The List

At long last, my Top Ten list of things I miss about Dakar, a.k.a. the most ridiculous things...

10. “Hamburger complète”: a burger with ketchup, mayo, fries, and a fried egg on it. Possibly some other things I don’t even remember anymore…

9. Houses that don’t actually close to the outside: what happens during the rainy season? Don’t worry, we have these convenient steps in the floors to prevent water coming into the house, but really they are just there to make you look like an idiot because you trip over them every day. Awesome.



8. Calls to prayer: there is something oddly reassuring about hearing the same call from the mosques 5 times every day. Anywhere in the country, you are always within earshot of a mosque. Sometimes people even pray, too, and then you get to see fruit vendors close their stalls and kneel on their prayer rugs right in the middle of the street. Except when you hear it at 5 or 6am, reminding you that you, once again, stayed up all night. Then it kind of pisses me off, because I know it’s my own fault.



7. Marché Sandaga: best place to shop EVER. It makes me hate malls even more! Of course, it’s only worth shopping in markets if you know how to haggle in Wolof (not that I’m showing off or anything…) but you get the best deals on crap that was made in China. Hmm, that makes it seem much less cool. But seriously, this outdoor market takes up several blocks of downtown Dakar and contains not only trashy clothes, but everything else you would ever want, from food to appliances to Muslim prayer beads, conveniently organized into different areas of the market (ok, only “convenient” or “organized” to a trained eye). I miss shopping in Senegal.

6. The random things people shout at you on the streets. Usually it’s just “hey toubab!” or “nanga def?” or “will you marry me?”, but sometimes people get pretty creative, like the fruit vendor who always used to shout at my friend Sara, “bëgg nga fanaan ak man?” which means, “do you want to spend the night with me?”. LOL.



5. Cars Rapides (not very original, but seriously, it’s a hollowed-out Mercedes van, with benches put in it, various magazine cutouts taped all over the inside, eyes drawn on the front and “Alhamdoulilahi!” written all over. Plus they drive like crap and it only costs 20 cents to get almost anywhere in Dakar. Too bad only Senegalese people can tell where they are going and you can just as easily end up at the other end of the city as at your destination)

4. MyShop: It’s a gas station, plus a convenience store, plus a pizza place… The best place to go on the way home from school to “study” while enjoying a pizza (see above) and a beer (or cheap Senegalese gin!), and then have taxis fighting over you when you’re done. Or to waste time from 11pm until a “reasonable” time to go out (around 1 or 2 am), you can sit on the terrace and make ridiculously strong gin and tonics with your expat friends.

3. Horse-drawn delivery carts on the freeway. With the driver talking on his cell phone. The very ancient meets the somewhat modern.

2. Traditional Senegalese cuisine … JUST KIDDING. Seriously though, there are some winners, including Soupu Kanja—this actually may be the worst thing I’ve ever eaten, which is impressive in itself. It’s a stew made of okra (ugh) and palm oil (the most saturated oil in the world, tastes sick and hates your digestive system). Then there was the award-winning “goat soup”, a broth made from a boiled goat’s head, complete with brains and tongue! Also, liver, the best meat EVER (not), in the most appetizing greenish-brownish oily sauce. There are also some edible dishes, but you can read about those in any old West Africa guidebook. And you're allowed to eat with your hands!



1. Ham-flavored beef (MyShop’s solution to the Hawaiian-pizza-vs.-Muslim-dietary-restrictions dilemma)

Feeling Needed

So. My Senegal experience has in fact been useful now that I'm home. And to all those people who used to say, "Why would you take French? You'll never use it. Spanish is useful": I'm using my French. In America.

Through some miraculous chain of events (e-mails), I found out about the Freedom House. It is a temporary residence for refugees while they are applying for political asylum in the U.S. And where are these refugees from? Right now, mostly West and Central Africa, where they speak French. And until they learn enough English to conduct their asylum interviews without a translator (not happening!), I am there to advocate for them. And translate their birth certificates and letters. And doctor's appointments. etc, etc. Even if they don't say anything, I know they appreciate what I do for them. And they always say something. I'm already totally broken-hearted at the thought of leaving them when I go back to school in the fall. (Unless someone wants to lend me their car to drive to Detroit...)

So that's what I've been up to. Using my French. The best job I've ever had, depite being the lowest (un)paid.

I've also been up to a little of this (as shown by my *other* blog)


and this (watching my little sister graduate high school!)


and this (playing outside with my "baby" cousin)



SO. More later. Enjoy summer!
xoxo Sarah

home

In case you haven't heard, I made it home alive. Alhamdoulilay.

Notes before leaving

I leave Dakar in two days. What are the things I want to do most before leaving?

1. Go to "posh bakery". Seriously, the thing I want to do most in Dakar is drink cappuccino and pretend I'm not in Senegal? The irony.

2. Buy things. I have already bought more things than I can afford and I will probably not even fit it all in my suitcase, but I can feel Marché Sandaga calling me, saying "You don't need this, but you know you want it. Don't you want to see how cheaply you can haggle it for??"

3. Cook Senegalese food. Isn't it sad that I've been here for 5 months, with someone in my house cooking authentic Senegalese dishes EVERY DAY, and countless offers to teach me how to cook, yet I have never once taken them up on it. So tomorrow I will cook with my maid, chebu yap, which means and is, literally, rice and meat.


