Okay, where was I? Oh yes, starting over from the end of dance on Saturday. Since I actually wrote all this yesterday really nicely and can't bring myself to do it over and am extraordinarily frustrated and pressed for time and want to just catch up already, I'm going to make this a list, using past-tense verbs and boring language. Forgive this outburst of bitterness.
Dance: disappointing. We left after about an hour and decided to go to to the Phare (lighthouse). We followed our djembe teacher friend who told us to ask for Sise and mention Moussa if we wanted to get up top. We walked half an hour there, half an hour up the big windy hill, stopped at some lookouts, saw a beautiful view of Dakar, tagged along with a German lady and her son who were getting a tour in very poor French, but which involved an amazing GIANT lightbulb from the "olden days" (aka the nineties) and the mirrored dome of the new tiny light installed in the tower which rotates using an ancient motor or by hand. So cool. Later the woman wanted us to pay the guide even though he insisted we shouldnt but we gave her something to pay him anyways and made him slightly uncomfortable. We walked the hour back and went to a restaurant where we waited a good hour or so for a meal and talked for about three. Some friends came by who were passing and just spent a couple hours, thats the kind of thing we've just got time for here. Which is good and bad: nothing gets done, but people are tons more relaxed. Saturday night I read and talked to Jaco who is pretty crazy but he has given me some good advice about engaging the family, for all his sketchyness. More on that later.
Sunday morning I got up to read, got walked to church by Jaco when I forgot how to get there, arrived for the end of the first service and immediately embarrassed myself by remaining standing, not knowing that I was standing to recieve communion, and had to decline and sit down. Oops. I found Marlene and her fiance and was embarrassed again when we were asked to move to a row that was not for families with children. Oops. It was a pretty good service with the usual gospelly choir, and there were also some Americans visiting who didn't speak any french and I went and introduced myself and they gave me all kinds of Christian organization contacts and were amazed that I'm actually living here. As nice as everyone was, I felt a little lonely later in the day...that's another more personal story but man, sometimes I could go for a minyan and some matzah in this city where Muslim prayer is blasted from loudspeakers up to six times a day and anyone who's accepted Jesu as their lord and savior displays it proudly on their clothing and in their conversation. Later in the day I met up with Jeremy to work on a presentation and go to a cyber cafe and then more hanging out at home and bed.
Tuesday two exciting things happened: the beginning of my internship at the hospital and getting my hair done. I'll keep it short: we walked around town, Reine and Fifi and I, looking for rubber bands, found them after two hours and then the two of them plus Mamie set to doing my braids which took them two hours before and after dinner. Now I'm Senegalese! It's lasted a good ten days and is getting kind of icky but I'm hoping to leave it another week or so.
Tuesday morning I went to the hospital to start my "intership" which consisted that day of being introduced to every single person who works at the hospital for three hours. There was no sense of privacy and we just friggin walked in on people having small surgeries, and getting teeth pulled, and screaming babies being stuck with needles, and pregnant women waiting in lines, and doctors prescribing all kinds of shit, and old dudes half-naked on exam tables. It was unreal.
Okay that is far less detail than I would have liked but I just wanted to catch up a little before I leave for Saint Louis tomorrow and ten days of spring break! I'll talk about Gambia when I can. Jamm ak jamm.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
playing catch-up
Hiya folks,
It's been over two weeks due to an unfortunate series of power outages and a crazy trip to the Gambia. As I am currently in a weird slow cyber cafe the latter and probably most of the former is going to have to wait a little, hopefully a second post later today, but I'll begin catching you up starting with two weekends ago, as quick as I can on this French keyboard that keeps getting stuck on the letter qqqqqqqqqq...
To begin with last Friday, Hannah and I decided to make chocolate chip cookies for the family before she left on Saturday morning for the Gambia (I left the following Wednesday.) This is not the simple task it is in the US, and a huge deal because the oven takes a ton of gas and some hands-and-knees effort to turn on and is very rarely used. I spent a good part of the afternoon in the computer lab trying to look up recipes and do metric-English and liquid-solid conversions so that later we could tell the boutiquier how much we needed. I went to the Toubab store to buy baking soda and try to find chocolate chips, which they didn't have. The girls were going to help us later that night with other ingredients.
Hannah and I walked home from WARC together and pretty soon afterwards the incomprehensible Jaco asked us to accompany him on a walk to Samu's school as it was report card day in all of Senegal. There were no teachers by the time we got there since he'd slept too late in the afternoon, but we now know where they go to school, and when to avoid the reeking sewage canal that borders the campus (pretty much all the time). On the way back we stopped off at some friends/cousins houses, where we dropped off a mysterious bike and said hi to Marlene and her fiance and his brother. Their family's house is sort of oddly bare of furniture and decor but they do have a computer and several electrical appliances. Odd. I mean people choose where they put their money...my family has satellite tv but the flush toilet hasn't worked for 8 months. In any case I promised Marlene I'd go to church on Sunday. More on that later.
So getting the rest of the cookie ingredients turned out to be a much bigger deal than we expected, since you have to go to the boutique and ask for dry ingredients in either half or third kilos et cetera, and we didn't know the word for third or sixth in wolof, and practically the whole family had gotten involved, what with us walking to the store with the boys, and down the block with the girls, and Mamitie getting all pissed at our attempts at mixing and eyeballing and questioning the available utensils that she finally threw up her hands and said "Callie a fait ca toute seule et c'etait parfait!" - the last exchange student did it all by herself and everything came out perfect! Hannah and I felt pretty awful buying the chocolate (in bars that had to later be smashed with a big wooden spoon and knives) because it cost almost 12 dollars and we bought it in front of the kids, who never just have that kind of cash. At one point during the mixing they all berated me because I went to wash my hands and dried the heels of them a little on my pants before I put them back in the batter. I mean, there are no hand towels, everything drip dries, and I was in the middle of mixing, and come on, theyre going to get baked anyway. We decided to throw in an extra egg and a lot more flour and some vanilla and probably too much baking soda, but how bad can you really mess up cookies? Several hours later, after lighting the gas oven in several places with matches, and severely buttering the pan for each of four batches, we had a large bowl of sort of cakey chocolate chip cookies. They were delicious, and everyone liked them, though they did get compared in every way possible to Callie's. Mamitie, knowing the kids would eat them all, gave us a small jar to keep for ourselves, and they didn't last long. They were about the best thing I've eaten in months...
Another interesting observation from Saturday night: chez nous, the word of Mamitie is god. As absent as gender equity is in this society, the matriarch has considerable power in her home. Sylvan, Mamie's boyfriend, came over to say hi while we were making the cookies. He still has to ask permission every time to go into Mamie's room, which is visible through an indoor window from the family room couch, though the two of them have been dating for a year and a half. He was about to leave since he had class very early the next day, but Mamitie said "no, you should stay for dinner," to which he of course responded "no thank you, I have class very early," to which Mamitie said "no really, you have to stay and eat," followed by "no thank you, really, Mamitie, I have to go," and then "You will sit down and stay for dinner. Sit down!" And he sat down, just like that.
Saturday morning I woke up to find that there was EVERYTHING possible available for breakfast, and no one around to see me eating it all piggishly. I had two cuts of bread, one with chocolate, and one with jam AND butter, plus there was hot chocolate mix and instant coffee (mmm mocha) and tea and even sugar and powdered milk left (the kids never leave us any). I cannot WAIT until I can wake up in the US and make whatever the heck I want, eggs and real cheese and cereal with real milk and stuff. But onward! I went back into my room to get dressed and when I came out to leave for dance, Mamitie (Maman Amitie in case that contraction was not obvious) was screaming at the top of her 68-year-old lungs while beating Arture on the ribs with a giant wooden pole because he had dug up her freshly planted flowers. It went like this: poor Arture would run by whimpering, she'd whack at him, he'd scream and run into the house, she'd scream at him to get out, he'd run by whimpering for another smack, et cetera. I got out of there ASAP. The poor dog was all bruised and limpy for a week.
Dance was disappointing as our teachers (dance and drums) are on some kind of strike against WARC who doesn't pay them enough and whose students never show up because the class is so damn disorganized that lots of us gave up. The six or so of us who were there learned a little bit of Sabar for half an hour or so from another girl who works at the WARC restaurant. She was a terrible teacher, only talked to one person the whole time and was impossible to follow, plus she speaks very little French and everyone ended up frustrated and just went home. It's a sort of unfortunate situation and I don't know whats going to happen since last week when I missed it to go to the Gambia only one student and one drummer showed up. Who even knows?
Ugh I have not even made it to the end of last Saturday and my hour here is up, so this may just get more and more postponed...sorry all, but don't worry, I'll get to my Gambian adventures hopefully before I leave for spring break and Saint Louis from the 31st to the 10th. If there's no power outage, n'shalah. Tootles!
It's been over two weeks due to an unfortunate series of power outages and a crazy trip to the Gambia. As I am currently in a weird slow cyber cafe the latter and probably most of the former is going to have to wait a little, hopefully a second post later today, but I'll begin catching you up starting with two weekends ago, as quick as I can on this French keyboard that keeps getting stuck on the letter qqqqqqqqqq...
To begin with last Friday, Hannah and I decided to make chocolate chip cookies for the family before she left on Saturday morning for the Gambia (I left the following Wednesday.) This is not the simple task it is in the US, and a huge deal because the oven takes a ton of gas and some hands-and-knees effort to turn on and is very rarely used. I spent a good part of the afternoon in the computer lab trying to look up recipes and do metric-English and liquid-solid conversions so that later we could tell the boutiquier how much we needed. I went to the Toubab store to buy baking soda and try to find chocolate chips, which they didn't have. The girls were going to help us later that night with other ingredients.
Hannah and I walked home from WARC together and pretty soon afterwards the incomprehensible Jaco asked us to accompany him on a walk to Samu's school as it was report card day in all of Senegal. There were no teachers by the time we got there since he'd slept too late in the afternoon, but we now know where they go to school, and when to avoid the reeking sewage canal that borders the campus (pretty much all the time). On the way back we stopped off at some friends/cousins houses, where we dropped off a mysterious bike and said hi to Marlene and her fiance and his brother. Their family's house is sort of oddly bare of furniture and decor but they do have a computer and several electrical appliances. Odd. I mean people choose where they put their money...my family has satellite tv but the flush toilet hasn't worked for 8 months. In any case I promised Marlene I'd go to church on Sunday. More on that later.
