Hi There,
This is just a quick update before I we leave for our second rural village stay. Next week our hotel will have wireless (inchalla) (hopefully) so maybe I’ll be able to update then and let you know how it went!
Monday: After classes (and feeling very, very greasy all day because of the shea-butter soaked hair) I had my first meeting with my ISP advisor, Edouard Manga. It was scheduled for 4:30 and he actually showed up around then, but he talked with other people/teachers/friends for an hour and 20 minutes before our meeting started! Which was alright for me, as I got to do a little more research before we started. I thought he had been an ISP advisor before but it turns out he had no idea what the position entailed…and neither do I really, so it was an interesting meeting. He’s a really funny guy though so we just kind of talked, I told him about my project and he kept saying, okay, so I’m not your teacher, I’m just your advisor. Yes. Maybe I’ll take lessons with you if I have time, but my project isn’t on modern kora, it’s on traditional griot kora vs. classical catholic monk kora. And at the end, he broke into a Backstreet Boys song, so overall it went very well.
Tuesday: After school I came straight home to start the actual dreading process! When we first started Moussa said, oh, it’s not going to work, your hair is too slippery! Which is what I had been trying to ask for the past few days, whether or not it would work with my hair…but yes he finally came to that conclusion. I showed him how people do it in the U.S., with the method of teasing/backcombing, not really expecting to continue and just kind of excited to wash the shea butter out—but he tried it and we continued until 1:30 in the morning!
Wednesday: In the morning I heard a knock on the door but didn’t answer it because I figured it was a family friend—turns out it was the new student, Bethany, with her homestay sister. She lives really near to me and is a cousin of mine! So we walked to school together and talked a lot, it was fun to have someone to walk with!
We had a little pre-departure logistics meeting (as our only class for the whole day!) where we found out where we’ll be living in the village. It’s one village, called Keur Sedaro, where there is no French so we’ll be relying on our Wolof! We all live in this one village but in little groups in separate compounds. I’m with Lucy in one house (I think?) and Avery, Jessie and Megan are also in our compound. Honestly I know almost nothing about the village besides the little Souleye told us: there are more kids than in our Kedougou villages and women garden a lot. So hopefully after the village stay I’ll have more to tell you on that subject! After that meeting I went home to continue dreading the locks, but Moussa wasn’t there so I packed my bags for the voyage. At around 1PM we started, and it’s now 9:16 and we’re still going!! Around 5 Bethany showed up to meet her family so they could take her home, but they never came so my sister had to call her mom to come get her…anyway we had a good time talking with Moussa and it was really great to have a visitor! And I think, if all goes well, I’ll finally be able to wash my hair tonight!!!! (I can’t remember the last time I did that…)
Anyway yes so I leave Thursday morning and will return April 5, but I should be able to update you before that. Have a great few days, and Mama, get well soon!
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
I ate Vegetables!
Hello friends!
I’ve been noticing a steady decline in my journal entries over the past few weeks, which is really disappointing for me because I know how much I’ve already forgotten about my trip and I’m still here; however, I know the reason for the decline is that I’m spending more time being in the moment and working hard to be a part of my family and see more of Senegal while I’m here. Basically I know I should be writing more but it’s hard to convince myself of that when I can see myself becoming more comfortable with everything here and involving myself more…I just have to find a balance, a problem I think every student here has mentioned having.
That little intro was essentially another apology, like last week, for possibly forgetting many of the details of my days, but I’ll attempt to recount my week:
Tuesday, March 17: Saint Patrick’s Day! They don’t celebrate that here, but Alex gave us each a little shamrock sticker to wear. Tuesday was a pretty great day for me, starting out with two wonderful emails from family members. I think that, for a few different reasons, this trip has made me feel the concept of family in a very different way. I’m really a home-oriented person in the first place, so being far away from family has its natural effects for me and I think draws me towards increased need for communication and longing for what is comfortable (home). But in addition to that the importance put on family here is very strong; that is shown by the decorations in houses (which consist of pictures of religious pictures and pictures of family), the emphasis put on family names as opposed to first names, the amount of time one spends simply discussing/spending time with his/her family vs. how much time they spend doing things Americans would consider “constructive,” and so many other little ways…I think the combination of not having my family with me and seeing how important family really is to me make a really strong impression on my perception of family relationships.
Anyway yes so it was a great morning, I was able to decide on my ISP topic: I’m going to study the kora! The plan as of now is this: I’ll stay with my family in Dakar for the first few days (April 11-17) and do background research on the kora and its players, while taking lessons/interviewing traditional griots, then depart (April 18) for the monastery of Keur Moussa and take intensive kora sessions there for 2 weeks, and finally for the last week (May 2-9) return to a simple apartment in Dakar to write my ISP and prepare my presentation. This choice is very comforting to me because I’m a person who likes to be able to plan things out very well before I do them, and the village option just didn’t leave much room for planning.
For lunch I finally got to COOK for myself!!! I don’t think I realized how much I would miss cooking, even if it’s just boiling water and making pasta…but it felt amazing to do that, and to heat some frozen vegetables and eggplant in simmering water, and most of all to eat VEGETABLES! Don’t get me wrong, oil and French fries and fish are nice, but at home my diet consists mostly of pasta and vegetables so it was magnificent to be able to have that luxury.
After lunch we had our second day of batik; this session was a little frustrating because I had my t-shirt all planned out and had done the first step the day before, and wanted to go on to the second step but the instructors, for some reason, really wanted me to do what THEY wanted with the t-shirt, not what I wanted! Eventually I got my way (and the shirt turned out almost exactly as I originally wanted) and the instructors began to understand that I like to plan things out at the beginning and continue with that plan until the end. I did the second step of my t-shirt and started on my other three pieces of fabric: a soft, light blue fabric that I bought in Kedougou (I bought 5m of fabric, ½ of which had a pretty design on it and ½ of which was very plain; I used the pretty half for a wrap skirt and batiked the plain half); an off-white strip of muslin; and a large, stiff white cloth called “basin.” By Tuesday I was starting to get the hang of being able to tell when the wax was too hot or too cold, how to properly heat the stamps (tampons, in French…this was much talked about in our group of 10 girls), and how to make sure the wax was soaking into the fabric correctly. It was really difficult to keep the wax at the right temperature!
After batik I went with Erin to a bookstore, and stepping through the door was like stepping back into the U.S. It’s surprising how comforting something like a bookstore can be! It was just astonishing that almost everything a “normal” bookstore would have was available—except, of course, pretty stationery, what I was looking for, and journals, what Erin was looking for—but it was just so different to have so many things available to us in the same place. I didn’t realize how used to I’d gotten to the stores here…
We then went back to the school around 6PM to, drumroll please, BAKE A CAKE!!! Two cooking sessions in one day, what a treat! The mix we had bought at the supermarket (did I write about the supermarket? I don’t remember what day that was…) took 3 eggs and about a quarter cup of melted butter, and made two tiny little cakes. Our stove is kind of scary: you have to turn the gas on and then throw lit matches into this little hole until it lights. But we got it to work and baked our two little cakes, and used chocolate spread for frosting because frosting doesn’t exist here. There was then the problem of storing them because there are no Tupperwares in our kitchen and the fridge was very smelly…we ended up just putting them in the fridge without covering them, which made them taste a little like smelly fridge, but nobody minded.
Upon arriving back home I heard guitar music for the first time since I’ve been here (very out-of-tune music, on a very old decrepit guitar, but guitar music just the same)! Moussa’s cousin was visiting for the night from Mbour. I sat down with them and listened to the music for a while Moussa sang and sometimes danced. It’s so interesting to see how emotional and involved people get with little music sessions like this here; he would just close his eyes and sing the words, getting louder and louder until he jumped from his seat to dance in the middle of the kitchen as the cousin played, eyes also closed, and I watched. This continued, along with conversations between the 3 of us about Senegalese culture and why I shouldn’t ever leave, until dark and still nobody else was home. Eventually my mom got home and we ate a quick dinner, just the 4 of us, and soon after Moussa’s friends started showing up. The cousin, Moussa and I continued our conversation as the guitar played and others talked, for at least another hour, and things evolved into more improv-based group song about mothers. The cousin asked me to sing and I tried to argue that I didn’t know the words, but eventually he talked me into saying something about my mother. “It’s what makes me happy. Please, Emily, say something to your mother. What do you want to give to your mother? It’s what makes me happy.” etc. So I said tonight, my mother is cooking dinner for my grandparents and they’re going to have a dinner together, and I wish I could be there to help my mother cook and to be with my family. And everyone applauded and finally let me go to bed, as my eyes were closing and I could no longer think in French.
Wednesday: Wednesday was Elena’s birthday (hence baking the cake Tuesday) and we got 4 new students! They came from the SIT program in Madagascar, where, if you’ve been keeping up with world news (I haven’t) it’s been pretty unstable and dangerous. Their home universities had them evacuated but luckily for them instead of having to go home they just joined our program! There are 3 girls and 1 boy, (and I found out another girl is coming next week, which means we’ll have 26 in our program when 25 is the absolute limit) and we’re trying to help them quickly adjust to life in Senegal so they can kind of pick up where they left off in their program. At lunch time a bunch of people went to the pool for Elena’s birthday but some of us stayed at the school, and then went to buy ice cream to go with the cake. The cake was alright (except for the smelly fridge taste) and the ice cream was phenomenal, and everyone was very happy and surprised that we were able to bake a cake in Senegal.
We had more batik that afternoon and afterwards I went to buy some CDs (I got 10 for less than $2!) and took a little walk, and as soon as I got home started my 9 Wolof exercises, which I then continued up until dinner and afterwards as well.
Thursday: It was our last day of batik, which was very sad, but I was very satisfied with two of the pieces I made (and mostly satisfied with the other two, just the colors weren’t what I intended). I talked with one of the instructors about doing some batik this summer and he told me where I could buy stamps and dyes and everything I’d need! I don’t think I’ll buy them here just because trying to pack them to bring home with all the rest of my stuff would be a bit difficult, especially with the weight, but I’m hoping to check it out sometime.
Friday: In the morning we had a session about relationships in Senegal—how people here perceive them, how to avoid them, how to get out of them, etc. It was interesting to hear people talk about the relationships their Senegalese siblings have or the ones their parents have, and to hear some stories about attempted relationships (by men on the street). Afterwards we played a big game of jeopardy in French.
I felt very accomplished on Friday, I called Keur Moussa to try to get in touch with the kora teachers (who said they’ll email me next week) and I called Edouard Manga, my kora teacher from a couple weeks ago, to ask him to be my advisor. Two steps closer to my ISP becoming reality!
That afternoon I had to do some research with my little group on how to do archival research, so I went with Aurora to the Center of Statistics, where a few nerdy Senegalese men sit in a room full of books and help whoever comes in to find the information they’re looking for. That night, instead of going out with the other students, I went to bed nice and early for once (around 9:30) and slept for 11 HOURS. This, for me, is amazing. I guess I just really needed to catch up, it felt so good to sleep!!!
Saturday: I wrote some postcards and did some homework in the morning, anticipating the large amount of time this weekend that would be spent reading, doing my ISP proposal and catching up on other work. Starting at 11:30 I began the long process of making “rastas” with Moussa—he began separating my hair and soaking the locks in a mixture of melted shea butter and something that smelled pine-y—to start my dreadlocks! I’ve been debating for years whether or not to get them and have always wanted to but never was able to convince myself to do it. I guess being here makes me think a lot about how people judge others so superficially, and instead of making me want to always dress in my best clothes and make myself over for the benefit of others, it more makes me realize that, no matter how a person looks, one will still judge them from the outside and that if they decide to go ANY deeper in getting to know that person, they’ll almost always find the person is different than their original judgment. Why should I change how I look just so other people have different original perceptions of me, when they’ll find the same person on the inside no matter how I look? If I want to style my hair a certain way I should be less worried about the fact that one person may think I’m dirty, another may think I do drugs, another may think I listen to reggae, etc.—and more worried about what makes me feel good about myself. People might think those things anyway, with my hair combed and styled normally, so why try to anticipate the judgments of others and dress for them instead of for myself?
