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.