More anecdotes, per request of someone I don't think I know but who's following my blog

Marie Sophie introduced me to her cousin. She said I was from New Jersey. He said he was well acquainted with New Jersey. He watches Jersey Shore. Jersey Shore has reached Dakar.

The phrase for 'bumper cars' in French is 'auto tamponneuses'. We now call the bumper cars near my house the tampon cars.

Was walking past the tampon cars when I recognized the music to ATC's 'All Around the World (La La La La La)'. I haven't listened to that song since maybe 2001. I still remembered an embarrassing number of the words. Now! 6 was such a great CD. 

Had a meeting with the Princeton postgraduate fellowship advisor in My Shop via Skype. She asked my GPA. There are some things I would rather not say in public. Yet another example of how privacy does not exist in Senegal.

Decided to determine what proportion of taxis honk at me as I pass. During an approximately ten minute period of my walk home, ten of the thirty taxis that passed me honked. 1/3, dear readers. Fully 1/3. Considering that another 1/3 probably already had passengers, basically 1/2 of all empty taxis passing feel it's necessary to honk to alert me to their presence. Because obviously even thought I'm walking (and often walking in the opposite direction), their honking might suddenly remind me that I actually want to take a taxi. My data would also suggest that I'm honked at once every minute, although it feels less frequent because the honks tend to come in pairs. Because clearly if I didn't react when the first taxi honked, it makes perfect sense for the taxi just behind to honk, too. Maybe his will be the one to convince me that I simply can't walk any further and must immediately jump into a cab heading the wrong way.

A man yelled, "Lady, you are pretty!" at me as I waited for a bus. Considered replying, "No I'm not. Are you insane?"

Think a group of preteen boys made kissing noises as I walked past. 

A five-year-old kid called me a tubab on my way to school. I hate seeing kids pick up the bad habits of their elders, like when Khadijatou insulted the boy in her preschool for playing with dolls. It's so much more pleasant to think that children are tabula rasa, but if they ever are, that stage is long gone by the age of three. 

Someone's been reading my blog from Indonesia. Ufortunately that still counts as part of Asia. Come on, people of Oceania! Make my life complete, why don't you.  

My African Lit professor went on a tangent during class (hardly a rare occurrence) and told us about how as a preteen, he was circumcised in the brush. I far prefer thinking things like that only happen in African literature.

My mosquito killing skills have increased tenfold in the past week. I just felt the need to share that with the world. Does anyone know why squashed mosquito innards resemble charcoal?

Held down the three-year-old while her mother administered a rectal medicine. I have never felt so much like an accessory to rape.

I have already eaten a baguette and a quarter or a baguette and a third today and it is only just after lunch. There will be more baguette with dinner.

A stranger I passed on the street held up his hand for me to give him a high five. When I didn't, he slapped me on the shoulder instead.

Got a marriage proposal at 8:05 am the other day. What a way to start off the morning. 

A man in his thirties approached me at WARC to ask if I would fund his studies/research. Why would I, a twenty year old student, fund the studies/research of a man ten to fifteen years older than me? I wonder if people here are ashamed when they ask such preposterous and humiliating questions. I would hope so.

My friend Ioana went to The Gambia over Spring Break. Apparently sex tourism is fairly big there. But not sex tourism the way you'd assume (or at least the way I'd assume), between older European/American men and younger Gambian women. Instead, it's between older European/American women and younger Gambian men. Let's just say Ioana had some stories about shenanigans occurring in her hotel. 

Gambian man offering himself to Ioana as a prostitute: "Nice lady, nice lady. Would you like my company?" Unlike many of the quotes on this blog, that one hasn't been translated. Gambia's official language is English. I'd almost rather hear something that disturbing in French. It makes it less real, somehow, keeping the literal meaning but losing the emotional one. For me, 'Ich liebe dich' does not at all mean the same as 'I love you.' 'Je t'aime' comes closer but still doesn't carry the same weight.

