Goree encore, Bambey and Ngoye

Readers, be prepared for a very long post that may very well be sappy, trite, and poorly narrated because so much happened between Friday and Sunday morning that I honestly can't even list what happened in order.
I'll begin with Friday morning - a second trip to Goree Island, this time with my History of Senegambia professor, who had mentioned the week before that we'd meet where the boat leaves for the Island at 10 am. There are five people in the class, one of whom had already been to Goree and decided that he didn't want to come, so that left me, Tina, two Canadians, and the professor. Tina and I met in the morning and bargained for a taxi to the boat port, where we walked around a little in the market. There were giant hanging pieces of beef and fruit and grain and more flies than I've ever seen in one place in my life. Tina bought six of what she thought was a certain kind of fruit that she ate when she lived in Zimbabwe, but actually turned out to be a weird sort of mealy kiwi-esque thing that I didn't really want to risk.
We met our professor, Boubacar Barry (best name EVER, by the way), and waited nervously for the Canadians who probably thought we were meeting at 10 and not that the boat was leaving then. Boubacar bought the tickets and said he hoped the other girls would "have the intelligence to take the next boat" but I knew if it had been me I'd probably just go home, plus they didnt have cell phones so we couldnt communicate with them to tell them what was going on. In any case it ended up being a whole day on Goree with just me, Tina, and this old professor, which was a bit awkward but turned out to be AMAZING.
We got off the ferry and went to have a tour at the slave house where a man named Joseph Ndaiye has made it his life's work to tell the story of the slave trade on Goree and the middle passage. It was a very moving speech he made and there was an Italian translator too. The dude is 82 years old and has only missed a couple of days in like 50 years. Plus, our professor has known him for years, so we got in for free AND got to speak personally with Ndaiye afterwards. This sort of thing kept happening all day long - I mean Boubacar knows everyone there because of his historical work so we just got in everywhere for free and got to see things that not even government officials have seen, like the insides of some of the famous houses on the Island. He even knows Madame Crespin, who is a descendant of the Signares (in the colonialist period, women of mixed race living with white officials). Her house is a living history book and she knows so much - plus she has these museum-like collections of old lithographs and postcards, not to mention rooms and rooms full of artwork and artifacts and a huge courtyard garden. She spoke French that was very easily understood and was interested in our lives in the states, and explained that she doesn't give tours or have visitors except in very special cases for people she knows. She and our professor talked about the future of the island, and she seemed to be very nervous about the government turning her family home into some kind of national museum or tourist trap. We also just happened to run into this other dude who owns a house on the island, who of course Boubacar knew as well, so we got invited for a few hours over to his house for coffee. It was probably the most beautiful courtyard garden I've ever seen, and the rooms were all sort of separated up above the garden looking out on it. The man told us the history of the house and also the history of his family - he's from a long line of traditional Senegalese tribal royalty, that at some point got mixed with the colonialists, and he has some of the first photographs taken of people on the island. Once a year on Goree all of the houses are opened for three days and 20 or 30 artists get to display their work in the gardens and houses. It's unfortunately happening after we leave, but we met the artist who will be displaying in this guy's house. We had a ton of amazing coffee in tiny cups and listened to the wind chimes and chatted with a Brazillian exchange student and a couple of other people who were visiting. Another material plus: really nice bathrooms with flush toilets...
We spent a few hours at the history and womens' museums and had a great lunch of fish and fries at a restaurant (super expensive, but all paid for by WARC - super expensive being like 8 or 9 dollars for fish, fries, rice, salad, drinks, and sliced fruit for dessert) . We were planning to take the 2 pm boat, but we missed that when we were having coffee, then we were going to take the 4:30 boat, but we missed that because we were having some kind of lemonade with Madame Crespin, and so we barely made the 6 pm boat and since this is around rush hour in Dakar I didn't get home until after 8.

Okay so now comes the crazy part. I'm going to leave out a lot and talk about the interesting parts. Saturday I got up at six and got to WARC at 8, where we waited a lot, loaded the bus, and finally left around 9. On the bus we were given bananas and Thiakry, which is a sort of liquidy yoghurt with millet in the bottom that you mix in, almost like granola. It's pretty delicious but really intense, and if you eat it too fast it may very well come up again, which happened on the bus to somebody...
On the way to Bambey we drove through Thies, another large city, and stopped a bit outside of it to visit an agricultural school and also what I think is a sort of project co-op village. The aim there is to "combattre l'exode des villages" which is to fight against the mass exodus of villagers towards the cities. There is a community of weavers and artists who make clothing, dolls, bags, et cetera and sell them for a communal profit. It seemed like a kind of kibbutz, but it was very hard to hear anything people were explaining about it since there were so many of us. A couple of kids bought stuff, but most things were in the range of 40-50 dollars and I didn't bring that much with me on the trip. I did take some awesome pictures (of the whole weekend, actually), which should be on facebook soon.
Upon our arrival in Bambey, we met the family of professor Ngom, who would be feeding and housing all thirty of us, a friend of the WARC coordinators and a professor in the village of Ngoye. The women were all in the courtyard cleaning pots with sand and soap, soaking lettuce and grain, and cooking on outdoor stoves. I noticed in the corner of the courtyard two goat heads hanging up on a pole (they put them there, I believe, so that they dont attract flies near the food before they get disposed of) so I was fairly certain what kind of meat we'd be eating for lunch. We then took horse and cart rides around the town, by twos, so there were about 20 carts. We got laughed at and pointed at in our giant group of touristy Toubaabs. Bambey is Serrer territory so we didn't get to speak much Wolof, or French for that matter. We also took a little tour of a market place, even weirder since it was a huge line of Toubaabs squeezing through the little stalls while Professor Pam tried to explain things to us. Oh also it was about 100 degrees there - Bambey is inland so they don't get the nice Dakar ocean breezes. The city is much dirtier than Dakar - I didn't think it possible - but there was garbage everywhere, and the smell was overwhelming in the heat. Most people who approached us or called out to us asked for money or gifts and I felt very out of place and uncomfortable. We came back to a delicious lunch of rice, meat, eggs, and vegetables, eaten out of big plates that we put across the knees of four or five people in chairs, and dug in with our hands or with forks or spoons.

