An excellent Friday

Friday afternoon after class seven of us walked from WARC to the real downtown area of Dakar. It took over an hour and I was tired after a long week, so I definitely got cranky on the way in, but we walked on a road that overlooks the ocean and saw the sun setting over the water and it was pretty and I started feeling happier. And the sunset reminded me of The Lion King and the sunrise at the beginning of Circle of Life, so I started to sing. Come to Senegal and live your Disney inspired childhood dreams.

While we were walking, a bus stopped by the sidewalk near us, and sitting by the windows were four other study abroad students from WARC, waving for us to get on. Because in a city of a million people, obviously a bus carrying four of the only maybe twenty-five people you know in all of Dakar will of course pull up right next to you as you’re walking along. Another occurrence that happens more typically in animated musicals.

Then we went to N’ice Cream, where I purchased amazingly rich triple chocolate and intensely raspberry-y raspberry ice cream for the exorbitant (by Dakar standards) price of $3 for two scoops. I’m going to be so confused when I get back to the US and have to actually start paying realistic prices for things. The ice cream was so delicious and there were so many other flavors to choose from (at least 35, including one called ‘Obama’) that we decided we’re going to have to make going to N’ice Cream a weekly event. Score.

After ice cream, some people wanted real food, so we went to this total dive restaurant where I just wanted to split a plate of fries with two other people, but not only was the plate of fries we were bought gigantic and overflowing, but our waiter brought us a second plate for free, so I ate so many fries that it was ridiculous and greasy and delicious. While we were eating, the TV in the corner was playing a show whose name was unfortunately mistranslated as ‘Arab’s got talent’.

After gorging ourselves, we headed to the Institut Français, a cultural center for Dakar’s expat community, where we had tickets to a concert by Youssou N’Dour, who is probably the most famous living person in Senegal and is definitely the most famous musician. My host mother was in fact appalled two weeks ago to learn I’d never heard any of his music. Anyway, I rectified that situation by sitting center at the concert, three rows from the front, and swaying and dancing to the mbalax music and being overwhelmed by the ridiculously high energy all around me. But I have to admit, my favorite parts were the sappy moments where we all waved our lit cell phones because that’s just so iconically ‘concert’ and I was at my first concert (not counting Lawnparties, anyways) and I was doing just that and I just felt so cool. 

A selection of anecdotes for your enjoyment

I witnessed my first street fight this past week. I was sitting in My Shop, an internet café (more like an internet fast food restaurant if you want to get technical) and these two men outside started hitting each other until one was bleeding profusely. A crowd gathered, but no one seemed to call the police, probably because Dakar traffic is always so obscenely jammed that there was no chance of the police arriving.

I’ve never had any desire to be bulimic, but at dinner a few nights ago I was force-fed such absurd quantities that afterwards I wanted very much to stick my finger down my throat and vomit it all up.

I’ve developed mad skills at killing inch-long cockroaches by flashlight during power outages. I’ve also discovered the necessity of shaking out my hairbrush for ants each morning.

Alice (you’ll hear a lot more about her in this and later posts) and I were sitting on the sidewalk in the middle of Dakar under the shade of a parked car (yes, the car was parked entirely on the sidewalk) waiting for a bus (literally a bus, not the bus, because we didn’t know what bus we were waiting for) when a one-legged man sitting on a skateboard rolled up to us to ask for money, and instead of giving him some coins, Alice just started chatting with him in Wolof (she took a course last semester in the US). Because why wouldn’t you start chatting with a one-legged stranger who rides around on a skateboard when you’re sitting in the middle of a sidewalk waiting for a bus in Dakar?

The Wolof word for gay translates to ‘manwoman’. According to my Wolof professor, there are no lesbians in Senegal.

I learned to make Thieboudienne the other day. One of my jobs was to pick miniature ants out of the bag of uncooked rice. I definitely didn’t get all of them. I guess I’ve been eating bugs every meal. I also had to mortar and pestle and entire half of a frozen fish, skin, bones, and all. The resulting bony pulp was made into fishballs.

One of my host family’s maids has developed an unhealthy fascination with my hair. She’s ruffled it four times in the past two days. She’s also asked if I shampoo with olive oil. Two other people have also examined my hair in the past few days. One was eight, the other three. The three-year-old has an excuse. The eight year old, maybe not so much.

I saw a man wearing a boubou and boat shoes. It’s a pretty snazzy combination.

As we run across two lanes of traffic, hop over the divider, and dash across two more. Alice: “This is like a video game, only you’re playing with your life.”

