Hi All! Thanks again for your posts and comments. This weekend was a pretty good time and I'm completely gueri (cured) of the strange malady that put me in the bathroom for a week. It's much easier to keep my head about me and avoid thinking about home too much, now that I'm feeling myself again.
So to begin with Friday afteroon. My friend Jeremy and I decided we wanted to brave the downtown crowds and find this one pharmacy in all of Dakar that sells Malarone (for a very hefty price.) There are other malaria meds that are super cheap but either unapproved by the US or cause crazy side effects so I'm sticking to Malarone and hoping that the insurance company will take the teeny printed receipts. Anyhoo, we started out walking towards the bus stop from WARC - both of us had gone downtown with Senegalese family or friends but never on our own so we were kind of lost. We got to where we had taken the bus the last time and asked a bunch of people if bus 10 or 20 was coming or how we could get downtown. After three people had sent us to different places we decided just hop a car rapide and see what happened. Car rapides are like these little minibuses or vans painted dark blue and yellow and they run all over the city. There's a driver and a dude who sits in the back to tell the driver to stop and tell people where theyre headed. So if its headed to Ouakam, for instance, they'll hang out the back while the driver pulls up to the curb and slows down a bit and yell "OuakamOuakamOuakamOuakamOuakamOuakam aaaayyaaaaaayyyaaayyyyOuakamOuakamOuakam" and things of that nature and shove people up into the car who want to go there. All of the car rapides have "ALHAMDULILAHI" written across the front which basically means "thanks to God" in Wolof. It is an essential exclamation and is a pretty good response to almost anything anyone says. It is pronounced "all-cham-doo-lee-laiye" and you MUST say it as an exclamation.
So we got into this car rapide and told people we wanted to go to centre ville and after a while we figured out that we were in fact headed exactly where we wanted to go, for the small price of 100 CFA each (20 cents). We descended upon arrival downtown and the theme of the adventure was "pick a street and see where it goes." We found the pharmacy, the bank, a place to eat, and many other exciting alleys without any trouble and I was so proud because nothing has ever worked out directionally for me before in my life. We told most people who asked that we were married or newlyweds, sort of to avoid having people ask Jeremy if I was available and of age, but mostly because it was really funny since we both look way too young to be married. Most guys here place my age as 16 or 17 and are surprised to know that I'm 20 and thus a woman. This is fine with me - if you look older you get bothered by more dudes. After a while while looking for an ATM with Jeremy these two dudes approached us and told us they knew where one was so we followed them and found out that their family owns a bunch of little shops that they wanted to take us to.
This sounds mad sketchy, just following dudes around, but even the Senegalese will do it to get better prices on things. We really wanted to lose them after a while and they wouldnt really leave us alone but they were friendly and well meaning so we put up with it and then sort of snuck out after going to the pharmacy. They took us to some fabric shops and pushed a lot of stuff in our faces, and I said no, not today, and then they took us to buy CD which Jeremy wanted. He bargained pretty well but he's kind of a sucker and ended up buying stuff he didnt really need, like he usually does. Thats sort of the opposite of me - I am still a little too nervous to buy anything so I keep holding off, but after our adventure actually worked out from start to finish I feel like I might survive in this city! We were thinking about taking a taxi but then we came upon a bus stop where the right bus actually just came along so instead of paying 4 bucks for a taxi we paid 25 cents to take the bus right back near home. An extraordinarily sucessful outing which terminated in me having more malaria pills and Jeremy having 3 Yossou Ndour CDs and a goofy traditional shirt and no money. He owes me a couple of lunches now. But I feel as though I could do it myself now if I had to, get downtown and buy what I need without too much trouble.
Friday night was uneventful and I woke up early Saturday for dance class. We met and took the car rapide to OuakamOuakamOuakamOuakamOuakamayayayayayaayayaOuakamOuakam and spent almost 4 hours dancing with our teacher, a woman named Kadja, and learning djembe from these rasta dudes, like 8 of them, who smoked the whole time. Our dance is turning out to be awesome - we start in the back of the room and us girls run out bent over shaking our hands and dancing in a formation for a while. Then we separate out into two lines and the guys come out and dance, hopping on one foot and stuff, while we do a kind of simple line dance on the sides. Then each person in turn goes out in the center to dance by themselves and one djembe player comes out front to play for us. Thats all we have for now, and its really sweet. You really have to get good at hearing where you are in the music because its not like a set number of each kind of move, its certain sets of beats that signify a switch to the new move which you do until they get tired of playing the beat for that move. Its a long morning and when I got back everyone had eaten lunch already but Fifi got some leftovers together for me and it was the first protein I'd eater in a week due to the rice-and-bread diet I'd been following.
Saturday afternoon I slept a lot and then got up later to go out with like 12 people downtown again, to a weird little movie place we'd heard about. We tried to take the car rapide but nobody spoke french and after much gesturing they asked for twice the usual price and this one kid was trying to bargain for all 12 of us. We found out that the car rapide had only decided to continue all the way downtown because all of us wanted to go there so as a sort of compensation they asked us each for another 100, but we tried to compromise with 500 extra for all 12. It wasnt the money, just the principle of the matter but eventually they got angry and kicked us all out in a sort of dark sketchy street that ended up being about a 20 minute walk from where we wanted to be. We asked some people on the street and found out where we were. I personally did not have much part in all this and kind of tagged along having little idea what was going on. At one point it got a little creepy when the girl I was walking next to stepped on some kind of cracker that had been thrown out a car window and this giant CRACK went off and we couldnt hear anything for several seconds.
Anyways we got to the place and walked up a tiny dark staircase and climbed through some weird dark rooms to find a dude to brought us some tables and a menu. It turns out you can order drinks and food and then the price of the movie is included, and since there were so many of us they said we could pick a film to watch from this little video room they had in the back. The drinks were like 5 bucks each but since there were 12 of us he lowered the price to 3 bucks. We sat on a big terrace under the stars and drank beer and Fanta until about 2 and then decided we didnt really want to see a movie anyway. One person ordered some really expensive beef kabob that was the best thing Ive tasted in weeks. I took a taxi back with some girls and we got ripped off because I didnt recognize anything in the dark and made this dude drive around a bit more than he wanted to. Its hard to bargain when someone is shouting at you angrily in Wolof and you cant say anything except for salutations and "mann deggna tutti rekk olof" which means "I only understand a little bit of Wolof." The 20 minute taxi ride still only cost 2 dollars for each of us. I got home safe but had to knock on the window, where Mamie was thankfully still awake, since my roommate had the key to our room and had gone elsewhere thinking she'd be back first. JB went out when I got back and came home around 7 am. He's crazy. Ive found that Maman Amitie is like super overprotective and worries so much about us having our phones and keys and bags stolen that she checks where we've put it all and made me take a taxi just to get down the street to where I was meeting my friends. She's a great old lady and understanding but super paranoid, especially since she hosted students in the past who had gotten robbed or hurt.
Well Samu had been begging us to take him to the beach so he woke us up around 9 to say we were leaving at noon, then again at 10:30 to say quick quick come eat, we're leaving! it turned out he hadnt asked Maman Amitie and wanted to get out before she could tell him no, he had to do his homework. So we were up really early, then waited for the kids to come home from church, then didnt end up going until 3 pm after lunch when Jean Paul got home. We were both pretty pissed off at Samu, mostly because we didnt know what was going on and sat around in our bathing suits all day thinking we were leaving when we could have been in bed. He begged us not to tell Maman Amitie and he got enough crap from his brother and from us that we didn't say anything. Maman Amitie's daughter came over with her kids, more cousins, and some friends, and everyone ate lunch and watched a lot of what I call Jesus TV. There are biblical cartoons for the kiddies and sermons for the adults, and songs and prayers, and Maman Amitie is really into it. She sort of supplements it with little speeches to Samu and Reine and Fifi about how you cannot accomplish anything without love, and says Amen and tells the kids to pay attention when she is particularly impressed with something. I found out that she is the head of the senior citizens' charity group at her church and they organize events and get together a lot. "We are old so we cannot go very far," she said, and I told her it was great that she was still so involved. She and the other ladies have matching uniform dresses with headscarves and the name of the church all over them.
