fayda. What I have noticed here though is that the Americans in Senegal need more Fayda. As toubabs, we automatically are charged horrendous prices and are tempted to pay them out of niceness or politesse (sorry for the franglais but I prefer some words when they are in French… actually I might just be making this word up… who knows). Il faut avoir plus de Fayda… something which I tell myself nearly every time I get into Kersa mode.

Another example is the treatment of children here. When a child falls down and cries here, they are pretty much on there own unless very seriously injured. It is fascinating how a child will respond here if you give it personal attention, that which it hardly ever will receive. Children here are seen and not heard. They get everything last and are sent out to do all of the errands and chores. If they mouth off they get a sharp slap to the face. Truly, the children here have more Fayda than American children. I really think that this is necessary in Africa though where there are so many children and often not enough food or water. Conditions are harsh, and so must the people be in order to survive. Even the babies I have seen will hardly ever cry. They just sit in kind of an oblivious stupor as if they have already accepted their fate. I just want to hug them all. I hugged my little seven-year-old “sister” once and you can’t even imagine the surprise and happiness lighting up that rotund little face.

Joyeuse Anniversaire… Happy Birthday

My birthday was absolutely fantastic. In the afternoon we went to the beach and splashed around for awhile. The ocean was teeming with humanity… I swear half of Senegal was in that water, but it was great fun. Later that night, Bineta and I tried to teach each other card games though I think we both failed miserably. I also showed her how to attempt to make card houses (I can’t actually do it) which she thought was pretty amazing. They even shuffle cards differently here by the way. We tried each other’s shuffling techniques but neither of us could manage it the other way. Later on, the younger, and still nameless to me, sister and I taught each other hand clapping games. You would love her, mom- I swear I did “Say say oh playmate” at least a million times in a row. Then she got up the idea that she wanted me to dance with her and so they changed the TV channel to the music station (it was salsa hour) and everyone in the room got up and started dancing in the middle of the living room. Of course they are all amazing dancers but I just acted as insane and silly as I usually do when I can’t actually do something and we all ended up laughing like crazy. The little girl kept telling me to dance like an American but I really had no idea what that meant because it’s very nearly the same. I just ended up picking her up and doing a rather dramatic tango around the room. I seriously already am the biggest joke here because of my accent and crazy ideas, so I might as well play the part. I really love it and have no problem laughing at myself because I will pretty much always stand out like a sore thumb. Why not a fun and exciting sore thumb?

Later my sisters sang happy birthday to me in both French and English and then the younger decided that she wanted me to sing her a song. I ended up getting out my mandolin and singing one of the three songs that I know. My host mother took a video of it on her cell phone and has already shown it to most of the neighborhood (to my embarrassment as I was very nearly off key). Now everyone wants to hear me play the “guitar.” All in all it really was an unforgettable night of family bonding- the most purely free moment I have had since I have been here. I have a greatly augmented appreciation now of both music and dance which can so easily surpass all language and cultural barriers and raise everyone to a common place where all can share and laugh and love together.

My down day

I knew that it would come eventually, but yesterday was truly my “down day.” It all began the night before when I was sitting unknowingly in front of the television trying to hold a conversation in Frolof (my new word for French-Wolof). Someone got up to change the channel and all of a sudden, Frodo was staring me in the face, laughingly informing Gandolf (in French) of his tardiness and jumping into his arms. I almost cried when the little hobbit children ran across the screen screaming Gandolf’s name with a French accent, remembering last summer with Jess and Caitlin filming our little spoof. The next day I woke up incredibly depressed. I felt I had lost all capability to speak in either French or Wolof and so was very discouraged. “Je ne comprends pas” was truly my phrase of the day which I’m sure my family found frustrating when trying to communicate. By the time I got to school I was feeling nauseous and emotional. I didn’t want to take the bus back home for fear of puking all over everyone so I decided to go to the CIEE office to figure out what to do. As soon as I got there, Elizabeth (one of the directors), asked me what was wrong and I started crying like a madwoman. She was great and just sat and talked with me for over an hour until I was fine again. She was once a student in this program so she truly understands everything we are going through which is really great. I had her call my family to let them know I wasn’t feeling well and that I wouldn’t be home right away. I ended up taking a taxi home and the taxi driver was a bit creepier than usual. He also ended up asking my marital status so I told him that not only was I married with kids, I also was about to puke all over everything so he better get there quick. He left me alone after that and we arrived in record time.