A major difference between men in Senegal and The Gambia: men in The Gambia want to sleep with you if you'll pay them. Men in Senegal want to sleep with you for free. 

Have I always been this deeply politically incorrect?

I'll write up 'Over the river and through the bush, part 2' (relatively) soon, but until then, here are some more anecdotes

The President of Senegal claims he has arrested fifteen men who were planning a coup. It seems silly to plan a coup in Senegal. I wonder if the men were silly or if the president is paranoid.

There was a protest in downtown Dakar last Saturday. Apparently the demonstrators numbered 3,000. I was not one of them. Princeton forbids study abroad participants from taking part in protests. Unfortunate.

People are directed to my blog after googling 'comments by citizens of occident about travel safety to Dakar'. Apologies. I'd imagine I'm not particularly helpful on that front.

In the last month, my blog has been read in India, Israel, Denmark, and Brazil. My blog has now been read in every continent except Oceania (and, of course, Antarctica). Anyone have a business trip there soon?

Whenever I say I'm getting a sandwich from the egg man, people (generally Alice, sometimes Amy) have taken to adding, "Goo goo g'joob".

Yesterday a man in the street said, "Tubab," as I walked by. This happens about once a week. Each time I want to reply, "Well spotted."

The two randomest things that have been shouted at me in the street: "Pay my tuition," and "Give me 200 francs."

The director of WARC walked into the computer lab last week with a gigantic man who was apparently formerly the number one wrestler in Senegal. No biggie, just dropping by.

The art exhibition at WARC for the past month has just closed. The creeper who's been sitting at WARC every day representing the artist packed up with the paintings. He used to send my friend Sammy love emails and would approach me while I was working on my JP to quiz me on Wolof. I am so glad WARC has gone back to being a haven from creepers and not their base camp.

Two hours after I jotted down that last anecdote, a man of about thirty in a business suit asked for directions to the director of WARC's office. Somehow less than two minutes later he'd given me his business card and taken out his planner to write down my number (even though I'd already told him no twice). When I said no the third time, his voice went all sad and he said that I was behaving like he was aggressing me. I'm sorry, was he not? When otherwise perfectly nice men sexually harass me, I do start to wonder whether their behavior is completely legitimate and whether I'm the one in the wrong for being uptight and paranoid and rude.

Khadijatou (the three-year-old): Everyone in the world is Muslim. Except Mégane. 

Khadijatou: There's a boy at school who likes to play with dolls.

Host mother: That's not good.

Seriously, the boy is three. Stop enforcing gender norms and let the kid have fun.

I don't know about other Senegalese news coverage of what's happening in Libya, but the channel we were watching last night over dinner only interviewed Gaddafi supporters. And my host father definitely called what Britain and France and the US are doing "criminal". No one asked me for my opinion, for which I was partially grateful, because talking politics in French is slightly beyond me. But it would still have been nice had they shown some interest in what I, the token American, had to say.

I may have seen another roadside masturbator yesterday. He was lying down on the sidewalk and his hands were in a certain area so I pointedly looked away. He cackled evilly as I passed.

In general I'm opposed to Medieval methods of torture (fascinating though they undeniably are), but I might be willing to make an exception and approve of castration as punishment for roadside masturbation.

Abbey (about the roadside masturbator she's seen twice): Why does he have to stand near a school? Why can't he just stay home and look at child porn?

Two people in the past two days have asked me if I'm Canadian. Why would you assume that someone is Canadian (unless you're in Canada) when there are so many more Americans in the world?

Almost all Senegalese cookies taste exactly the same. Their taste is boring. I have nonetheless somehow become addicted. 

I wish I understood why some body parts are considered taboo in a culture while others are completely socially acceptable. Saw a woman in a headscarf nursing her baby in My Shop. Her breast was completely exposed, but at least her hair was completely covered.