When we finally headed out to the beach it was with Jean Paul and not Samu, and we had limited conversation walking there. It was a beautiful little beach with tons of guys doing exercises and running around, and kids playing soccer. The water was cold so we went in a bit but mostly sat and tanned and fended off men who came to stare at us. Some acquaintances of Jean Paul's were around and wouldnt leave us alone. Everyone thinks that Hannah and I are twins and much younger than we really are. One guy told Hannah he loved her after about five minutes and wouldnt let it go even with the other guys telling him he was being stupid. Ive been here a bit longer than her and have learned to sort of hold an expression of indifference or boredom and not talk too much. Its so tiring to have a whole beach full of people staring at you in a bathing suit for three hours, but we were with Jean Paul who gave us some tips on how to annoy people so that theyd go away. You have to find a balance between being nice and being forceful.
After the beach we came back to a coupure de courant (blackout) which lasted until we went to bed, so we spent the night in semi-darkness, eating and showering by candlelight and playing Uno with the kids. It was a good time and a nice break from the TV which is on ALL the time. We got some sleep and I didnt have to be here today for anything in particular so I got up a bit after Hannah and had a leisurely breakfast and cleaned up, then entertained Farou the maid's son but this terminated in him screaming so I sort of ducked out.
This week's random list:
1) For some reason, the girls I meet LOVE the color of peeling nailpolish that is currently on my toes, and can't find it anywhere. It's sort of whitish-pink, and I should probably take it off.
2) Everyone goes to everyone else's funerals and weddings here. I was invited to the wedding of the friend of a guy who coordinates the dance lessons. Its on February 10th and I may actually go.
3) If I didn't say so yet, there are TONS of blackouts here. Like every three nights we spend at least an hour in the dark, using candles and flashlights. It's kind of fun.
4) If you comment to a woman about her moustache it means you have respect for her. I was insulted and told Jean Paul so, at which point he explained that its not a rude thing to say here. But this seems to be true about a lot of things - you can point out distiguishing features on people, and even compare their beauty, and people dont get insulted. Only us Americans have to try hard to take it with a grain of salt when people say things like "tu es belle comme une poubelle" which means you're pretty like a pail of garbage.
Well, thats all for now! I'm finally feeling mostly settled in - Alhamdulilaay! Time for a lunch of fish and rice.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Nearly Week 3
So it has been a pretty cruddy couple of days over here unfortunately - the diet has caught up with me, or else I accidentally consumed some tap water, or who even knows what it could be, but I certainly spent a lot of time in the toilettes this weekend. A lot of us are getting sick with stomach stuff so we're in the same boat - and anyways, I'll move on from that so as not to dwell on the negatives. If you want to hear what is not so excellent about my sejour in Africa, I'll gladly whine to you in an email.
So! Starting with last Friday: We went downtown, about five of us and and someone's host sister, to go to the bank, the pharmacy, and the markets in the city. The bus ride took nearly an hour due to terrible traffic but only cost 150 CFA or about a quarter. I cant figure out the bus system thus far but it seems to me that you have to take bus ten to get downtown and bus 20 to get back uptown. Once in town, we went to a "fast food" restaurant which is basically a place that sells chawarma, falafel, hamburgers, et cetera, for super cheap and delicious lunches. I got chawarma, which is like a gyro, and comes with fries wrapped inside. Senegalese hamburgers consist of a giant slab of some kind of meat, fries, onion sauce, and sometimes lettuce or bits of tomato on top, inside a big piece of bread. mmmm. We headed out to the market after that, to find varied things such as an alarm clock, fabric, baskets, bags, and clothing. No one ended up buying anything because even with a senegalese guide it was terribly tiring to be pushed at from all sides by women selling stuff and men shoving things in our faces and asking us questions et cetera et cetera. Its not like you can just go through and be an observer, you have to be aware of everything and responsive and careful and talk to some people and fend off others and bargain your ass off for a price that is probably twelve times the price they would offer a non-Toubab. It is often best not to really look at anything unless youre serious about buying it - if you pick something up and try to ask about it they assume immediately that you want it and will follow you down the street shouting prices. I want to go back but I'm not ready at all to buy anything or go alone which seems to be the best way to not get trampled by sellers. After that insanity we went to the pharmacy where I found Malarone to be insanely expensive so I didnt buy it yet and will have to go back. There are pharmacies literally on every corner but none of them sell Malarone except for the big one downtown. We got back uptown and I spent an uneventful evening with the family.
Saturday. I woke up mad early in the AM to go take an African Dance class (for credit I think!) and walked down to the gas station (called On The Run and attached to an ice cream and fast food place called, of all things, The Creamy Inn. Yeah, I know). There I met with about 15 others, and a coordinator showed up about half an hour later to take us all by car rapide to the North of Dakar. It was very disorganized and we met up with some teachers and got sort of dragged around to the teacher's half brother's house. We sat in a room painted insanely and decorated with Bob Marley posters and which smelled permanently illegal, if you catch my drift. Then all the teachers broke out the stuff and made it smell all the better, while we Toubabs sat awkwardly listening to Wolof reggae. Following a long walk through the tiny streets of Ouakam, where we were regaled by small dusty children shouting TOUBAB and touching our foreign garb, we arrived at a small shop in the street where the coordinator shoved us all in and put on some Marley while he again lit up and made a bunch of phone calls to inquire as to the whereabouts of someone who could teach us to dance and somewhere to put us while dancing. Finally a woman arrived and we walked some more, out onto a huge garbage-filled beach, and after a bit the coordinator decided he was tired an didnt want to walk all the way around to the beach where we were supposed to dance. So instead we sat in a courtyard and waited for a room to open up in this big building, and finally around 11:30 (almost three hours after we met) we went in and started to dance. It was worth the wait and the soreness later because it was about the coolest dancing Ive ever done, and I've done a lot of dancing. They told us the stories behind the dance we learned and we got yelled at a lot to move more or less or perhaps just to motivate us, I have no idea. I'll have to bring my camera next time because we all looked like complete idiots.
Speaking of the camera, my pictures are on facebook now. There are hundreds of daily things Id love to have a picture of but its so socially inappropriate to take pictures here that I just cant do it. Pictures of things like roosters and goats in the street and women carrying babies and kids running around and people weaving faster than Ive ever seen, and the giant pots they cook in, and the gas stove, and the men soldering stuff in the roads, and families eating around a huge bowl at midday in the street. I just cant break out the camera. Even around my family I avoid it because they go crazy and take a hundred pictures of themselves or very nearly drop it in fighting over looking.
Saturday afternoon we said goodbye to Joe (the youngest of Maman Amities 7 kids) who was visiting with his daughter Sowane, for about a month, and they left after the Deces which you can read about in my last post. Its quieter without her running around but theres still Farou the maid's son who is always around, usually sitting on the potty or taking off his hand-me-down pants or generally causing mischief in the living room.
That night I went out with JB to a club a few blocks away to dance and hang out a bit. I thought he may have taken it as a sort of date because after a while he wanted to slow dance and hold my hand. However, as I found out after insulting him by saying no, holding hands here does not mean the same thing it does in the states, it is simply a sign of affection and companionship and even guys can walk home holding hands, no problem. Ah well. Anyways we stayed out till about 7 am which is what people DO here, and I dont ever want to do it again because its ridiculous. Dancing seems to be far less sexual than it is in the states; during fast songs you dont even touch but just stand next to each other and avoid eye contact unless you do want it to be sexual, and during slow songs you dance like middle school. By the end of the night Id started to feel very sick and then spent the rest of Sunday and Monday and some of Tuesday between bed and bathroom. So it goes. By Sunday night I couldnt blame it on a hangover anymore...