Earlier this week, I ate a delicious lunch of baguette, nutella, and orangina while sitting on the beach. The market where we bought the food has a deli where you pick your own freshly baked baguette from a rack and then pass it behind the counter to the woman making your sandwich. They also sell jam in fantastic flavors like bissap (hibiscus) and something that translates to ‘bread of monkeys’. I think it’s the fruit of the baobab tree.

This one’s for Marian. Yes, the number ‘ten’ in Wolof is indeed ‘fukk’.

My host mother and I had a conversation the other day about how Americans are indiscreet. I agreed. But thinking about how my host mother walks around the house every morning wearing only a sheet, and about how she changes with her door open, so that I’ve already seen her topless, I think Americans and Senegalese just have differing definitions of ‘indiscreet’.

I was at My Shop with some friends yesterday evening, sitting at the plastic tables while everyone around us ate pizza and fast food chicken. My friends bought wine and drank from the bottle. I just had ice cream. I felt ridiculously adult nonetheless.

As an addendum to that last anecdote: last night I left Alice’s house at 2:30 am. (After My Shop, we went to her house. We ended up on her roof, watching the stars and taxis and listening to the prayers rising from the mosque across the street.) When I finally decided to go, I made her wait with me on the sidewalk until a taxi pulled up, and when she went to go back inside, the door had locked behind her. No one in her family was up to let her in, so she had to come back to my place and crash on the couch is my room. I’ve never before felt like such a cosmopolitan twenty-something. Oh, and did I mention that this all took place in Senegal?

Some thoughts on interpersonal relations

I spent from 10:00 to 4:30 Saturday on Île de Gorée, once the largest slave trade departure port in Africa, being harassed by street vendors. One woman stalked me, introducing herself while we were traveling by boat to the island before ever so coincidentally running into me twice more, the second time actually following me to the bathroom and cornering me when I came out. (Zach, if you’re reading this, please don’t call this karma.) When I finally told her that I didn’t want to visit her shop, she pouted because I broke a promise I supposedly gave her on the boat and then, when that didn’t work, shouted at me that Americans were always changing their minds (because obviously yelling at potential customers is a superb way to entice them to your store), at which point I walked off (still apologizing, I must add, because I have no spine). And yes, I know I messed with her mind and wasted her time by attempting politeness rather than brushing her off, but really, is it necessary to guilt trip people just so that one out of every maybe thirty will feel bad enough to make a purchase? I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, but my imagination is limited, but from unfortunate memories of trying to get people to sign petitions for Amnesty, I can just barely begin to piece together how degraded she must feel having to hassle people if she’s to have any hope of earning income that day, but I hope she understands that in doing so she’s not just demeaning herself, she’s also making (pick one: some, many, most) of those who shoo her away or ignore her or sadly say ‘no’ feel like they’re terrible, terrible people. And I hope that’s something she’s ok with.

Then there were the vendors wearing hundreds of red and green and yellow beaded necklaces who’d follow you up the pathways to the scenic overlooks, asking your name and calling you ‘sister,’ which is a sweet reminder of global unity and the fact that we are all sisters and brothers and all those lovey-dovey notions, but once your sister is a woman whose sole aim in entering your life is to get your 1000 CFA ($2), then that term loses all possible significance.

Which reminds me. My host sister, Marie Sophie, who calls me her big sister, asked me yesterday if I was lonely being an only child and if I wished I had sisters and brothers and I lied and said ‘yes’.

But I digress. Back to the thought of overuse of a term of intimacy rendering it meaningless. I haven’t called my host mother “Maman” since my first day at the house (when I was emotionally compromised and desperately wanted her to be my mom) because the fact is that she’s not my mom and I don’t love her and I worry that to call her ‘mom’ would be to debase what the word for me connotes. (Sometimes German sentence structure just sounds better than English.)

I feel the same about calling the other Americans here friends. I love that German distinguishes between a Freund, a true, potentially lifelong friend, and Bekannte, an acquaintance, but without the slightly derogatory connotation. Because my friends here aren’t my friends. I’ve known them for seven days, and much as they’re a refuge from the madness of street vendors and host families and French, it’s also takes significant effort to be around them and try to get to know them. Which is not to say that they won’t become my friends. I certainly hope that they will. But what we have now isn’t friendship. Yet.

Host families are pretty awesome! Senegalese keyboards, not so much (the keys are switched around).

In my room at my host family’s house I have a TV, a computer, a couch, and a private bathroom, which begs the question of why I go to Princeton at all when I could just live in luxury in Senegal. I mean, shared bathrooms down the hall? How déclassé compared to a house that’s three stories plus a walk-on roof with a spectacular view of the neighborhood and the goat that lives on the roof next door. Downstairs, my bedroom window opens onto a semi-indoor garden and just outside my room there’s a couch and coffee table where my host mother brought me breakfast this morning (although I do wish she would stop pampering me). And there’s Wifi. I wish I could express how in love with my host family’s house I am right now.