Sorry if that was very redundant, I have difficulty explaining all my thoughts about that subject in any simple way. But after contemplating that for a long time, years in fact, finally, after experiencing so much judgment because of my appearance here, decided to try dreadlocks. So right now my hair is in pieces wrapped in thread and soaked in this buttery mixture I mentioned before, and on Wednesday we’ll be doing the locking. This process took about 6 hours, but it wasn’t 6 hours of just doing hair; Moussa’s friend came over so we hung out and talked all day, listened to music, drank coffee, ate lunch with the family, and did hair at the same time. It was very relaxing and comfortable for me. Different friends of my mom would come in during the day and say oh my gosh, you’re getting rastas? You’re going to cut them off when you go back to the U.S., right? Have you told your mom? etc. I’m already being judged for the dreads I don’t have yet!
Sunday: This morning I met Erin and Elena in Ouakam to walk to the Phare de Mamelles—the same lighthouse I visited last weekend with Alex, Avery and Whitney. We had a nice walk over and hung out there for a while just talking about our experiences, our families, our ideas for ISPs, we went up in the lighthouse (the guard this time wouldn’t let us go inside where the bulb was, it was disappointing) and just had a nice, relaxing morning. When I got back home I did my laundry ALL BY MYSELF for the first time!! I know it was only because there was nobody else in the house* and I think the maid didn’t want to embarrass me by helping/showing me how to do it right, but it felt so good for me to be able to accomplish something without someone trying to show me how THEY do it and ending up just doing it for me. I feel very helpless here most of the time, when people think I can’t boil water or wash my own clothes.
And since then I’ve just been doing homework and writing this blog.
*Oh, and today is Election Day here in Senegal, so everyone is out voting and in the evening they’ll be out watching the results. (I’ve been home alone for a while now, for the first time ever since I got here!!) I learned a bit about the elections, it was a bit confusing but from what I gathered:
Everyone votes for the local council (in rural areas), the regional council (government for the regional level), and municipal mayors (in city areas). These are some of the biggest coalitions:
-And Sopi 2009 (PDS)—24 Parties—(This coalition is controversial because the current president’s son is part of this one and a lot of people don’t want him to have a chance to be president because he was raised in France and doesn’t speak Wolof)
-Benno Siggil Senegal (PS)—17 Parties
-Dekkal Ngor—5-7 Parties
-And Liggeey Senegal—4-5 Parties
And defa Senegal—3 Parties
If, after voting, no majority is reached, they will resort to negotiation. For the past week or so the groups have been parading the streets in huge trucks BLASTING music and having big gatherings in the streets at night and on weekends; there has been a lot of violence during the nights and in the morning when I walked to school I’d see broken furniture everywhere, so we were told not to go out at night. But basically that’s all I know, and now elections are over so things in the streets should be back to normal.
On Thursday our whole, newly bigger group leaves for our second rural village stay, in Ker Sedaro, and then we’re going to Saint Louis, the 2nd biggest city in Senegal, for a week. Throughout this excursion we’ll also be visiting Lac Rose (a lake where salt mining takes place and the sun reflecting off the water looks bright pink, for some reason), Thiès, the Grande Mosque of Touba, and celebrating Independence Day in Saint Louis (April 4th). So I’ve got a lot to look forward to, but I’ll be really busy as well, so I’ll update again when I can.
Until then,
Emily
I’ve been noticing a steady decline in my journal entries over the past few weeks, which is really disappointing for me because I know how much I’ve already forgotten about my trip and I’m still here; however, I know the reason for the decline is that I’m spending more time being in the moment and working hard to be a part of my family and see more of Senegal while I’m here. Basically I know I should be writing more but it’s hard to convince myself of that when I can see myself becoming more comfortable with everything here and involving myself more…I just have to find a balance, a problem I think every student here has mentioned having.
That little intro was essentially another apology, like last week, for possibly forgetting many of the details of my days, but I’ll attempt to recount my week:
Tuesday, March 17: Saint Patrick’s Day! They don’t celebrate that here, but Alex gave us each a little shamrock sticker to wear. Tuesday was a pretty great day for me, starting out with two wonderful emails from family members. I think that, for a few different reasons, this trip has made me feel the concept of family in a very different way. I’m really a home-oriented person in the first place, so being far away from family has its natural effects for me and I think draws me towards increased need for communication and longing for what is comfortable (home). But in addition to that the importance put on family here is very strong; that is shown by the decorations in houses (which consist of pictures of religious pictures and pictures of family), the emphasis put on family names as opposed to first names, the amount of time one spends simply discussing/spending time with his/her family vs. how much time they spend doing things Americans would consider “constructive,” and so many other little ways…I think the combination of not having my family with me and seeing how important family really is to me make a really strong impression on my perception of family relationships.
Anyway yes so it was a great morning, I was able to decide on my ISP topic: I’m going to study the kora! The plan as of now is this: I’ll stay with my family in Dakar for the first few days (April 11-17) and do background research on the kora and its players, while taking lessons/interviewing traditional griots, then depart (April 18) for the monastery of Keur Moussa and take intensive kora sessions there for 2 weeks, and finally for the last week (May 2-9) return to a simple apartment in Dakar to write my ISP and prepare my presentation. This choice is very comforting to me because I’m a person who likes to be able to plan things out very well before I do them, and the village option just didn’t leave much room for planning.
For lunch I finally got to COOK for myself!!! I don’t think I realized how much I would miss cooking, even if it’s just boiling water and making pasta…but it felt amazing to do that, and to heat some frozen vegetables and eggplant in simmering water, and most of all to eat VEGETABLES! Don’t get me wrong, oil and French fries and fish are nice, but at home my diet consists mostly of pasta and vegetables so it was magnificent to be able to have that luxury.
After lunch we had our second day of batik; this session was a little frustrating because I had my t-shirt all planned out and had done the first step the day before, and wanted to go on to the second step but the instructors, for some reason, really wanted me to do what THEY wanted with the t-shirt, not what I wanted! Eventually I got my way (and the shirt turned out almost exactly as I originally wanted) and the instructors began to understand that I like to plan things out at the beginning and continue with that plan until the end. I did the second step of my t-shirt and started on my other three pieces of fabric: a soft, light blue fabric that I bought in Kedougou (I bought 5m of fabric, ½ of which had a pretty design on it and ½ of which was very plain; I used the pretty half for a wrap skirt and batiked the plain half); an off-white strip of muslin; and a large, stiff white cloth called “basin.” By Tuesday I was starting to get the hang of being able to tell when the wax was too hot or too cold, how to properly heat the stamps (tampons, in French…this was much talked about in our group of 10 girls), and how to make sure the wax was soaking into the fabric correctly. It was really difficult to keep the wax at the right temperature!
After batik I went with Erin to a bookstore, and stepping through the door was like stepping back into the U.S. It’s surprising how comforting something like a bookstore can be! It was just astonishing that almost everything a “normal” bookstore would have was available—except, of course, pretty stationery, what I was looking for, and journals, what Erin was looking for—but it was just so different to have so many things available to us in the same place. I didn’t realize how used to I’d gotten to the stores here…
We then went back to the school around 6PM to, drumroll please, BAKE A CAKE!!! Two cooking sessions in one day, what a treat! The mix we had bought at the supermarket (did I write about the supermarket? I don’t remember what day that was…) took 3 eggs and about a quarter cup of melted butter, and made two tiny little cakes. Our stove is kind of scary: you have to turn the gas on and then throw lit matches into this little hole until it lights. But we got it to work and baked our two little cakes, and used chocolate spread for frosting because frosting doesn’t exist here. There was then the problem of storing them because there are no Tupperwares in our kitchen and the fridge was very smelly…we ended up just putting them in the fridge without covering them, which made them taste a little like smelly fridge, but nobody minded.
Upon arriving back home I heard guitar music for the first time since I’ve been here (very out-of-tune music, on a very old decrepit guitar, but guitar music just the same)! Moussa’s cousin was visiting for the night from Mbour. I sat down with them and listened to the music for a while Moussa sang and sometimes danced. It’s so interesting to see how emotional and involved people get with little music sessions like this here; he would just close his eyes and sing the words, getting louder and louder until he jumped from his seat to dance in the middle of the kitchen as the cousin played, eyes also closed, and I watched. This continued, along with conversations between the 3 of us about Senegalese culture and why I shouldn’t ever leave, until dark and still nobody else was home. Eventually my mom got home and we ate a quick dinner, just the 4 of us, and soon after Moussa’s friends started showing up. The cousin, Moussa and I continued our conversation as the guitar played and others talked, for at least another hour, and things evolved into more improv-based group song about mothers. The cousin asked me to sing and I tried to argue that I didn’t know the words, but eventually he talked me into saying something about my mother. “It’s what makes me happy. Please, Emily, say something to your mother. What do you want to give to your mother? It’s what makes me happy.” etc. So I said tonight, my mother is cooking dinner for my grandparents and they’re going to have a dinner together, and I wish I could be there to help my mother cook and to be with my family. And everyone applauded and finally let me go to bed, as my eyes were closing and I could no longer think in French.
Wednesday: Wednesday was Elena’s birthday (hence baking the cake Tuesday) and we got 4 new students! They came from the SIT program in Madagascar, where, if you’ve been keeping up with world news (I haven’t) it’s been pretty unstable and dangerous. Their home universities had them evacuated but luckily for them instead of having to go home they just joined our program! There are 3 girls and 1 boy, (and I found out another girl is coming next week, which means we’ll have 26 in our program when 25 is the absolute limit) and we’re trying to help them quickly adjust to life in Senegal so they can kind of pick up where they left off in their program. At lunch time a bunch of people went to the pool for Elena’s birthday but some of us stayed at the school, and then went to buy ice cream to go with the cake. The cake was alright (except for the smelly fridge taste) and the ice cream was phenomenal, and everyone was very happy and surprised that we were able to bake a cake in Senegal.
We had more batik that afternoon and afterwards I went to buy some CDs (I got 10 for less than $2!) and took a little walk, and as soon as I got home started my 9 Wolof exercises, which I then continued up until dinner and afterwards as well.
Thursday: It was our last day of batik, which was very sad, but I was very satisfied with two of the pieces I made (and mostly satisfied with the other two, just the colors weren’t what I intended). I talked with one of the instructors about doing some batik this summer and he told me where I could buy stamps and dyes and everything I’d need! I don’t think I’ll buy them here just because trying to pack them to bring home with all the rest of my stuff would be a bit difficult, especially with the weight, but I’m hoping to check it out sometime.
Friday: In the morning we had a session about relationships in Senegal—how people here perceive them, how to avoid them, how to get out of them, etc. It was interesting to hear people talk about the relationships their Senegalese siblings have or the ones their parents have, and to hear some stories about attempted relationships (by men on the street). Afterwards we played a big game of jeopardy in French.
I felt very accomplished on Friday, I called Keur Moussa to try to get in touch with the kora teachers (who said they’ll email me next week) and I called Edouard Manga, my kora teacher from a couple weeks ago, to ask him to be my advisor. Two steps closer to my ISP becoming reality!