Last night my roommate arrived. It seems I got lucky in knowing she was coming since a lot of students didnt know, and there were so many kids on the newly arrived program that yesterday they called up some families to ask if they could take a second kid. Great organization, right? One friend on my program is sharing a bed with his new roommate. This is no big deal here since everybody shares beds but its kind of a big deal for us Americans who dont want to be wrestling a stranger for some more space. In any case, my roommate Hannah is wonderful - shes from Alabama, goes to Grinnell College, and also danced ballet for a long time. We actually look a lot alike in build and just general features so our families think its hysterical. On the one hand, its great to have someone to speak with in English and share stuff with. But even after one day of questions its really hard not to resent a little bit sharing all of my knowledge about the family and lifestyle here that I had to figure out myself over the last three weeks. Such as how to flush the toilet, or whose brother is whose, or how meals work. Mostly though, Im happy to share, and I know I would have asked the exact same questions of someone if I'd been able to. In a way, watching her is like watching myself arrive all over again, which is both comforting (holy crap Ive come a long way) and uncomfortable (wow, I still have no idea how that works).
As for academics, still sub-par but getting better - history of Islam in west africa seems to be pretty cool, if you like names and dates. The Senegambian History professor has not provided us with the class material so we're still making tons of expensive copies of his books and articles (all of the course material was written by him.) Its interesting stuff but very dense and difficult to have an opinion in front of him because, come on, he wrote the stuff, and hes also just this really well-respected figure in the field and doesnt really want to be here teaching us, or so it seems. Hope that gets better. French is dreary but obligatoire, and Literature is quite the performance of Senghor poetry in which the professor has explained in detail every obvious metaphor, which really frustrates a lot of people, but I love listening to his voice. In any case my french listening skills are improving. Im also continuing with Wolof which I missed a bit when I was sick, and the dance class is a sixth one for credit, so we'll see how that all works out when I get back for sure.
Random observation of the day:
All notebooks here are made of graph paper. All of them. How can people see anything they write?? I know I can't.
Okay, after this long installment I am ready to eat some lunch. I hope your days are filled with peace, tranquility, and regular bowel movements.
Tootles!
So! Starting with last Friday: We went downtown, about five of us and and someone's host sister, to go to the bank, the pharmacy, and the markets in the city. The bus ride took nearly an hour due to terrible traffic but only cost 150 CFA or about a quarter. I cant figure out the bus system thus far but it seems to me that you have to take bus ten to get downtown and bus 20 to get back uptown. Once in town, we went to a "fast food" restaurant which is basically a place that sells chawarma, falafel, hamburgers, et cetera, for super cheap and delicious lunches. I got chawarma, which is like a gyro, and comes with fries wrapped inside. Senegalese hamburgers consist of a giant slab of some kind of meat, fries, onion sauce, and sometimes lettuce or bits of tomato on top, inside a big piece of bread. mmmm. We headed out to the market after that, to find varied things such as an alarm clock, fabric, baskets, bags, and clothing. No one ended up buying anything because even with a senegalese guide it was terribly tiring to be pushed at from all sides by women selling stuff and men shoving things in our faces and asking us questions et cetera et cetera. Its not like you can just go through and be an observer, you have to be aware of everything and responsive and careful and talk to some people and fend off others and bargain your ass off for a price that is probably twelve times the price they would offer a non-Toubab. It is often best not to really look at anything unless youre serious about buying it - if you pick something up and try to ask about it they assume immediately that you want it and will follow you down the street shouting prices. I want to go back but I'm not ready at all to buy anything or go alone which seems to be the best way to not get trampled by sellers. After that insanity we went to the pharmacy where I found Malarone to be insanely expensive so I didnt buy it yet and will have to go back. There are pharmacies literally on every corner but none of them sell Malarone except for the big one downtown. We got back uptown and I spent an uneventful evening with the family.
Saturday. I woke up mad early in the AM to go take an African Dance class (for credit I think!) and walked down to the gas station (called On The Run and attached to an ice cream and fast food place called, of all things, The Creamy Inn. Yeah, I know). There I met with about 15 others, and a coordinator showed up about half an hour later to take us all by car rapide to the North of Dakar. It was very disorganized and we met up with some teachers and got sort of dragged around to the teacher's half brother's house. We sat in a room painted insanely and decorated with Bob Marley posters and which smelled permanently illegal, if you catch my drift. Then all the teachers broke out the stuff and made it smell all the better, while we Toubabs sat awkwardly listening to Wolof reggae. Following a long walk through the tiny streets of Ouakam, where we were regaled by small dusty children shouting TOUBAB and touching our foreign garb, we arrived at a small shop in the street where the coordinator shoved us all in and put on some Marley while he again lit up and made a bunch of phone calls to inquire as to the whereabouts of someone who could teach us to dance and somewhere to put us while dancing. Finally a woman arrived and we walked some more, out onto a huge garbage-filled beach, and after a bit the coordinator decided he was tired an didnt want to walk all the way around to the beach where we were supposed to dance. So instead we sat in a courtyard and waited for a room to open up in this big building, and finally around 11:30 (almost three hours after we met) we went in and started to dance. It was worth the wait and the soreness later because it was about the coolest dancing Ive ever done, and I've done a lot of dancing. They told us the stories behind the dance we learned and we got yelled at a lot to move more or less or perhaps just to motivate us, I have no idea. I'll have to bring my camera next time because we all looked like complete idiots.
Speaking of the camera, my pictures are on facebook now. There are hundreds of daily things Id love to have a picture of but its so socially inappropriate to take pictures here that I just cant do it. Pictures of things like roosters and goats in the street and women carrying babies and kids running around and people weaving faster than Ive ever seen, and the giant pots they cook in, and the gas stove, and the men soldering stuff in the roads, and families eating around a huge bowl at midday in the street. I just cant break out the camera. Even around my family I avoid it because they go crazy and take a hundred pictures of themselves or very nearly drop it in fighting over looking.
Saturday afternoon we said goodbye to Joe (the youngest of Maman Amities 7 kids) who was visiting with his daughter Sowane, for about a month, and they left after the Deces which you can read about in my last post. Its quieter without her running around but theres still Farou the maid's son who is always around, usually sitting on the potty or taking off his hand-me-down pants or generally causing mischief in the living room.
That night I went out with JB to a club a few blocks away to dance and hang out a bit. I thought he may have taken it as a sort of date because after a while he wanted to slow dance and hold my hand. However, as I found out after insulting him by saying no, holding hands here does not mean the same thing it does in the states, it is simply a sign of affection and companionship and even guys can walk home holding hands, no problem. Ah well. Anyways we stayed out till about 7 am which is what people DO here, and I dont ever want to do it again because its ridiculous. Dancing seems to be far less sexual than it is in the states; during fast songs you dont even touch but just stand next to each other and avoid eye contact unless you do want it to be sexual, and during slow songs you dance like middle school. By the end of the night Id started to feel very sick and then spent the rest of Sunday and Monday and some of Tuesday between bed and bathroom. So it goes. By Sunday night I couldnt blame it on a hangover anymore...
Last night my roommate arrived. It seems I got lucky in knowing she was coming since a lot of students didnt know, and there were so many kids on the newly arrived program that yesterday they called up some families to ask if they could take a second kid. Great organization, right? One friend on my program is sharing a bed with his new roommate. This is no big deal here since everybody shares beds but its kind of a big deal for us Americans who dont want to be wrestling a stranger for some more space. In any case, my roommate Hannah is wonderful - shes from Alabama, goes to Grinnell College, and also danced ballet for a long time. We actually look a lot alike in build and just general features so our families think its hysterical. On the one hand, its great to have someone to speak with in English and share stuff with. But even after one day of questions its really hard not to resent a little bit sharing all of my knowledge about the family and lifestyle here that I had to figure out myself over the last three weeks. Such as how to flush the toilet, or whose brother is whose, or how meals work. Mostly though, Im happy to share, and I know I would have asked the exact same questions of someone if I'd been able to. In a way, watching her is like watching myself arrive all over again, which is both comforting (holy crap Ive come a long way) and uncomfortable (wow, I still have no idea how that works).