So getting the rest of the cookie ingredients turned out to be a much bigger deal than we expected, since you have to go to the boutique and ask for dry ingredients in either half or third kilos et cetera, and we didn't know the word for third or sixth in wolof, and practically the whole family had gotten involved, what with us walking to the store with the boys, and down the block with the girls, and Mamitie getting all pissed at our attempts at mixing and eyeballing and questioning the available utensils that she finally threw up her hands and said "Callie a fait ca toute seule et c'etait parfait!" - the last exchange student did it all by herself and everything came out perfect! Hannah and I felt pretty awful buying the chocolate (in bars that had to later be smashed with a big wooden spoon and knives) because it cost almost 12 dollars and we bought it in front of the kids, who never just have that kind of cash. At one point during the mixing they all berated me because I went to wash my hands and dried the heels of them a little on my pants before I put them back in the batter. I mean, there are no hand towels, everything drip dries, and I was in the middle of mixing, and come on, theyre going to get baked anyway. We decided to throw in an extra egg and a lot more flour and some vanilla and probably too much baking soda, but how bad can you really mess up cookies? Several hours later, after lighting the gas oven in several places with matches, and severely buttering the pan for each of four batches, we had a large bowl of sort of cakey chocolate chip cookies. They were delicious, and everyone liked them, though they did get compared in every way possible to Callie's. Mamitie, knowing the kids would eat them all, gave us a small jar to keep for ourselves, and they didn't last long. They were about the best thing I've eaten in months...
Another interesting observation from Saturday night: chez nous, the word of Mamitie is god. As absent as gender equity is in this society, the matriarch has considerable power in her home. Sylvan, Mamie's boyfriend, came over to say hi while we were making the cookies. He still has to ask permission every time to go into Mamie's room, which is visible through an indoor window from the family room couch, though the two of them have been dating for a year and a half. He was about to leave since he had class very early the next day, but Mamitie said "no, you should stay for dinner," to which he of course responded "no thank you, I have class very early," to which Mamitie said "no really, you have to stay and eat," followed by "no thank you, really, Mamitie, I have to go," and then "You will sit down and stay for dinner. Sit down!" And he sat down, just like that.
Saturday morning I woke up to find that there was EVERYTHING possible available for breakfast, and no one around to see me eating it all piggishly. I had two cuts of bread, one with chocolate, and one with jam AND butter, plus there was hot chocolate mix and instant coffee (mmm mocha) and tea and even sugar and powdered milk left (the kids never leave us any). I cannot WAIT until I can wake up in the US and make whatever the heck I want, eggs and real cheese and cereal with real milk and stuff. But onward! I went back into my room to get dressed and when I came out to leave for dance, Mamitie (Maman Amitie in case that contraction was not obvious) was screaming at the top of her 68-year-old lungs while beating Arture on the ribs with a giant wooden pole because he had dug up her freshly planted flowers. It went like this: poor Arture would run by whimpering, she'd whack at him, he'd scream and run into the house, she'd scream at him to get out, he'd run by whimpering for another smack, et cetera. I got out of there ASAP. The poor dog was all bruised and limpy for a week.
Dance was disappointing as our teachers (dance and drums) are on some kind of strike against WARC who doesn't pay them enough and whose students never show up because the class is so damn disorganized that lots of us gave up. The six or so of us who were there learned a little bit of Sabar for half an hour or so from another girl who works at the WARC restaurant. She was a terrible teacher, only talked to one person the whole time and was impossible to follow, plus she speaks very little French and everyone ended up frustrated and just went home. It's a sort of unfortunate situation and I don't know whats going to happen since last week when I missed it to go to the Gambia only one student and one drummer showed up. Who even knows?
Ugh I have not even made it to the end of last Saturday and my hour here is up, so this may just get more and more postponed...sorry all, but don't worry, I'll get to my Gambian adventures hopefully before I leave for spring break and Saint Louis from the 31st to the 10th. If there's no power outage, n'shalah. Tootles!
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Almost ten weeks?!?!?!
Today is the halfway mark (in days, and yes, of course I counted, you would too) of my time here in Senegal. I mean, what happened? Rather than dwell on how long I've been here, I'll say that I'm glad I didn't do my usual Tuesday blog post because I was having a serious down day yesterday and today I am in a much better position to describe the last very full week with the usual cynical yet positive spin. Here goes.
Thursday: Okay so morning French class got cancelled yet AGAIN, as it will be tomorrow, and we also found out we had no class in the afternoon...so I decided to take the opportunity to make the journey downtown all alone. I waited a good half hour for the ten bus on the corner and since there was no traffic, made it downtown in good time where I changed a bunch of money at the bank and immediately spent it all on antimalarials at the pharmacy. I mean I literally had only enough left to eat some shawarma and grab the bus back, but I was meeting some friends who wanted to shop for presents, so I figured I'd follow them around and be jealous of where they spent their money. I met them by the pharmacy, and had to make a huge circle around the block because I was being hassled by all these guys who wanted to drag me around to various shops, and avoiding them was one of my goals for the afternoon. However this proved impossible since as soon as we three Toubaabs met up we were accosted and had to choose a couple of them to bring us around. This seemed really sketchy to me the first time it happened, but honestly it really helps since they know where to take you and will often give you better deals (or so it seems) because they assume that next time you'll come back with your Toubaab friends. This of course is true, but it doesn't make it any less frustrating to be dragged around and flattered by dudes who buy you oranges and say "okay, okay, just look, and then later you can decide if you want to buy." I'm really great at standing my ground about not buying anything, especially when I really honestly don't have any money, and also because my horrendous attempts at Wolof amuse vendors into friendliness or indifference. Others give in easily and buy mountains of expensive or useless crap just to avoid hassling or bargaining, which is all well and good if you actually want any of the stuff you end up with at the end of the day. At some point I'm going to have to make a massive shopping trip and go all out with the gifts, but that's for later. In any case Tina and Jeremy bought silver jewellery and scarves and stuff and I followed them around and insisted I had no money. Later we found a bus stop with some difficulty and since it was still mid-afternoon we went over to Jeremy's house to hang out with his family.
Jeremy lives with five brothers and two sisters and the house is huge and beautiful. The brothers spend a good amount of time up on the terrace outside the room all five of them share, making tea, and chatting, and just hanging out. It was really refreshing to hang out with some guys who didn't ask for my number within five minutes, and we spoke French and bits of Wolof the whole afternoon and talked (as usual) about the US and how it compares with Senegal, and why we came here to study, and all that. I'm getting much better at summing up my thoughts on all this, but it depends entirely on the person you're talking with. You sort of have to judge how much they want to hear, and how patriotic they are, and the extent to which they're going to scorn you when you tell them the (tangible and intangible) things you really miss at home, and whether they'll give a flying pork rind about your goals and dreams, and how they're going to react to you summing up your culture and theirs in poorly constructed French phrases. In any case it was a very relaxing afternoon and so different from my family who relaxes in front of the TV and never drinks Attaya and just talks. Then again they're all of different ages and I suppose there's less interest in having sociopolitical exchanges when Samu would prefer to play soccer or Uno, and Reine and Fifi would prefer to parade about in fancy tank tops and write in their mutual notebook about boys, and JB would prefer to zone out, and Jean-Paul would prefer to be out getting a new tattoo, and Mamie would prefer to read aloud her bible or make unreadable faces at us while heating up fish, and Maman Amitie would prefer to hail the president or the Seigneur and do up her hair in tiny dyed-red bunches in front of the couch, and Felix would prefer to be anywhere else but where he is.
Attaya, by the way, is the tea that Senegalese men make ALL the time. It used to be the women who made it, but due to the fact that the men just have loads of time on their hands, what with unemployment and the fact that a few people can easily feed a family of twenty with decent part-time jobs, it is now the men who do it. There are three rounds. The first is very strong and bitter, the second strong and plain, and the third very light and sweet. I like the second round the best. The whole process takes a good three hours if you want it to, and usually there are three or four cups the size of shot glasses passed around among ten or more people, for each round. Before the tea is served, whoever is making it takes one shot glass full and pours it back and forth between two glasses for several minutes to make a good foam that stays on the top of the tea as you drink it. This has to happen for every glass of every round. There's really an art to it - you start a few inches above and pour the tea from one glass to the other, while lifting it up to about a foot above the glass, then bringing it back down. I spilled it all over the place. I've heard several explanations for the foam, including: a) it's just for decoration b) it's for keeping it hot, and c) it's because there isn't much else interesting to do with our time. On to...
Friday: A usual school day, with a long lunch, some games of gin, and stories of debauchery from a friend who was stopped by the police, arrested, and taken to the police station for having spent some "quality time," shall we say, with his girlfriend on the Corniche (the beach) , but not until after the police had observed them for over half an hour. Oh my. Nothing else particularly exciting on Friday, but I did stop by and say hello to the men who work at TRJ to have some stimulating political conversation and a lecture about how I should really know Wolof by now. And oh yes, later JB "took me out" to Nando's and paid for our beers though I insisted he should not, but he really was enjoying having me alone (Hannah was in the states) and promenading me around to the youth of Dakar, who, I swear, ALL congregate at Nando's on Friday nights. He brought up the subject of getting my hair done again, and we discussed animistic practices for a little while, which ended in me insisting that if I don't believe in those kinds of things nothing will happen to me, and him insisting that this is precisely what makes me more vulnerable to them. We gave up on this topic and went home to watch crappy movies until bedtime.
Saturday: Matt, forgive me for a little bit of copy-and-pasting. Dance was cancelled since our teacher was in Touba for the Maggal. I met 4 friends at WARC, all girls, and we had planned it to be a sort of girls day out on this island, Ile de Madeleine, we'd heard about where you pay some guys at the beach to take you over there and it's just you and this rocky island with tons of birds and pretty much nothing else. We were all excited about getting away from the stress of agressive men and the insanity of the city when Natalie told us she'd invited four others - two guys from the ivory coast (one of them is her boyfriend) and one from cape verde and a girl from France. Ah well, we were all sort of annoyed but nobody got mad, it's just sort of a given that here you take it as it comes and shut up. So we bought some lunch, found the beach and the little shack where these guys were sitting around in hard hats (dont ask me why) and asked them if we could go over to the Isle de Madeleine, and they were like oh okay sure, we'll just take your names and bring you over in this boat and pick you up at 5:30. Sweet. It cost us about 10 bucks each but it turned out to be one of the most relaxing days I've had, even with the presence of loud obnoxious vulgar (yet essentially harmless) men, one of whom made me very angry towards the end of the day by forcing me to put my ear to his head while he asked me the equivalent of "Have you ever tasted a salty Ivory Coastman?" Really pleasant. I refused to speak to him after that, and he shall forever hate me for it, and I'm glad.
