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.