As for academics, still sub-par but getting better - history of Islam in west africa seems to be pretty cool, if you like names and dates. The Senegambian History professor has not provided us with the class material so we're still making tons of expensive copies of his books and articles (all of the course material was written by him.) Its interesting stuff but very dense and difficult to have an opinion in front of him because, come on, he wrote the stuff, and hes also just this really well-respected figure in the field and doesnt really want to be here teaching us, or so it seems. Hope that gets better. French is dreary but obligatoire, and Literature is quite the performance of Senghor poetry in which the professor has explained in detail every obvious metaphor, which really frustrates a lot of people, but I love listening to his voice. In any case my french listening skills are improving. Im also continuing with Wolof which I missed a bit when I was sick, and the dance class is a sixth one for credit, so we'll see how that all works out when I get back for sure.
Random observation of the day:
All notebooks here are made of graph paper. All of them. How can people see anything they write?? I know I can't.
Okay, after this long installment I am ready to eat some lunch. I hope your days are filled with peace, tranquility, and regular bowel movements.
Tootles!
Friday, January 19, 2007
several more days of insanity
First of all, thanks guys for your comments and emails et cetera. It's really a huge comfort to hear from home! Ive got a lot to write this time as some crazy stuff happened in the last several days.
This morning I performed a feat I did not think possible - I walked the half hour to school WITHOUT GETTING ANY SAND IN MY SANDALS. I don't think you realize how huge of a deal this is, so I put it in caps. I might remind you that the streets and sidewalks, where they arent crumbly pavement, are MADE OF SAND.
So lets see, where to begin? Saturday morning I went to the beach with my friends from the program. I had to ask the night before and my family is not too keen on me going places, it seems, or else Maman Amitie is just very overprotective. But I went and met a friend and we walked probably a good hour to get to this big traffic circle and bus stop where we were to meet everyone else, only everyone else had been out late or was on Dakar time (aka late all the time )and so everyone didnt end up together until about an hour and a half after we'd been sitting there in the sun. It was really a sketchy place to be and there are nice people who want to talk to you but also very creepy people who want to talk to you. So you take your chances insulting people and just sort of semi-ignore everybody. Anyways, we bargained for taxis (we still paid way too much, but it was like a dollar a person for a 20 minute cab ride) and got to this beautiful beach where we sat around and just dipped our legs into an extraordinarily dangerous undertow, and ate senegalese pizza. There was nobody there because it's winter and only like 80 degrees. We went back in taxis and hung out with our families for the evening. When I say "hung out" I mean, sat on the couch and watched tv.
Sunday the whole Toubab group (we are now about 20) got together and took a giant bus to a beautiful monastery up north, where we sat in on a mass and ate lunch all together in a beautiful outdoor area - chicken and lots of fruit (!!!!!) and onions and couscous. Oh I forgot to say that one the way up there, the bus broke down so after an hour spent changing buses and waiting around, we were super late and missed the first mass so we got to see the second one and it was just us and the monks, very cool. Im going to try and put pictures up on facebook soon so I can get out of describing everything about the place...
So after a long lunch and a repose and some very intense conversation about organized religion over mango juice and rum, we got back on the bus and drove to Lac Rose (pink lake) which in fact is very pink and salty and at which we got accosted by tons of vendors, mostly women who really wanted to see photos of themselves and who are experts at giving people small gifts in a seemingly nice manner and then later running after tourists who accept them and calling them liars. The idea of lying in traditional Senegalese native culture is in some ways completely different from that of American culture in that a lie is anything that does not protect or maintain the common good of a group of people. This idea seems to have stuck around even in modern times and probably the worst way you can insult someone is by saying "tu mentes" which means "youre lying." The other night all the kids in my family were all joking around and Samu said that at one point to his older cousin, and everyone got totally silent and dispersed soon after. Whoa. So anyway we were warned against accepting gifts from these women and one girl gave me a bracelet after i had shown her the photo id taken and I tried to give it back but she wouldnt take it. It turned out she was actually just being really nice and I didnt get followed or screamed at but a couple of people did.
Okay, now for the big event of the week: the deces. One year after the death of someone, they hold a mass in church, very ceremonial, and then have a GIANT party. My host grandmother is in fact widowed and not divorced like Id been told. Since Wednesday night was one year, I dressed up and went with them to the mass which was beautiful with a little chorale singing up in the balcony behind, and birds just flying all over the chapel, and a hundred people singing, and the priests all decked out since it was a special occasion. After the service they handed out little snacks and in the churchyard I was introduced to everyone. They then had about 80 people over at the house, most of them cousins and a few neighbors. They were cooking for days in giant pots that are about two feet in diameter and come up to my waist! There was maize, which is like a kind of chili with beans and corn, and pork and beef and goat and mutton and so much beer and boxed wine that I was a bit shaky on my feet Thursday morning. They rented about 50 chairs and a huge tent to put out in the street and people stayed until midnight and just sat and ate and talked and drank. I finally met my host brother's friends who were all really funny but couldnt understand why I dont want a Senegalese boyfriend.
I'm thinking about making this list of random facts on every blog, so:
1) Biggest faut-pas of the week: whistling. Girls are not supposed to whistle. I did it in my room, and Reine came in to tell me girls dont do that so I better not again.
2) Oranges here are the size of US clementines, and much better. I have decided to buy one every day on my way home. One costs 25 CFA, or about 5 cents. Score!
3) All of the dogs here are the same, I swear. Light brown mutts chewing on goat limbs roam the streets with not a care in the world. Disgusting.
4) That huge race from France to Dakar ends this weekend! At Lac Rose, which I just told you about. Everyone in my family has apologized to me about all the dust in the air here by blaming it on that race. Look up Dakar Rally on google if you want to know more. The Canadians, who are also at WARC on a different program and are also kind of insane, are all going to take the 2=hour bus ride and then sleep on the beach at Lac Rose (they cant find a hotel thats free) so they can see the rally drivers come in during the afternoon. This is A) a bad plan and B) a really friggin bad plan. Like I said, theyre insane.
5) Here, "Je suis si excitee" does NOT mean "I'm so excited." It means "I'm so horny." No joke. I, thankfully, did not learn that the hard way, but some people here did. No pun intended.
More later! Time to go downtown and get malaria pills!
This morning I performed a feat I did not think possible - I walked the half hour to school WITHOUT GETTING ANY SAND IN MY SANDALS. I don't think you realize how huge of a deal this is, so I put it in caps. I might remind you that the streets and sidewalks, where they arent crumbly pavement, are MADE OF SAND.
So lets see, where to begin? Saturday morning I went to the beach with my friends from the program. I had to ask the night before and my family is not too keen on me going places, it seems, or else Maman Amitie is just very overprotective. But I went and met a friend and we walked probably a good hour to get to this big traffic circle and bus stop where we were to meet everyone else, only everyone else had been out late or was on Dakar time (aka late all the time )and so everyone didnt end up together until about an hour and a half after we'd been sitting there in the sun. It was really a sketchy place to be and there are nice people who want to talk to you but also very creepy people who want to talk to you. So you take your chances insulting people and just sort of semi-ignore everybody. Anyways, we bargained for taxis (we still paid way too much, but it was like a dollar a person for a 20 minute cab ride) and got to this beautiful beach where we sat around and just dipped our legs into an extraordinarily dangerous undertow, and ate senegalese pizza. There was nobody there because it's winter and only like 80 degrees. We went back in taxis and hung out with our families for the evening. When I say "hung out" I mean, sat on the couch and watched tv.