That afternoon I had to do some research with my little group on how to do archival research, so I went with Aurora to the Center of Statistics, where a few nerdy Senegalese men sit in a room full of books and help whoever comes in to find the information they’re looking for. That night, instead of going out with the other students, I went to bed nice and early for once (around 9:30) and slept for 11 HOURS. This, for me, is amazing. I guess I just really needed to catch up, it felt so good to sleep!!!
Saturday: I wrote some postcards and did some homework in the morning, anticipating the large amount of time this weekend that would be spent reading, doing my ISP proposal and catching up on other work. Starting at 11:30 I began the long process of making “rastas” with Moussa—he began separating my hair and soaking the locks in a mixture of melted shea butter and something that smelled pine-y—to start my dreadlocks! I’ve been debating for years whether or not to get them and have always wanted to but never was able to convince myself to do it. I guess being here makes me think a lot about how people judge others so superficially, and instead of making me want to always dress in my best clothes and make myself over for the benefit of others, it more makes me realize that, no matter how a person looks, one will still judge them from the outside and that if they decide to go ANY deeper in getting to know that person, they’ll almost always find the person is different than their original judgment. Why should I change how I look just so other people have different original perceptions of me, when they’ll find the same person on the inside no matter how I look? If I want to style my hair a certain way I should be less worried about the fact that one person may think I’m dirty, another may think I do drugs, another may think I listen to reggae, etc.—and more worried about what makes me feel good about myself. People might think those things anyway, with my hair combed and styled normally, so why try to anticipate the judgments of others and dress for them instead of for myself?
Sorry if that was very redundant, I have difficulty explaining all my thoughts about that subject in any simple way. But after contemplating that for a long time, years in fact, finally, after experiencing so much judgment because of my appearance here, decided to try dreadlocks. So right now my hair is in pieces wrapped in thread and soaked in this buttery mixture I mentioned before, and on Wednesday we’ll be doing the locking. This process took about 6 hours, but it wasn’t 6 hours of just doing hair; Moussa’s friend came over so we hung out and talked all day, listened to music, drank coffee, ate lunch with the family, and did hair at the same time. It was very relaxing and comfortable for me. Different friends of my mom would come in during the day and say oh my gosh, you’re getting rastas? You’re going to cut them off when you go back to the U.S., right? Have you told your mom? etc. I’m already being judged for the dreads I don’t have yet!
Sunday: This morning I met Erin and Elena in Ouakam to walk to the Phare de Mamelles—the same lighthouse I visited last weekend with Alex, Avery and Whitney. We had a nice walk over and hung out there for a while just talking about our experiences, our families, our ideas for ISPs, we went up in the lighthouse (the guard this time wouldn’t let us go inside where the bulb was, it was disappointing) and just had a nice, relaxing morning. When I got back home I did my laundry ALL BY MYSELF for the first time!! I know it was only because there was nobody else in the house* and I think the maid didn’t want to embarrass me by helping/showing me how to do it right, but it felt so good for me to be able to accomplish something without someone trying to show me how THEY do it and ending up just doing it for me. I feel very helpless here most of the time, when people think I can’t boil water or wash my own clothes.
And since then I’ve just been doing homework and writing this blog.
*Oh, and today is Election Day here in Senegal, so everyone is out voting and in the evening they’ll be out watching the results. (I’ve been home alone for a while now, for the first time ever since I got here!!) I learned a bit about the elections, it was a bit confusing but from what I gathered:
Everyone votes for the local council (in rural areas), the regional council (government for the regional level), and municipal mayors (in city areas). These are some of the biggest coalitions:
-And Sopi 2009 (PDS)—24 Parties—(This coalition is controversial because the current president’s son is part of this one and a lot of people don’t want him to have a chance to be president because he was raised in France and doesn’t speak Wolof)
-Benno Siggil Senegal (PS)—17 Parties
-Dekkal Ngor—5-7 Parties
-And Liggeey Senegal—4-5 Parties
And defa Senegal—3 Parties
If, after voting, no majority is reached, they will resort to negotiation. For the past week or so the groups have been parading the streets in huge trucks BLASTING music and having big gatherings in the streets at night and on weekends; there has been a lot of violence during the nights and in the morning when I walked to school I’d see broken furniture everywhere, so we were told not to go out at night. But basically that’s all I know, and now elections are over so things in the streets should be back to normal.
On Thursday our whole, newly bigger group leaves for our second rural village stay, in Ker Sedaro, and then we’re going to Saint Louis, the 2nd biggest city in Senegal, for a week. Throughout this excursion we’ll also be visiting Lac Rose (a lake where salt mining takes place and the sun reflecting off the water looks bright pink, for some reason), Thiès, the Grande Mosque of Touba, and celebrating Independence Day in Saint Louis (April 4th). So I’ve got a lot to look forward to, but I’ll be really busy as well, so I’ll update again when I can.
Until then,
Emily
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
A week of Kora love
Another fast week has gone by (a little more than a week actually, wow) since I last wrote, and this amazes me. I warn you that I had a LOT of homework this week so I didn’t keep up with my journal as I should have, so I’m sure I’ve forgotten a lot of little things throughout the course of the week, but I’ll try to recount as much as I can:
Monday, March 9: We had classes as usual and began our music workshops. I started the kora—and immediately fell in love (with the instrument, in case that was ambiguous…). Our teacher’s name was Edouard Manga, and he is apparently VERY well known in Senegal for playing the kora. (There aren’t very many people who actually know how to play this instrument; originally it was played by only griots, traditional storytellers, but has spread a bit and can now be played by others. But since the only way to learn was from griots, and because women don’t normally play instruments here, it’s a very small population who now have the skill.) He was hilarious and very easy to work with. I have no idea how old he actually is, but I would guess around 27, and he has little dreadlocks in a bowl-cut shape. His favorite phrase is, “It’s a PIECE, of CAKE!” (in English), and he sang these “lyrics” to each song we played. When we played something badly he would tell us that there was a bit of fish in the cake, and when we did well it was a chocolate cake. (*Remember this, it comes up later.) Anyway I caught on surprisingly quickly (I wonder if it was because of my little experience playing the harp and I was used to the strings, or because of my musical blood from a certain piano teacher of my childhood?) so he called me “Super Woman” because each time he taught a new part of a song, by the time he came to my part of the circle I had listened/observed the other students enough to have learned it already. This was an amazing feeling for me; I realized it’s the first time since I’ve been here that I’ve felt I was somewhat good at something!
Oh, Monday (or maybe Tuesday, I was confused as to which day it actually was) was also the “Maouloud,” the celebration of the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed, so from Sunday to Tuesday there were little parties going on everywhere and the streets were close to empty! My family was amazed that I had school during this celebration. Also for those three days I ate dinner around 11 PM because my mom and sister would go to the parties until that time, and my dad, brother and I would wait to eat since it was the women who had prepared the meal and it would be rude to eat it without them. I didn’t really get to experience the holiday, but there was very a different feeling to the city with no traffic and close to no one in the streets.
Tuesday: Classes took place as usual, and after kora class (which was, again, amazing) I had an online “interview” with the Director of Residence Life of Alfred University, regarding my RA position next semester. It was great to hear from her and really interesting to hear some things going on at AU, I feel like when I travel it’s almost like life stops in other places and it’s really weird for me to hear that things are happening even when I’m not there! I don’t know if that makes any sense to anyone else, but I feel it whenever I leave home for college, and I definitely feel it now when I hear from those people at home or at school. That night I prepared my part of the group presentation on my Bedik village from the week before, in French, only to find out the next day that:
Wednesday: The presentation was actually in English. It went alright but I think I was so used to thinking about it in French that I didn’t articulate anything in the way I intended…but it was really interesting to hear about other peoples’ village stay experiences and to see pictures and compare all the different ethnic minorities’ cultures. Later we had kora again, by this time we had learned two full beginner’s songs and started a third. Afterwards I had another presentation to prepare: a comparison between my Wolof homestay family and my Bedik homestay family, this one actually in French. I also had 9 Wolof exercises to do…so the rest of my night was consumed by homework, again. (Oh, side note. (My entries must be so confusing, nothing is chronological! Sorry!) That morning, my “friend” Babacar, a guard at a restaurant on the way to school, walked with me as usual. He gets off work at about the time I walk by so he usually catches up to me and we talk a little in French before he catches a ride home. But that morning he gave me a hard time for not eating at his restaurant yet, and told me he wanted me to come eat with him and he would pay, and I could teach him a little English while he helped me with my French. I admit that would be helpful and it’d be great to have a friend here, but when he started saying “I love you” and things like that, I had a big problem with that. I told him I was married and he said, “It’s no problem, he’s in America, right?” I’m getting very frustrated with not being able to be FRIENDS with any male here, it’s an awful stereotype to have of Senegalese men but the more men I try to talk to, the more it’s enforced.)
Thursday: Thursday morning was interesting. Babacar tried to talk with me and I told him to leave me alone. He said he had been riding a Car Rapide and got off just to walk with me. I told him that I didn’t want to talk to him, and to leave me alone. He caught another Car Rapide when he saw how serious I was, and he hasn’t talked to me since! Hopefully that will continue and I can continue to walk to school; if it becomes a problem again I’ll have to give up my morning walk.
At school, we had Wolof class and then French presentations, and it felt SO wonderful to be done with presentations for the week! At lunchtime I took a nice walk to the patisserie to pick up a little something for our kora class: *A PIECE, of CAKE! We all chipped in for some little chocolate cake-pastry things and during our break in kora class we shared them all with our professor. He thought it was pretty funny and really appreciated it, I think. I also video taped part of the last class, and at one point my professor took my camera and went around the room and interviewed each student about her feelings about it being the last day of the kora workshop. Each day of the workshop we got into a different deep conversation about something, it was really interesting to see this man go from goofy and rather childish to a sort of philosopher, but I feel like the more I talk with men around that age, the more I end up seeing that sort of contradiction. I was so sad to be finished with the workshops, but I really hope to continue for my ISP (more on that later). After kora, we set up the projector and started the “movie night” we’ve all been so looking forward to! We started “Can’t Hardly Wait,” a chick-flick comedy type movie, but didn’t end up finishing because it got to be dark and people wanted to go home and eat with their families. It was so nice not to have a presentation to prepare that night, so I just hung out with Moussa and with my family and it was very relaxing.
Friday: I took a long walk during lunch, and, stupidly, walked towards the mosque right before call to prayer (Friday is the holy day for Muslims so this call to prayer is MUCH bigger than on any other day). So when I tried to turn around and come back to school, every road around the mosque was blocked off by men praying in hundreds of rows. It’s bad to walk in front of someone who’s praying so I felt SO culturally insensitive when I turned a corner to find a group of hundreds of people praying!! After walking through a maze of side streets where there was room to walk, I found a route back to the school without being TOO much of an ignorant toubab. Back at school we watched a movie on excision, female genital mutilation, which until recently was practiced in many parts of Senegal (and is now illegal throughout but is still practiced in secret). It was a really interesting movie, in an African language with English subtitles; most of the lines made sense but some were just translated in hilarious ways that didn’t fit with the rest of the movie at ALL so it was really hard to take most of the film seriously!! Basically though it was about a mother who refused to have her daughter “purified” and then took in other girls who were against the “purification,” and the fight in the town about whether or not girls should be purified. It was a really emotional film and ended with the purification being outlawed in the town, so that was happy! That night everyone was supposed to go to this fancy Thai restaurant together, but a big group of people decided at the last second that they thought the group was too big and they went to a different restaurant downtown. So 9 of us went to eat Thai food, I got my fix of pasta and vegetables (both of which are severely lacking in my diet here) and, instead of going out dancing with other people, us Ouakam people (me, Alex, Avery and Whitney) went to get ice cream and then went home to our cozy beds. It was really nice to hang out with people outside of class, I haven’t done that much here!