Other last things that were completely necessary: trampolining on the beach, of course!

100% Animist

There is this joke in Senegal, I think the first person who said it was Leopold Senghor, the first president of independent Senegal: Senegal is 95% Muslim, 5% Catholic, and 100% animist. This explains why my Catholic host mom has a muslim magic man protect our house, and why both Catholics and Muslims wear gri-gris (protective charms) and slay animals and stuff to please their ancestors and protect them from harm. One time I bought some bracelets or something with these white shells on them, and someone told me that those shells will protect me from people talking about me behind my back. The reason this joke is "funny" is because people say it all the time and always think they're the first person who ever said it and laugh their heads off at themselves.

I realize that it has been an absurdly long time since my last blot post. Don’t worry: I’m still alive! It’s just life as usual in Dakar, but with building frustration with this place. I hate to complain, but this is just ridiculous.

Problem Number 1: Casamance
Meera and I were planning to spend a week in the southern part of Senegal, the region of Casamance. There was a war there because Casamance wanted to separate from Senegal, but things have cooled down in the past few years. Plus, it’s the most beautiful region of Senegal, it’s the most tropical and they grow rice there instead of peanuts, plus the people who live there, the Joola (or Diola) are really cool. (sweeping generalizations). Anyway. We bought tickets for the overnight boat to Ziguinchor, the biggest city in Casamance, 3 days before we were supposed to leave. The next day, our host mom went to a seer (gis-gis in wolof, in case you were wondering), who told her that if we went we would never come back and she would regret letting us go for the rest of her life (because it was clearly her decision). THEN, to add insult to injury, our family’s Muslim magic man, who is kind of a condescending ass, came over to tell our mom (not us) that we shouldn’t go. Then everyone in our family, including the maid, proceeded to lecture us about how it is unsafe there, blah blah blah, even though none of them has actually been there, ever, and despite the fact that we had 5 friends, all girls, who went and came back all in one piece, and our mom just wouldn’t stop talking about it until we left the next week to spend 3 days on the beach, away from this house.

Problem Number 2:
She is off work for 2-3 weeks.

But enough complaining. Good thing it’s 2 weeks until I go home; there’s nothing like a nagging fake mother to appreciate your real one, who treats you like an independent adult.

Other things that have been going on:
Toubab Dialao. It is a tiny fishing village about an hour south of Dakar (3 hours with traffic). There is this incredible hostel there (they are called auberges in french, which translates as hostel, but the really are more like hotels, except cheaper). The auberge is right on the water, and it’s this complex of buildings that are all decorated with shells and colorful tiles and cool shaped bricks, etc. Meera and I decided we needed a break from our host family, so we took of for four days of nothing. Literally. We laid on the beach and read, we laid in bed and read, and we ate delicious cheap food. Perfect relaxing time.

Mmmm, beach...

Shopping. Shopping in Senegal is nothing like shopping at home. Instead of malls, we go to markets. You can find everything you need at the market, and the big ones are open every day. The biggest market in Dakar, and the most intimidating if you’re new here, is Marché Sandaga. The other thing about markets: nothing has prices, and you have to haggle (waxale) for everything. This is where speaking Wolof is especially helpful, because they all try to rip off toubabs like crazy. So basically when you find something you like, you ask how much it is (nyata?), and then the vendor gives you a ridiculously high price, and then you laugh and give him a ridiculously low price, and the he acts really offended. Then you both budge a little until you find a price in the middle. Often, they try to teach you how to bargain, assuming it’s your first time even though you speak Wolof. “You see, you tell me how much you want to pay, but then you have to augment it, then I lower my price a little, and then we find a price in the middle”. Except they lower their price in increments of about 50 francs (10 cents) and expect you to raise your price by the thousands. It’s quite exhausting, and usually when Meera and I go shopping we set out with long shopping lists, then end up getting 2 things that aren’t on our list and getting tired. Then we go to this bakery near the market and get really expensive pastries and cappuccino. Yesterday, though, we both had a lot of stuff to buy and since Meera is leaving on Tuesday we were running out of time. So we started out with a nice lunch, then kept pushing each other through the market so we wouldn’t stop early. We ended up buying more stuff than we’ve probably bought the last 5 or so times we’ve been there, and there is nothing more satisfying than going home knowing that you’ve not only accomplished something, but also got a great deal. Of course, even when we think we’ve gotten a good deal, if people in our family ask how much we paid for stuff they usually laugh and tell us they could have gotten it for half the price. So we try not to talk about it.

Sunshine and Mangoes

Wolof word of the day: fecc = to dance. (pronounced like "fetch") The command form is "feccal". We were forced to dance in front of very entertained Senegalese people about every 5 minutes during our trip to Toubacouta.



Toubacouta is a "city" about 6 hours south of Dakar, just north of the border with the Gambia. It's on the coast but also in a river delta, so it's really green and humid. I never really saw any part of Toubacouta proper that looked like what I would call a city, but this is Senegal. You kind of have to forget everything you know and expect.

Our trip was full of surprises, and much nudity or near-nudity. For example, on Saturday we went on a boat trip through mangrove forests. We piled into two pirogues (fishing boats) and went out into the river. We kept running into trees or getting smacked in the face by them, as it was quite narrow. Once we got out into open water again, Waly, one of the program directors, took off his clothes except shorts and a tank top and jumped into the water. By this point, I still thought this was not something I would do. Even when other girls started stripping down to various levels of nakedness, I was still surprised to find myself doing the same thing and jumping in. It was so freeing to feel comfortable enough with my body that I would strip to my underwear in front of strangers just to splash around in the water with a bunch of friends.