In any case the boat took about 15 minutes to get over there and we had to wear giant orange life jackets. The waves were huge and got us pretty wet, but it was ridiculously hot so it was really nice. Then the island! As you approach it you can see hundreds and hundreds of birds just sitting on the rocks, and diving for fish, and flying inthe air. We got into a cove with a little cement dock, threw our life jackets in, got out, and the boat went away. There's very little on the island to see, not much vegetation, stunted trees, rocky beaches, thorny brush, flies everywhere, mountains of rock covered in bird poo, and little trails leading up towards a couple of odd stone or cement pavillions, but it's apparently some kind of national preserve. There was nobody else there, until later in the day when some couples came out, women decked out in high heels and fancy pants just to sit around on the dusty rocks. I don't get it. We americans escaped the rest of our companions and hiked up to the plateau in our bathing suits where you could see the city and the ocean for miles and miles. There were a couple of little trails up there but mostly it was sort of picking through the thorns and trying not to get bitten by flies or squirted by odd white liquid that oozed out of the plants ifyou stepped on them. Tina, the adventurous one among us, had the idea to find a way down to the beach on the other side on the island so we could go swimming. We sort of scrambled down this really steep rocky incline and got down where we wanted to. I swam for maybe three minutes but honestly it was so cold that I couldn't feel my legs and in the end we waited on the beach as our bathing suits dried on us in the sun in about ten minutes. We got back up with some difficulty and explored a little and then went down to see about lunch. Things were a little bit cold between us and the others but they warmed up as we shared lunch and played a trivia card game on the beach (in french, really hard) and made attaya (Charles the salty Ivory Coastman had actually brought a teapot and a little metal thing to stand it on and some stuff to make a fire.) I attempted to read a book but was mostly thwarted by Charles who would not leave me alone - partly because it's a Salmon Rushdie book that is banned in Senegal, which is why I wanted to read it on the island in the first place.
After a while I went with Tina and Natalie across the cove because Tina wanted to show us where she'd climbed the bird poo rocks to the highest point on the island. This, among other things, involved crossing several pools full of sharp shells, clinging desperately to a rock wall and barely hanging on enough to avoid falling into a shallow pool full of sharp rocks and sea urchins, scrambling up an incline of loose rocks using hands and feet, and finally emerging onto a sort of plateau. In any case it was an amazing view. Getting down was even harder than coming up, but we all made it back unscathed. It was something I would never have decided to do myself but I'm really glad I went. Tina is officially insane. We got down and Charles had cut some mussels and sea urchins from the rocks and was in the process of roasting them over a small fire and eating them with relish. It was pretty gross, and my excuse for not trying, instead of insulting them with an "I'm afraid of microbes," was to explain that Jews can't eat those kinds of things (Charles had, get this, guessed that I was Jewish, from my appearance, he said, which provoked several arguments earlier in the day.) Meanwhile the guys had come back with the boat and were messing around somewhere on the other side of the island so we had to go call them and get them to take us back.
Saturday night we just watched a lot of TV and I read some in my room. Then, when I was about to go to bed, my cousin Jacko (yes, that's hisname) came to the window and made a lot of gross noises and finally said "aren't you scared of me?" Keep in mind he's 22. I went over to the window, and there he was, looking pretty out of it, and he said "do you want to tell me something? do you want to tell me why you're so bizarre?" which of course is an excellent conversation starter in Jacko's mind, and I know he doesn'treally mean anything by it, so this happily terminated in a long philosophical conversation outside. I was finally able to explain some cultural differences to him and to Bouba the neighbor who really wanted to converse about it without too much judgment. Bouba told me that he thought I was an exception among Americans here because I am friendly to his family (they live across the street) and always greet them and shake their hands and ask after them and try to speak some Wolof in the afternoons. I was able to say that I hoped I wasnt the exception, but that Americans a lot of the time seem really unfriendly to the Senegalese because the notion of salutations and self-introductions in America has none of the informal importance that it does here. It's simply something we didn't grow up with and so aren't that comfortable with comporting ourselves in situations of greeting and thus try and avoid them. Or at least that's how I see it. I thought I did pretty well explaining this, what with the french and the sitting cross-legged in pajamas at 2 am on the sidewalk.
On to Sunday: I woke up and read a lot and just kind of lounged around all day until around 5:30 when JB and I had planned to take a walk. Actually he had planned to take a walk with me and I didn't have much choice in the matter, and anyway I wanted to get out of the house and see this beach where I've been meaning to go, but the program directors would kill us if we went alone, just as a group of Toubabs, so it was actually the perfect opportunity to see it. I mean, I really enjoy JB's company but it's so awkwardly obvious that he's attempting to win my affection and has no qualms about the fact that I live in his house. It was another one of those times where I didn't know what was going to happen till it did, and we ended up getting into a taxi (which he yet again paid for despite my protests) and getting out at the beach. It was absolutely beautiful, and there were hundreds of guys working out and running and sitting around with their girlfriends and I got a ton of stares (no comments thankfully, that's not ok when a woman is walking with a man) but that's how it goes. We climbed down to the beach and since the tide was high got soaked up to our waists as the waves came in. We went over and sat by this little cove and talked for an hour or so. The sun was setting and it was gorgeous, and he wanted to climb over along some slippery rocks to show me this cave he knows, and I thought it was too slippery but we started out anyway. Of course as suits the situation, about ten seconds later I fell down and bashed up my legs on the rocks. Good times. No serious lasting injuries, so don't you worry, folks. After another very frustrating conversation in which he attempted to understand exactly why I refuse to hold his hand, and why I am not interested in dating him, and I attempted to understand why he keeps pursuing this issue and why not holding his hand is such a mortal insult, we ended up walking all the way back from the beach- nearly an hour - because there weren't many car rapides. It was a great walk and when we got back, the girls decided to make a cake! This took several hours and involved a kilo of flour, the equivalent of three sticks of butter, and eleven eggs, the whites of which we took turns beating for 45 minutes straight, through a short power outage and during dinner. The ingredients for any baking don't get kept in the house; whenever you want to make something, you buy exactly as much as you need and no more, which may prove to be a problem when Hannah and I try to convert a chocolate chip cookie recipe into metric measurements.
Sunday night we watched King Kong (the new one) on TV which was super exciting even though I missed the first 40 minutes and even though Maman Amitie, who had seen it when she visited her daughter in the US, told us what was going to happen right before it happened. It was mostly so that we would not worry our little heads about the fate of each character, but this is how it goes with every movie we watch: things get commented on as they are happening, like "did you see that face he made?" or "did you hear him roar?" or "watch out, the man has a knife!" or "close the door immediately, the men are going to find you!" Half the time we come in to a movie three quarters of the way through and no one knows whats going on so they ask each other questions that nobody can answer, like "is that his wife?" or "why is he running from the police?" or "what happened in the first seventy minutes of this film?" Some would find this all very frustrating but as some of you can testify, I am notorious for this at home, and I can do it ALL I WANT here without anyone getting annoyed; in fact, they love it when I participate. So there! In any case I absolutely loved King Kong but this might be as much a product of spending most of my TV time watching bad 70s copper flicks and poorly filmed Australian pirate movies and the Jesus channel as it was of actually finding it to be a good movie.
Monday: Grammar class and then, you guessed it, class was cancelled, so after some lunch of chicken and rice at the Palais I went to the marche HLM again with three Canadians. We split up into pairs and John and I very efficiently spent our time. I totally splurged and spent about 19 dollars, and had a great time bargaining even though Maman Amitie told me I'd been seriously overcharged. I got one of these weird tie dye house gowns that women wear in the house and to bed here, in orange, which I'm so excited about, and also a pair of sandals and three yards of fabric which I'm not sure how I'm going to use yet. Afterwards we took a taxi to near where the three of them live and I went to a cyber cafe until I had a bit of a stomach attack and had to run to use the toilettes across the street and search out a bus stop to get back home. Getting home on the bus worked out fine, amazingly, though I had to ask for directions, which was unfortunate because looking like a lost Toubaab invites male attention. Aside from the many requests for money and kisses and my address and other fun things, I made it back without trouble and by that time the mal au ventre had subsided and I was annoyed at having lost thirty minutes of internet time at the cafe. Ah, Senegal.
Tuesday: At around 5:30 am Hannah came back, safe and glowing from a week in the states, which I don't need to bore you with because you know all about the daily pleasures of hot showers and flush toilets and reliable electricity and maybe even things like chicken fingers and hotel buffets and planned bus schedules. In the morning JB walked with me to WARC around ten so he could talk to Sophie (I think this happens once a month when the families get their stipend). And then I got a bit of a surprise. I had told Sophie months ago that I was interested in helping out at the hospital, and she said "Oh, Leora, you have an interview with the head doctor and director of Gaspard Camara hospital at 18:30 following your Wolof class today. I can't come with you like I usually do to get students internships because I have a meeting. You can probably go there and ask for the doctor and give him this request from Professor Sene and tell him what you want to do there." Which left me a couple of hours between class to write up a schedule and create a resume of sorts in French and change my shirt and research words I might need to use and generally freak out a little. In any case I shouldn't have worried, because aside from getting lost and having to ask directions for the entrance of the hospital (which is two minutes from my house, literally) everything went great. I got there and couldn't find anyone to ask about where to find the doctor's office except for some haughty-looking patients and lots of nurses running around busily, but after wandering through the building past doors of wards and offices I finally just went and asked some dudes sitting around at the front who directed me through five or six other people until a secretary had me sit on a bench and wait for the guy to show up. Now this twenty minutes of my life was like a typical waiting room hospital movie scene with the sounds of wailing babies being vaccinated and children with all kinds of ailments climbing on each other, and silent tired adults wearing expressions of worried patience and looking up expectantly when anyone came into the room. As for the director, when he finally came, I shouldn't have been worried at all because he just sat me down and asked me what I wanted to do there, and told me later that my French was totally fine. I told him I had a lot of experience in labs, didn't have any in hospitals but was considering medicine, and though he was surprised I wasn't already working toward some sort of medical degree he immediately made a list of things I could do. He seemed really pleased that I just wanted to help and he told me he'd introduce me to "the whole team" and after that I could observe, ask questions, help a little, in any ward I wanted to at any time of day. I told him Tuesday mornings and Friday afternoons were good and he said at those times I could come see infant vaccinations, pediatrics, maternity, or adult women consulations. He even said I could come at night between 11 pm and 5 am and observe the "accouchements" was the word I think, which bascially means I could just go over any night and watch babies being born. My goodness! The "interview" ended with him saying I should come next Tuesday morning to his office, at which point I will be free to choose what I want to see, he'll tell all the nurses about me, and if I do well I can help them out with whatever they're doing, aka baby vaccinations and taking blood pressure and the like. Also he said "maintenant tu es chez toi," in other words, I should make myself at home. All this after saying a couple of sentences in French, enough to demonstrate that I was interested and probably capable. I find this kind of thing completely amazing and incomprehensible as in the US I had to have two TB tests, fill out a mountain of paperwork, go to two separate orientations, have four meetings over the course of three weeks, get a badge made, and take a ten-hour online course on privacy protection and health law just to volunteer in a lab where I would spend my days doing Western blots and washing glassware and barely interacting with any humans. I am SO excited!
This morning, Wednesday, we had Islam class and got riled up about Jihad which the professor explained really well but which we will probably spend three weeks on since we could talk about it for a lifetime and not really get past our nationalistic and religious prejudices. Since then I've been sitting around like a bum in the computer lab writing all this, munching clandestinely on an egg sandwich and banana biscuits that Tina brought me from the university. This week's random observations:
1) The crossing guard is in love with me, wants me to come to his house on Sundays for cebbu jenn, and doesn't yet know my name. He is apparently very insulted and hurt because I laughed at him when he told me, yet will still not let me pass without a very long caressing handshake and some tidbits about my day and inquiries to each others' health. Jamm rekk, alhamdulilaay.