As I walked up to my door I saw my host mother standing there calling out to me. Apparently she had been so worried that she had sent out practically the entire neighborhood looking for me. I was actually feeling much better by that time but I decided to fake it a little in order to get some alone time. Alone time is really hard to come by here and I knew that is what I truly needed to recover from my bad day. I just needed one night’s vacation from strange languages and people and food. Unfortunately, the Senegalese solution for sickness is to eat more and more food. I kept trying to explain that in the US we don’t eat when we are nauseous but they just didn’t understand. Finally, the older brother of our neighbor (who comes over a lot) arrived and helped me explain to them that all Americans experience this when adjusting to the new “climate” (you can’t ever say it might be because of their food or something) and I ended up getting away with eating just a piece of bread and some tea that I brought from home and only one hour of having to visit with people (seriously everyone in the neighborhood came into my room to see how I was doing and to inform me that I needed to be stronger, and eat more and basically have more Fayda). I ended up going to bed at 9:30 (much earlier than usual) and woke up today feeling incredibly refreshed and back to being excited about everything again. I felt a bit guilty though when my host mom told me that she hadn’t even been able to sleep last night because she was so worried and that she kept looking under my door to see if my light was on and if I needed anything. Truly I could not be in better hands (except of course those of my real mommy who always takes care of me and lets me complain to her when I am sick without as much freaking out). Anyway I hope never to get sick again so as not to cause such an incredible uproar.

P.S. I just watched Fred’s cousin die an incredibly long and painful death and nearly killed myself in the process. Note to self: do not spray half a can of “SuperMax” bug killer while in an enclosed space. I must now search out some oxygen. Ba beneen yoon…until next time mes amies.

Pictures finally!

2007-08-23T14:30:00.000-07:00

Pictures take far too long to upload onto this blog, so if you want to see my pictures you can just click on this link: http://unco.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2068643&l=caff5&id=42106444

Woohoo!

2007-08-23T10:04:00.000-07:00

I just found out I got into Advanced French 1 and I am so excited because that means that I can take classes in French! I just now registered so I will be taking French language, Intro to Wolof, two subject classes in French (The History of Islam and one on Senegalese culture), and Gender and Development. I am so excited!!!

Day three was also great

2007-08-23T10:01:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was Day Three, where we started our orientation. After breakfast (which is always really really white French bread with various spreads and instant coffee or tea) we were shown various rather boring diagrams and talked about the program. All in all it was tedious and uneventful though the two directors, Serigne and Elizabeth, are really very nice and helpful. My roommate got a bit sick in the morning and had to go lie down through most of the orientation. At lunch, I bought my very first mango (as far as I can remember) and it was one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten in my life.

Later, we took tours of our future neighborhoods. Mine is called Wakkam and I will be taking the bus to and from school every day for a few minutes each way. I am glad I got placed in this neighborhood (there are three) because it seems like it is not one of the wealthiest so I will be getting a better “African experience.” There was a huge field of dirt where hundreds of kids were playing soccer and across the street, a monstrous pile of burning trash (that is how they get rid of it). There are goats everywhere here, but especially in our neighborhood. The two Senegalaises who were showing us around live in the neighborhood too and we stopped in one of their friend’s shop. It was so cool because this guy takes mentally and physically handicapped orphans from the street and teaches them to make pottery. He then sells the pottery with his own and pays the children who otherwise would be begging on the streets. There was one adorable deaf and mute kid there who would make a “baby” version of every clay animal the potter made to create a family since he never had any parents. Our tour guides also bought us these sticks that the Senegalese chew on to whiten and clean their teeth. I loved it because I am always chewing on things anyway and it’s nice to think that maybe I’m doing my teeth some good. They also showed us where we can go to the gym if we want and where to sign up for fitness classes etc. I am so excited to try out the Olympic pool.