Another surprisingly cool thing we did was going to a traditional wrestling match. We have been to a really commercial wresting match in a huge stadium in Dakar, but this was totally different. We went at around 10:30 or 11 at night, so it was already dark. The only lights were two fluorescent lights on either side of the ring, which was basically a circle of people. They were sitting on the ground or standing, shouting and banging on things while the wrestlers fought in the middle. On one side of the ring, there was an announcer and some drummers and griots, who provided the music. I don't know if I have ever explained this, but a griot is basically a person in traditional West African society whose job was to sing about the royal families. They were a casted group of people, which means they were born into griot families and weren't really supposed to marry outside their caste. The castes still exist, but people are trying to get rid of them. Anyway, each griot family was tied to a royal family, so if the king and his griot both died, the griot's son would become the griot of the king's successor. Also, apparently Youssou N'dour is a griot.

Probably the most important part of the trip was the rural visit. We spent a whole day in a village, each with a different family, then we had the option to spend the night in the village, which all of us did except three girls. This village was really, actually in the middle of nowhere. From this small town near the Gambian border, we drove inland about an hour, getting further and further from "civilization". The people there were really nice though, and they welcomed us by making us dance in front of them, which gets less humiliating every time we do it. At the beginning of the trip, we were mortified when we had to dance "senegalese" because we look so ridiculous doing it, but it's actually starting to be kind of fun. I spent the whole day doing almost nothing. We cooked lunch then ate it, relaxed and chatted under a mango tree for a couple hours (by "chatting" I mean I listened to people chatting in Wolof. Mine is getting better but it's still not THAT good.), then made dinner. Also, no running water = lot's of water-fetching from the well. I even carried my shower in a bucket on my head! The night was almost as peaceful as the day, except for the zoo under my bed and the fire ant that kept crawling all over me and biting me. I never knew what they were like, but it's weird because it kind of itches but also feels like you were burned.

It was really relaxing being in the village for a day, but I don't think I could live in a place like that for any extended period of time, because I was getting really antsy to get back to Dakar. Much as I love doing nothing, having nothing to do is quite a different thing. I don't like being that far away from any people or things, although I suppose I might have felt more lonely because of my very limited interactions with people. They spoke no french at all, but as the region we were in is mostly Sereer, we were, ironically, relieved to be in a Wolof village where no one spoke french. We left the village dirty, hungry, and laden with delicious mangoes.

La Pâques

My family will be relieved to know that Easter in Senegal is much the same as our Easter. In a nutshell, my host mom's whole family and some of my dad's friends came over around lunch time and stayed until about 11 PM eating and drinking. My mom has 4 sisters and a brother, so there were lots of aunts fussing in the kitchen and cousins running around. And as usual, my mom made enough food for about 4 times as many people as actually came, so we'll be eating chicken and vermicelli for about a week. At least we don't have to stuff ourselves with white rice! We also got to eat pork, a rare treat in this country of non-pork-eating Muslims. I don't really know what else to say because it's just like the family gatherings I'm used to, except instead of our family's usual gin and tonics, we drink this fabulous coconut punch with home-made alcohol that my mom makes.


[This is me and my host mom]

There is always a feriée (a day where everything is closed) the day after religious holidays, so the Catholics can recuperate from all the drinking, and I guess the Muslims just pray.

24-Hour Boat Rides, and other unexpectedly long adventures

Really, I did love Cape Verde, but I would have loved the 1-week vacation I planned on spending, instead of the nearly 2 weeks that Air Senegal gave us as a result of changed and missed flights.

Cabo Verde is a country composed of several volcanic islands off the coast of West Africa. It used to be a Portuguese colony, where the Portuguese brought Africans to grow sugar. I would have liked it coming from America, but coming from Senegal it was even more spectacular. Mountains! Trees! Clean air! Cars that stop for you when you cross the street! The northern islands were even better than Praia; we stayed in a tiny town called Paùl on the island of Santo Antao, where we spent six hours hiking down from the mountains towards the ocean, and had a black sand beach all to ourselves for a whole day. The only problem? The boat ride to get there. It was described to us as a 15-hour ride, and how wrong we were to believe them. It was actually much less traumatic than we expected before going. We didn't really know how to grocery shop before, though, and we came prepared with lots of chips, chocolate, and beer, which wasn't the best food for a whole day. The most ironic part of this boat ride was when we found out that we could take a plane back to Praia for only $20 more. And it only took one hour.

We came back to Praia for our last few days. The morning of the day we were supposed to fly home, we sent two people to the Air Senegal office to make sure our flight info was the same. We probably should not have been so surprised to find out that they had moved our flight to the day before, and that there wasn't another flight for 5 days. After all, it is Senegal. We hadn't really budgeted for two weeks, so we had to get creative. We stayed in a disgusting hostel and made cheese and ham sandwiches for 3 days.