2) Several days of normal bowel movements does wonders for the morale.
3) I have started to feel that I dress like a complete bum in my t-shirts and loose skirts, surrounded by older women in beautiful boubous and younger women in tight black pants, pointy shoes, and flashy tank tops.
Okay that's all that I can think of for now. A postscript which I've already shared with Ari: I hope that none of you ever learns to distinguish between rotting goat carcass and just-plain-smells-like-garbage, as has yours truly.
Yendoleen ak jamm (Y'all pass the day in peace now, ya hear?)
Thursday: Okay so morning French class got cancelled yet AGAIN, as it will be tomorrow, and we also found out we had no class in the afternoon...so I decided to take the opportunity to make the journey downtown all alone. I waited a good half hour for the ten bus on the corner and since there was no traffic, made it downtown in good time where I changed a bunch of money at the bank and immediately spent it all on antimalarials at the pharmacy. I mean I literally had only enough left to eat some shawarma and grab the bus back, but I was meeting some friends who wanted to shop for presents, so I figured I'd follow them around and be jealous of where they spent their money. I met them by the pharmacy, and had to make a huge circle around the block because I was being hassled by all these guys who wanted to drag me around to various shops, and avoiding them was one of my goals for the afternoon. However this proved impossible since as soon as we three Toubaabs met up we were accosted and had to choose a couple of them to bring us around. This seemed really sketchy to me the first time it happened, but honestly it really helps since they know where to take you and will often give you better deals (or so it seems) because they assume that next time you'll come back with your Toubaab friends. This of course is true, but it doesn't make it any less frustrating to be dragged around and flattered by dudes who buy you oranges and say "okay, okay, just look, and then later you can decide if you want to buy." I'm really great at standing my ground about not buying anything, especially when I really honestly don't have any money, and also because my horrendous attempts at Wolof amuse vendors into friendliness or indifference. Others give in easily and buy mountains of expensive or useless crap just to avoid hassling or bargaining, which is all well and good if you actually want any of the stuff you end up with at the end of the day. At some point I'm going to have to make a massive shopping trip and go all out with the gifts, but that's for later. In any case Tina and Jeremy bought silver jewellery and scarves and stuff and I followed them around and insisted I had no money. Later we found a bus stop with some difficulty and since it was still mid-afternoon we went over to Jeremy's house to hang out with his family.
Jeremy lives with five brothers and two sisters and the house is huge and beautiful. The brothers spend a good amount of time up on the terrace outside the room all five of them share, making tea, and chatting, and just hanging out. It was really refreshing to hang out with some guys who didn't ask for my number within five minutes, and we spoke French and bits of Wolof the whole afternoon and talked (as usual) about the US and how it compares with Senegal, and why we came here to study, and all that. I'm getting much better at summing up my thoughts on all this, but it depends entirely on the person you're talking with. You sort of have to judge how much they want to hear, and how patriotic they are, and the extent to which they're going to scorn you when you tell them the (tangible and intangible) things you really miss at home, and whether they'll give a flying pork rind about your goals and dreams, and how they're going to react to you summing up your culture and theirs in poorly constructed French phrases. In any case it was a very relaxing afternoon and so different from my family who relaxes in front of the TV and never drinks Attaya and just talks. Then again they're all of different ages and I suppose there's less interest in having sociopolitical exchanges when Samu would prefer to play soccer or Uno, and Reine and Fifi would prefer to parade about in fancy tank tops and write in their mutual notebook about boys, and JB would prefer to zone out, and Jean-Paul would prefer to be out getting a new tattoo, and Mamie would prefer to read aloud her bible or make unreadable faces at us while heating up fish, and Maman Amitie would prefer to hail the president or the Seigneur and do up her hair in tiny dyed-red bunches in front of the couch, and Felix would prefer to be anywhere else but where he is.
Attaya, by the way, is the tea that Senegalese men make ALL the time. It used to be the women who made it, but due to the fact that the men just have loads of time on their hands, what with unemployment and the fact that a few people can easily feed a family of twenty with decent part-time jobs, it is now the men who do it. There are three rounds. The first is very strong and bitter, the second strong and plain, and the third very light and sweet. I like the second round the best. The whole process takes a good three hours if you want it to, and usually there are three or four cups the size of shot glasses passed around among ten or more people, for each round. Before the tea is served, whoever is making it takes one shot glass full and pours it back and forth between two glasses for several minutes to make a good foam that stays on the top of the tea as you drink it. This has to happen for every glass of every round. There's really an art to it - you start a few inches above and pour the tea from one glass to the other, while lifting it up to about a foot above the glass, then bringing it back down. I spilled it all over the place. I've heard several explanations for the foam, including: a) it's just for decoration b) it's for keeping it hot, and c) it's because there isn't much else interesting to do with our time. On to...
Friday: A usual school day, with a long lunch, some games of gin, and stories of debauchery from a friend who was stopped by the police, arrested, and taken to the police station for having spent some "quality time," shall we say, with his girlfriend on the Corniche (the beach) , but not until after the police had observed them for over half an hour. Oh my. Nothing else particularly exciting on Friday, but I did stop by and say hello to the men who work at TRJ to have some stimulating political conversation and a lecture about how I should really know Wolof by now. And oh yes, later JB "took me out" to Nando's and paid for our beers though I insisted he should not, but he really was enjoying having me alone (Hannah was in the states) and promenading me around to the youth of Dakar, who, I swear, ALL congregate at Nando's on Friday nights. He brought up the subject of getting my hair done again, and we discussed animistic practices for a little while, which ended in me insisting that if I don't believe in those kinds of things nothing will happen to me, and him insisting that this is precisely what makes me more vulnerable to them. We gave up on this topic and went home to watch crappy movies until bedtime.
Saturday: Matt, forgive me for a little bit of copy-and-pasting. Dance was cancelled since our teacher was in Touba for the Maggal. I met 4 friends at WARC, all girls, and we had planned it to be a sort of girls day out on this island, Ile de Madeleine, we'd heard about where you pay some guys at the beach to take you over there and it's just you and this rocky island with tons of birds and pretty much nothing else. We were all excited about getting away from the stress of agressive men and the insanity of the city when Natalie told us she'd invited four others - two guys from the ivory coast (one of them is her boyfriend) and one from cape verde and a girl from France. Ah well, we were all sort of annoyed but nobody got mad, it's just sort of a given that here you take it as it comes and shut up. So we bought some lunch, found the beach and the little shack where these guys were sitting around in hard hats (dont ask me why) and asked them if we could go over to the Isle de Madeleine, and they were like oh okay sure, we'll just take your names and bring you over in this boat and pick you up at 5:30. Sweet. It cost us about 10 bucks each but it turned out to be one of the most relaxing days I've had, even with the presence of loud obnoxious vulgar (yet essentially harmless) men, one of whom made me very angry towards the end of the day by forcing me to put my ear to his head while he asked me the equivalent of "Have you ever tasted a salty Ivory Coastman?" Really pleasant. I refused to speak to him after that, and he shall forever hate me for it, and I'm glad.
In any case the boat took about 15 minutes to get over there and we had to wear giant orange life jackets. The waves were huge and got us pretty wet, but it was ridiculously hot so it was really nice. Then the island! As you approach it you can see hundreds and hundreds of birds just sitting on the rocks, and diving for fish, and flying inthe air. We got into a cove with a little cement dock, threw our life jackets in, got out, and the boat went away. There's very little on the island to see, not much vegetation, stunted trees, rocky beaches, thorny brush, flies everywhere, mountains of rock covered in bird poo, and little trails leading up towards a couple of odd stone or cement pavillions, but it's apparently some kind of national preserve. There was nobody else there, until later in the day when some couples came out, women decked out in high heels and fancy pants just to sit around on the dusty rocks. I don't get it. We americans escaped the rest of our companions and hiked up to the plateau in our bathing suits where you could see the city and the ocean for miles and miles. There were a couple of little trails up there but mostly it was sort of picking through the thorns and trying not to get bitten by flies or squirted by odd white liquid that oozed out of the plants ifyou stepped on them. Tina, the adventurous one among us, had the idea to find a way down to the beach on the other side on the island so we could go swimming. We sort of scrambled down this really steep rocky incline and got down where we wanted to. I swam for maybe three minutes but honestly it was so cold that I couldn't feel my legs and in the end we waited on the beach as our bathing suits dried on us in the sun in about ten minutes. We got back up with some difficulty and explored a little and then went down to see about lunch. Things were a little bit cold between us and the others but they warmed up as we shared lunch and played a trivia card game on the beach (in french, really hard) and made attaya (Charles the salty Ivory Coastman had actually brought a teapot and a little metal thing to stand it on and some stuff to make a fire.) I attempted to read a book but was mostly thwarted by Charles who would not leave me alone - partly because it's a Salmon Rushdie book that is banned in Senegal, which is why I wanted to read it on the island in the first place.
After a while I went with Tina and Natalie across the cove because Tina wanted to show us where she'd climbed the bird poo rocks to the highest point on the island. This, among other things, involved crossing several pools full of sharp shells, clinging desperately to a rock wall and barely hanging on enough to avoid falling into a shallow pool full of sharp rocks and sea urchins, scrambling up an incline of loose rocks using hands and feet, and finally emerging onto a sort of plateau. In any case it was an amazing view. Getting down was even harder than coming up, but we all made it back unscathed. It was something I would never have decided to do myself but I'm really glad I went. Tina is officially insane. We got down and Charles had cut some mussels and sea urchins from the rocks and was in the process of roasting them over a small fire and eating them with relish. It was pretty gross, and my excuse for not trying, instead of insulting them with an "I'm afraid of microbes," was to explain that Jews can't eat those kinds of things (Charles had, get this, guessed that I was Jewish, from my appearance, he said, which provoked several arguments earlier in the day.) Meanwhile the guys had come back with the boat and were messing around somewhere on the other side of the island so we had to go call them and get them to take us back.
Saturday night we just watched a lot of TV and I read some in my room. Then, when I was about to go to bed, my cousin Jacko (yes, that's hisname) came to the window and made a lot of gross noises and finally said "aren't you scared of me?" Keep in mind he's 22. I went over to the window, and there he was, looking pretty out of it, and he said "do you want to tell me something? do you want to tell me why you're so bizarre?" which of course is an excellent conversation starter in Jacko's mind, and I know he doesn'treally mean anything by it, so this happily terminated in a long philosophical conversation outside. I was finally able to explain some cultural differences to him and to Bouba the neighbor who really wanted to converse about it without too much judgment. Bouba told me that he thought I was an exception among Americans here because I am friendly to his family (they live across the street) and always greet them and shake their hands and ask after them and try to speak some Wolof in the afternoons. I was able to say that I hoped I wasnt the exception, but that Americans a lot of the time seem really unfriendly to the Senegalese because the notion of salutations and self-introductions in America has none of the informal importance that it does here. It's simply something we didn't grow up with and so aren't that comfortable with comporting ourselves in situations of greeting and thus try and avoid them. Or at least that's how I see it. I thought I did pretty well explaining this, what with the french and the sitting cross-legged in pajamas at 2 am on the sidewalk.