Saturday: I slept in a little, which was amazing because it’s very hard to do in my household, and then ate breakfast with my mom on her bedroom floor in an effort to become closer to her. We talked about politics and her religion and the economic state of Senegal; it was great to finally be in a situation where it was just the two of us so everything was in French! I then walked over to Cité Asecna, where Alex and Avery live, because the 4 of us from the night before were going to go to the Ouakam lighthouse. It turned out that the Avery and Whitney couldn’t go until later, so once I finally found Alex (he lived nowhere near where I thought he did) he showed me around his town and we hung out at his house for a bit (about 5 hours, that’s “a bit” in Senegal) and I ate lunch with his family. Then we went and met Whitney, picked up Avery and walked to the Ouakam lighthouse; it looked old and creepy but the view was BEAUTIFUL—we could see the whole peninsula of Dakar—and a guy who worked there let us in and led us up to the top where the light was. He made us climb up into the place where the actual bulb was: the bulb was tiny compared to what I expected, in between the size of a Christmas-tree light bulb and a regular light bulb, but 1000 watts and was surrounded by hundreds of mirrors in a spherical shape. 4 or 5 people could have probably fit within the mirror-room but we did only 2 at a time, and the guy who worked there would spin the mirror-room walls while we were inside and that made us very, very dizzy.
That night back at home I sat with Moussa in the kitchen area for a few hours, and we listened to some beautiful acoustic Wolof music and for each song, he explained the meaning behind what the artist was saying and we talked about our feelings about the themes…another instance of a 20-something man going from joking around to philosophical that took me by surprise. I’m really starting to feel close to Moussa and will be sad to leave him because I feel like the few good relationships I have with Senegalese people are just starting to get deeper than basic, school-related conversations; that said, I’m not sure if that’s more because my French is getting better along with my comprehension, or if I’m becoming more comfortable with the people themselves. I guess I’ll find out when I move and live among others.
Sunday: I left my house around 7AM to begin my first excursion alone: the trip to the Keur Moussa monastery to research a possibility for an ISP. I had minimal information about how to get there, even less about what the monastery was exactly, and three hours to get there in time for the Sunday mass. I took a taxi to Garage Pompiers, which was a HUGE parking lot just stuffed with cars and vans and buses going to everywhere throughout Senegal. It took a few minutes to find something going to Thiès, and when I did it was a van, not the 7-seat taxi I was told to take. So after sitting in the van for a few minutes, waiting for the other 9 seats to fill, I decided to try to find the “sept-place,” assuming it would fill up quicker. I did find it, and it did fill up quicker. I sat next to a nice man from the Congo who knew a little English and who has siblings who live near Washington D.C., so we talked a bit on the way there. I got off in a town called Kilometre Cinquante and a man in the front seat of the sept-place who hadn’t talked the whole time explained to me the road to take and where I could find cars to drive me to the monastery. I thanked them and found a car, and got driven over to the monastery. To my great surprise I was not only on time for the mass, I was 45 minutes early! So I looked around the garden a little before sitting down. This monastery is a big tourist attraction so I didn’t feel very singled out (especially because I was in my traditional Senegalese boubou while the other toubabs were in capris and fanny-packs). The mass was really interesting—there were about 50 monks in white gowns, and they used djembes and koras and a lot of pine-scented incense in singing many, many songs, some including the audience and others not. I felt very peaceful surrounded by the chirping of birds and the chanting of monks, it was so different from anything I’ve experienced yet here in Senegal. The mass lasted for an hour and a half, and then I commenced my research: could I take kora lessons there for the three weeks of my ISP? The answer to this question, as I should have expected in Senegal, would not come until much, much later. I talked to a very nice brother who was really excited about my interest to learn the kora, and searched for the right brother to talk to about lessons. But right as he found him, it was time for another prayer. So all the monks ran away and I sat down to watch another prayer, and afterwards we went to lunch. I sat with about 20 Senegalese women who I think belong to the monastery, but at the end one of the monks had each of us introduce ourselves so I don’t think they knew each other. Through our introductions I met 5 Senegalese students about my age who also live in Dakar (Diana, Gisèle, Anne Charlotte and “the twins) and who have learned a bit of English; they became my companions for the rest of the day, kind of taking me under their wing because they knew I came alone, and they helped me find answers to most of my questions! They were really sweet and funny, it was really interesting to hang out with a group of Senegalese people around my age because I’ve seen how they act together, but never experienced it. People here are very touchy and friends (even two boys) will regularly hold hands walking down the street. So I held hands with Gisèle for a while, sometimes one would put her arm around me and lean her head on my shoulder—it was just immediate total comfort on their part and I was a bit, let’s say, confused, as to who they were and whether they were staying at the monastery just to help me or if they had planned to stay there all day anyway…but they brought me to the hostel, where I wanted to look at a room and check prices in case I do end up doing my ISP there, and on the way back we took a little detour to visit the “aunt” of Anne Charlotte (really her mother’s friend who used to live next door). We walked across a barren field to a fence that looked like it surrounded the house, so then went all the way back to the road and took the long way around, to find that the fence actually didn’t surround the house at all; on the way, Gisèle kept saying, “Il fait chaud! It is most cold!” And I was very confused, because it was hot, and “chaud” means hot… so after she repeated it 4 times I said, cold means “froid,” and she laughed until she cried on my shoulder while I told her how to say “hot” in English. That was a source of amusement for the rest of the day.
We sat in the entryway of Anne Charlotte’s “aunt” for about 15 minutes while they all spoke Wolof, and then returned to the monastery where I was going to talk to some brothers about my kora lessons and the possibility of living at the monastery. The girls knew a lot of the monks so that made it much easier to get to talk to them! We were led into a room by one monk and ended up sitting there for about 45 minutes until the one I was waiting for returned from his nap. He was very confusing and not as friendly as any of the others I had talked to, which was disappointing, but then I found one I had talked to earlier who was very helpful and helped me find the price of a room and meals, and who searched for a while to find the price of kora sessions but wasn’t successful and said he’ll email me soon about them. He explained to me that it’s difficult to know how much it’ll be because usually the sessions are in July and with other students, and that they’re very intensive sessions that happen in the morning, afternoon and evening of every day of the week. So pending an email from this brother and depending on the price of kora sessions as compared to my ISP budget from SIT, I would LOVE to live at the monastery (for about $5 a night with breakfast and $3/meal) and do an intensive study of the kora with the monks of Keur Moussa. As some of you know, my other option is this (and I had a lot of trouble deciding between the two, so if the Keur Moussa one doesn’t work out I won’t be TOO disappointed): I would like to go back to my Bedik village and study how they use natural resources for different parts of life: building houses, cooking, pottery and other arts, etc. So, two very different ideas, and I’ll let you know when I find out which one I can do!
Monday: Today we started our batik workshop! Our teachers are really quirky and artsy so it was very different from the kora workshops, where we were shown exactly what to do; this is more of a “do what you want” kind of workshop, and they help with the logistics. I started a “batik dessin,” where I drew a picture with the wax on a t-shirt and then put it in a basin of dye, so the dye only colors the parts of the t-shirt that aren’t covered in wax. Next I’m going to put the shirt in hot water to remove this wax, and then I’ll cover different parts in wax and dip the shirt in other colors to make new designs; I’m not sure how it’ll come out, but I’ve got three more days to experiment!
So that’s what I’ve been up to. I also realized that today is the 16th, meaning my plane out of Senegal leaves in exactly 2 months! In a way that sounds like such a long time but I know how quickly it’ll pass; I feel like I’m just beginning to realize the things I really want to do while I’m here and making real relationships with people and before I know it I’ll be on my way back to the U.S. Even more insane is that we have only 11 days of classes left before ISP period! Wow!
Maybe I contemplate the passing time in every blog entry and maybe that’s getting old for you, but each entry means another few days have passed and I’m still in awe of the concept of time here.
Anyway, thanks for reading, and I’ll be in touch soon!
Monday, March 9: We had classes as usual and began our music workshops. I started the kora—and immediately fell in love (with the instrument, in case that was ambiguous…). Our teacher’s name was Edouard Manga, and he is apparently VERY well known in Senegal for playing the kora. (There aren’t very many people who actually know how to play this instrument; originally it was played by only griots, traditional storytellers, but has spread a bit and can now be played by others. But since the only way to learn was from griots, and because women don’t normally play instruments here, it’s a very small population who now have the skill.) He was hilarious and very easy to work with. I have no idea how old he actually is, but I would guess around 27, and he has little dreadlocks in a bowl-cut shape. His favorite phrase is, “It’s a PIECE, of CAKE!” (in English), and he sang these “lyrics” to each song we played. When we played something badly he would tell us that there was a bit of fish in the cake, and when we did well it was a chocolate cake. (*Remember this, it comes up later.) Anyway I caught on surprisingly quickly (I wonder if it was because of my little experience playing the harp and I was used to the strings, or because of my musical blood from a certain piano teacher of my childhood?) so he called me “Super Woman” because each time he taught a new part of a song, by the time he came to my part of the circle I had listened/observed the other students enough to have learned it already. This was an amazing feeling for me; I realized it’s the first time since I’ve been here that I’ve felt I was somewhat good at something!
Oh, Monday (or maybe Tuesday, I was confused as to which day it actually was) was also the “Maouloud,” the celebration of the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed, so from Sunday to Tuesday there were little parties going on everywhere and the streets were close to empty! My family was amazed that I had school during this celebration. Also for those three days I ate dinner around 11 PM because my mom and sister would go to the parties until that time, and my dad, brother and I would wait to eat since it was the women who had prepared the meal and it would be rude to eat it without them. I didn’t really get to experience the holiday, but there was very a different feeling to the city with no traffic and close to no one in the streets.
Tuesday: Classes took place as usual, and after kora class (which was, again, amazing) I had an online “interview” with the Director of Residence Life of Alfred University, regarding my RA position next semester. It was great to hear from her and really interesting to hear some things going on at AU, I feel like when I travel it’s almost like life stops in other places and it’s really weird for me to hear that things are happening even when I’m not there! I don’t know if that makes any sense to anyone else, but I feel it whenever I leave home for college, and I definitely feel it now when I hear from those people at home or at school. That night I prepared my part of the group presentation on my Bedik village from the week before, in French, only to find out the next day that:
Wednesday: The presentation was actually in English. It went alright but I think I was so used to thinking about it in French that I didn’t articulate anything in the way I intended…but it was really interesting to hear about other peoples’ village stay experiences and to see pictures and compare all the different ethnic minorities’ cultures. Later we had kora again, by this time we had learned two full beginner’s songs and started a third. Afterwards I had another presentation to prepare: a comparison between my Wolof homestay family and my Bedik homestay family, this one actually in French. I also had 9 Wolof exercises to do…so the rest of my night was consumed by homework, again. (Oh, side note. (My entries must be so confusing, nothing is chronological! Sorry!) That morning, my “friend” Babacar, a guard at a restaurant on the way to school, walked with me as usual. He gets off work at about the time I walk by so he usually catches up to me and we talk a little in French before he catches a ride home. But that morning he gave me a hard time for not eating at his restaurant yet, and told me he wanted me to come eat with him and he would pay, and I could teach him a little English while he helped me with my French. I admit that would be helpful and it’d be great to have a friend here, but when he started saying “I love you” and things like that, I had a big problem with that. I told him I was married and he said, “It’s no problem, he’s in America, right?” I’m getting very frustrated with not being able to be FRIENDS with any male here, it’s an awful stereotype to have of Senegalese men but the more men I try to talk to, the more it’s enforced.)