While we were freaking out about what to do about our predicament, Lindsay made the fateful suggestion to go to the American Embassy. When we got there, they said they couldn't really help us but all we could do was use the phone to make free calls to America. We stayed there until closing, and Lesley, the woman who worked there, told us she wasn't really supposed to, but she was going to drive us to our hostel and take us out for dinner. We went to a cafe owned by a delightful Scotsman named Fraser, and then afterwards Lesley invited us to our house to watch Twilight, the trashy teen vampire movie. She also let us make long-distance phone calls, made us cookies and brownies, and the best part... use her washing machine and dryer! (It would seem a lot more exciting if you had been washing your jeans by hand for the last 3 months) The taste of America was just what we needed to keep us going. And thanks to Lesley, we also met many cool Peace Corps volunteers and went swimming in the embassy pool. Basically Lesley saved the morale of our group and made our last 4 days a lot better, but I was still jumping (literally) with joy to finally come back to Dakar. Which is more than can be said for most of my friends who came with me. It was a beautiful trip and I loved it, but I'm used to Dakar. It's true that nothing ever works and things never happen when or how they are supposed to, but it's home.

I know it seems like I am just complaining about the trip and I'm sorry. It really was wonderful, but we spent so much time dealing with ridiculous things that it's what I remember. Fortunately, we can laugh about them now.

Birds and Boats

Wolof word of the day: pic (pronounced kind of like a mix between peach and pitch). It means pimple. It is apparently not rude to talk about pimples here and people always ask me and other Americans why we have them on our faces. One time someone even complimented my friend Katie on how nicely her pink shoes matched her pimples. Of course, it also means bird because why would one word only mean one thing?

Last weekend was spent in northern Senegal, specifically St. Louis, the former capital of French West Africa. The city itself is beautiful, situated on an island in between the mainland and a peninsula called the Langue de Barbarie. During the colonial period, the French people lived on the island and the slaves and other Africans lived on the Langue de Barbarie, in what is now the village des pecheurs. On our first day, Meera and I wandered over to the fishing village, and ran into this guy named Tahir who gave us a little tour of the area. He is a fisher himself so he explained everything that was happening: the pirogues (fishing boats) would come in, people would unload the catch (mostly sardines) and then guys with horse carts would come and load the fish on their carts and ride down the beach to the fish market, where trucks were waiting to take them to all the regions of Senegal. The market is where they smoke and dry the fish, so we left with the smoked fish smell clinging to our clothes and hair, even after a few showers. Of course, at the end of our tour Tahir told us he couldn't fish because he injured his hand and asked us for 13000 CFA (about $26) for a sack of rice for his family. We gave him 1000 ($2) and ran away. 1000 francs is actually quite a lot of money for a Senegalese person, and the story was probably a lie, and he had probably just been waiting for some toubabs to come to the beach so he could give them a "free" tour then ask them for money because they would feel bad for him. Senegalese people are actually lying about 70% of the time, usually about really stupid stuff, but if you ever call them out on it, they say that it was just a joke. This is hard for us to understand because we're used to jokes that are meant to be funny.

Another highlight of the weekend was the boat trip up the Senegal River. We met this German med student named Hanna in the hostel where we were staying and she asked if we wanted to do this day-long boat tour with her, so we came along. Our guide was named Babacar and it seemed as though the further away we got from St. Louis the less well he spoke French. He kept trying to tell us things but we couldn't hear him over the roar of the boat's engine (in spite of the roar it went slower than most row boats) so there was a lot of smiling and nodding. The best part of this trip was our first stop in a tiny village just north of St. Louis, called Bopou Thiot. We got to visit the village school, where there were two professors for three classes, and they explained a lot about the education system to us, including the fact that if the students do well enough on their high school entrance exams, will have to commute (presumably by boat) to St. Louis for high school. After that we went back and hung out with the women and small children of the village (all the men were out fishing and all the older kids were at school) and one woman made us ataaya while the others did laundry and the children all gave us fearful looks and ran away whenever we said anything to them in Wolof. We made it all the way to a dam in the river before heading back; we walked across the dam to a point where I think I can say I set foot on Mauritanian soil. Babacar walked across the border to buy us some muffins, and Meera had to hide them in her bag because we weren't declaring them to customs. By the end of the trip we actually started to go slightly crazy because of how long we had been on the boat (roughly 8 hours) and so it ended in tears of laughter.

After our few days on our own we met up with the school group for the weekend. The first night we went to a cultural soiree (sabar) which included lots of singing and dancing, a fire eater, and a comedy troup who performed a sketch in which two friends fought over who stole whose song about cous-cous. All the Senegalese people thought this was hilarious. In fact, it was only funny because of how not funny it was.

We also went to the Djoudj bird sanctuary and spent even more time in a boat (but only about 2 hours) and saw pelicans, flamingos, warthogs, and crocodiles. We didn't excactly get to this park on what one would call a "real" road, and on the way back we had to turn around and go a different way because our enormous bus couldn't get over a mound of dirt onto the road we needed to turn on.

Lastly, we changed the schedule for the last night in St. Louis because the program did not actually include any free time spent in the city, so we took a taxi from the university where we were staying downtown. This proved more difficult than normal because the bridge into town was closed due to President Abdoulaye Wade's visit to St. Louis. As we were walking by the governor's palace, Meera and I saw The Man himself standing out of the sunroof of his limo waving at people.

A note on the president: people actually do refer to him as "gorgui" (the man) in Wolof. He is 94 and has been in politics since 1960, when he ran for the first time against Leopold Senghor. He has run in every election since then and finally got elected in 2000. I could tell you a lot more about him and Senegalese politics if you asked me but this blog is supposed to be fun and not about politics.