On to Sunday: I woke up and read a lot and just kind of lounged around all day until around 5:30 when JB and I had planned to take a walk. Actually he had planned to take a walk with me and I didn't have much choice in the matter, and anyway I wanted to get out of the house and see this beach where I've been meaning to go, but the program directors would kill us if we went alone, just as a group of Toubabs, so it was actually the perfect opportunity to see it. I mean, I really enjoy JB's company but it's so awkwardly obvious that he's attempting to win my affection and has no qualms about the fact that I live in his house. It was another one of those times where I didn't know what was going to happen till it did, and we ended up getting into a taxi (which he yet again paid for despite my protests) and getting out at the beach. It was absolutely beautiful, and there were hundreds of guys working out and running and sitting around with their girlfriends and I got a ton of stares (no comments thankfully, that's not ok when a woman is walking with a man) but that's how it goes. We climbed down to the beach and since the tide was high got soaked up to our waists as the waves came in. We went over and sat by this little cove and talked for an hour or so. The sun was setting and it was gorgeous, and he wanted to climb over along some slippery rocks to show me this cave he knows, and I thought it was too slippery but we started out anyway. Of course as suits the situation, about ten seconds later I fell down and bashed up my legs on the rocks. Good times. No serious lasting injuries, so don't you worry, folks. After another very frustrating conversation in which he attempted to understand exactly why I refuse to hold his hand, and why I am not interested in dating him, and I attempted to understand why he keeps pursuing this issue and why not holding his hand is such a mortal insult, we ended up walking all the way back from the beach- nearly an hour - because there weren't many car rapides. It was a great walk and when we got back, the girls decided to make a cake! This took several hours and involved a kilo of flour, the equivalent of three sticks of butter, and eleven eggs, the whites of which we took turns beating for 45 minutes straight, through a short power outage and during dinner. The ingredients for any baking don't get kept in the house; whenever you want to make something, you buy exactly as much as you need and no more, which may prove to be a problem when Hannah and I try to convert a chocolate chip cookie recipe into metric measurements.
Sunday night we watched King Kong (the new one) on TV which was super exciting even though I missed the first 40 minutes and even though Maman Amitie, who had seen it when she visited her daughter in the US, told us what was going to happen right before it happened. It was mostly so that we would not worry our little heads about the fate of each character, but this is how it goes with every movie we watch: things get commented on as they are happening, like "did you see that face he made?" or "did you hear him roar?" or "watch out, the man has a knife!" or "close the door immediately, the men are going to find you!" Half the time we come in to a movie three quarters of the way through and no one knows whats going on so they ask each other questions that nobody can answer, like "is that his wife?" or "why is he running from the police?" or "what happened in the first seventy minutes of this film?" Some would find this all very frustrating but as some of you can testify, I am notorious for this at home, and I can do it ALL I WANT here without anyone getting annoyed; in fact, they love it when I participate. So there! In any case I absolutely loved King Kong but this might be as much a product of spending most of my TV time watching bad 70s copper flicks and poorly filmed Australian pirate movies and the Jesus channel as it was of actually finding it to be a good movie.
Monday: Grammar class and then, you guessed it, class was cancelled, so after some lunch of chicken and rice at the Palais I went to the marche HLM again with three Canadians. We split up into pairs and John and I very efficiently spent our time. I totally splurged and spent about 19 dollars, and had a great time bargaining even though Maman Amitie told me I'd been seriously overcharged. I got one of these weird tie dye house gowns that women wear in the house and to bed here, in orange, which I'm so excited about, and also a pair of sandals and three yards of fabric which I'm not sure how I'm going to use yet. Afterwards we took a taxi to near where the three of them live and I went to a cyber cafe until I had a bit of a stomach attack and had to run to use the toilettes across the street and search out a bus stop to get back home. Getting home on the bus worked out fine, amazingly, though I had to ask for directions, which was unfortunate because looking like a lost Toubaab invites male attention. Aside from the many requests for money and kisses and my address and other fun things, I made it back without trouble and by that time the mal au ventre had subsided and I was annoyed at having lost thirty minutes of internet time at the cafe. Ah, Senegal.
Tuesday: At around 5:30 am Hannah came back, safe and glowing from a week in the states, which I don't need to bore you with because you know all about the daily pleasures of hot showers and flush toilets and reliable electricity and maybe even things like chicken fingers and hotel buffets and planned bus schedules. In the morning JB walked with me to WARC around ten so he could talk to Sophie (I think this happens once a month when the families get their stipend). And then I got a bit of a surprise. I had told Sophie months ago that I was interested in helping out at the hospital, and she said "Oh, Leora, you have an interview with the head doctor and director of Gaspard Camara hospital at 18:30 following your Wolof class today. I can't come with you like I usually do to get students internships because I have a meeting. You can probably go there and ask for the doctor and give him this request from Professor Sene and tell him what you want to do there." Which left me a couple of hours between class to write up a schedule and create a resume of sorts in French and change my shirt and research words I might need to use and generally freak out a little. In any case I shouldn't have worried, because aside from getting lost and having to ask directions for the entrance of the hospital (which is two minutes from my house, literally) everything went great. I got there and couldn't find anyone to ask about where to find the doctor's office except for some haughty-looking patients and lots of nurses running around busily, but after wandering through the building past doors of wards and offices I finally just went and asked some dudes sitting around at the front who directed me through five or six other people until a secretary had me sit on a bench and wait for the guy to show up. Now this twenty minutes of my life was like a typical waiting room hospital movie scene with the sounds of wailing babies being vaccinated and children with all kinds of ailments climbing on each other, and silent tired adults wearing expressions of worried patience and looking up expectantly when anyone came into the room. As for the director, when he finally came, I shouldn't have been worried at all because he just sat me down and asked me what I wanted to do there, and told me later that my French was totally fine. I told him I had a lot of experience in labs, didn't have any in hospitals but was considering medicine, and though he was surprised I wasn't already working toward some sort of medical degree he immediately made a list of things I could do. He seemed really pleased that I just wanted to help and he told me he'd introduce me to "the whole team" and after that I could observe, ask questions, help a little, in any ward I wanted to at any time of day. I told him Tuesday mornings and Friday afternoons were good and he said at those times I could come see infant vaccinations, pediatrics, maternity, or adult women consulations. He even said I could come at night between 11 pm and 5 am and observe the "accouchements" was the word I think, which bascially means I could just go over any night and watch babies being born. My goodness! The "interview" ended with him saying I should come next Tuesday morning to his office, at which point I will be free to choose what I want to see, he'll tell all the nurses about me, and if I do well I can help them out with whatever they're doing, aka baby vaccinations and taking blood pressure and the like. Also he said "maintenant tu es chez toi," in other words, I should make myself at home. All this after saying a couple of sentences in French, enough to demonstrate that I was interested and probably capable. I find this kind of thing completely amazing and incomprehensible as in the US I had to have two TB tests, fill out a mountain of paperwork, go to two separate orientations, have four meetings over the course of three weeks, get a badge made, and take a ten-hour online course on privacy protection and health law just to volunteer in a lab where I would spend my days doing Western blots and washing glassware and barely interacting with any humans. I am SO excited!
This morning, Wednesday, we had Islam class and got riled up about Jihad which the professor explained really well but which we will probably spend three weeks on since we could talk about it for a lifetime and not really get past our nationalistic and religious prejudices. Since then I've been sitting around like a bum in the computer lab writing all this, munching clandestinely on an egg sandwich and banana biscuits that Tina brought me from the university. This week's random observations:
1) The crossing guard is in love with me, wants me to come to his house on Sundays for cebbu jenn, and doesn't yet know my name. He is apparently very insulted and hurt because I laughed at him when he told me, yet will still not let me pass without a very long caressing handshake and some tidbits about my day and inquiries to each others' health. Jamm rekk, alhamdulilaay.
2) Several days of normal bowel movements does wonders for the morale.
3) I have started to feel that I dress like a complete bum in my t-shirts and loose skirts, surrounded by older women in beautiful boubous and younger women in tight black pants, pointy shoes, and flashy tank tops.
Okay that's all that I can think of for now. A postscript which I've already shared with Ari: I hope that none of you ever learns to distinguish between rotting goat carcass and just-plain-smells-like-garbage, as has yours truly.
Yendoleen ak jamm (Y'all pass the day in peace now, ya hear?)
Thursday, March 8, 2007
You know you're in Africa when...
Okay I'm heading to the market downtown and I don't have much to say about the last two days but I had to just come write about what happened this morning. Here I was thinking I'm living in this semi-Westernized neighborhood with a family with super modern ideas...
This morning I was eating my breakfast of dry bread and jam when JB came in and said "Lee, I'm going to walk you to school because I have something important to tell you that is just a good thing to know." Clearly this ruined the peace of my breakfast, as it got me to thinking of all the things I could possibly have done wrong within the last few days, and what he could have to tell me that was so important it merited him getting up at 8 am just to walk down the street with me. Some ideas:
A) Love confession part II.
B) You are a gross American pig and need to clean up after yourself.
C) The other day you said/did something that was exraordinarily insulting to everyone you live with.
D) Everybody in the neighborhood can see you when you change your clothes.
E) You have to move out immediately.
Et cetera. You can imagine that this was distressing, as it could have been ANYTHING.
So we start walking, and he mentions that he heard me talking with his cousin about going to get my hair braided by a girl who lives across the street. This is going to sound bizarre (he prefaced it like that), but there are people all over Dakar, and even in the neighborhood, who talk to him all the time about why he does not save hairs from the Americans heads or cut nails or even things that we've touched and use them for whatever purpose he wants...for example, taking such things to a maribou or medicine man or voodoo figure to cast spells that would make us fall in love with him, or that would make it very easy to injure us if we do something to anger the family. He was just letting me know that it's a very easy and very common thing that people do, and he wanted to warn me that he thought it was a very very bad idea to go across the street and have my hair done. I then asked him "Do you believe in that? Do you believe it works?" to which I was sure JB, the least religious of anyone in the house, would respond with a negative, but believe it or not, he said "yes, of course, those kinds of things work all the time, and happen all the time. Even when I was a kid my mom told me never to leave nails on the ground when I cut them, and never to let anyone I didn't know cut my hair, or wash my underwear."
After this he turned around and went home and I was left to walk to school pondering the great mysteries of animism and the wonder of being in Africa...tres bizarre. So hold on to your hair and nails, people, or you may find yourself under the spell of some medicine man. That's all for now.