Saw a twentysomething guy with a messenger bag printed with the picture of some B-list boy band. I love when guys in Senegal wear things guys in the US wouldn't be caught dead in. 

The fashion of men wearing their pants so low that what's meant to be the waist hangs halfway down their butt has reached Senegal. Just one note to Dakar fashionistos: when men do that in the US, they wear underwear.

All I post anymore are anecdotes (or so it would appear)

Alice encountered a man with no pants wandering outside the post office talking to himself. We’ve christened him the pantless ranter. 

I’m considering making a comic strip featuring the cast of characters one sees around Dakar: public urinators, the roadside masturbator, the pantless ranter. A comic strip or a graphic novel. A graphic graphic novel. 

Who writes online French dictionaries? You look up a word whose primary meaning is ‘to enjoy’ only to be told that in slang it can also mean ‘to come’. Or you look up synonyms for the word ‘job’ and the dictionary, thinking it’s being helpful, tells you how to say ‘to give a blow job’. No, that’s not a phrase that would be especially helpful for my paper, thanks.

Alice mentioned that she wants to name her sons Conrad, after the main character of Ordinary People, and Holden, from The Catcher in the Rye. My one regret about not wanting children is that I will never have two boys to name Holden and Conrad. Maybe I can steal hers.  

There are 35 new students at WARC on a program that spends five weeks in New Delhi, five weeks in Dakar, and five weeks in Buenos Aires doing comparative urban studies. Had lunch with a few of them their first day at WARC. One guy mentioned he went to Harvard. I said I went to Princeton. He said he’s mad that Princeton’s men’s basketball beat Harvard to go on to the NCAA last week. I love that college rivalries still hold when we’re in Senegal.

It’s great being able to give people in the new program advice about what to do in Dakar. I love not being one of the new kids anymore.

Alice and I walked through a sandstorm along the highway on our way home from school. I no longer have any desire to visit a desert.

Me (post sandstorm): I need a miniature turkey baster to suck out the sand in my eye.

Alice: You mean an eyedropper?

After the sandstorm, I went to rinse the sand out of my eye, only to find that my eye had already collected all of the grains into a little grey clump, which it had deposited in a corner for easy access. Thanks, eye!

The US government has issued warnings of an imminent terrorist attack against the US embassy or US citizens in Mali, Senegal’s neighbor to the north. I had friends planning on going to Mali for Spring Break. Now they’re not.

Tried to use Alice’s nail clippers to open a grapefruit. Epic fail. 

The man who runs the computer lab at WARC has the job title ‘plant manager’. The WARC computer lab is not a manufacturing plant. Nor is it a potted plant. What plant is he managing?

Alice (turning off the light): Does this derange you? 

I love false friend words in French.

Saw a protest (or, as Alice enjoys saying, a manifestation) from the bus. Just a lot of people walking slowly down a street. And we were sent out warning emails telling us to avoid the street because it might get violent.

Fun Wolof phrase of the day: Gerte giangi. Here is the peanut. Apparently shouted by street vendors selling nuts.

Here are some Dakar anecdotes in picture form:

More anecdotes, just for you!

Most exciting (and least Dakar related) news first: I have a summer internship at a translation agency in Paris! I am ecstatic! Can it please be summer now?

On March 8, I received a notice from the post office stating that a package from my parents had arrived. The parcel had been sitting there since February 28. When I went to pick it up, I was charged late fees. Oh, Senegal.

The most exciting items in the care package (in my opinion, not objectively) were six pairs of black socks. Now I have clean socks for the first time in eight weeks. Washing does not get rid of Dakar dust, at least not when socks are white.

I accidentally sprayed Teddy with mosquito repellent as I was spraying myself before bed three weeks ago. This week, she finally no longer smells of bug spray. Now I can cuddle with her again.

Alice (after I told her I enjoy hosting tea parties): Megan, you’re so cool!