Lekkal bu baax! Or, eat till you throw up!

Wolof words of the day: teranga: it means hospitality and is basically the motto of Senegal, “Le Pays de Teranga”, where people share everything, especially food. It also means that whenever anyone offers you anything to eat you absolutely cannot refuse or else you run the risk of deeply offending them. “Suur naa” means “I’m full” and is very useful when dealing with Senegalese meals. “Seeti” (SAY-ti) means to go visit someone.

Today Aminata, the woman who sells peanuts in front of our house, invited Meera and me to her house. It’s not that far from ours, but is in a shanty town just up the road where they have one room for Aminata and her four daughters. I knew they were poor but I guess I hadn’t realized how poor, because they all have pretty nice clothes and the girls go to school. Fortunately, all of our neighbors take really good care of them, and they are the most loving and appreciative family.

Anyway, today Khadiditou (it sounds like KA-je-tou) was supposed to come pick us up at 1 PM, because we had no idea where their house was. We have actually been supposed to go for about four weeks, but the first time Khadiditou forgot to pick us up, the second time we forgot and took a nap, etc. But finally we coordinated this week and she came at around 1:30. We had to wait outside the next-door neighbor’s house for a while, and it turned out she was making lunch for Aminata and the girls. Before leaving, Maman was slightly annoyed with us because they were almost ready to eat, but she told us to go anyway and not eat there because they were waiting for us to come back for lunch! However, as she well know, you are not allowed to turn down food, so when Aminata told us to sit down and eat mafé (peanut-based sauce with beef, on rice) with them, we had to comply because she is the last person we would ever want to offend. No matter how much you eat, it’s never enough and we had to combat shouts of “lekkal!, lekkaleen!” (“eat! eat!”) from Aminata and her daughters. In spite of our protests of “suur naa, vraiment!”, the oldest daughter Fatoumata kept loading more rice and sauce into the bowl. This is why our group of toubabs often says that Teranga’s a bitch, because there we were, stuffing ourselves until we felt sick, all the while knowing that a huge pile of gumbo was waiting for us at home. Obviously, we weren’t allowed to complain, because this poor family that could barely feed itself was offering whatever they had to us, and they were the ones who were thanking us profusely for coming over.

After lunch we had to turn down the rather seductive offer to take a nap at Aminata’s and pretend that we had to do homework and were not in fact rushing home to our second lunch. When we got home they had started without us, and Maman evidently thought we were famished because she made Juliette refill the bowl twice and kept putting pieces of meat and fish in front of us, then made us drink beer to help us digest and make more room in our stomachs, until we were practically crying because we were so uncomfortable. Finally after two lunches it was l’heure de la sieste, or nap time, and Meera and I could go in our room and feel sorry for ourselves while our sisters went to take their nap.

Later, we went to our friend Penda’s house just around the corner because we had been meaning to visit her for a while. She was in the middle of having her hair done, but two other women who live there (sisters? cousins? who knows, the mystery of Senegalese families strikes again) were making orange beignets. I knew they were going to offer us some, but I wasn’t prepared for the heaping plate of beignets they put in front of Meera and me, just for us, and told us to dig in. We kept trying to make other people take some, but they wouldn’t hear of it. We managed to finish about half of the plate, then the maid came and refreshed our plate with the next batch! We tried to explain to Penda that we really really couldn’t because we had eaten not one, but two huge lunches, and she just shrugged and said, that’s what Sundays are like. Clearly we should not do more than one visit in a day, unless we haven’t eaten in a week. Now we are trying our best to avoid dinner: this will not work.

Senegalese culture lesson of the day: hospitality is very very important, and people are really happy when you visit them, especially if they have been to visit you. BUT, never go visit someone without an appetite, and it's probably not a good idea to visit more than one friend in a day.

Reflections on Last Week's Wolof Class

Wolof is silly. We did numbers in our last class, and they make even less sense than most things in Wolof. There are really only numbers up to 5, and then you continue with "five-one", "five-two" etc. BUT, with money it's a different story. The smallest unit is five francs, so fukk (ten) actually means 50 francs. Our professor kept insisting it wasn't that complicated, so he used an example:

975 is "temer ak juroom-nyeent-fukk ak juroom" or "five hundred plus nine times fifty plus twenty-five". Except that it's really fifty plus nine times ten plus five, then you multiply the everything by five.

The best part is how everyone always assures me that people always use French numbers, so don't worry, except that people in shops actually tell me that I owe them ten plus sixteen. Times five. Get it?

Senegalese Wildlife

Wolof word of the day: "yaangi noos" is a greeting that means "are you having fun?". You are never actually supposed to respond with yes, because if you are having too much fun people will think you have money and try to steal it, so you can only respond that you are having a little fun, or I think you can also respond with something like "I'm eating my money".

I don't think I wrote about our mouse ("jinax" in Wolof) before, but in the first or second week of living with our family, Meera and I found a mouse in our room. We heard it scuttling around and neither really wanted to look for it, but Meera decided to turn the light on. There was a lot more angst and sleeplessness involved, but to make a long story short, the mouse jumped onto my bed and then onto the floor and Meera screamed bloody murder, after which our cousin Daniel came running into our room and asking why it was such a big deal and didn't we have mice in America? We named him Jacques, and unsuprisingly we didn't stop being teased for weeks. Since we haven't seen him in a while and have cleaned every inch of our room several times, we decided he had probably gone. Imagine my surprise, then, when I woke up this morning to have Meera tell me that she had seen a mouse on my bed with me last night while I was sleeping! Apparently Jacques is here to stay.