Sunday the whole Toubab group (we are now about 20) got together and took a giant bus to a beautiful monastery up north, where we sat in on a mass and ate lunch all together in a beautiful outdoor area - chicken and lots of fruit (!!!!!) and onions and couscous. Oh I forgot to say that one the way up there, the bus broke down so after an hour spent changing buses and waiting around, we were super late and missed the first mass so we got to see the second one and it was just us and the monks, very cool. Im going to try and put pictures up on facebook soon so I can get out of describing everything about the place...
So after a long lunch and a repose and some very intense conversation about organized religion over mango juice and rum, we got back on the bus and drove to Lac Rose (pink lake) which in fact is very pink and salty and at which we got accosted by tons of vendors, mostly women who really wanted to see photos of themselves and who are experts at giving people small gifts in a seemingly nice manner and then later running after tourists who accept them and calling them liars. The idea of lying in traditional Senegalese native culture is in some ways completely different from that of American culture in that a lie is anything that does not protect or maintain the common good of a group of people. This idea seems to have stuck around even in modern times and probably the worst way you can insult someone is by saying "tu mentes" which means "youre lying." The other night all the kids in my family were all joking around and Samu said that at one point to his older cousin, and everyone got totally silent and dispersed soon after. Whoa. So anyway we were warned against accepting gifts from these women and one girl gave me a bracelet after i had shown her the photo id taken and I tried to give it back but she wouldnt take it. It turned out she was actually just being really nice and I didnt get followed or screamed at but a couple of people did.
Okay, now for the big event of the week: the deces. One year after the death of someone, they hold a mass in church, very ceremonial, and then have a GIANT party. My host grandmother is in fact widowed and not divorced like Id been told. Since Wednesday night was one year, I dressed up and went with them to the mass which was beautiful with a little chorale singing up in the balcony behind, and birds just flying all over the chapel, and a hundred people singing, and the priests all decked out since it was a special occasion. After the service they handed out little snacks and in the churchyard I was introduced to everyone. They then had about 80 people over at the house, most of them cousins and a few neighbors. They were cooking for days in giant pots that are about two feet in diameter and come up to my waist! There was maize, which is like a kind of chili with beans and corn, and pork and beef and goat and mutton and so much beer and boxed wine that I was a bit shaky on my feet Thursday morning. They rented about 50 chairs and a huge tent to put out in the street and people stayed until midnight and just sat and ate and talked and drank. I finally met my host brother's friends who were all really funny but couldnt understand why I dont want a Senegalese boyfriend.
I'm thinking about making this list of random facts on every blog, so:
1) Biggest faut-pas of the week: whistling. Girls are not supposed to whistle. I did it in my room, and Reine came in to tell me girls dont do that so I better not again.
2) Oranges here are the size of US clementines, and much better. I have decided to buy one every day on my way home. One costs 25 CFA, or about 5 cents. Score!
3) All of the dogs here are the same, I swear. Light brown mutts chewing on goat limbs roam the streets with not a care in the world. Disgusting.
4) That huge race from France to Dakar ends this weekend! At Lac Rose, which I just told you about. Everyone in my family has apologized to me about all the dust in the air here by blaming it on that race. Look up Dakar Rally on google if you want to know more. The Canadians, who are also at WARC on a different program and are also kind of insane, are all going to take the 2=hour bus ride and then sleep on the beach at Lac Rose (they cant find a hotel thats free) so they can see the rally drivers come in during the afternoon. This is A) a bad plan and B) a really friggin bad plan. Like I said, theyre insane.
5) Here, "Je suis si excitee" does NOT mean "I'm so excited." It means "I'm so horny." No joke. I, thankfully, did not learn that the hard way, but some people here did. No pun intended.
More later! Time to go downtown and get malaria pills!
Friday, January 12, 2007
One week down
Well its hard to believe I've been here a little over a week already. The first couple of days were really hard but I'm quickly learning to take things a day, even an hour at a time, and ask tons of stupid questions. Course registration has been ridiculous yet surprisingly not too frustrating because it seems everyone's attitude is "it will get done in good time." (God's time, I think.)
So it goes like this, in a run-on sentence: We sat around for hours on Tuesday hearing from all the professors on their courses; Wednesday were given registration forms, then the times were all changed, so we chose some classes, but nobody can figure out how many credits each class is, so we all picked about seven, then we went to the local university to have a tour which didnt even happen, then they collected registration forms for the classes at WARC (the West African Research Center which is sort of our home base), then they told us we needed to put that info on a different form, but we no longer had the list of when all the classes met, so we asked for the previous forms back, but they couldnt find them, so we're basically doing yesterday over again today. Its nearly impossible to get into any classes at the local university since there are like 60,000 people who go there, so I may opt to take most everything at WARC. So far Ive signed up for History of Senegambia (which I missed the first class of today because nobody told us there was class), Islam in West Africa, an oral French recitation class (at least thats what I think it is) given at the university, West African Literature, Wolof, and an Art and Dance class. Of course that will most probably all change, plsu some of them conflict, yet Ive been told that it doesnt matter because if I come half an hour late it probably wont have started yet. My goodness this place moves slowly.
The other night I went out with my host brother and almost everyone on my program, and I swear every Toubab in the city was at at this club listening to live Reggae. It was awesome music but I was sort of torn between French and English and was trying to keep my brother feeling comfortable among all the Americans, and it didn't really work out. I had a great time but was exhausted. We left around 1 am, which is mad early for here (people tend to go out around midnight and come home around 5 or 6 am). But dammit it was a Wednesday night and I was tired! We woke up my host grandma to let us in. Thats another thing about everyone Ive met here - they sleep whenever they feel like it and nobody seems to mind being woken up. I mean JB (host bro) was saying it was no big deal, he does it all the time when he comes home, and I was trying to explain that people in the US often get really pissed off about being woken up and he thought that was weird.
Yesterday we sat in on a round table discussion about Senghor (he was the first president of Senegal, and a poet and writer and just generally an amazing man.) People IDOLIZE him here. The 'discussion' lasted about three hours and was mostly people telling anecdotes about the kindness and generosity of Senghor and how he inspired them. It was supposed to be about his relation to and place in the world of African literature. There was one dude who knew him personally even, and another sort of famous dude who had set his poetry to music and sang a bit while we all clapped. It was very nice but rather brutally lengthy and the whole audience was nodding off. There were of course a lot of good comments about his political work and his shortcomings and how the modern Senegal can continue to follow his example socially and politically. All the people who spoke were pretty well respected, but this means here that they require very long introductions praising their lives and work. This sometimes takes 5 or 10 minutes - in the states you can say stuff like "he's the president of so-and-so" and "he went to Yale" and "he has is pHD in this" or "he is working on that" but here if you introduce someone to a group as a speaker, you list about everything he's ever done and even talk about his family and connections. The speeches and discussions lasted until dark so I walked home in a group instead of on my own.
We had to take a French placement test the other day and I did very well in general except on the oral section but I think this had to do with the fact that I was completely uninterested in all fo the questions the dude asked me, such as: "describe the town you live in," " do you like American politics?" and "what was the flight like to get here?" I mean, come on, thats Ossining, George Bush, and twelve hours of French cartoons. Anyways I did really well comparative to a lot of people but I feel kind of awful about that because they literally presented us with one sheet in the order of how well we did, points on all the sections and all, numbered 1-15. Most everyone is in the same level of classes so its fine, I suppose.
1) Latest girly fad: colored eyebrows. People pluck them out and redraw. In reddish-purple, mostly. Also for older women, little bunches of hair all over the head, dyed reddish purple.
2) The Wolof women tie their to their backs with a piece of cloth that acts as a little carrier. There's apparently a special way to tie it so the baby doesn't fall out, but I cannot at this moment figure out how it works. Is there a pocket? This is a mystery.