This may officially be the first time in my life I have been told that I’m cool. Or at least the first time the person telling me wasn’t being sarcastic. (This is a pointed reference to you, Zach.)

My host parents have now twice discussed, in front of Alice and I, how I’m better at French but Alice is better at Wolof. And my host mother thinks Americans are indiscreet.

Alice left my house at 1:00 pm one Sunday. My host mother later asked me why she didn’t stay to eat with us at noon. Lunch is served on weekends at 3:30. Apparently whenever lunch is served is noon.

My host father got a promotion and a new car. The first day we drove the new car to work/school, the chauffer got us in a traffic accident. This has been my second traffic accident in a month.

Khadijatou picked her nose and then asked me if I wanted her to stick the booger on my forehead. No thank you.

Marie Sophie asked to borrow my phone. After she returned it, I tried to call a friend and was informed I had no credits. There had been 1,000 CFA of credits on there before. Marie Sophie used my phone to make seven calls.

The power was out on Saturday from 9:30 am to 11:00 pm except for half-an-hour of power from 8:45-9:15 pm. On Sunday, the power was out from 8:30 am to 5:45 pm, with forty-five minutes of power from 11:00-11:45 am. This is getting ridiculous.

There’s a shack down the road from WARC where a man makes delicious egg sandwiches with tomatoes and onions. I sitting in there the other day with nine Senegalese men, all of us waiting for our sandwiches, when one of them told me in Wolof that the egg sandwich man would make a good husband. I laughed it off, but as I was walking back to WARC, I realized that as my husband, he would make me superb egg sandwiches every morning. The offer just got a bit more tempting.

Marie Sophie’s thirty-year-old English teacher came over to the house and chatted me up for forty-five minutes. He asked for my number five times, so at the end I had him give me his. He wants me to call him to make plans to go out next weekend. What do I do?

While the English teacher and I were talking, the fact that I’ve never had a boyfriend came up. He told me he didn’t know it was possible for someone in college to have never dated. The point of college isn’t to study, he told me. The point of college is to date.

I asked the English teacher if it was possible for men and women in Senegal to be close friends without dating. He said yes. He had a close friend he had seen naked, but they had never dated. They had even slept in the same bed, but never been romantically involved. I’m curious about the context in which these events occurred.

Over a month ago now, I was walking home from WARC with a bunch of people when they starting spazing about a man we passed. I assumed he was a roadside urinator who didn’t have the decency to turn around and face away from the highway. Found out recently he was actually a roadside masturbator.

Mentioned the roadside masturbator to my friend Abbey. She asked if he was the one who stands next to the school across from the church. Maybe Dakar has two roadside masturbators.

The professor’s strike at UCAD (sort of) ended last week. My translation class met for the first time since mid-February. The professor gave us a midterm.

My African Lit class, normally twice a week, will meet only three times during the month of March because my professor has business trips to the US, France, and Germany, and then we have Spring Break.

Meanwhile, my Islam professor has decided to schedule make-up classes for all the sessions he’s randomly missed. What?

Our African Lit professor brought us presents when he returned from the US: five jars of peanut butter. His first morning back, he had the WARC office buy us baguettes so we could make peanut butter sandwiches. We finished the peanut butter by noon.

My African Cinema professor was explaining that the grandchildren of Frenchmen who settled in Senegal have darker skin than first-generation French expats because their grandparents’ acquired tans have been passed down genetically. That sounds suspiciously like Lamarckian inheritance. Has that come back in fashion?

Fun Wolof phrase of the day: Kan moo wax, “Waaw mën nanu”? Obama moo ko wax. Who said, “Yes we can”? Obama said it. 

Over the river and through the bush, part 1

Thursday morning all twenty Americans (and two Canadians) piled into a miniature bus bound for Toubacouta, a village near the border with The Gambia, seven hours by bus from Dakar. Maybe three or four hours out (frankly I’m surprised it took that long) the road disintegrated into larger and larger potholes and eventually into dirt and the houses we passed weren’t rectangular and concrete but instead circular with thatched roofs and the bus had to stop for donkey crossings.