On the way, we rode in a “car rapide” which is basically a small cramped, colorfully-painted bus/van that has no set schedule or stops. To get on, you stand at certain marked spots on the side of the road so that it will stop for you. You climb in the back and stuff yourself in. Within seconds you are drenched in sweat, arm to arm and thigh to thigh with another sweaty person on each side. When you want to get off, you rap your coin or fist on the metal inside of the car to inform the driver.

Later that night we went out to a Lebanese restaurant and it seemed a lot like Greek food so I loved it.

In general, I am finally beginning to get more comfortable here. This really is the land of “teranga” or hospitality/welcoming. The true key to the hearts of the people here is their language, Wolof. We just learned all of the basic greetings today and as soon as you use them, the response is staggering. Beggars, who would normally pester you for minutes on end just laugh and move on good naturedly at the sound of the common Wolof expression “ba beneen” which means “until next time.” It is so hard to get used to the fact that it is disrespectful not to greet most people that you pass. I can’t wait until I learn more so that I can carry on a full conversation!

Day Two (though posted late)

2007-08-23T09:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was such a full day for us! I am becoming pretty good friends with the Colorado kids. All the students seem great though. Somehow the fact that we are all from Colorado though is such a bonding experience. My roommate, Saren (pronounced like Karen with an “s”) and I accidentally slept through breakfast so we decided to explore a little before lunch. We didn’t walk very far before we could hardly breath in the humidity. The morning really seems to be the hottest time here. In the afternoon, clouds set in and there is the occasional breeze. We heard that the other CU kids were heading to the beach so we tagged along. One of the dorm’s security guards offered to show us around which was great because he bartered the taxi prices for us and everything (there are no set prices for anything and “toubabs” which means “white people,” are automatically charged at least twice of what something is worth. Of course it is still much less than we would ever pay in the US, but they say you should barter on principal since there isn’t much necessity for us as Americans). The beach was absolutely fantastic! The sand is soft and white and the water almost feels warm. The guard had taken us to one of the more expensive (and by expensive I mean about two dollars) private beaches because otherwise, there is a great chance of all of your things being stolen while you are in the water. Our security guard friend watched out for us and our belongings the whole time and advised us not to speak to anyone. We swam around for awhile and had an all around spectacular time until I cut my toe on a rock underwater and it started bleeding a bit. We returned to the dorms shortly after where I had to tend my wound using medical supplies bummed off of all my friends.

It really is such a pain not to have my luggage for so long! I have been wearing all of my roommate’s clothing and her toiletries (besides her toothbrush), using my jacket as a bath towel, and having to wear my glasses every single day which I absolutely despise! And though I am trying to keep my new wounded toe clean and bandaged to avoid infection, I have no close-toed shoes with me to keep it protected.

Day One in Dakar!!!!!!

2007-08-20T15:53:00.000-07:00

All in all the great toss of my life into the life of Dakar was not too far from what I expected though it was most certainly an adventure. My family dropped me off at Denver for a sad goodbye and I cried all through Terminal A feeling like an idiot (I’m surprised I don’t see more tearful people around airport departure gates). The first flight was long and boring though I actually fell asleep for a few hours (no doubt because of the genius suggestion of an inflatable neck pillow from Pauline when she was in the States). The staff at Heathrow were much less friendly and generally seemed in a bad mood. I had about an hour between flights which was apparently not enough time to grant me passage into the “fast lane” even though the slow lane took about 45 minutes to get through. As chance would have it, standing in that endless security line just behind me was one of the people from my program- a boy from Seattle with blond curly hair halfway down his back and an open smiling face. We whiled away our minutes in line fretting together over our lack of time while comparing luggage. Oh! I almost forgot to mention the absolute best part of that first flight on British Airways… (Spencer and Jess will especially appreciate this)… not only were there the usual headphones and blankets, but apparently the British also find it practical to endow each passenger with their very own toothbrush and pair of wooly SOCKS! I just love socks.