3) Everyone wants to marry/date you if you are American. I mean, I got asked to be the girlfriend of a 35-year-old, had a marriage proposal, and got two I-love-yous in Wolof in the space of forty minutes on the way to school this morning. People are mostly joking around and aren't terribly agressive, just really friendly...you just have to very directly indicate youre not interested. The whole "Im married" or "I have a boyfriend" excuse seems to just make them ask again.
Okay well thats all for now. Out to lunch with Andre for his last day here, after which we're on our own. Keep writing to me! If you want my address here send me an email. Kiss kiss!
Lili
So it goes like this, in a run-on sentence: We sat around for hours on Tuesday hearing from all the professors on their courses; Wednesday were given registration forms, then the times were all changed, so we chose some classes, but nobody can figure out how many credits each class is, so we all picked about seven, then we went to the local university to have a tour which didnt even happen, then they collected registration forms for the classes at WARC (the West African Research Center which is sort of our home base), then they told us we needed to put that info on a different form, but we no longer had the list of when all the classes met, so we asked for the previous forms back, but they couldnt find them, so we're basically doing yesterday over again today. Its nearly impossible to get into any classes at the local university since there are like 60,000 people who go there, so I may opt to take most everything at WARC. So far Ive signed up for History of Senegambia (which I missed the first class of today because nobody told us there was class), Islam in West Africa, an oral French recitation class (at least thats what I think it is) given at the university, West African Literature, Wolof, and an Art and Dance class. Of course that will most probably all change, plsu some of them conflict, yet Ive been told that it doesnt matter because if I come half an hour late it probably wont have started yet. My goodness this place moves slowly.
The other night I went out with my host brother and almost everyone on my program, and I swear every Toubab in the city was at at this club listening to live Reggae. It was awesome music but I was sort of torn between French and English and was trying to keep my brother feeling comfortable among all the Americans, and it didn't really work out. I had a great time but was exhausted. We left around 1 am, which is mad early for here (people tend to go out around midnight and come home around 5 or 6 am). But dammit it was a Wednesday night and I was tired! We woke up my host grandma to let us in. Thats another thing about everyone Ive met here - they sleep whenever they feel like it and nobody seems to mind being woken up. I mean JB (host bro) was saying it was no big deal, he does it all the time when he comes home, and I was trying to explain that people in the US often get really pissed off about being woken up and he thought that was weird.
Yesterday we sat in on a round table discussion about Senghor (he was the first president of Senegal, and a poet and writer and just generally an amazing man.) People IDOLIZE him here. The 'discussion' lasted about three hours and was mostly people telling anecdotes about the kindness and generosity of Senghor and how he inspired them. It was supposed to be about his relation to and place in the world of African literature. There was one dude who knew him personally even, and another sort of famous dude who had set his poetry to music and sang a bit while we all clapped. It was very nice but rather brutally lengthy and the whole audience was nodding off. There were of course a lot of good comments about his political work and his shortcomings and how the modern Senegal can continue to follow his example socially and politically. All the people who spoke were pretty well respected, but this means here that they require very long introductions praising their lives and work. This sometimes takes 5 or 10 minutes - in the states you can say stuff like "he's the president of so-and-so" and "he went to Yale" and "he has is pHD in this" or "he is working on that" but here if you introduce someone to a group as a speaker, you list about everything he's ever done and even talk about his family and connections. The speeches and discussions lasted until dark so I walked home in a group instead of on my own.
We had to take a French placement test the other day and I did very well in general except on the oral section but I think this had to do with the fact that I was completely uninterested in all fo the questions the dude asked me, such as: "describe the town you live in," " do you like American politics?" and "what was the flight like to get here?" I mean, come on, thats Ossining, George Bush, and twelve hours of French cartoons. Anyways I did really well comparative to a lot of people but I feel kind of awful about that because they literally presented us with one sheet in the order of how well we did, points on all the sections and all, numbered 1-15. Most everyone is in the same level of classes so its fine, I suppose.
Laundry day is wet and messy. The maids really just do most of it for us in my house. They use huge buckets in the courtyard and afterwards sweep up all the water with a bucket. Water dries up in about ten minutes outside and inside so there isnt really the same mindset about cleanliness. At dinner, we throw bones and stuff on the floor and wipe the table onto the floor, then just clean up the floor. Anyway, I have no idea how much it is appropriate to put in the laundry, but I put in some shirts and everything came back all clean and ironed. I also finally know exactly what to do with the toilet, but yesterday a new problem arose: when one uses the shower, water comes out the bidet and slops all over the floor unless you slow the shower to a tiny trickle. I have been told to empty the bidet with a bucket as I go. Cold trickly showers are an excellent way to start the morning.
The little girl Sowane who lives in the house is infinitely cute. There is about nothing cuter than a tiny person speaking mumbly baby French. She knows me now and runs to hug my legs when I come in. I make faces at her and let her draw in my notebook but she doesn't like to be picked up or tickled, and the only times she ever cries are when her cousins scare the crap out of her, which they do a lot, and when her aunt does her hair in little tiny bunches all over her head, which looks a lot like it hurts. Speaking of that, Reine and Fifi got their hair done in braids the other day and it's beautiful. I'm getting along better with the French and talking to the girls a bit more now. Last night I taught Samu, Reine, Fifi, and Jean-Paul how to make some origami things (they LOVE it) at which point Sosou squashed everything. Rach gave me a terrible romance novel before which I of course am devouring and Fifi and Reine like to pick it up and read in English even though they have no clue what it says. That's probably a good thing. I try to avoid explaining anything they hear in music videos that is really overtly and obviously sexual but they ask a lot. They also have all this American clothing or stuff with English on it, but they dont know what it means so I tell them and sometimes theyre really surprised to know that their shirt says "God at the movies" or "Sleepy fairy!" on it.
Okay, time for some random observations.1) Latest girly fad: colored eyebrows. People pluck them out and redraw. In reddish-purple, mostly. Also for older women, little bunches of hair all over the head, dyed reddish purple.
2) The Wolof women tie their to their backs with a piece of cloth that acts as a little carrier. There's apparently a special way to tie it so the baby doesn't fall out, but I cannot at this moment figure out how it works. Is there a pocket? This is a mystery.
3) Everyone wants to marry/date you if you are American. I mean, I got asked to be the girlfriend of a 35-year-old, had a marriage proposal, and got two I-love-yous in Wolof in the space of forty minutes on the way to school this morning. People are mostly joking around and aren't terribly agressive, just really friendly...you just have to very directly indicate youre not interested. The whole "Im married" or "I have a boyfriend" excuse seems to just make them ask again.
Okay well thats all for now. Out to lunch with Andre for his last day here, after which we're on our own. Keep writing to me! If you want my address here send me an email. Kiss kiss!
Lili
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
Hi again! man o man, things move slowly here. Today we had this whole schedule laid out including a tour of the center WARC where most of my classes are going to be, and really it was like ten minutes of tour and then pretty much all day to do whatever we felt like on the computers, eat a huge lunch, sit around in the sun (with sunscreen, mom, I know you're reading.)
Yesterday we had a bit of an adventure by taxi through the rather harshly scented streets of Dakar and finally got to the Museum of African Art which turned out to be a couple of display rooms of pottery and stuff, and the whole basement was made up of six or seven scenes depicting traditional life of some of the ethnic groups in Africa. It was really an interesting tour and the guide was nice and spoke slowly so we caught most of it. There were these giant sort of paper-mache people dressed up in masks and traditional garb and doing different activities in the displays, and we got about an hour and a half tour of just those seven setups - just different elements and ways of life of groups of people in Sierra Leone, Mali, Senegal, et cetera. Most of the art depicted maternity or pregnancy and rituals of coming of age and fertility, and there was a lot of explanation about polygamy and its place in African culture. It is still completely incomprehensible to me how women can accept being a second or third or fourth wife, but the two young women Sophie and Marianne who work with us and travel with us all the time were trying to explain. It has a lot to do with how different the role of the woman is in this society, and it's probably not something I should be attempting to re-explain here, not until I've had some time to process this whole world. The museum had a strange air about it though - like everything else it's sort of crumbling away at the edges.