We stopped for lunch at the home of the extended family of the director of WARC, who doubles as my African Lit professor. The meal was uneventful (monstrous platters of ceeb u jen (an alternate spelling of thieboudienne), force feeding) except for the cashew apples served as desert. The best description I can think of at present is an apple with the approximate consistency of a marshmallow (perhaps a better analogy will present itself later). Their flesh was inordinately difficult to chew, they released obscene quantities of juice that pooled on the floor below, and they left your mouth ridiculously dry.

After lunch we were herded outside where a circle of women and children were making music from dried and hollowed gourds and plastic water tanks and metal bowls and flip flops and shotgun shells. A woman would enter the circle alone, show off some moves, and select one of us to drag in as her dancing partner while everyone else stared and laughed and maybe applauded if the person was sufficiently embarrassing himself. Sitting, dreading being tugged out and knowing I inevitably would be was excruciating. Hearing afterwards that my hitherto unsuspected Senegalese dancing skills were the surprise gem of the day only made me feel worse.

Again on the road to Toubacouta, the bus passed a brush fire and the Senegalese fire department, which was extinguishing the fire by smacking it with branches. We did see a fire hose, but no water. We considered donating our bottled water to the cause but decided against it.

The fire had recently passed by our hotel, so there was a lovely smell of campfire in the air when we arrived and ashes in the pool. But we were given two-person bungalos with toilets that flushed without waiting for the tank to load and toilet paper kept in holders actually attached to the wall and plump pillows and I realized that all was pretty ideal and that our field trip to Toubacouta was basically a vacation.

The village of Toubacouta was a fascinating mix of thatched roofs and corrugated tin, occasionally in the same building. The neighboring village was practically identical but inhabited by a different ethnic group. That’s how it’s apparently done in rural Senegal. Different ethnicities live as neighbors but each in their own town. In Toubacouta we visited a middle school that crammed 700 students into seven concrete buildings, each one or two roomed. A sign outside the compound displayed the Japanese flag to signify that Japan had funded the school’s construction. The town’s medical clinic bore the Belgian flag. The one classroom we visited had notes from a lesson in basic trigonometry and some phrases in English about American rappers on the board.

We rode back to the hotel on the back of motorbikes driven by Senegalese men. I freaked out a bit about having to wrap my arms around the driver’s waist (there’s something about clutching a man on a motorcycle that screams “Sexually harass me!”) so Alice let me ride behind her. The ride was exhilarating, especially the (false) sense of authenticity that came from riding on the back of a motorbike driven by a Senegalese man, waving at the kids we passed as though they were my neighbors, too.

That night we drive on dirt roads through the bush in the dark to a traditional wrestling match. The arena was a dust patch, the spectators, locals and us. The wrestlers were twenty or so guys in their twenties wearing black speedos and loincloths and dousing themselves in water and juice before sprinkling dirt all over their bodies. When they fell, they looked like dying insects. The fights were brief, accompanies by drumming and singing and dancing from the spectators, in large part women with babies strapped to their backs. Before the final, six preteen boys (future wrestlers?) had a dance off that the crowed judged through cheers. We, the visitors, awarded the prize money (2,000 CFA) but I don’t think we provided it. We didn’t get back to the hotel until 1:00 am.

Friday morning there was Nesquick hot chocolate mix and real milk at breakfast. The baguettes in the village were also significant better (and significantly more French) than those in Dakar. After breakfast we toured a fishing and oystering village to see the economic opportunities afforded to rural women, although almost half of those working were men. (The same was later to happen when touring a streamside onion garden.) We then clambered in perogues (long brightly colored canoes with outboard engines) for a boat tour of the offshore mangroves. Being on the water for two hours was wonderful, with sing-alongs and four-foot lizard spottings and getting scraped by branches when the passage was thin.

