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.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
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.
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.
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