And now for the Senegalese culture lesson of the day: ataaya is the national tea of Senegal. The main point of it is not the tea itself, but the ritual of making it. You make it a really small pot that you put directly on hot coals, and there is one part sugar to about 3 parts water (but people in Senegal say that they don't like things "too sweet"). After the tea boils, you have to pour it back and forth between two cups in a special way that makes a lot of foam on top of the tea. The tea is no good without this foam. After you do that, you rinse the outside of the cups because they have sugar all over them, then you serve it. The ataaya glasses are only slightly bigger than shot glasses, and you're only supposed to use two, so two people drink at a time then you refill them and pass them on, with men being served first. The best part about this process is that it's usually men who make and drink the tea, so Meera and I get no end of amusement about Daniel and his friends having tea parties in his bedroom. They keep saying that they're going to teach us how to do it, and then we'll serve them, but as they are very particular about their tea, I think it will be a while before they entrust this task to us.

Everyday life is anything but boring

Wolof word of the day: jafe = too expensive or too difficult, but usually the former (JAH-fay). When someone tries to charge you the ridiculous toubab price, you say “dafa jafe”, “meaning that’s too expensive, I’m not a moron”. Because all words in Wolof have at least 2 meanings, when you repeat it ("jafe jafe") it means a problem.

Since I’ve been sliding into a routine here, I’m going to try to keep describing some “everyday life” things. One thing that’s pretty entertaining and also completely different from at home is taking a taxi. In the US, there is generally a standard price for a taxi, calculated by a meter. Because this is Senegal, you have to bargain for everything. Before you get in, you tell your taxi driver where you are going, and then he offers you a “reasonable” price, which is especially inflated for toubabs. Then you tell him what you should actually pay (this is where “dafa jafe” becomes useful), because there actually is an unofficial “standard” price of 1000CFA ($2) unless you are going all the way across town, in which case you can pay about $4. Another thing I don’t usually see in the US, once in the taxi, you usually sit in front with the driver and chat with him. If there are many people, you get in front first and then the others get in the back. This is just another one of those instances that make Americans seem unfriendly and private. Often when you pass another taxi, the two drivers will shout a hello at each other. A note on Senegalese drivers: they are CRAZY. I’m sure there are probably places with worse drivers (my friend Ginger assures me that India is much worse), but I’ve seen people do things with cars that I never thought possible. The normal way to park is by driving up on the curb so half of your car is on the sidewalk. People also drive across the boulevard things in the middle of roads to take shortcuts. And no one ever gets in trouble for going through parking lots to avoid no-left-turn intersections. I am already so used to this that I hardly notice how dangerous it usually is.

Yesterday I had my first real shopping experience. Coura, who works at our school, took Meera and me to the Marché HLM to buy traditional Senegalese clothes that we will need to wear this weekend for the religious pilgrimage we are going to (see below). The market was incredible: it was totally crammed with stalls, mostly selling clothes, and in one of the aisles cars kept driving by, even though there was already barely enough space to walk through! We went into an indoor part of the market to find a friend of Coura’s, but we weren’t wild about any of the clothes he had, so we went out to wander around. Of course, Coura was the essential part of the trip because once we found the clothes we liked she had to haggle with the guys to get us a good price. We ended up with one outfit for Sarah, and two for Meera, and we are heading off to the market near our house to find some more before we leave.

The pilgrimage we are going to is called the Magal de Touba, in the city of Touba. It’s a Mulsim pilgrimage to celebrate Cheikh Amadou Bamba, the founder of the Mouride brotherhood, one of the two major Islamic brotherhoods in Senegal. All I know about the Magal so far is that millions of people will descend on Touba and it will be crazy and overwhelming and there is no way we can miss it. Since our family is Catholic, we are not going with them but with Amadou, a very good friend of our Maman’s who supposedly has some kind of mystical powers and protects the house, but mostly he just loves to talk and give people advice. But we figure if Maman trusts him it must be ok because she is VERY protective of us. Today we bought about 20 liters of water, because everyone has been warning us not to drink the water or eat fresh produce in Touba, but we are arming ourselves with powerful antibiotics just in case. I know it will be completely exhausting but an amazing experience, and I’ll have plenty of pictures and stories when I get back.

A bientôt, inchallah!


P.S. bonus Wolof lesson: "inchallah" is actually Arabic and means "God willing". The Americans all think this is both hilarious and morbid because people will say things like, "I'll see you tomorrow inchallah". Apparently you have to say it because you can never be sure, which makes sense, but we hear it as saying "we'll meet again, as long as we're both still alive tomorrow!" I will probably be saying this all the time back home, so don't be alarmed and interpret it as my newfound Muslim religious fervor.