This morning I was eating my breakfast of dry bread and jam when JB came in and said "Lee, I'm going to walk you to school because I have something important to tell you that is just a good thing to know." Clearly this ruined the peace of my breakfast, as it got me to thinking of all the things I could possibly have done wrong within the last few days, and what he could have to tell me that was so important it merited him getting up at 8 am just to walk down the street with me. Some ideas:
A) Love confession part II.
B) You are a gross American pig and need to clean up after yourself.
C) The other day you said/did something that was exraordinarily insulting to everyone you live with.
D) Everybody in the neighborhood can see you when you change your clothes.
E) You have to move out immediately.
Et cetera. You can imagine that this was distressing, as it could have been ANYTHING.
So we start walking, and he mentions that he heard me talking with his cousin about going to get my hair braided by a girl who lives across the street. This is going to sound bizarre (he prefaced it like that), but there are people all over Dakar, and even in the neighborhood, who talk to him all the time about why he does not save hairs from the Americans heads or cut nails or even things that we've touched and use them for whatever purpose he wants...for example, taking such things to a maribou or medicine man or voodoo figure to cast spells that would make us fall in love with him, or that would make it very easy to injure us if we do something to anger the family. He was just letting me know that it's a very easy and very common thing that people do, and he wanted to warn me that he thought it was a very very bad idea to go across the street and have my hair done. I then asked him "Do you believe in that? Do you believe it works?" to which I was sure JB, the least religious of anyone in the house, would respond with a negative, but believe it or not, he said "yes, of course, those kinds of things work all the time, and happen all the time. Even when I was a kid my mom told me never to leave nails on the ground when I cut them, and never to let anyone I didn't know cut my hair, or wash my underwear."
After this he turned around and went home and I was left to walk to school pondering the great mysteries of animism and the wonder of being in Africa...tres bizarre. So hold on to your hair and nails, people, or you may find yourself under the spell of some medicine man. That's all for now.
Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Here I am again on Tuesday morning making use of the computer lab instead of sleeping in...last night I stayed up with Hannah till around 1 (that's like 2 hours past my bedtime, give me a break)and JB and I walked her down the street to get a taxi. Maman Amitie wanted us to get the license plate number of the taxi just in case something happened to her, but she's sort of old and crazy. How old? 68. How crazy? We'll never know, but what I do know is that her oldest GRANDchild turned 31 last week. Daaaamn. Anyway, Hannah's fine, off to the US for a week, and I can't help but enjoy a little solitude in my room and envy her being put up in a nice hotel and taking glorious hot showers and eating whenever and whatever she wants. The suit she had made for her interview by a tailor here turned out to be really awesome and fits her better than anything you could get in the US for the equivalent of 30 bucks.
So, let's start with Friday. After another exciting history lecture per usual I went with Jeremy, Tina, Natalie, and Joanna to check out this Chinese restaurant around the corner, not because they have good food, but because they have a POOL. There was nobody there, except for three or four employees who sort of oddly stared at us for a couple of hours while we sat around this deck and ordered really expensive food and drinks and waited for a guy to clean out the pool. I wasn't really in the mood for swimming, mostly because it was just a weird situation what with being the only customers and ordering the cheapest things on the menu and the pool seeming sort of sketchy and being at a restaurant in bathing suits with these dudes all staring at us and whatnot. The rest of the bunch cheerfully did cannonballs for several hours, the only resulting injury being some pretty severe scrapes on Tina's feet that we cleaned up with toilet paper that someone was carrying around. We left around 3 and even left something like a 3 percent tip. People generally don't tip at all here. Afterwards we went back to WARC to use the computers, then to le Palais to share a couple of hamburgers (because clearly we needed more food).
Friday night was sort of uneventful - we watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith on TV (dubbed over in French of course). What really amazes me is that there is absolutely no concern about what children are allowed to watch on TV - if it's on, everyone watches it, from 2-year-old Farou, when he's around, to Maman Amitie, be it a bloodly horror flick or a war movie or Scooby Dooby Doo. Samu turned away voluntarily during the scantily-clad-Brad-and-Angelina bits, but was all eyes while they were attempting to blow each other up with machine guns. Another movie that was on was Brokeback Mountain which someone immediately turned off as soon as they realized there would be men kissing later...there is very very little tolerance of homosexuality in this culture.
Saturday morning I headed off to dance feeling sort of woozy (I'd had a very rough week or stomach stuff) and eventually came back early via taxi because I really couldn't dance at all. Too bad, apparently I missed a great class and a new dance but I'll pick it up next time. My friends were all really nice about it and offered to come get me and take me to a doctor if necessary. At home, Maman Amitie was very understanding and gave me plain rice and fish without any spicy sauce. The rest of the day I slept and read Mansfield Park which I got through in like 4 days because there's so much friggin time to just read books. Hannah got back from l'Ile de Madeleine where she spent the day getting a tan and hanging out, and I was feeling a lot better. Saturday night was a good time - we finally got into the kitchen by really bugging Mamie to let us cook the French fries and wash the salad and all that. It was also Purim so I attempted to tell Mamie the story and failed rather miserably but it was at least good to talk to her - she's quiet in the first place, and thinks our French is awful because we can never understand her when she speaks and are always asking her to repeat things. I was all excited to be frying stuff in oil for Purim and then found out that the dinner meat that night was pork. Well, you can't have it all. In any case we told Mamie we'd exchange recipes, and she wants to be there when we bake cookies, which we tried to explain was really not hard at all but she's still sort of in awe at the idea.
Sunday I probably could have slept in but instead I got up at 8 and read more Jane Austen until almost noon, with a break for a little breakfast. Maman Amitie and Samu had gone to see Didi's new apartment and were staying there overnight, so neverland was sort of wild and the kids did whatever they wanted all day. Around 1 I left for Amitie 3 to go to Becky's house where she was having a party for her birthday. The house she lives in is huge and really comfy and there are families and students renting rooms upstairs. She has some Senegalese and Guinean friends from her classes at the university who came for the party and we tried to speak French as much as possible so that everyone could understand. I listened to Saliou and Eli argue about philosophy for a while and then went out in search of vegetable vendors so that we could add something to the twelve pounds of pasta that the family had cooked. Justine and Ashleigh and I wandered around and pretty much bought all the vegetables that this one woman had. The thing about anyone selling stuff on the street is that for the most part, they'll just have enough so that a couple of people can buy a couple of things. Like one woman will have 4 tomatoes and a couple of sketchy-looking peppers, and then down the street you might find some carrots or onions, and around the corner three or four more peppers and a handful of chives. I got a bit of a burn on my shoulders in the process, just walking around for under an hour. The pasta salad turned out to be the best thing I'd eaten in a week, and there were really three GIANT plates full, enough for the twenty people who were there and more. When I say giant plates I mean shallow metal painted dishes nearly three feet in diameter. I'd love to bring one home but I haven't a clue where I'd put it. At the end of the party we had cake that someone bought, with butter cream frosting that Becky's aunts made, which was literally butter and sugar. Then we did this cute little gift exchange where we brought something we had or bought in Dakar and everyone drew numbers out of a hat and got something. I put in a campaign poster and a little necklace and got back an odd shell someone had found on the beach. It was a nice little gathering and sort of awkward but I think people had a good time.
Afterwards some friends and Spencer's family went off to Ouakam to see the Simba festival. I didn't go but I will describe as best I can from what I've heard: Men in costumes do traditional dances and some Mbalax while other guys dressed up as lions run around chasing kids who haven't bought tickets. And when I say chasing kids, I mean really running after them till they scream and then grabbing them and smashing them face down in the dirt or twisting their arms or kicking them until they cry. I think most of the fun of the festival is in watching the child abuse, from what it sounds like. I was hoping to go as well but it was getting kind of late. I also had the inside keys to our room and Hannah was there, throwing up all afternoon, having to go all the way around the house to get to the bathroom. I don't know what's up with everyone getting stomach bugs all the time! We didn't do much Sunday night other than the usual TV routine but I did the dishes and played a game with the kids that was kind of like pre-teen Mad Libs and involved various names and numbers and terminated in a story about who you were going to kiss or marry and when. Kids are pretty much the same everywhere. Jean-Paul, gangsta that he is, has already gotten half of a new tattoo which will say "In God I trust." In English and everything. I of course had to break out a quarter and show him what was written all over all American money, and I think he was sort of put off by that, but at the moment it just says "In God" so he could theoretically change his mind about that...
Yesterday (Monday) I made the spontaneous decision to go downtown and apply for a Gambian visa for spring break. I may go twice, once with Becky and Cate's dads, and again for spring break if I like it. Then again I may bum around Dakar and do all kinds of fun things like shopping and beach trips. We'll see. Anyways we were sort of pressed for time and had to be back for class at 3:30, but Ryan and I got some lunch and then took the car rapide downtown. On the way there I stopped to have some passport photos taken, which took five minutes and cost 4 bucks. I also ran into Jean-Paul, Reine, Samu, and Fifi going home for lunch, which was kind of exciting, seeing family on the street. The car rapide we got on was probably the wrong one and took us nearly an hour to get downtown, but we got there and with some maps and good guesses we made it to the embassy. We started out speaking in French and when they found out we were American they were so impressed with the fact that we spoke French that they started speaking in English. Actually what the woman said (in French) was "the US needs more people like you!" which was mildly encouraging, and then she said "keep it up" in English, and I thought she was testing us to see if we understood Wolof, because the expression was so unintelligible. I responded with "degg naa tuuti rekk" and got laughed at. In any case the Visas were very easily obtainable - in half an hour, no less! - and we filled out the forms, gave them some photos, and were out of there. I was pretty late for Literature class, but I don't think anyone really noticed or cared.
The only other exciting thing that happened yesterday was that Maman Amitie gave us the recipe for cebbu jenn. We sat on the couch taking notes, accompanied by the shrieks and suspense music of some kind of weird horror flick. There was a lot of translating and repetitions and substitutions for things we don't have in the US, and a lot of Mamie cutting in with reminders, but I think it may work out! I'd at least like to see someone prepare it here before I go wasting loads of oil and rice on something that turns out to be really gross.
Well, that's all for now, folks. I'm going to read a book I've borrowed from Ryan and play cards until Wolof and get lunch on the Corniche and talk to Marianne and Sophie about doing some kind of community service soon. I miss the states like crazy but you gotta have some of those days. Things are going well in any case, Alxamdulilaay.
So, let's start with Friday. After another exciting history lecture per usual I went with Jeremy, Tina, Natalie, and Joanna to check out this Chinese restaurant around the corner, not because they have good food, but because they have a POOL. There was nobody there, except for three or four employees who sort of oddly stared at us for a couple of hours while we sat around this deck and ordered really expensive food and drinks and waited for a guy to clean out the pool. I wasn't really in the mood for swimming, mostly because it was just a weird situation what with being the only customers and ordering the cheapest things on the menu and the pool seeming sort of sketchy and being at a restaurant in bathing suits with these dudes all staring at us and whatnot. The rest of the bunch cheerfully did cannonballs for several hours, the only resulting injury being some pretty severe scrapes on Tina's feet that we cleaned up with toilet paper that someone was carrying around. We left around 3 and even left something like a 3 percent tip. People generally don't tip at all here. Afterwards we went back to WARC to use the computers, then to le Palais to share a couple of hamburgers (because clearly we needed more food).
