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.