After lunch it was off to the village. This is where words begin to fail me. It is only 7 km outside the city but it's like a different world. We got there around 5 and were greeted by crowds of kids. The houses are round and made of earth and have grass or tin roofs. The granaries are way outside the living areas in case of fires. The water is all drawn from wells, by the women, and they have a couple of solar panels to provide light in some of the squares. It's actually a fairly large village, miles across, with several thousand inhabitants. I don't know about the level of poverty but there didn't seem to be a lot of obvious signs of malnutrition, and I think they are fairly well off from what we were told. We stopped to greet a group of men who were reposing under some trees, and only the boys were allowed to shake hands with them. A bit later we watched some women grinding the millet to make couscous, with giant pestles (sp?) in bowls. They sort of showed off for us and did it two at a time alternating hitting the wooden stick down into the bowl then throwing it up and occasionally even clapping in the air. Some little girls did it too and it was amazing to see these 8-year-olds with their baby siblings tied to their backs and throwing up and down these heavy wooden things. A couple of people in our group even tried and found it was really difficult. In another clearing a few feet away there was a tree with the bottom of the trunk colored with a sort of dripping white paint. Most families have a tree like that and it's a holy place for animists - even the Muslims and Catholics maintain animistic practices. From what we gathered, when someone is sick or hurt or stressed they come pray and sort of paint the tree and are cured of whatever is ailing them.
After that brief visit we were led by about a hundred children down a large dusty road, to where they had a schoolhouse. We all went into a classroom and sat down with them at the desks. On the board was written in French "everyone will wait here for the strangers," which was promptly erased when we got there. They sang us a song in Serrer about a boy who is leaving his family to go to school, and tells his sister not to cry because he will return soon. It was so many beautiful voices. I have to admit I got kind of teary. We played a sort of game afterwards, then walked back with them towards a big crowd of people preparing for the lutte. We were ushered into some rows of chairs where we had the best view and for an hour or so watched the boys wrestling and dancing. Some of the boys could jump up in the air and touch their feet. I got some killer photos. Everyone was excited and animated and everyone had a kid sitting on their lap. The rest of the people there squashed together in a big circle and pushed and shoved to try and see what was going on. There was one guy who was supposed to be a sort of jester character who was wearing this weird white man mask. The man sitting next to me explained that the guy in the mask was a sort of fortune teller, that people went to with their troubles, and who was a very respected character in the community. The whole time there was a group of men playing the drums, and once in a while, one of them would come out in front and play for us - and ask us for money - which got very uncomfortable, but our coordinators talked to them for us.
After the lutte there was a horse race - everyone lined up in a couple of rows and the horses were brought out by their riders in a kind of line. There was a false start, and then they really began, and all the kids went screaming after them. The race involves turning around at a certain point and coming back, and someone got hit by a horse on the way back with all the insanity of the crowd but he seemed to just roll and get up and everything was cool.
By this point the sun was nearly down and the stars were coming out. It was hard to see and now the crowd of kids was probably up to three hundred and we had to find the rest of the Toubaabs and walk back to the bus. Eventually they had us line up holding each other by the waist so they could count heads, and with some people still carrying sleepy children this proved to be a bit complicated. But finally we headed out holding hands and walked back to the bus in the dark. It was amazing being in that crowd of kids.
I realize, looking at this entry, that it all sounds sort of strange and primitive and typically trite, and I didn't mean for it to come out like that. It's hard to process what they and what we got out of the exchange - there I was, looking in on their daily lives and now describing it to people from home like it's this grand barbaric oddity that I got to look at from behind the glass. And that's how it was, to an extent - there was no possible way to feel at home there, we were just these white wealthy staring exciting guests who came to poke our heads in for a few hours and be gone after sunset. On the other hand, there's something to say for having carried children we couldn't even talk to under a sky full of stars, and for opening our eyes to people who speak and live differently but are really, when it comes down to it, just the same. I felt more maternal than I've ever felt - just seeing all the young girls with even younger kids strapped to them, and walking everywhere with a kid holding my hand or sitting on my lap or my hip. This sounds ridiculous even to me but I know now that I want to have kids one day.
Well since I'm pressed for time I'll finish talking about the rest of the trip sometime later in the week. Its sort of exhausting just writing about it, and I did a very poor job of telling it how it was but that's the way it goes, this whole language thing. Anyways, I hope everyone has a good week and takes the time to find (or make) a little peace.
Jamm rekk.