Home sweet home!

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

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!

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

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

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?

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

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

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