Thursday: Thursday morning was interesting. Babacar tried to talk with me and I told him to leave me alone. He said he had been riding a Car Rapide and got off just to walk with me. I told him that I didn’t want to talk to him, and to leave me alone. He caught another Car Rapide when he saw how serious I was, and he hasn’t talked to me since! Hopefully that will continue and I can continue to walk to school; if it becomes a problem again I’ll have to give up my morning walk.
At school, we had Wolof class and then French presentations, and it felt SO wonderful to be done with presentations for the week! At lunchtime I took a nice walk to the patisserie to pick up a little something for our kora class: *A PIECE, of CAKE! We all chipped in for some little chocolate cake-pastry things and during our break in kora class we shared them all with our professor. He thought it was pretty funny and really appreciated it, I think. I also video taped part of the last class, and at one point my professor took my camera and went around the room and interviewed each student about her feelings about it being the last day of the kora workshop. Each day of the workshop we got into a different deep conversation about something, it was really interesting to see this man go from goofy and rather childish to a sort of philosopher, but I feel like the more I talk with men around that age, the more I end up seeing that sort of contradiction. I was so sad to be finished with the workshops, but I really hope to continue for my ISP (more on that later). After kora, we set up the projector and started the “movie night” we’ve all been so looking forward to! We started “Can’t Hardly Wait,” a chick-flick comedy type movie, but didn’t end up finishing because it got to be dark and people wanted to go home and eat with their families. It was so nice not to have a presentation to prepare that night, so I just hung out with Moussa and with my family and it was very relaxing.
Friday: I took a long walk during lunch, and, stupidly, walked towards the mosque right before call to prayer (Friday is the holy day for Muslims so this call to prayer is MUCH bigger than on any other day). So when I tried to turn around and come back to school, every road around the mosque was blocked off by men praying in hundreds of rows. It’s bad to walk in front of someone who’s praying so I felt SO culturally insensitive when I turned a corner to find a group of hundreds of people praying!! After walking through a maze of side streets where there was room to walk, I found a route back to the school without being TOO much of an ignorant toubab. Back at school we watched a movie on excision, female genital mutilation, which until recently was practiced in many parts of Senegal (and is now illegal throughout but is still practiced in secret). It was a really interesting movie, in an African language with English subtitles; most of the lines made sense but some were just translated in hilarious ways that didn’t fit with the rest of the movie at ALL so it was really hard to take most of the film seriously!! Basically though it was about a mother who refused to have her daughter “purified” and then took in other girls who were against the “purification,” and the fight in the town about whether or not girls should be purified. It was a really emotional film and ended with the purification being outlawed in the town, so that was happy! That night everyone was supposed to go to this fancy Thai restaurant together, but a big group of people decided at the last second that they thought the group was too big and they went to a different restaurant downtown. So 9 of us went to eat Thai food, I got my fix of pasta and vegetables (both of which are severely lacking in my diet here) and, instead of going out dancing with other people, us Ouakam people (me, Alex, Avery and Whitney) went to get ice cream and then went home to our cozy beds. It was really nice to hang out with people outside of class, I haven’t done that much here!
Saturday: I slept in a little, which was amazing because it’s very hard to do in my household, and then ate breakfast with my mom on her bedroom floor in an effort to become closer to her. We talked about politics and her religion and the economic state of Senegal; it was great to finally be in a situation where it was just the two of us so everything was in French! I then walked over to Cité Asecna, where Alex and Avery live, because the 4 of us from the night before were going to go to the Ouakam lighthouse. It turned out that the Avery and Whitney couldn’t go until later, so once I finally found Alex (he lived nowhere near where I thought he did) he showed me around his town and we hung out at his house for a bit (about 5 hours, that’s “a bit” in Senegal) and I ate lunch with his family. Then we went and met Whitney, picked up Avery and walked to the Ouakam lighthouse; it looked old and creepy but the view was BEAUTIFUL—we could see the whole peninsula of Dakar—and a guy who worked there let us in and led us up to the top where the light was. He made us climb up into the place where the actual bulb was: the bulb was tiny compared to what I expected, in between the size of a Christmas-tree light bulb and a regular light bulb, but 1000 watts and was surrounded by hundreds of mirrors in a spherical shape. 4 or 5 people could have probably fit within the mirror-room but we did only 2 at a time, and the guy who worked there would spin the mirror-room walls while we were inside and that made us very, very dizzy.
That night back at home I sat with Moussa in the kitchen area for a few hours, and we listened to some beautiful acoustic Wolof music and for each song, he explained the meaning behind what the artist was saying and we talked about our feelings about the themes…another instance of a 20-something man going from joking around to philosophical that took me by surprise. I’m really starting to feel close to Moussa and will be sad to leave him because I feel like the few good relationships I have with Senegalese people are just starting to get deeper than basic, school-related conversations; that said, I’m not sure if that’s more because my French is getting better along with my comprehension, or if I’m becoming more comfortable with the people themselves. I guess I’ll find out when I move and live among others.
Sunday: I left my house around 7AM to begin my first excursion alone: the trip to the Keur Moussa monastery to research a possibility for an ISP. I had minimal information about how to get there, even less about what the monastery was exactly, and three hours to get there in time for the Sunday mass. I took a taxi to Garage Pompiers, which was a HUGE parking lot just stuffed with cars and vans and buses going to everywhere throughout Senegal. It took a few minutes to find something going to Thiès, and when I did it was a van, not the 7-seat taxi I was told to take. So after sitting in the van for a few minutes, waiting for the other 9 seats to fill, I decided to try to find the “sept-place,” assuming it would fill up quicker. I did find it, and it did fill up quicker. I sat next to a nice man from the Congo who knew a little English and who has siblings who live near Washington D.C., so we talked a bit on the way there. I got off in a town called Kilometre Cinquante and a man in the front seat of the sept-place who hadn’t talked the whole time explained to me the road to take and where I could find cars to drive me to the monastery. I thanked them and found a car, and got driven over to the monastery. To my great surprise I was not only on time for the mass, I was 45 minutes early! So I looked around the garden a little before sitting down. This monastery is a big tourist attraction so I didn’t feel very singled out (especially because I was in my traditional Senegalese boubou while the other toubabs were in capris and fanny-packs). The mass was really interesting—there were about 50 monks in white gowns, and they used djembes and koras and a lot of pine-scented incense in singing many, many songs, some including the audience and others not. I felt very peaceful surrounded by the chirping of birds and the chanting of monks, it was so different from anything I’ve experienced yet here in Senegal. The mass lasted for an hour and a half, and then I commenced my research: could I take kora lessons there for the three weeks of my ISP? The answer to this question, as I should have expected in Senegal, would not come until much, much later. I talked to a very nice brother who was really excited about my interest to learn the kora, and searched for the right brother to talk to about lessons. But right as he found him, it was time for another prayer. So all the monks ran away and I sat down to watch another prayer, and afterwards we went to lunch. I sat with about 20 Senegalese women who I think belong to the monastery, but at the end one of the monks had each of us introduce ourselves so I don’t think they knew each other. Through our introductions I met 5 Senegalese students about my age who also live in Dakar (Diana, Gisèle, Anne Charlotte and “the twins) and who have learned a bit of English; they became my companions for the rest of the day, kind of taking me under their wing because they knew I came alone, and they helped me find answers to most of my questions! They were really sweet and funny, it was really interesting to hang out with a group of Senegalese people around my age because I’ve seen how they act together, but never experienced it. People here are very touchy and friends (even two boys) will regularly hold hands walking down the street. So I held hands with Gisèle for a while, sometimes one would put her arm around me and lean her head on my shoulder—it was just immediate total comfort on their part and I was a bit, let’s say, confused, as to who they were and whether they were staying at the monastery just to help me or if they had planned to stay there all day anyway…but they brought me to the hostel, where I wanted to look at a room and check prices in case I do end up doing my ISP there, and on the way back we took a little detour to visit the “aunt” of Anne Charlotte (really her mother’s friend who used to live next door). We walked across a barren field to a fence that looked like it surrounded the house, so then went all the way back to the road and took the long way around, to find that the fence actually didn’t surround the house at all; on the way, Gisèle kept saying, “Il fait chaud! It is most cold!” And I was very confused, because it was hot, and “chaud” means hot… so after she repeated it 4 times I said, cold means “froid,” and she laughed until she cried on my shoulder while I told her how to say “hot” in English. That was a source of amusement for the rest of the day.
We sat in the entryway of Anne Charlotte’s “aunt” for about 15 minutes while they all spoke Wolof, and then returned to the monastery where I was going to talk to some brothers about my kora lessons and the possibility of living at the monastery. The girls knew a lot of the monks so that made it much easier to get to talk to them! We were led into a room by one monk and ended up sitting there for about 45 minutes until the one I was waiting for returned from his nap. He was very confusing and not as friendly as any of the others I had talked to, which was disappointing, but then I found one I had talked to earlier who was very helpful and helped me find the price of a room and meals, and who searched for a while to find the price of kora sessions but wasn’t successful and said he’ll email me soon about them. He explained to me that it’s difficult to know how much it’ll be because usually the sessions are in July and with other students, and that they’re very intensive sessions that happen in the morning, afternoon and evening of every day of the week. So pending an email from this brother and depending on the price of kora sessions as compared to my ISP budget from SIT, I would LOVE to live at the monastery (for about $5 a night with breakfast and $3/meal) and do an intensive study of the kora with the monks of Keur Moussa. As some of you know, my other option is this (and I had a lot of trouble deciding between the two, so if the Keur Moussa one doesn’t work out I won’t be TOO disappointed): I would like to go back to my Bedik village and study how they use natural resources for different parts of life: building houses, cooking, pottery and other arts, etc. So, two very different ideas, and I’ll let you know when I find out which one I can do!
Monday: Today we started our batik workshop! Our teachers are really quirky and artsy so it was very different from the kora workshops, where we were shown exactly what to do; this is more of a “do what you want” kind of workshop, and they help with the logistics. I started a “batik dessin,” where I drew a picture with the wax on a t-shirt and then put it in a basin of dye, so the dye only colors the parts of the t-shirt that aren’t covered in wax. Next I’m going to put the shirt in hot water to remove this wax, and then I’ll cover different parts in wax and dip the shirt in other colors to make new designs; I’m not sure how it’ll come out, but I’ve got three more days to experiment!
So that’s what I’ve been up to. I also realized that today is the 16th, meaning my plane out of Senegal leaves in exactly 2 months! In a way that sounds like such a long time but I know how quickly it’ll pass; I feel like I’m just beginning to realize the things I really want to do while I’m here and making real relationships with people and before I know it I’ll be on my way back to the U.S. Even more insane is that we have only 11 days of classes left before ISP period! Wow!
Maybe I contemplate the passing time in every blog entry and maybe that’s getting old for you, but each entry means another few days have passed and I’m still in awe of the concept of time here.
Anyway, thanks for reading, and I’ll be in touch soon!
Monday, March 9, 2009
Kedougou Trip
Dedicated readers of my online journal: We meet again.
It’s nice to be back in the world of technology, but it was also really great just to be disconnected for a while and only rely on what was readily available. I shall now tell you the details of our trip to Kedougou. (We students have decided that this trip is really just a big reality show and on the last day we’ll be told everyone was acting and all the “WTF” moments (if you don’t know what “WTF” means, that’s probably for your own good) were planned. So I kind of picture this whole trip as a soap opera. That could also be because of the incessant presence of soap operas in my life. Or also possibly because I’m writing this at 2AM after 20 hours of sitting on a bus with a broken air conditioner. Anyway,) Ready? Go.