Okay, time for Wolof lesson number one! My family doesn't speak it at all really, they even told me they don't know it very well, so I'm getting lots of French practice, but Wolof should be useful in bargaining and getting taxis and all that. It's hard not to be really timid about it all. My new roommate at the house (American? Parisian? Who knows?) will arrive tomorrow night. Okay send me emails everybody!
Lee
Yesterday we had a bit of an adventure by taxi through the rather harshly scented streets of Dakar and finally got to the Museum of African Art which turned out to be a couple of display rooms of pottery and stuff, and the whole basement was made up of six or seven scenes depicting traditional life of some of the ethnic groups in Africa. It was really an interesting tour and the guide was nice and spoke slowly so we caught most of it. There were these giant sort of paper-mache people dressed up in masks and traditional garb and doing different activities in the displays, and we got about an hour and a half tour of just those seven setups - just different elements and ways of life of groups of people in Sierra Leone, Mali, Senegal, et cetera. Most of the art depicted maternity or pregnancy and rituals of coming of age and fertility, and there was a lot of explanation about polygamy and its place in African culture. It is still completely incomprehensible to me how women can accept being a second or third or fourth wife, but the two young women Sophie and Marianne who work with us and travel with us all the time were trying to explain. It has a lot to do with how different the role of the woman is in this society, and it's probably not something I should be attempting to re-explain here, not until I've had some time to process this whole world. The museum had a strange air about it though - like everything else it's sort of crumbling away at the edges.
Okay, time for Wolof lesson number one! My family doesn't speak it at all really, they even told me they don't know it very well, so I'm getting lots of French practice, but Wolof should be useful in bargaining and getting taxis and all that. It's hard not to be really timid about it all. My new roommate at the house (American? Parisian? Who knows?) will arrive tomorrow night. Okay send me emails everybody!
Lee
Monday, January 8, 2007
im here!
hi everybody! nanga def! these international keyboards are a pain in the patootey. so here goes, anyway. i got to the paris airport with a couple of kids from my program and we did the whole awkward hang-out-in-the-airport-and-play-cards thing for a while, then took a second flight to dakar. i slept on the wrong flight, meaning that the jet lag really caught up with me. im good now, in any case; last night was the first that i didnt wake up at 5 am to the muslim call to prayer. yup, you hear that from the mosque all day, but its really quite beautiful waking up to this rumble of prayer from the whole city.
anyways, we stayed at a hotel the first night because it was late by the time we got off the plane. the airport was complete insanity. i mean, COMPLETE INSANITY. goddamn. like a thousand people pushing and screaming and sweaty and outside, another hundred trying to grab your bags and take them to a taxi. our group (15 americans) was rushed to this giant bus which weve taken everywhere so far so as to be a completely and utterly conspicuous bunch of toubabs (white foreigners) stared at like fish. good times. we drove around the city a lot on the first day and got out to walk in the markets and eat bitter cola nuts and change money at the bank downtown. again, lots of hassling and selling of everything from socks to djembes to giant piles of stinky fish. our program leaders are awesome and when we're together we've sort of reached this happy english-french medium, franglais at its best. people are either really friendly or really cold but mostly tolerant of our giant group. the last two days we went to Goree Island for a tour and to this big lutte which happened to be taking place this weekend. Goree is where the slave trade in Africa originated and it was really a very moving and interesting tour. There were all kinds of Toubabs there, even some koreans who were completely lost. we strolled around and sat on a beautiful beach and i swear there must have been fifteen women who very flatteringly addressed us and pushed their wares in our faces. As for the lutte, its a sort of combination of wrestling, slapboxing, and football, and the actual big match between two giant half-naked dudes was preceded by four hours of dancing, speeches in wolof, and chants praising the politicians which apparently everybody in the stadium resents, since its all related to the upcoming elections and is mostly a lot of bull. the matches themselves last about three minutes, tops. the big one we saw was between one dude named the bombarder and the other was nicknamed Tyson so all his fans in this giant stadium were waving american flags. needless to say, we cheered for tyson.
on to the family! my host grandmother, maman amitié, has 7 kids, some of whom live with her, some down the street, and two in france and america. they each have at least three kids (and at most 8) so its a big family. in my house now we have the adults jo, didi, and a couple of others who i believe are just visiting, then there are a bunch of kids, the baby Souann nicknamed Sosou, Jean-Paul, 17, Samuel (Samu, 10), Renee (Rene, 15), Fifi, 14, Jean Baptiste (JB), 21, and Mamie, 25. There will be another exchange student very soon in my room (Rene is sleeping there for the moment) and there was also a student from france just visiting who left the other day. There are tons of people sleeping on the floor on mats or on couches. Across the street there are a lot more cousins whose names escape me but thats ok because they havent gotten mine either yet. my family calls me Lee or lili since about 2 days ago, i told them my dad did that and they liked it a lot. so now weve got Fifi, Didi, and Lili. They speak mostly french, and are very french in general compared to a lot of families, meaning that they do the Bisou kiss kiss on the cheek a lot and speak very little wolof which is fine with me for now. the house has a beautiful courtyard with a garden where the dishes get done and where the old dog, arture, lives. hes really old and sort of rotting so nobody really pets him, but people dont seem to pet dogs in general and they arent allowed in the house here. poor old Arture. Inside theres a front room with a table and couches and a tv which is way more central to down time than i expected. then the kitchen is off to the right and two curtains go through into the rest of the house. there are three bedrooms i walk through to get to my room but people seem to either sleep really deeply or just not ever be in their rooms. one also walks through another couple of rooms to get to the bathroom. the senegalese dont use toilet paper and lots carry around water in case they use the public bathrooms. so you go and then take a little bucket and use your hand to rinse yourself. americans sometimes can use toilet paper in their families houses but my familys toilet doesnt flush(you have to very forcefully splash water down) so if i wanted to use it, id then have to carry the used stuff all the way through the house and outside, so im just kind of like, when in rome, you know? always the left hand is associated with that because the right hand is associated with eating and introducing. maybe thats way too much info, sorry! laundry day is wednesday so ill get back to you about how that works. they have a maid who comes to do it. but everyone also washes their own underwear daily and like literally hides it while its dryingand its like a huge no-no to ask anyone to wash them. as for keeping clean, the senegalese are extremely clean and shower at least once a day. there is no hot water but its not terribly freezing and i could always heat some up on the stove if i wanted.
the dishes get done in huge tubs outside in the courtyard and i do them with Fifi or Rene after dinner. Meals are taken as a family and eaten from huge round metal plates. a lot of families eat with their hands, but mine uses spoons. We had a cultural orientation where we learned to eat with our hands, among other things. You use your whole right palm (never EVER the left, that's like the biggest faux-pas) and scoop it into a little ball with rice and meat and ususally a little bit of potatoes, cabbages, or carrots. you only eat directly in front of you and make a little trough with your fingers, and the mother or whatever woman is serving with cut meat and distribute it to everyone as they go. One of the girls on the program is living with a family that doesnt even touch the bread to break it in the morning. my family is much less formal. oh yes, breakfast is baguette bread and butter or cheese or chocolate spead which is a lot like nutella but with peanuts, so i love it. i'm missing vegetables though - i think the first thing im going to want when i get home is like a giant applebees salad. i honestly have no clue how anyone ever manages to poop without fiber supplements, its just bread and meat and potatoes and cabbage et cetera, its all delicious in any case but im totally going to gain another me while im here what with maman amitie all insulted when i only eat like four pounds of food at dinner and take only a foot of bread at breakfast.