Friday night was sort of uneventful - we watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith on TV (dubbed over in French of course). What really amazes me is that there is absolutely no concern about what children are allowed to watch on TV - if it's on, everyone watches it, from 2-year-old Farou, when he's around, to Maman Amitie, be it a bloodly horror flick or a war movie or Scooby Dooby Doo. Samu turned away voluntarily during the scantily-clad-Brad-and-Angelina bits, but was all eyes while they were attempting to blow each other up with machine guns. Another movie that was on was Brokeback Mountain which someone immediately turned off as soon as they realized there would be men kissing later...there is very very little tolerance of homosexuality in this culture.
Saturday morning I headed off to dance feeling sort of woozy (I'd had a very rough week or stomach stuff) and eventually came back early via taxi because I really couldn't dance at all. Too bad, apparently I missed a great class and a new dance but I'll pick it up next time. My friends were all really nice about it and offered to come get me and take me to a doctor if necessary. At home, Maman Amitie was very understanding and gave me plain rice and fish without any spicy sauce. The rest of the day I slept and read Mansfield Park which I got through in like 4 days because there's so much friggin time to just read books. Hannah got back from l'Ile de Madeleine where she spent the day getting a tan and hanging out, and I was feeling a lot better. Saturday night was a good time - we finally got into the kitchen by really bugging Mamie to let us cook the French fries and wash the salad and all that. It was also Purim so I attempted to tell Mamie the story and failed rather miserably but it was at least good to talk to her - she's quiet in the first place, and thinks our French is awful because we can never understand her when she speaks and are always asking her to repeat things. I was all excited to be frying stuff in oil for Purim and then found out that the dinner meat that night was pork. Well, you can't have it all. In any case we told Mamie we'd exchange recipes, and she wants to be there when we bake cookies, which we tried to explain was really not hard at all but she's still sort of in awe at the idea.
Sunday I probably could have slept in but instead I got up at 8 and read more Jane Austen until almost noon, with a break for a little breakfast. Maman Amitie and Samu had gone to see Didi's new apartment and were staying there overnight, so neverland was sort of wild and the kids did whatever they wanted all day. Around 1 I left for Amitie 3 to go to Becky's house where she was having a party for her birthday. The house she lives in is huge and really comfy and there are families and students renting rooms upstairs. She has some Senegalese and Guinean friends from her classes at the university who came for the party and we tried to speak French as much as possible so that everyone could understand. I listened to Saliou and Eli argue about philosophy for a while and then went out in search of vegetable vendors so that we could add something to the twelve pounds of pasta that the family had cooked. Justine and Ashleigh and I wandered around and pretty much bought all the vegetables that this one woman had. The thing about anyone selling stuff on the street is that for the most part, they'll just have enough so that a couple of people can buy a couple of things. Like one woman will have 4 tomatoes and a couple of sketchy-looking peppers, and then down the street you might find some carrots or onions, and around the corner three or four more peppers and a handful of chives. I got a bit of a burn on my shoulders in the process, just walking around for under an hour. The pasta salad turned out to be the best thing I'd eaten in a week, and there were really three GIANT plates full, enough for the twenty people who were there and more. When I say giant plates I mean shallow metal painted dishes nearly three feet in diameter. I'd love to bring one home but I haven't a clue where I'd put it. At the end of the party we had cake that someone bought, with butter cream frosting that Becky's aunts made, which was literally butter and sugar. Then we did this cute little gift exchange where we brought something we had or bought in Dakar and everyone drew numbers out of a hat and got something. I put in a campaign poster and a little necklace and got back an odd shell someone had found on the beach. It was a nice little gathering and sort of awkward but I think people had a good time.
Afterwards some friends and Spencer's family went off to Ouakam to see the Simba festival. I didn't go but I will describe as best I can from what I've heard: Men in costumes do traditional dances and some Mbalax while other guys dressed up as lions run around chasing kids who haven't bought tickets. And when I say chasing kids, I mean really running after them till they scream and then grabbing them and smashing them face down in the dirt or twisting their arms or kicking them until they cry. I think most of the fun of the festival is in watching the child abuse, from what it sounds like. I was hoping to go as well but it was getting kind of late. I also had the inside keys to our room and Hannah was there, throwing up all afternoon, having to go all the way around the house to get to the bathroom. I don't know what's up with everyone getting stomach bugs all the time! We didn't do much Sunday night other than the usual TV routine but I did the dishes and played a game with the kids that was kind of like pre-teen Mad Libs and involved various names and numbers and terminated in a story about who you were going to kiss or marry and when. Kids are pretty much the same everywhere. Jean-Paul, gangsta that he is, has already gotten half of a new tattoo which will say "In God I trust." In English and everything. I of course had to break out a quarter and show him what was written all over all American money, and I think he was sort of put off by that, but at the moment it just says "In God" so he could theoretically change his mind about that...
Yesterday (Monday) I made the spontaneous decision to go downtown and apply for a Gambian visa for spring break. I may go twice, once with Becky and Cate's dads, and again for spring break if I like it. Then again I may bum around Dakar and do all kinds of fun things like shopping and beach trips. We'll see. Anyways we were sort of pressed for time and had to be back for class at 3:30, but Ryan and I got some lunch and then took the car rapide downtown. On the way there I stopped to have some passport photos taken, which took five minutes and cost 4 bucks. I also ran into Jean-Paul, Reine, Samu, and Fifi going home for lunch, which was kind of exciting, seeing family on the street. The car rapide we got on was probably the wrong one and took us nearly an hour to get downtown, but we got there and with some maps and good guesses we made it to the embassy. We started out speaking in French and when they found out we were American they were so impressed with the fact that we spoke French that they started speaking in English. Actually what the woman said (in French) was "the US needs more people like you!" which was mildly encouraging, and then she said "keep it up" in English, and I thought she was testing us to see if we understood Wolof, because the expression was so unintelligible. I responded with "degg naa tuuti rekk" and got laughed at. In any case the Visas were very easily obtainable - in half an hour, no less! - and we filled out the forms, gave them some photos, and were out of there. I was pretty late for Literature class, but I don't think anyone really noticed or cared.
The only other exciting thing that happened yesterday was that Maman Amitie gave us the recipe for cebbu jenn. We sat on the couch taking notes, accompanied by the shrieks and suspense music of some kind of weird horror flick. There was a lot of translating and repetitions and substitutions for things we don't have in the US, and a lot of Mamie cutting in with reminders, but I think it may work out! I'd at least like to see someone prepare it here before I go wasting loads of oil and rice on something that turns out to be really gross.
Well, that's all for now, folks. I'm going to read a book I've borrowed from Ryan and play cards until Wolof and get lunch on the Corniche and talk to Marianne and Sophie about doing some kind of community service soon. I miss the states like crazy but you gotta have some of those days. Things are going well in any case, Alxamdulilaay.
Thursday, March 1, 2007
Part 2 of a day in the life
Before I begin I have to say that I am quite jealous of several people whose parents are visiting at the moment, mostly because they have a great excuse to miss class and have taken hot showers in the hotel. Some news for today: French class is cancelled because our professor is somewhere in Gambia, and Maman Amitie is tired because she has to wake up Samu so he doesn't wet the bed at night. "Il est un gros pisseur," she said this morning; "quelquefois c'est les pompiers!" which means "He's a big pisser...sometimes its like the firemen!" Also she told me and Hannah that she was fattening us up before we go home, so she wants us to eat good breakfasts. It's most certainly working, I can tell I'm gaining weight. Another great Maman Amitie moment was last night at dinner when she and Mamie were grilling me about why my stomach was hurting, and I thought it wasnt okay to say during dinner in front of the whole family. I sort of waited till the kids had dispersed and said no to a list of things it could possibly be, including menstruation, fish, spicy spinach sauce, and too many cookies. Finally I quietly told the two of them and was met with a very loud exclamation of "Ohhhh, t'es constipee!" from Maman. Pretty embarrassing, though I probably should have just said it in the first place.
Oh also this morning we went to two pharmacies and got laughed at before we found a pumice stone, which cost over 6 dollars but is probably going to be the best purchase EVER. The man who sold it to us told us that it was for girls, generally. We were sort of confused because it's rather obvious that we're girls. I mean, I think it is.
So where was I? Ah yes, our arrival at WARC around 9 am. Let's make it a Wednesday. I'll usually run into the computer lab for a few minutes and check my email, until Sophie comes in to yell at us that the Islam professor has arrived: "c'est l'heure!" (it's time!) Class usually goes from 9 to 11 with about a 20 minute break sometime in there. You never know where class is going to be - there are really only a couple of classrooms and the different groups of students sort of fight over who gets the big one and who gets squashed into the office. When it's actually time for lunch we sort of slowly mobilize people for a variety of different choices:
1) Eat at WARC. It's a real restaurant that lots of people other than the students come to, and it's rather expensive (between 800 and 1200, or around 2 bucks.) They sort of cycle through different meals, including fish and fries, Cebbu jenn, Yassa poisson or yassa viande, vernicelli and some kind of meat, mafe, and once in a while theyll have spaghetti with meat sauce. Usually there are two choices and theyll tell the students that the good one is all gone so they can serve it to the Senegalese professors and other people. Most of the time it's pretty good, but again rather expensive and it's fun to explore other options.
2) Buy pain thon, which is, as Tina calls it, tuna slop, on half a baguette. This costs a whopping 125 cfa - 25 cents.
3) Buy pain chocolat, chocolate on bread, then buy a banana from the fruit vendor, slice it up, and put it on the bread. Again a good half a baguette or more than a foot of bread, but it's not that filling.
4) Walk to Nando's and buy Thiakry (sweet yoghurt made from dried milk. The bottom of the carton is filled with a sort of watery millet mush that you mix in and its DELICIOUS.) This can be supplemented by fruit or bread. The walk is about 20 minutes either way.
5) Walk to the Toubab store (run by Toubabs, frequented by Toubabs) on the Corniche (the beach) and buy bread, yoghurt, granola, cheese, vegetables, and any number of good things if you are willing to walk and to navigate a giant store full of anything that can be imported from Europe. It's a great place but also kind of expensive. I like to get laughing cow cheese, bread, and a tomato, then make a sandwich.
6) Go to a resto, where you can get fairly decent to excellent cebbu jenn for 300-500 cfa, depending on how hungry you are. Be prepared to speak some Wolof and possibly have terrible gas later.
7) Walk over to the University (if you're there, it's clearly the best option) and go to a restaurant where you can get pretty much any of the same things as above, but for less.
8) Walk over to the University and buy an egg sandwich from the vendor. Be prepared for shoving and inquiries from Senegalese students and getting ripped off if you don't know the price beforehand.