Family Time

Yesterday we finally had our first music and dance class, only 2 weeks after classes started! As with everything in Senegal, all in its own time. We met at school, with the guy who works there who was going to take us to the class. Then we all walked together to the main road, Cheikh Anta Diop, to get on the Car Rapide. For those who don't know what a car rapide is, it's the most common form of public transportation. They are smaller than buses, usually painted blue and yellow and covered in all kinds of weird and tacky decor, and have guys hanging off the back of the bus who collect your money and bang on the side of the bus to let the driver know when you want to get off. It costs 100 CFA francs, roughly 20 cents. They are surprisingly comfortable on the inside, and true to their name, are much faster than the "real" buses. So, we all got on the car rapide heading towards Ouakam, a neighborhood north of the city, which is kind of a smaller city within Dakar. It's very traditional and feels like a village rather than a big city. Once descended from the car rapide, we went to the home of our guide's grandmother to pick up our djembes (drums). We finally got to the actual location of the dance class around 10 am, despite being told that the class was from 9-12. The actual dancing was really fun and exciting. The dance instructor was introduced as [forgotten name] from school, but while here you all have to forget she's from school, and at school forget she's your dance instructor. The dancing wasn't nearly as racy or scandalous as that introduction would suggest. We did about an hour and a half of dancing, then played djembe for about a half an hour.

When we got home from dance class, most of maman's sisters, mother, and other women from our family were in the courtyard getting ready for a feast that we were hosting for the whole family. A few days ago, Maman told us that we were going to have pork for said feast, and the night before, Sandra took me out into the front courtyard to show me the pig that she was going to kill the next day for the feast. Unfortunately, this happened while I was out. My vegetarianism has clearly gone out the window, because I was genuinely disappointed to miss such an opportunity. Anyway, Meera and I helped the women get the food ready for a while, until all the men in the family descended on us to chat with us and pretend they spoke english and try to give us kisses and alcohol. At this point we fled to take refuge in the boutique with Jean-Daniel. This would turn out not to be the best place; when we returned after eating "lunch" (at around 5 pm), Maman's younger brother showed up to pick a fight with one of our good friends from the shop, who would never hurt anyone. There was a lot of shouting in Wolof and a struggle to prevent a physical fight, so I figured it was probably a good idea to gather up my little cousin Jennifer and take her into the house. This turned out to be a great idea because she's now my newest fan and also really adorable.

Most of what happens now seems normal to me, but I have to keep reminding myself that I'm just becoming accustomed to the bizarre. An example of something that we always get a good laugh about among the Americans: no one ever has change at stores etc. In fact, they say the don't have change and make a big fuss when you present them with a big bill, but then it turns out they actually do have change when you say you really really don't have any petites pièces. Additionally, every customer tries to use the biggest bill they can get away with, so they can have change. People come in the the shop specifically to ask us to "faire de la monnaie", and we've dubbed this the "game de la monnaie". It is like a big game, and it seems that everyone in Senegal is just hoarding change, with no intention of really using it. Just one of many weird phenomena of everyday life in Senegal.

Well, until next time. Leegi leegi!

Danga doff waay!

Wolof word of the day: doff = crazy. It’s probably the Wolof word I hear most often around my house.

The person who taught me the word “doff” is also probably the craziest person I know. He knows everyone in the neighborhood and is a good friend of the family, and I think he’s actually living in our house right now. His name is Matar, but everyone calls him the Gambien because he has spent a lot of time in the Gambia. At first, I thought he was really exhausting because he doesn’t speak perfect French and instead tries to force me to speak Wolof, but he has grown on me quickly, and Meera and I have started to refer to him as our second father. He hangs around our shop all the time and yells at guys who pay too much attention to us or bother us. Ironically though, he loves checking out women on the street, and taught us that “jaay fonde” means a nice ass.

In addition to my family’s boutique, there is a woman who sells peanuts and fruit at a stand in front of our house, and sometimes on the weekends her little daughter is there instead of her. This daughter is the coolest person I know and my new best friend; I think she’s about 9 or 10. I don’t really know how to spell her name but the short version of it is something like Kadjat. A few days ago I introduced myself to her but she was really shy and just kept smiling at me. Then Sunday I offered to help her set up her stuff, and she gave me a bucket to sit on and showed me how to help her tie bags of peanuts. She is super adorable and I spent about 2 hours sitting with her yesterday. We played with my cell phone and she tried to braid my hair, and at one point a guy from the neighborhood came over and was kind of bothering me, so one of the other neighbors started yelling at him. My new best friend thought this was hilarious and practically fell off her seat laughing, then offered me some sage advice on how to fend off men. I was both thankful and impressed.

Another one of the new things I am experiencing here is housework! My host mom is really insistent that Meera and I keep our room spotless, but the best part is that once a week, we get to wash our own laundry, by hand! The first time it was pretty hard and we were really tired after, but each time it gets a little easier and more fun. Everyone in the house and even some who don’t live in the house think it’s exceedingly funny, and last week the Gambien came into the courtyard and said he wanted to take a picture, then offered us a glass of gin to “make us stronger”. This past Saturday, we put on music and started dancing while washing, which made our maid, Nabu, really happy. She is really sweet and fortunately gets treated very well here—she works really hard, but my most mom and sisters do a lot of the housework too, and she gets to go home every other weekend.

look at the toubabs!

wolof word of the day: toubab. it means white person. my mom told me it's not mean or offensive, but everywhere we go we hear it. my other favorite new phrase is leegi-leegi (pronounced leggy-leggy). it means "see you later", but actually leegi means now, so when you say it it's kind of like saying i'll see you later but i wish i was seeing you right now. or something like that.

saturday we went to the pink lake, which is theoretically "near" Dakar, but because it's senegal it took us about 3 hours to get there and 4 hours to get home. It's called pink lake because there is some kind of algae in it that makes the water look pink when the sun shines on it. It's also salty, and there is a layer of salty foam over the sand around the edge which is really weird and cool. That was really fun until we got attacked by people trying to sell us crappy jewelry and sand paintings, which is what happens when white people go to tourist destinations here.