Anyway we finally met up with the other four on our flight to Dakar. Three of us moved seats to sit by each other, swapping stories and rumors about Senegal to pass the time (which was still FAR too long for me). For several amusing moments, we thought we were flying over huge drifts of sand that actually just turned out to be the ocean. Tess, who was sitting by the window, relayed to us the changing scenery as we took turns standing over her and peering out. Tess, whose wonderful French and bold personality I admire, also befriended the young and attractive Senegalese man sitting in front of us. We spent a lot of the flight pestering him with questions in French about the customs of Senegal, what we should eat, where we should go, and even hairstyling tips and music recommendations, which was a whole lot of fun and also a comfort when I realized I could understand so much of what he said and communicate with him.

The true “adventure” began when we landed in the small airport in Dakar. I decided to run to the airlplane restroom after we landed to get in one last pee before being stuck in Senegal where I’ve heard it’s not uncommon for toilet paper to be unavailable to the public. When I got out of the “W.C.,” I stood in the “queue” (don’t you just love British words) to get my bags from the overhead compartment and exit the plane. My heart stopped when I looked up to the compartment. There was my mandolin, but my backpack (containing laptop, camera, MP3 player, and much more… though luckily not the important documents) was missing! I told the flight attendant and we searched every compartment without success. I could tell he really didn’t know what to do so he told me to get off of the plane and tell one of the ground attendants. These attendants spoke little English or French and also seemed confused by Tess and my desperate explanations. They finally pointed us towards customs and told us to fill out the customs form. I expected the worst though was surprisingly calm in spite of my emotionally-charged jetlag. It was very comforting to have 4 other program participants with me, one of whom was fluent in French. Finally, while walking through customs, I saw it on the baggage claim (god knows how it ended up there) and heaved a sigh of relief. Unfortunately that sigh came a little too soon as I was quick to realize that both of my suitcases were actually missing. The attractive Senegalese man was yelling angrily at some airport employees because, though his bag had come back to him, it had come back torn open with several missing items. It turned out that about six of our bags were missing and were apparently “in transit” to arrive “later.” We were led down a long hallway into a cramped little office with peeling white walls partially covered by an oversized painting (or copy of one) and a stringed instrument I did not recognized. Sitting cheerfully enough at a wooded desk the size of half the room, was a very sweaty man whose job it was to take down all of our information and record it, print it out on carbon-copy/receipt-type paper and tell us that we would be contacted to pick up our bags at a later time. I didn’t mind all of this hassle so much (even though it took nearly an hour in a stiflingly humid cube of a room) because it all seemed part of the “african experience.”

Outside of the airport we met up with one of the program directors, Elizabeth, who had the sort of face that you just recognize and trust without knowing why. We stood huddled out front with all of our bags trying to avoid the countless offers of help from boys seeking money from the “rich Americans.” Finally, a large, rather beat-up van came to pick us up as arranged by Elizabeth. The suitcases were simply placed on top in a rack while we all piled inside (no seatbelts of course). As we barreled on through the streets, sometimes narrowly missing other vehicles or pedestrians, I decided that I would absolutely NEVER drive in Senegal. It seemed exactly how my Dad had explained India to me… there really aren’t any traffic rules besides the direction you drive. The only rule is to not get hit, so cars swerve madly in front of each other at full speed in wildly circus-like feats. Next to us, like a warning in the middle of the road was a full sized bus with a rather nice-looking car crammed halfway underneath the back of it. Luckily our driver seemed to be a pretty good one. We gazed out at the passing scenery in the dark… a true city, but with some African surprises. There were many, very classy-looking nightclubs interspersed with fruits stands (some still open, even at night); sleek-looking apartment buildings right next door to humble shanties. Sometimes you would see a few pieces of tin and stone piled together without even four definitive sides and begin to wonder whether or not it was somebody’s home sweet home.