In the afternoon class we had a music and dance class. We learned the drum rhythm traditionally played post-circumcision, so if any of you guys (girls need not apply, FGM probably has its own soundtrack) would like to get circumcised in the bush, I can provide the musical accompaniment to your recovery. We also learned that traditional Senegalese dancing seems to essentially involve bending over, sticking out your butt, and going crazy. Needless to say, we obliged. After class, we saw a monkey, which, we decided, was confirmation that we were in Africa. Because learning the proper drum beats to play for someone recovering from circumcision was not proof enough.

That evening we went to a spectacle in town with drumming and singing and dancing (yours truly featured in part, in my third dance performance in two days – two more are to come) and a fire eater and a man eating razor blades and pulling three-inch-long nails out of his nose and a man on stilts dressed strikingly similarly to member of the KKK. But what really held my gaze were the dust clouds that rose around the dancers’ bare feet.

That’s all for now folks. Coming soon: In part two, I am placed with a family that speaks only Wolof and left there for twenty-three hours. 

Here are some more, so that you don’t think I’m neglecting you

Found a squashed but alive and still squirming ant stuck to the bottom of my foot.

Saw a public urinator in the act of urinating. (No body parts were witnessed.) Dakar, please invest in public toilets.

Saw the six-year-old naked for the third time. Kid, don’t walk through the courtyard to the shower Sunday mornings completely naked when you know I’m sitting outside doing my homework.

My host family believes the three-year-old needs to lose three or four kilos. They discuss this in front of her.

The Wolof word for food is ñam. I am never saying nom again. Ñam ñam ñam.

There were riots in Sacre-Coeur 3 after the horrible power outages I told you about last week. The riots were Tuesday night. On Wednesday, power was still awful. But on Thursday and Friday we only had two hours of outages and on Saturday and Sunday we had fulls day of electricity. Thanks, rioters!

Someone self immolated in front of the presidential palace in downtown Dakar last week. How unreal.

My host father wore a grey plaid boubou last week. Please continue to make boubous out of suit material. And suits out of boubou material.

My host family’s chauffer is one of my favorite Senegalese men, because I know that were he to ask for my number, he would be fired. That makes me completely comfortable around him. Alice’s host cousin is another one of my favorite Senegalese men, because were he to ask for my number, Alice would yell at him.

Was asked to get the iron from the maid. The iron is actually made of iron. I suppose that would explain the etymology.

I walked down from the roof after dinner with the maids to find the grandfather and all the kids reciting the Qur’an together. So cute.

Apparently Iran has been selling weapons to the Casamance, the separatist region in the south of Senegal. This came out last week. Last Friday, Senegal suspended diplomatic ties with Iran. The Cultural Center of the Iranian Embassy is right by my house. Wonder if it’ll close.

The Gambia, the country in the middle of Senegal (find a map), has been the intermediary in the Iran-Casamance arms deals. It would be rather demotivating to know that the country inside you hopes you’ll descend into civil war. And is working to make that dream a reality.

My Shop, the internet fast food restaurant, played “Quelqu’un m’a dit” while I was finishing the abstract for my JP (junior paper, for those non-Princetonians among you). My Shop has officially played one good song.

Fanta at WARC costs 250 CFA (50 cents). Fanta at the food court at Sea Plaza, a ritzy mall minutes from WARC, costs 1500 CFA ($3). How can a drink cost six times more ten minutes away?

While my host family was eating our (deliciously non-Senegalese) pizza at the Sea Plaza food court, the table next to us smoked hookah. At the table was a seven-year-old. He smoked, too. In the middle of the food court at a mall. And no one stopped him.

Fun Wolof phrase of the day: Sama baay angiy sol costume bu snazzy. My father is wearing a snazzy suit. Can you spot the borrowed French and English words in that sentence? Languages are mixed here a lot.