Day 1: Friday
I got up early so I could get to school on time to leave for Kedougou—it’s always questionable whether there will be taxis available so, because of the threat that “Clint (one of the students) will beat up anyone who is late (but if Clint is late, everyone will beat up Clint),” I made sure to go out extra early…and ended up getting to school around 7:10. The bus wasn’t scheduled to leave until 8, so that’s why I got to post my last lovely blog entry before leaving. But as everything here happens at least an hour after it was planned to happen, we didn’t leave Dakar until after 9. Is this important to my story? No. So we drove for 4 or 5 hours before stopping for lunch in a city called Kaolack, the 3rd biggest city in Senegal (after Dakar and Thiès). Luckily I slept a TON because I hadn’t really slept the night before—a not-previously-planned but pleasantly surprising preparation for this trip. After lunch we drove some more and then stumbled upon the Worst Road I Can Possibly Imagine: Part 2. I don’t know if you remember last time I mentioned a bad road, it was after visiting Mariam (another sister)’s house. That one lasted for 5 minutes. This one lasted for…8 hours? Somewhere around there. I was terrified the whole time that we were going to tip over. We decided at about 4 PM that it was time for a flat tire! It happened right outside this little village where every single child came rushing out to see the toubabs. It was a really strange experience for me; the kids were just all over us, wanting to touch our skin, shake our hands, get our cell phone numbers (yes, in a rural village) (people here are INSANE with their cell phones, maybe I’ll explain sometime but that’s another story), get their pictures taken, etc. They acted like we were celebrities. That lasted for about an hour, and finally we were back on the road. After much more driving the driver realized one of the tires was loose. We pulled over and had another little rest, wished for food for about an hour, and continued on our way. We arrived at our BEAUTIFUL hotel in Tambacounda, “Hotel l’Oasis,” around midnight (so that means our drive lasted about 15 hours). The rooms were little huts with air conditioning, TV’s, showers/bathrooms, etc. (oh. I was sharing a room with Erin, and we were really really excited to take our first warm showers since we’ve been here, but found out that our water didn’t work. We asked the hotel guy to look at it, and he turned a knob outside of our hut and water just came POURING out of the ceiling. So after a few times trying the same thing, he moved us to a different room.) We had a lovely huge dinner, some people swam in the pool, I took a shower and went to bed.
Day 2: Saturday
We departed Tambacounda around 9AM to head towards Kedougou. I would have loved to stay at the beautiful hotel longer and maybe swim/relax some, but we were just so excited to start driving again. After 4-5 more hours we arrived at Campement Nieriko in Kedougou!! After lunch we visited the Bedik village I’d later be staying in (Indar) and hiked up to Etchwar, the other Bedik village at the top of the mountain. That was beautiful and it was really nice to get into nature again, it’s been so long! We climbed up to the tippytop and went rock-hopping and saw a pretty view of Kedougou. After dinner we were all invited to a “Where the Wild Things Are”-themed party hosted by a couple of students: costumes required. I experimented with my mosquito net and sheets for a costume but eventually ended up doing my hair with some things found in nature and wearing a pagne my homestay sister let me borrow. That was cute/fun, we basically just sat around in a group of 8 or so girls and talked, since the only channel that worked on the TV was the “Angry Mosque Channel” (not the real name, don’t worry) and nobody had any music. Later, though, the bartender/waiter showed up looking for a charger someone had previously left in the room, and we asked him to bring us some music. He brought a little tape-player boom box thing but he kept it very very quiet since there were other clients in the next hut sleeping.
Day 3: Sunday
Side note: March 1st—that means we’ve been here a month!
After breakfast we boarded 4x4’s (quatre-quatres, said like “cat-cats,” teehee) to begin our 2-hour journey to Dindefello. Within the first 3 minutes the cat-cat ahead of us got a flat tire, so we sat for a while. My stomach decided that it didn’t really like pain au chocolate so I felt very sick for the first 7/8 of the drive—again, the worst roads I can possibly imagine (I’m seeing a trend here) but also accompanied by clouds of dust and incredible heat. When I stopped feeling sick it was really fun!! We arrived at Campement de Dindefello and began our hike. It was the lushest, greenest hike I have been on in quite some time! After about 20 minutes we arrived at possibly the most beautiful sight I have ever seen: les Cascades de Dindefello (Dindefello Waterfall). It was inexplicably gorgeous and peaceful (except that we were a group of 21 Americans seeing nature for the first time in a month) and we got to swim and bask in the glory of the beautiful sun and cool water for a while. After a much-too-short stay we descended for lunch and our trip back on the cat-cats. (I was not feeling sick this time and was in the open-air jeep one so it was much more of a fun adventure on the way back.) We then visited the Kedougou market and I purchased some Indigo fabric and some little gifts for my village homestay. It was a much different market than those in Dakar: much less stressful, people don’t hang on your body and try to get you to buy their things, you can usually walk through the pathways without squeezing through a blob of people…overall much more calm. After dinner that night as I was trying to close the door to my hut (that I shared with a girl named Lucy) and go to bed, a big spider crawled in after me. I was very scared and I’m sorry to say that I killed it. I apologize.
Day 4: Monday
We departed for our rural village homestays! We drove out to the farthest one and saw some people off, then dropped off a couple more people on the way to ours: Bedik at Indar. (Megan and Isa were dropped off with Alex and I because they were living at the top of the mountain and wouldn’t climb up until their families came down in the evening to meet them.) Alex (the student staying in my village with me) and I met our family: Mark and Veronique Keita, and their 4 kids: Vanessa (8), Fabian (5), Thierry (3) and Zita (18 months). These names were SO easy to remember, I’m used to having to try to learn Wolof names! Everyone in the Bedik villages has a Bedik name (based on their birth order, all the first-born boys are named the same, second-born boys are all the same, etc.) and a Christian name (they are Christian Animists). We spent the day talking with Marc and getting used to the intense heat and style of life in the village: a LOT of sitting around. A lot of the women were topless, and the ones who weren’t usually wore very loose shirts so they “fell out” a lot. There were a lot of kids running around naked/partially-clothed, many had the stereotypical protruding belly and bellybuttons (I could go into the state of health etc. in the village but I don’t really feel like it at the moment, I feel like it’d take a lot of reflection and I’m not in the state to do that at the moment, sorry). Our “maison” was cute, it was made up of 4 little huts: one that contained Alex’s room and the family’s room (I think they all sleep in the same bed even though there were many empty huts around), one for Senegalese students (there were a bunch of teenagers who are from other villages but stay with the Keitas in Indar during the week since it’s closer to the school), one for cooking, and one for me (or when I’m not there, also used by Senegalese students). In the middle of the little semicircle there was a HUGE mango tree! The mangos won’t be ripe until mid-March or so, so that was a little disappointing but it was still magical to lounge underneath a mango tree all day. After doing typical rural village things all day (lounging, chatting, visiting others, watching some yurts being built) we returned from a walk across the street to (drumroll please)… a bunch of people sitting around a television, watching the soap operas I thought I’d escaped!!! There’s an electricity generator in this village that apparently is only used for television and a couple lights, and only used at night. Why this is a necessity over other things in a rural life is beyond me. Anyway after some wonderfully awful dubbed soap operas I was given a tent, since the rooms are too hot to sleep in. So I slept in my tiny tent under the mango tree. Actually, I shouldn’t use the word “slept.” I more waited in fear as the possibly-rabid dogs fought merely feet from me and the 90-degree-even-at-midnight weather kept me constantly sweating. I also attempted to use the hole-in-the-ground toilet (a little different than the one in my Dakar home) but I was a little freaked out by the giant red cockroaches crawling out of it and over my feet. (Side note: This isn’t so bad after hearing that other people had to deal with rats crawling on them. I’m thankful for cockroaches.)
Day 5: Tuesday
I “woke up” (or rather exited my tent) very early and after lounging for a while and sharing some rice-slime with a Senegalese student, I was invited to go collect water with Veronique! (She never would have asked me to, but I had told Marc the day before that I really wanted to try it. She was too sweet and never wanted me to do anything even remotely difficult!) She pointed to a little white bucket I could carry, and then strapped Zita onto her back and picked up a big tub with 3 plastic jugs inside to put on her head, picked up 2 other plastic jugs for her hands, and then let me carry the remaining little jug along with my bucket. I felt quite ridiculous walking down the street next to her. We got to the pump where a few teenage boys were fooling around and collecting water, putting filled containers on a cart drawn by a donkey. I was surprised to see them let so much water go to waste, and also that they didn’t quit fooling around even though others were waiting to use the pump. I asked Veronique if there was always water there, even during the dry season, and she said yes; even though wasting water isn’t really a problem if it’s always available I was still surprised to see such a valuable resource lost in a setting like this. We waited for a while, letting some others go ahead of us, I played with Zita a little bit, and then it was our turn. I entered the cloud of bees (I thought of you, Grampy) that surrounded the pump and brought my two measly containers to be filled. Veronique let me try the pump but not for long, even though there was no difficulty involved. Just as I was wondering how we were going to carry back all the plastic jugs, Marc and Theirry showed up with a cart like the one the donkey was pulling before. We put the plastic jugs there and I got to carry my bucket on my head!! I held it the whole time with both hands and didn’t try to let it balance ( I was afraid of losing all the water and being really embarrassed), it hurt my neck just a little but I felt very accomplished and a little less useless. Walking back I saw Alex sitting with some guys at the town boutique, drinking palm wine at 9AM. (It’s obvious that the men here do barely any work—when asked about gender roles here, the first thing Marc said was that the women do ALL the work in the village, except for earning money.) A while after that Alex decided he was leaving the village—he had had a cold for a few weeks and the heat and dust certainly weren’t helping—so he called Souleye to come pick him up and he left the village. After playing marbles with Fabian and a Senegalese student (which took me forever to understand, by the way), Marc and I hiked up the mountain to visit a couple families, see the well up there (which could only be used very rarely, it’s not finished and keeps caving in—the women hike up and down the mountain twice a day to collect water from the pump at the bottom) and we met up with Megan and Isa for a bit to watch the sun set and then came back down for dinner. That night in the tent went better, with no rabid dogs and a tiny bit less heat. But during this day a big lizard, flies, bees AND cockroaches had jumped/flew/crept out of the toilet, so I decided not to try to use it in the dark.
Day 6: Wednesday
I got up early to hike the mountain and watch the sun rise with Megan. I hung out on the rocks some, there was a nice breeze and it wasn’t over 90 degrees yet so it was very enjoyable. Most of the rest of the day was spent doing a séance de coiffure: I got my hair braided! It took about 7 hours (that’s including breaks and lunch) but my derrière was quite sore by the end. I really like how it feels, it’s SO much cooler not having all my hair piled on my head all the time. Something funny happened during the braiding: two white tourists were visiting the village and saw me getting my hair braided, and practically ran over to ask if they could take pictures. It was very strange being the object of a tourist photo instead of the photographer. They even went back to their car to grab their other camera and take more pictures. Toubabs. After the braiding I really bonded with the kids for the first time! I had run out of drinking water so they walked me to the next village to buy some. We played a lot together (marbles, soccer, volleyball, etc) and then did some drawing and played cards after dinner. They were SO different from the kids I’ve encountered in Dakar—very gentle and sweet, less overwhelming, more shy, they listen and respond and don’t constantly attempt to hurt others. It was very enjoyable and made me really sad to be leaving the village the next day! That night it wasn’t nearly as hot as the others, I actually used my sheet for the first time!!! How pleasant. But the rooster decided to stand outside my tent and crow from 5AM until I came out…so that made up for the temperature.