I’m pretty in love with my host family, too. My host mother is young and gorgeous and has three adorable kids and is a social worker. She works with the families of youth who have been arrested to help them reintegrate into society after they’re released from prison (or juvenile detention centers? I’m not quite sure how the Senegalese justice system works). My host father is a tax official and teaches economics at the University Cheikh Anta Diop, also known as the University of Dakar. I’m not entirely sure what being a tax official entails, but he’s traveled to almost every country in Africa and much (although I’m not quite sure how much) or Europe, Asia, and North America for work, so I’m guessing it’s pretty important. He definitely wears very legit looking suits. And watches CNN.

The oldest daughter, Marie Sophie, is nine and goes to a bilingual French/English school, along with Ibrahima, her six-year-old brother. Khadija, the three-year-old youngest sister, might speak better French than I do. Maybe. The older two definitely do. And they speak Wolof with the nanny. Which means that these kids are going to be actively trilingual by the age of ten. So jealous. I’ve been asked to speak English with Marie Sophie to help her improve, although she’s already quite good. Her English is probably better than my French. Again, maybe.

I spent a good portion of the evening watching Hannah Montana in French with Marie Sophie on the massive TV in their living room. Because of course the first time I’d watch a Miley Cyrus TV show would be in Senegal. Then the Jonas Brothers came on and I told Marie Sophie that they were from New Jersey, too, which seriously impressed her. I was actually quite worried about how our interactions would go, because I’m not much of a kid person, but all three kids are really sweet. And they call me sister. And they like to hug. Which is a definite plus. My host mom hugged me, too, after I asked if I could call her mom. Clearly the way to a mother’s heart.

I spent from 4:30-11:00 yesterday speaking French with the family, which was intense and definitely had moments of me deer-in-headlightsing because I had no idea what was going on, but was also me speaking French for six-and-half hours, which isn’t shabby for my second day in Senegal. Although this morning when I woke up I was definitely not ready to speak more French. But there were birds singing in the garden outside my window and host mother gave me half of a gigantic baguette for breakfast and my host father’s chauffer drove me to WARC before dropping my father off at work, so life is pretty good.

I suppose I’m here, although sometimes it doesn’t feel like it.

Leopold Sedar Senghor International Airport in Dakar has cats milling around baggage claim and 150 men loitering outside. Six or seven follow you to your bus, where they try to hoist your luggage onto the roof so they can ask to be tipped in dollars. When you climb inside the bus, they encircle it, knocking on the windows. One forces opens the door and asks for money for coffee. He calls you ‘sister’.

At the hotel it’s 7:00 am and you try to sleep, but you can’t. You want to think about something calming, so you think about friends and home, but now you’re going to cry, so you make yourself promise to discount any thoughts you have before getting some rest because you’ve only gotten three-and-half hours of sleep and that’s what causing the sadness, not any profound discontent with Dakar. You tell yourself you don’t dislike Dakar. Just before drifting off, you realize the people you love give your life meaning. You wonder why you left them.

When you wake up, you go to a house with leather couches and white marble tiles on the floors. Ousmane Sembene lives four doors down. You’re star struck. You’re the only one who knows who he is. You sit on the roof with the other fifteen Americans and listen to a man recite your orientation packet and realize periodically that this man is speaking French. He tells you that you will not experience racism but that people will assume your last name is ‘dollar’ and that you will receive five marriage proposals per day. He tells you not to go anywhere with men you don’t know because however many years ago, a girl was raped. You hope he’s just trying to scare you. You decide, regardless, to never again go anywhere, ever, alone with a man. And to never again go anywhere, ever, alone. You remember you’re going to have to walk forty-five minutes to and from school each day.

You eat Thiéboudienne, mushing the rice into a ball in your right hand and rolling it into your mouth. You expected to love the food. You don’t. You’ll get used to it. You walk to the ocean. You climb out onto the rocks and take pictures of what a girl tells you are hermit crabs and a brown sweatshirt in the water and a man walking his goat on the beach. You wonder why the beachfront mansion doesn’t clean up the trash strewn across the sand beyond its walls. You wonder why the mosque next-door doesn’t either. You don’t think about the people you’ve left on the other side of the Atlantic.

Back at the house, you have a dance party on the roof. You realize you’re having a dance party on the roof of a house in Dakar. You hope you never see the photographic evidence of your dancing. You realize you’re having fun. You take a picture of the gorgeous orange sunset beyond the palm trees and the white, angular buildings across the road. You’re told that the orange is just the light from the airport. You decide it’s pretty anyway.