In Dakar, people (especially women) dress very nice all of the time. They care a lot about good clean appearances. It is true what people have told me, the size of the top doesn’t matter so much, but the length of the skirt is extremely important. Skirts MUST cover knees at all times, even when dining (which is traditionally done sitting on the floor, making knee coverage rather difficult without ample skirt fabric). If you see a woman in shorts on the street, she may seem like a normal American woman, but here she is a whore. It looks like I will be purchasing some skirts while I am here (hopefully I will actually get my luggage first).

We stopped at an ATM on the way so we would have money for phone calls home and for dinner. The currency here is CFA francs and 500 francs is about the equivalent of one American dollar. It is so incredibly strange to be holding bills in your hand that say 10,000 on them when they are really about twenty dollars each. Elizabeth pointed out some restaurants we could walk to later (armed with cash in your bra and a copy of your ID in your pocket) and then showed us our dorm rooms, which are temporary housing during our orientation before we meet our families.

We walked down the street to get food a little later, crossing the street very carefully as there are no crosswalks and pedestrians do NOT have the right of way. One wrong step could mean death, so we waited for big breaks in traffic, rushing all the same while trying to look as cool and collected as the native Senegalese strolling along and weaving between cars. I ate some interesting pizza that had tuna on it but that really wasn’t so bad. At least I can be sure that any fish I eat here has probably been caught within 24 hours before it is served to me.

Being in the main area of a city, there seems to be quite a nightlife going on. Many people just sit or stand on the side of the road chatting with each other. I was surprised how comfortable I felt walking around. Of course I wasn’t extremely comfortable, just more than I expected (a lot was probably due to the fact that I was in a fairly large group). The only thing we received from the Senegalese people were the occasional stares (of course, we are a bunch of white kids walking around town at night) and some friendly greetings. There were uncomfortable moments at the little café thing we ate at because we couldn’t decide how to order and pick up our food or whether or not to leave a tip. We all decided that we would just have to get used to feeling completely stupid until we get the hang of things here.

Back at the dorm room: this isn’t your typical American dorm room. It has peeling white walls and (thank god!) an air conditioner. When you walk in there is a bathroom on the left. One more step and there are two twin beds crammed into a corner with a small space between them and a large wooden desk to the right. The beds have one yellow sheet apiece on them and one pillow (no blankets because no one in their right mind would use one here where it is so hot and humid!). The bathroom is about the size of my parent’s shower with a toilet (and toilet paper woohoo!), sink and mirror, and shower head on the wall. When the shower turns on, it gets everything else in the bathroom (the toilet too) completely wet. The water is cold, but you wouldn’t have it any other way because it is so refreshing. The only thing is that you have to ignore the odd dirt clods on the walls and the occasional beetle-like bugs that scurry around the walls and around your shampoo container while you shower. I really do think that these things are luxuries though. I hear that it is not far-fetched to find yourself bathing out of a bucket here and peeing in a hole in the ground.

Tomorrow we have a free day so we are going to go exploring in the nearby shops and down at the beach (which is less than a mile away from the dorms near a gorgeous mosque). It smells so much like the sea here and I love it. The ocean with all its beauty, fresh fish, and the works, is something I am very much looking forward too.

All in all I think I really love this place! I know that it is going to take a LOT of getting used to but I am already learning so much. And the other people in the program seem just great so far. The only thing I’m nervous for is when we meet our families in a week or so, and of course the French placement exam on Tuesday. Hopefully I will find a moment or two to cram so that I can get into a good French class this year, though I hear they are very flexible if you feel you are not being challenged where they place you.

Welcome

2007-07-01T14:35:00.000-07:00

Tune in for news of my study abroad experience starting mid-August!