dirt and bugs and power outages are a fact of life here. i mean there are ants all over the place, and the mosquito netting saves my life at night. but i feel very safe, my street and neighborhood has a guard, people are so friendly and especially my family is very understanding of all the differences because theyve had tons of exchange students. I thought my host sister mamie was a little cold at first but it turns out we both just needed to open up a little. i met her boyfriend last night - theyre very cute and have been together a little over a year and so then of course i broke out the family and friends photos for everyone and they liked it. they absolutely loooved the jelly bellies and chocolates, and ive found that since dinner is around 9 pm, they eat dessert first around 8.
anyways im going to eat lunch of fish and couscous for about 2 buccks with the rest of the group, and then were going to a museum later. yesterday was a little lonely until the evening but it gets better and better and more comfortable and ill probably go out with JB this weekend dancing and to church to see mamie solo in the choir. theres just lots to do at the moment and im trying to throw myself in there and be who i came here to be. ill be watching out for your responses and emails! im going to try to use skype at the cybercenter sometime soon. kisses! miss you all.
love,
lili
anyways, we stayed at a hotel the first night because it was late by the time we got off the plane. the airport was complete insanity. i mean, COMPLETE INSANITY. goddamn. like a thousand people pushing and screaming and sweaty and outside, another hundred trying to grab your bags and take them to a taxi. our group (15 americans) was rushed to this giant bus which weve taken everywhere so far so as to be a completely and utterly conspicuous bunch of toubabs (white foreigners) stared at like fish. good times. we drove around the city a lot on the first day and got out to walk in the markets and eat bitter cola nuts and change money at the bank downtown. again, lots of hassling and selling of everything from socks to djembes to giant piles of stinky fish. our program leaders are awesome and when we're together we've sort of reached this happy english-french medium, franglais at its best. people are either really friendly or really cold but mostly tolerant of our giant group. the last two days we went to Goree Island for a tour and to this big lutte which happened to be taking place this weekend. Goree is where the slave trade in Africa originated and it was really a very moving and interesting tour. There were all kinds of Toubabs there, even some koreans who were completely lost. we strolled around and sat on a beautiful beach and i swear there must have been fifteen women who very flatteringly addressed us and pushed their wares in our faces. As for the lutte, its a sort of combination of wrestling, slapboxing, and football, and the actual big match between two giant half-naked dudes was preceded by four hours of dancing, speeches in wolof, and chants praising the politicians which apparently everybody in the stadium resents, since its all related to the upcoming elections and is mostly a lot of bull. the matches themselves last about three minutes, tops. the big one we saw was between one dude named the bombarder and the other was nicknamed Tyson so all his fans in this giant stadium were waving american flags. needless to say, we cheered for tyson.
on to the family! my host grandmother, maman amitié, has 7 kids, some of whom live with her, some down the street, and two in france and america. they each have at least three kids (and at most 8) so its a big family. in my house now we have the adults jo, didi, and a couple of others who i believe are just visiting, then there are a bunch of kids, the baby Souann nicknamed Sosou, Jean-Paul, 17, Samuel (Samu, 10), Renee (Rene, 15), Fifi, 14, Jean Baptiste (JB), 21, and Mamie, 25. There will be another exchange student very soon in my room (Rene is sleeping there for the moment) and there was also a student from france just visiting who left the other day. There are tons of people sleeping on the floor on mats or on couches. Across the street there are a lot more cousins whose names escape me but thats ok because they havent gotten mine either yet. my family calls me Lee or lili since about 2 days ago, i told them my dad did that and they liked it a lot. so now weve got Fifi, Didi, and Lili. They speak mostly french, and are very french in general compared to a lot of families, meaning that they do the Bisou kiss kiss on the cheek a lot and speak very little wolof which is fine with me for now. the house has a beautiful courtyard with a garden where the dishes get done and where the old dog, arture, lives. hes really old and sort of rotting so nobody really pets him, but people dont seem to pet dogs in general and they arent allowed in the house here. poor old Arture. Inside theres a front room with a table and couches and a tv which is way more central to down time than i expected. then the kitchen is off to the right and two curtains go through into the rest of the house. there are three bedrooms i walk through to get to my room but people seem to either sleep really deeply or just not ever be in their rooms. one also walks through another couple of rooms to get to the bathroom. the senegalese dont use toilet paper and lots carry around water in case they use the public bathrooms. so you go and then take a little bucket and use your hand to rinse yourself. americans sometimes can use toilet paper in their families houses but my familys toilet doesnt flush(you have to very forcefully splash water down) so if i wanted to use it, id then have to carry the used stuff all the way through the house and outside, so im just kind of like, when in rome, you know? always the left hand is associated with that because the right hand is associated with eating and introducing. maybe thats way too much info, sorry! laundry day is wednesday so ill get back to you about how that works. they have a maid who comes to do it. but everyone also washes their own underwear daily and like literally hides it while its dryingand its like a huge no-no to ask anyone to wash them. as for keeping clean, the senegalese are extremely clean and shower at least once a day. there is no hot water but its not terribly freezing and i could always heat some up on the stove if i wanted.
the dishes get done in huge tubs outside in the courtyard and i do them with Fifi or Rene after dinner. Meals are taken as a family and eaten from huge round metal plates. a lot of families eat with their hands, but mine uses spoons. We had a cultural orientation where we learned to eat with our hands, among other things. You use your whole right palm (never EVER the left, that's like the biggest faux-pas) and scoop it into a little ball with rice and meat and ususally a little bit of potatoes, cabbages, or carrots. you only eat directly in front of you and make a little trough with your fingers, and the mother or whatever woman is serving with cut meat and distribute it to everyone as they go. One of the girls on the program is living with a family that doesnt even touch the bread to break it in the morning. my family is much less formal. oh yes, breakfast is baguette bread and butter or cheese or chocolate spead which is a lot like nutella but with peanuts, so i love it. i'm missing vegetables though - i think the first thing im going to want when i get home is like a giant applebees salad. i honestly have no clue how anyone ever manages to poop without fiber supplements, its just bread and meat and potatoes and cabbage et cetera, its all delicious in any case but im totally going to gain another me while im here what with maman amitie all insulted when i only eat like four pounds of food at dinner and take only a foot of bread at breakfast.
dirt and bugs and power outages are a fact of life here. i mean there are ants all over the place, and the mosquito netting saves my life at night. but i feel very safe, my street and neighborhood has a guard, people are so friendly and especially my family is very understanding of all the differences because theyve had tons of exchange students. I thought my host sister mamie was a little cold at first but it turns out we both just needed to open up a little. i met her boyfriend last night - theyre very cute and have been together a little over a year and so then of course i broke out the family and friends photos for everyone and they liked it. they absolutely loooved the jelly bellies and chocolates, and ive found that since dinner is around 9 pm, they eat dessert first around 8.
anyways im going to eat lunch of fish and couscous for about 2 buccks with the rest of the group, and then were going to a museum later. yesterday was a little lonely until the evening but it gets better and better and more comfortable and ill probably go out with JB this weekend dancing and to church to see mamie solo in the choir. theres just lots to do at the moment and im trying to throw myself in there and be who i came here to be. ill be watching out for your responses and emails! im going to try to use skype at the cybercenter sometime soon. kisses! miss you all.
love,
lili
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Departure
Well hello readers. Friends, Romans, countrymen, et cetera. First of all, I can't believe I'm doing a blog. I am actually morally opposed to blogs. But here I am. I'm leaving for the airport in a couple of hours and I'm just beginning to be excited. Mostly still terrified, but a little excited. I'm still trying to shove five monthsworth of stuff into one suitcase and a backpack. Interesting stuff I wouldn't have thought of but people told me to bring: a flashlight for power outages and a roll of toilet paper since my host family may not use it and I may not be used to that. Actually that's all I'm bringing. Good times. So anyways, goodbye everybody, have an exellent semester, and hope to hear from you soon. Many kisses, happy new year, and peace to all.
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