Yesterday, our program assistant Josephine invited us to a baptism at her house for her cousin's baby. We were already running about an hour late when we called her, but we met her and she said she was going to the hair salon and we could come with her. That was actually kind of fun because I like hair salons a lot, but after about an hour she said she was going to be a while and we should go ahead, and she would meet us. When we got there and met the other Americans, it was basically just a bunch of people sitting around, and a bunch of African children swarming us and touching our hair and calling us toubabs (the ones who could talk). After being covered in child germs and snot, we got to eat out of a big plate of meat and rice, with our hands! By the time we had to leave, Josephine still hadn't arrived, and when we asked her about it today, she just responded "Mais ca, c'est le Senegal". Which was my thought exactly when it took us 3 hours to get to school today. It's a 20 minute bus ride, but we managed to get lost and spend 2 hours wandering around Dakar before finding our school. Even after a week, the incredibly slow pace of life is already getting to me and I found myself wondering why I wasn't overly angry and frustrated, as I would have been if this had happened any other place.

Other recent adventures include eating a soup made from a boiled goat's head. My brother and sister were arguing about what certain pieces were because they knew the word in wolof but not french. I told them not to tell me, but at one point it was pretty obvious I was eating the tongue. Among the students on my program, we call these "chew once, then swallow" meals. Other than that, all of the weird things that happen here are pretty awesome. Life is pretty different here but I totally love it.

Week one: découvrir Dakar

Salaamaleikum! Bienvenue au Sénégal. It’s only been 5 days but it seems like a lot longer. It’s now my second day with my host family, the Diouf family. After talking with the other students in the program, I can see that I got pretty lucky. I am lucky to be sharing a host family with Meera, because I would be really lonely if I was here by myself, at least for the first few days, but I also got one of the most well-off families. The house is great: Meera and I share our own room and bathroom, which are across the courtyard from the kitchen, and we are the only ones with the key so no one else ever goes in our room.

The food is great here. The first day, we went to the house of a woman named Honorine, who used to run the program but now she just does the cultural orientation. We went up on her terrace for lunch and we had tiéboudienne, fish and rice, a very typical Senegalese meal. It’s a big platter full of rice with a whole fish and whole vegetables and traditionally you all sit on the floor around it and eat with your hands, picking off pieces of fish and veggies and mixing it with the rice. This is much more difficult that it seems! You’re supposed to squeeze the rice into a ball in the palm of your hand, so you can eat it without getting it all over your face. They had us eat our first meal like this in case our families did, but fortunately in my house we use spoons, still all eating off the same platter. Yesterday was the Muslim new year, so we had couscous, with chicken and meat. Another thing about the food here—“meat” can mean just about anything, and they don’t really differentiate between beef, lamb, goat, etc. It’s just meat. Anyway, our host sister Juliette told us that the legend is that the night of the new year, the angel of love comes and visits you while you’re sleeping, and if you’re light enough he’ll take you away but if you’re too heavy he will leave you in your bed, so you’re supposed to eat too much so that the angel doesn’t take you away.

Since it was the new year last night, no one works today and we have the day off from program stuff. I’m slightly disappointed because we were supposed to have our first wolof class today, but it’s ok because we get to spend time with our family and our mom made us a great lunch. I thought I would be fine here because my French is really good, and I have been perfectly able to communicate with everyone, but if I’m going to be here long, wolof is imperative. Basically, everyone talks to us in French and to each other in wolof. Even in our house, they sometimes talk to each other in French but I think it’s only for our benefit. The maid doesn’t speak any French, so she will be good to practice with while I’m learning. I’ve picked up about a dozen words and phrases, but I can’t wait to really learn. Also, our first day with the family, our host sister Sandra made fun of us for not speaking wolof, so now my competitive nature is kicking in. I’m pretty sure that just the way she is, and her teasing doesn’t mean she doesn’t like us, but when I learn enough wolof and/or French to be able to tease her back, then she’ll really like me. Other than that, the family is really great. As soon as we met “maman”, she said, I’m your mom, this is your house, you can do whatever you like. Our sister Juliette is super sweet. Sandra is kind of crazy and total drama queen, but in a good way. I think we’ll get along fine. There is also a mysterious brother, Michael, who everyone speaks of but who we haven’t actually met yet. Then there is Moussa, maman’s nephew, who also lives with the family. Then there is a random array of friends, cousins, and neighbors who wander in and out all day. There is much more community here than in America. You have to say hi to everyone you see, and people share everything, including their houses. In the front of the house there is a shop, the back of which opens into the courtyard, so people come through there and we also go through it since we don’t have a key to the front door yet. The cousin Jean-Daniel runs the shop and has a small bedroom behind it, and it’s mostly a liquor shop although they have other things. Our family is Catholic, and they apparently drink a lot and have lots of fun. Juliette goes out dancing a lot, so once we aren’t so tired, we’ll go out with her and her friends.

We’ve done a lot of stuff around the city with the program, but I’m excited to start getting to know it by walking around. I think in only a few weeks, I’ll really feel at home here.