Day 7: Thursday
The morning was spent packing my bags and hanging out with Marc, Megan and Isa until we got picked up. I was surprised how sad it was to be leaving; this family was just genuinely very nice and hospitable and enjoyable, a great host family. They made me feel very welcome and comfortable and included me in things! So it was sad to say goodbye; I gave Veronique a little bit of money for spending so much time doing my hair, and she gave me a couple necklaces as a gift and said I had to return to the village sometime. She’s really what a host mother should be like. Later in the day, after returning to the hotel and showering and napping, we went back to the market for a while, ate dinner, and slept. Nothing too exciting.
Day 8: Friday
The temperature was pretty brutal for our most difficult hike: the hike to the Iwol Bedik village at the top of a mountain. (Oh, and on the way our bus’s air conditioner broke and smelled very strongly of burning rubber. We have yet to take a more-than-20-minute-drive without a breakdown of some sort.) The hike was very steep the whole time and our group leaders do NOT like to take their time hiking to enjoy the view. Their favorite phrase is: “We’re burning daylight!” (and I liked the response of one of my classmates: “Daylight is burning US!”) The village was very cute, the chief told us a bit about it and then we went to the little schoolroom and had a couple students read what was on the chalkboard. We then climbed on the biggest baobab in the region, one person got stung by a wasp that, once it stings, sends out a signal to all the other wasps to swarm and follow that person…so that was interesting but the villagers got them to go away. Another person fell out of a tree because there were a bunch of ants that surprised him…but overall it was a fun little rest. We then visited the teeny-tiny market in the village where women sold their goods; I bought a couple little homemade things and then we hiked back down. Later we went to the Kedougou market again and I picked up the two skirts I had made, and bought some little gifts for my Dakar homestay family. (They make it a point to tell me all the nice things past students have done for them, I try to get them things to make them not hate me but I never know what they’ll actually use! So I bought some honey, which is made in Kedougou, and some baobob fruit to make juice because I know they like it.) We ate dinner and then hung out a while before getting dressed up in our new pagnes (wrap skirts) to go out dancing! We were about halfway to the night club walking when the person leading us decided to tell us that the night club wasn’t open that night, so he took us to a sketchy bar where it was at first a group of 21 Americans and one very drunk (I think), very creepy Senegalese man. More of these types of Senegalese men kept showing up, I felt extremely uncomfortable as they were very aggressive and instead of asking if you’d like to dance, they’d come up behind you and just start dancing on you or wrap their arms around you. I really had trouble with this and ended up yelling at two of them, pushing many away forcefully…I wanted to leave the second I got there but wasn’t allowed to walk back alone. After what seemed like HOURS some other people decided they’d like to leave so the four of us walked back with some guys who worked at our hotel. The only reason I had gone out really was so that I’d stay up late and be able to sleep on the bus the next day…so in that way the night served its purpose, but at the same time really made me re-think a lot of things about being a toubab in Senegal.
Day 9: Saturday
We got on the bus at 5AM to return to Dakar. The ride was going very smoothly for a great 12 hours (well, not “smoothly” because of the roads, but because the bus was surviving) until we got a flat tire. It was no big deal, it was fixed pretty quickly and the kids in this village were much more polite than the Wolof kids from the last flat-tire experience. We continued driving for a while and suddenly heard a loud POP and the flapping of rubber against the bottom of the bus. One of the back tires, fortunately one with another tire right next to it, had exploded! We stopped to check it out and while a couple of us got out a mat to lay in the cool breeze (I had forgotten that cool weather existed!) to watch the clouds/moon, some others decided to go for a walk, thinking it would take several hours to fix this problem. In fact in a couple minutes we decided to keep driving, so we could get it fixed in the next town. But that group of people had disappeared into the African savannah…so we spent quite some time yelling to them to no avail, beeping the horn of the bus, trying to call their phones…eventually they came back but it was scary to wonder what might have happened if it had been one or two people and no one had noticed they were gone. (Bouna hates waiting the extra 4 seconds to count and make sure everyone’s there on the bus, so I always do it and yell to him when someone’s missing, and it’s usually by the time the driver is beginning to pull away—Bouna then waits a while to tell the driver to wait…it’s annoying.) We got to the next town and waited at a gas station and had snacks while the tire was getting fixed, and finally, after a few more hours of driving, returned to SIT around 1AM. That means our trip took 20 hours. I got home and the door was luckily still unlocked, and Moussa greeted me and let me go straight to my room instead of trying to talk to me for a while (that was so very nice). I stayed up and wrote the first part of this blog entry because I wasn’t ready to go to bed (I had slept some on the bus), and went to bed around 3.
And now today is Sunday and I am tiiiired. (People here don’t care whether or not someone is still sleeping at 8AM after getting home late, they still slam doors that don’t need to be slammed and yell to people in other rooms and throw things etc.) I did my laundry earlier, I also had a big…I’m not sure what to call it: a misunderstanding, fight, conversation, breakthrough, “moment,” something—with my homestay mom. So that was fun…If we’re in touch through email you’ll probably hear about it but I don’t think it’s appropriate to post it here. Anyway later she came into my room with a gorgeous boubou (dress) she made for me, which was sweet. My first full traditional Senegalese outfit! I’m posting a picture of it but it’s not a very good picture because it’s not well-lit, but you’ll have to live with it, my friends.
Classes start again tomorrow (Monday), which will be really weird for me—I’m still having a lot of trouble realizing that this is supposed to be school. That said, we only have 3 ½ weeks left of classes, the first two including music/art workshops!! This week I’ll spend 4 days learning the Kora, and next week I’ll spend 4 days learning to Batik. Okay, it is time to part again; thanks for joining me! I sure do miss you all a bunch!
Maangi dem, ba beneen yoon! ☺
It’s nice to be back in the world of technology, but it was also really great just to be disconnected for a while and only rely on what was readily available. I shall now tell you the details of our trip to Kedougou. (We students have decided that this trip is really just a big reality show and on the last day we’ll be told everyone was acting and all the “WTF” moments (if you don’t know what “WTF” means, that’s probably for your own good) were planned. So I kind of picture this whole trip as a soap opera. That could also be because of the incessant presence of soap operas in my life. Or also possibly because I’m writing this at 2AM after 20 hours of sitting on a bus with a broken air conditioner. Anyway,) Ready? Go.
Day 1: Friday
I got up early so I could get to school on time to leave for Kedougou—it’s always questionable whether there will be taxis available so, because of the threat that “Clint (one of the students) will beat up anyone who is late (but if Clint is late, everyone will beat up Clint),” I made sure to go out extra early…and ended up getting to school around 7:10. The bus wasn’t scheduled to leave until 8, so that’s why I got to post my last lovely blog entry before leaving. But as everything here happens at least an hour after it was planned to happen, we didn’t leave Dakar until after 9. Is this important to my story? No. So we drove for 4 or 5 hours before stopping for lunch in a city called Kaolack, the 3rd biggest city in Senegal (after Dakar and Thiès). Luckily I slept a TON because I hadn’t really slept the night before—a not-previously-planned but pleasantly surprising preparation for this trip. After lunch we drove some more and then stumbled upon the Worst Road I Can Possibly Imagine: Part 2. I don’t know if you remember last time I mentioned a bad road, it was after visiting Mariam (another sister)’s house. That one lasted for 5 minutes. This one lasted for…8 hours? Somewhere around there. I was terrified the whole time that we were going to tip over. We decided at about 4 PM that it was time for a flat tire! It happened right outside this little village where every single child came rushing out to see the toubabs. It was a really strange experience for me; the kids were just all over us, wanting to touch our skin, shake our hands, get our cell phone numbers (yes, in a rural village) (people here are INSANE with their cell phones, maybe I’ll explain sometime but that’s another story), get their pictures taken, etc. They acted like we were celebrities. That lasted for about an hour, and finally we were back on the road. After much more driving the driver realized one of the tires was loose. We pulled over and had another little rest, wished for food for about an hour, and continued on our way. We arrived at our BEAUTIFUL hotel in Tambacounda, “Hotel l’Oasis,” around midnight (so that means our drive lasted about 15 hours). The rooms were little huts with air conditioning, TV’s, showers/bathrooms, etc. (oh. I was sharing a room with Erin, and we were really really excited to take our first warm showers since we’ve been here, but found out that our water didn’t work. We asked the hotel guy to look at it, and he turned a knob outside of our hut and water just came POURING out of the ceiling. So after a few times trying the same thing, he moved us to a different room.) We had a lovely huge dinner, some people swam in the pool, I took a shower and went to bed.
Day 2: Saturday
We departed Tambacounda around 9AM to head towards Kedougou. I would have loved to stay at the beautiful hotel longer and maybe swim/relax some, but we were just so excited to start driving again. After 4-5 more hours we arrived at Campement Nieriko in Kedougou!! After lunch we visited the Bedik village I’d later be staying in (Indar) and hiked up to Etchwar, the other Bedik village at the top of the mountain. That was beautiful and it was really nice to get into nature again, it’s been so long! We climbed up to the tippytop and went rock-hopping and saw a pretty view of Kedougou. After dinner we were all invited to a “Where the Wild Things Are”-themed party hosted by a couple of students: costumes required. I experimented with my mosquito net and sheets for a costume but eventually ended up doing my hair with some things found in nature and wearing a pagne my homestay sister let me borrow. That was cute/fun, we basically just sat around in a group of 8 or so girls and talked, since the only channel that worked on the TV was the “Angry Mosque Channel” (not the real name, don’t worry) and nobody had any music. Later, though, the bartender/waiter showed up looking for a charger someone had previously left in the room, and we asked him to bring us some music. He brought a little tape-player boom box thing but he kept it very very quiet since there were other clients in the next hut sleeping.
Day 3: Sunday
Side note: March 1st—that means we’ve been here a month!
After breakfast we boarded 4x4’s (quatre-quatres, said like “cat-cats,” teehee) to begin our 2-hour journey to Dindefello. Within the first 3 minutes the cat-cat ahead of us got a flat tire, so we sat for a while. My stomach decided that it didn’t really like pain au chocolate so I felt very sick for the first 7/8 of the drive—again, the worst roads I can possibly imagine (I’m seeing a trend here) but also accompanied by clouds of dust and incredible heat. When I stopped feeling sick it was really fun!! We arrived at Campement de Dindefello and began our hike. It was the lushest, greenest hike I have been on in quite some time! After about 20 minutes we arrived at possibly the most beautiful sight I have ever seen: les Cascades de Dindefello (Dindefello Waterfall). It was inexplicably gorgeous and peaceful (except that we were a group of 21 Americans seeing nature for the first time in a month) and we got to swim and bask in the glory of the beautiful sun and cool water for a while. After a much-too-short stay we descended for lunch and our trip back on the cat-cats. (I was not feeling sick this time and was in the open-air jeep one so it was much more of a fun adventure on the way back.) We then visited the Kedougou market and I purchased some Indigo fabric and some little gifts for my village homestay. It was a much different market than those in Dakar: much less stressful, people don’t hang on your body and try to get you to buy their things, you can usually walk through the pathways without squeezing through a blob of people…overall much more calm. After dinner that night as I was trying to close the door to my hut (that I shared with a girl named Lucy) and go to bed, a big spider crawled in after me. I was very scared and I’m sorry to say that I killed it. I apologize.