9) Walk to a shawarma place or the french-style sandwich shop.
I was hoping that list would get up to ten, but there you have it.
Whenever I have two classes a day, there is generally between three and four hours of free time in between. Here are some of the things I do in between:
1) more computer, if there aren't tons of people there.
2) gather awkwardly and talk to whoever else is there
3) read for class
4) do homework (HA! like once in a blue moon)
5) sit on the ledges of the building or at the WARC tables and play cards. Gin rummy, hearts, and most recently euchre (which I just learned and am awful at; none of the Michigan people will be my partner)
6) fall asleep under the big painted tree or on the building ledges
7) spend a while in the toilets if you're having mal au ventre then talk about the quality of your bowel movements - we're all so past the point of having any shame left
8) wander around dakar
9) go to a cyber cafe
10) go downtown or to the markets (for business or pleasure, business being the post office or picking up plane tickets or something administrative and pleasure being I have no idea what because its so insane down there)
Yeah, the days go slowly here. WARC is a good comfortable place to be, though, and things take so much more time than at home that the hours just sort of roll by.
Wednesday afternoons I have literature class, also two hours and involving usually a break of almost half an hour, during which I sometimes go across the street to the boutique and buy Biskrem and more recently Cafe Touba. Cafe Touba comes very hot in a little plastic cup and tastes like someone added a load of pepper to some really cheap coffee, but it is in fact delicious. And heavily caffeinated. Biskrem, and forgive me if I've already described them, are about the greatest cookie in the world. They come in packs of twelve and cost 60 cents. They're round with a delicious stale cardboard texture and a pasty chocolate filling. I probably eat an average of 3 or 4 daily. Meaning that I eat several packs a week. Hey, it's better than cigarettes. And I'm working on my jaayfunde (a most excellent Wolof word meaning big round butt, and one of the highest compliments among the youth in terms of physique).
After class we mobilize for the walk home. I don't really like to be part of a group of more than 5 or so Toubabs, but inevitably it ends up that way. Once in a while we get followed back towards Nando's by the stray dog pack that rules the streets near WARC. They're pretty mangy and scarred and you can tell who's the leader, and which of the females are pregnant, and who's been in a fight recently. I think they have it pretty good considering the amount of garbage that is available to them without much effort on their part.
The best part of walking anywhere is the intersections where, no joke, I fear for my life every single time. Sometimes the police direct traffic and help us out, but most of the time its just complete insanity. What you usually have to do is cross the first lane when you can, then stand in the middle and hope not to get hit by a bus while you wait to cross the second and third lanes. Tuesdays and Thursdays in the middle of the day we have to walk from WARC to the Baobab Center for Wolof class, which takes about half an hour and involves between 1 and 3 of said intersections, depending on what route you take and what you want to do on the way there. I walk pretty much everywhere unless I'm out at night and it's dangerous. Some girls just take taxis all the time so they can sleep in because they don't like walking. I have some friends who live 15 minutes walk away and take a taxi, and others who walk over an hour each way to school just because they like it.
It's also pretty amazing how different the situations of the host families are here. A couple of girls live with a very well-to-do Cape Verdian family in a giant courtyard house with mango and grapefruit trees. On the other hand, three peoples families have combined shower-Turkish toilets in the bathrooms (woohooo thats a stinky shower) and a couple of people live in apartments where they can only get running water at certain hours of the day and have to lug it up from the basement in buckets. And even they are very well off. My family is pretty wealthy, I think, and has a lot of luxuries compared to the rest of the population. Ibou, our frend in construction, lives with something like 20 people, works 72 hours a week, and said that most everyone lays their heads down on floor mats in the same few rooms. At our house, all the girls have beds, as do JB and Jean Paul (they share one) and Maman Amitie. The kids will switch off, I think, who sleeps where, and Felix always gets the couch in the family room until the morning when Awa comes to clean up and he moves to the floor of the boys' room.
Well I'll continue with a third installment soon, unless more excitement ensues. I mean, you never know. I wish I could put up pictures here but the computers won't support those kinds of programs, it seems. The good ones are all on facebook.
Yenduleen ag jamm (pass the day in peace.)
Oh also this morning we went to two pharmacies and got laughed at before we found a pumice stone, which cost over 6 dollars but is probably going to be the best purchase EVER. The man who sold it to us told us that it was for girls, generally. We were sort of confused because it's rather obvious that we're girls. I mean, I think it is.
So where was I? Ah yes, our arrival at WARC around 9 am. Let's make it a Wednesday. I'll usually run into the computer lab for a few minutes and check my email, until Sophie comes in to yell at us that the Islam professor has arrived: "c'est l'heure!" (it's time!) Class usually goes from 9 to 11 with about a 20 minute break sometime in there. You never know where class is going to be - there are really only a couple of classrooms and the different groups of students sort of fight over who gets the big one and who gets squashed into the office. When it's actually time for lunch we sort of slowly mobilize people for a variety of different choices:
1) Eat at WARC. It's a real restaurant that lots of people other than the students come to, and it's rather expensive (between 800 and 1200, or around 2 bucks.) They sort of cycle through different meals, including fish and fries, Cebbu jenn, Yassa poisson or yassa viande, vernicelli and some kind of meat, mafe, and once in a while theyll have spaghetti with meat sauce. Usually there are two choices and theyll tell the students that the good one is all gone so they can serve it to the Senegalese professors and other people. Most of the time it's pretty good, but again rather expensive and it's fun to explore other options.
2) Buy pain thon, which is, as Tina calls it, tuna slop, on half a baguette. This costs a whopping 125 cfa - 25 cents.
3) Buy pain chocolat, chocolate on bread, then buy a banana from the fruit vendor, slice it up, and put it on the bread. Again a good half a baguette or more than a foot of bread, but it's not that filling.
4) Walk to Nando's and buy Thiakry (sweet yoghurt made from dried milk. The bottom of the carton is filled with a sort of watery millet mush that you mix in and its DELICIOUS.) This can be supplemented by fruit or bread. The walk is about 20 minutes either way.
5) Walk to the Toubab store (run by Toubabs, frequented by Toubabs) on the Corniche (the beach) and buy bread, yoghurt, granola, cheese, vegetables, and any number of good things if you are willing to walk and to navigate a giant store full of anything that can be imported from Europe. It's a great place but also kind of expensive. I like to get laughing cow cheese, bread, and a tomato, then make a sandwich.
6) Go to a resto, where you can get fairly decent to excellent cebbu jenn for 300-500 cfa, depending on how hungry you are. Be prepared to speak some Wolof and possibly have terrible gas later.
7) Walk over to the University (if you're there, it's clearly the best option) and go to a restaurant where you can get pretty much any of the same things as above, but for less.
8) Walk over to the University and buy an egg sandwich from the vendor. Be prepared for shoving and inquiries from Senegalese students and getting ripped off if you don't know the price beforehand.
9) Walk to a shawarma place or the french-style sandwich shop.
I was hoping that list would get up to ten, but there you have it.
Whenever I have two classes a day, there is generally between three and four hours of free time in between. Here are some of the things I do in between:
1) more computer, if there aren't tons of people there.
2) gather awkwardly and talk to whoever else is there
3) read for class
4) do homework (HA! like once in a blue moon)
5) sit on the ledges of the building or at the WARC tables and play cards. Gin rummy, hearts, and most recently euchre (which I just learned and am awful at; none of the Michigan people will be my partner)
6) fall asleep under the big painted tree or on the building ledges
7) spend a while in the toilets if you're having mal au ventre then talk about the quality of your bowel movements - we're all so past the point of having any shame left
8) wander around dakar
9) go to a cyber cafe
10) go downtown or to the markets (for business or pleasure, business being the post office or picking up plane tickets or something administrative and pleasure being I have no idea what because its so insane down there)
Yeah, the days go slowly here. WARC is a good comfortable place to be, though, and things take so much more time than at home that the hours just sort of roll by.
Wednesday afternoons I have literature class, also two hours and involving usually a break of almost half an hour, during which I sometimes go across the street to the boutique and buy Biskrem and more recently Cafe Touba. Cafe Touba comes very hot in a little plastic cup and tastes like someone added a load of pepper to some really cheap coffee, but it is in fact delicious. And heavily caffeinated. Biskrem, and forgive me if I've already described them, are about the greatest cookie in the world. They come in packs of twelve and cost 60 cents. They're round with a delicious stale cardboard texture and a pasty chocolate filling. I probably eat an average of 3 or 4 daily. Meaning that I eat several packs a week. Hey, it's better than cigarettes. And I'm working on my jaayfunde (a most excellent Wolof word meaning big round butt, and one of the highest compliments among the youth in terms of physique).
After class we mobilize for the walk home. I don't really like to be part of a group of more than 5 or so Toubabs, but inevitably it ends up that way. Once in a while we get followed back towards Nando's by the stray dog pack that rules the streets near WARC. They're pretty mangy and scarred and you can tell who's the leader, and which of the females are pregnant, and who's been in a fight recently. I think they have it pretty good considering the amount of garbage that is available to them without much effort on their part.
The best part of walking anywhere is the intersections where, no joke, I fear for my life every single time. Sometimes the police direct traffic and help us out, but most of the time its just complete insanity. What you usually have to do is cross the first lane when you can, then stand in the middle and hope not to get hit by a bus while you wait to cross the second and third lanes. Tuesdays and Thursdays in the middle of the day we have to walk from WARC to the Baobab Center for Wolof class, which takes about half an hour and involves between 1 and 3 of said intersections, depending on what route you take and what you want to do on the way there. I walk pretty much everywhere unless I'm out at night and it's dangerous. Some girls just take taxis all the time so they can sleep in because they don't like walking. I have some friends who live 15 minutes walk away and take a taxi, and others who walk over an hour each way to school just because they like it.
It's also pretty amazing how different the situations of the host families are here. A couple of girls live with a very well-to-do Cape Verdian family in a giant courtyard house with mango and grapefruit trees. On the other hand, three peoples families have combined shower-Turkish toilets in the bathrooms (woohooo thats a stinky shower) and a couple of people live in apartments where they can only get running water at certain hours of the day and have to lug it up from the basement in buckets. And even they are very well off. My family is pretty wealthy, I think, and has a lot of luxuries compared to the rest of the population. Ibou, our frend in construction, lives with something like 20 people, works 72 hours a week, and said that most everyone lays their heads down on floor mats in the same few rooms. At our house, all the girls have beds, as do JB and Jean Paul (they share one) and Maman Amitie. The kids will switch off, I think, who sleeps where, and Felix always gets the couch in the family room until the morning when Awa comes to clean up and he moves to the floor of the boys' room.
Well I'll continue with a third installment soon, unless more excitement ensues. I mean, you never know. I wish I could put up pictures here but the computers won't support those kinds of programs, it seems. The good ones are all on facebook.
Yenduleen ag jamm (pass the day in peace.)
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