Day 4: Monday
We departed for our rural village homestays! We drove out to the farthest one and saw some people off, then dropped off a couple more people on the way to ours: Bedik at Indar. (Megan and Isa were dropped off with Alex and I because they were living at the top of the mountain and wouldn’t climb up until their families came down in the evening to meet them.) Alex (the student staying in my village with me) and I met our family: Mark and Veronique Keita, and their 4 kids: Vanessa (8), Fabian (5), Thierry (3) and Zita (18 months). These names were SO easy to remember, I’m used to having to try to learn Wolof names! Everyone in the Bedik villages has a Bedik name (based on their birth order, all the first-born boys are named the same, second-born boys are all the same, etc.) and a Christian name (they are Christian Animists). We spent the day talking with Marc and getting used to the intense heat and style of life in the village: a LOT of sitting around. A lot of the women were topless, and the ones who weren’t usually wore very loose shirts so they “fell out” a lot. There were a lot of kids running around naked/partially-clothed, many had the stereotypical protruding belly and bellybuttons (I could go into the state of health etc. in the village but I don’t really feel like it at the moment, I feel like it’d take a lot of reflection and I’m not in the state to do that at the moment, sorry). Our “maison” was cute, it was made up of 4 little huts: one that contained Alex’s room and the family’s room (I think they all sleep in the same bed even though there were many empty huts around), one for Senegalese students (there were a bunch of teenagers who are from other villages but stay with the Keitas in Indar during the week since it’s closer to the school), one for cooking, and one for me (or when I’m not there, also used by Senegalese students). In the middle of the little semicircle there was a HUGE mango tree! The mangos won’t be ripe until mid-March or so, so that was a little disappointing but it was still magical to lounge underneath a mango tree all day. After doing typical rural village things all day (lounging, chatting, visiting others, watching some yurts being built) we returned from a walk across the street to (drumroll please)… a bunch of people sitting around a television, watching the soap operas I thought I’d escaped!!! There’s an electricity generator in this village that apparently is only used for television and a couple lights, and only used at night. Why this is a necessity over other things in a rural life is beyond me. Anyway after some wonderfully awful dubbed soap operas I was given a tent, since the rooms are too hot to sleep in. So I slept in my tiny tent under the mango tree. Actually, I shouldn’t use the word “slept.” I more waited in fear as the possibly-rabid dogs fought merely feet from me and the 90-degree-even-at-midnight weather kept me constantly sweating. I also attempted to use the hole-in-the-ground toilet (a little different than the one in my Dakar home) but I was a little freaked out by the giant red cockroaches crawling out of it and over my feet. (Side note: This isn’t so bad after hearing that other people had to deal with rats crawling on them. I’m thankful for cockroaches.)
Day 5: Tuesday
I “woke up” (or rather exited my tent) very early and after lounging for a while and sharing some rice-slime with a Senegalese student, I was invited to go collect water with Veronique! (She never would have asked me to, but I had told Marc the day before that I really wanted to try it. She was too sweet and never wanted me to do anything even remotely difficult!) She pointed to a little white bucket I could carry, and then strapped Zita onto her back and picked up a big tub with 3 plastic jugs inside to put on her head, picked up 2 other plastic jugs for her hands, and then let me carry the remaining little jug along with my bucket. I felt quite ridiculous walking down the street next to her. We got to the pump where a few teenage boys were fooling around and collecting water, putting filled containers on a cart drawn by a donkey. I was surprised to see them let so much water go to waste, and also that they didn’t quit fooling around even though others were waiting to use the pump. I asked Veronique if there was always water there, even during the dry season, and she said yes; even though wasting water isn’t really a problem if it’s always available I was still surprised to see such a valuable resource lost in a setting like this. We waited for a while, letting some others go ahead of us, I played with Zita a little bit, and then it was our turn. I entered the cloud of bees (I thought of you, Grampy) that surrounded the pump and brought my two measly containers to be filled. Veronique let me try the pump but not for long, even though there was no difficulty involved. Just as I was wondering how we were going to carry back all the plastic jugs, Marc and Theirry showed up with a cart like the one the donkey was pulling before. We put the plastic jugs there and I got to carry my bucket on my head!! I held it the whole time with both hands and didn’t try to let it balance ( I was afraid of losing all the water and being really embarrassed), it hurt my neck just a little but I felt very accomplished and a little less useless. Walking back I saw Alex sitting with some guys at the town boutique, drinking palm wine at 9AM. (It’s obvious that the men here do barely any work—when asked about gender roles here, the first thing Marc said was that the women do ALL the work in the village, except for earning money.) A while after that Alex decided he was leaving the village—he had had a cold for a few weeks and the heat and dust certainly weren’t helping—so he called Souleye to come pick him up and he left the village. After playing marbles with Fabian and a Senegalese student (which took me forever to understand, by the way), Marc and I hiked up the mountain to visit a couple families, see the well up there (which could only be used very rarely, it’s not finished and keeps caving in—the women hike up and down the mountain twice a day to collect water from the pump at the bottom) and we met up with Megan and Isa for a bit to watch the sun set and then came back down for dinner. That night in the tent went better, with no rabid dogs and a tiny bit less heat. But during this day a big lizard, flies, bees AND cockroaches had jumped/flew/crept out of the toilet, so I decided not to try to use it in the dark.
Day 6: Wednesday
I got up early to hike the mountain and watch the sun rise with Megan. I hung out on the rocks some, there was a nice breeze and it wasn’t over 90 degrees yet so it was very enjoyable. Most of the rest of the day was spent doing a séance de coiffure: I got my hair braided! It took about 7 hours (that’s including breaks and lunch) but my derrière was quite sore by the end. I really like how it feels, it’s SO much cooler not having all my hair piled on my head all the time. Something funny happened during the braiding: two white tourists were visiting the village and saw me getting my hair braided, and practically ran over to ask if they could take pictures. It was very strange being the object of a tourist photo instead of the photographer. They even went back to their car to grab their other camera and take more pictures. Toubabs. After the braiding I really bonded with the kids for the first time! I had run out of drinking water so they walked me to the next village to buy some. We played a lot together (marbles, soccer, volleyball, etc) and then did some drawing and played cards after dinner. They were SO different from the kids I’ve encountered in Dakar—very gentle and sweet, less overwhelming, more shy, they listen and respond and don’t constantly attempt to hurt others. It was very enjoyable and made me really sad to be leaving the village the next day! That night it wasn’t nearly as hot as the others, I actually used my sheet for the first time!!! How pleasant. But the rooster decided to stand outside my tent and crow from 5AM until I came out…so that made up for the temperature.
Day 7: Thursday
The morning was spent packing my bags and hanging out with Marc, Megan and Isa until we got picked up. I was surprised how sad it was to be leaving; this family was just genuinely very nice and hospitable and enjoyable, a great host family. They made me feel very welcome and comfortable and included me in things! So it was sad to say goodbye; I gave Veronique a little bit of money for spending so much time doing my hair, and she gave me a couple necklaces as a gift and said I had to return to the village sometime. She’s really what a host mother should be like. Later in the day, after returning to the hotel and showering and napping, we went back to the market for a while, ate dinner, and slept. Nothing too exciting.
Day 8: Friday
The temperature was pretty brutal for our most difficult hike: the hike to the Iwol Bedik village at the top of a mountain. (Oh, and on the way our bus’s air conditioner broke and smelled very strongly of burning rubber. We have yet to take a more-than-20-minute-drive without a breakdown of some sort.) The hike was very steep the whole time and our group leaders do NOT like to take their time hiking to enjoy the view. Their favorite phrase is: “We’re burning daylight!” (and I liked the response of one of my classmates: “Daylight is burning US!”) The village was very cute, the chief told us a bit about it and then we went to the little schoolroom and had a couple students read what was on the chalkboard. We then climbed on the biggest baobab in the region, one person got stung by a wasp that, once it stings, sends out a signal to all the other wasps to swarm and follow that person…so that was interesting but the villagers got them to go away. Another person fell out of a tree because there were a bunch of ants that surprised him…but overall it was a fun little rest. We then visited the teeny-tiny market in the village where women sold their goods; I bought a couple little homemade things and then we hiked back down. Later we went to the Kedougou market again and I picked up the two skirts I had made, and bought some little gifts for my Dakar homestay family. (They make it a point to tell me all the nice things past students have done for them, I try to get them things to make them not hate me but I never know what they’ll actually use! So I bought some honey, which is made in Kedougou, and some baobob fruit to make juice because I know they like it.) We ate dinner and then hung out a while before getting dressed up in our new pagnes (wrap skirts) to go out dancing! We were about halfway to the night club walking when the person leading us decided to tell us that the night club wasn’t open that night, so he took us to a sketchy bar where it was at first a group of 21 Americans and one very drunk (I think), very creepy Senegalese man. More of these types of Senegalese men kept showing up, I felt extremely uncomfortable as they were very aggressive and instead of asking if you’d like to dance, they’d come up behind you and just start dancing on you or wrap their arms around you. I really had trouble with this and ended up yelling at two of them, pushing many away forcefully…I wanted to leave the second I got there but wasn’t allowed to walk back alone. After what seemed like HOURS some other people decided they’d like to leave so the four of us walked back with some guys who worked at our hotel. The only reason I had gone out really was so that I’d stay up late and be able to sleep on the bus the next day…so in that way the night served its purpose, but at the same time really made me re-think a lot of things about being a toubab in Senegal.
Day 9: Saturday
We got on the bus at 5AM to return to Dakar. The ride was going very smoothly for a great 12 hours (well, not “smoothly” because of the roads, but because the bus was surviving) until we got a flat tire. It was no big deal, it was fixed pretty quickly and the kids in this village were much more polite than the Wolof kids from the last flat-tire experience. We continued driving for a while and suddenly heard a loud POP and the flapping of rubber against the bottom of the bus. One of the back tires, fortunately one with another tire right next to it, had exploded! We stopped to check it out and while a couple of us got out a mat to lay in the cool breeze (I had forgotten that cool weather existed!) to watch the clouds/moon, some others decided to go for a walk, thinking it would take several hours to fix this problem. In fact in a couple minutes we decided to keep driving, so we could get it fixed in the next town. But that group of people had disappeared into the African savannah…so we spent quite some time yelling to them to no avail, beeping the horn of the bus, trying to call their phones…eventually they came back but it was scary to wonder what might have happened if it had been one or two people and no one had noticed they were gone. (Bouna hates waiting the extra 4 seconds to count and make sure everyone’s there on the bus, so I always do it and yell to him when someone’s missing, and it’s usually by the time the driver is beginning to pull away—Bouna then waits a while to tell the driver to wait…it’s annoying.) We got to the next town and waited at a gas station and had snacks while the tire was getting fixed, and finally, after a few more hours of driving, returned to SIT around 1AM. That means our trip took 20 hours. I got home and the door was luckily still unlocked, and Moussa greeted me and let me go straight to my room instead of trying to talk to me for a while (that was so very nice). I stayed up and wrote the first part of this blog entry because I wasn’t ready to go to bed (I had slept some on the bus), and went to bed around 3.
And now today is Sunday and I am tiiiired. (People here don’t care whether or not someone is still sleeping at 8AM after getting home late, they still slam doors that don’t need to be slammed and yell to people in other rooms and throw things etc.) I did my laundry earlier, I also had a big…I’m not sure what to call it: a misunderstanding, fight, conversation, breakthrough, “moment,” something—with my homestay mom. So that was fun…If we’re in touch through email you’ll probably hear about it but I don’t think it’s appropriate to post it here. Anyway later she came into my room with a gorgeous boubou (dress) she made for me, which was sweet. My first full traditional Senegalese outfit! I’m posting a picture of it but it’s not a very good picture because it’s not well-lit, but you’ll have to live with it, my friends.
Classes start again tomorrow (Monday), which will be really weird for me—I’m still having a lot of trouble realizing that this is supposed to be school. That said, we only have 3 ½ weeks left of classes, the first two including music/art workshops!! This week I’ll spend 4 days learning the Kora, and next week I’ll spend 4 days learning to Batik. Okay, it is time to part again; thanks for joining me! I sure do miss you all a bunch!
Maangi dem, ba beneen yoon! ☺
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