I love America! (Which I am actually fairly embarrassed to admit, but will own up to nonetheless.)

I’m home. Since Saturday, I’ve visited both my homes: the one where my parents live and the one where I attend school. In one, I lay facedown in the backyard, smelling the grass. In the other, I kissed the collegiate gothic bricks of Whitman, my residential college (or dorm). 

But I really should back up. The now ex-WARCers arrived in Washington Dulles Airport Saturday morning around 9:45. All had only two-hour layovers and were convinced we would miss our connecting flights. But we were in Washington now, not Dakar, and two hours (added to a 45 minute early arrival) was more than enough time to get us through customs and immigration and security and to our terminal, where we discovered fast food restaurants galore. We stood in awe of how quickly Starbucks prepared customers’ skim chai tea lattes. I ordered a quesadilla just after 10:45 am and ran to my gate cackling with laughter when its box was placed in my hands. I beamed at everyone: the United Airlines employee who printed my boarding pass, the man behind me in line at the Mexican place. After four months of staring at the ground ahead of me as I walked, I had worried I wouldn’t be able to snap out of my paranoia. But no, here I was being anti-social by being overly friendly.

The WARCers all sat by my gate eating our morning fast food Mexican and drinking our inordinately complicated coffees and thinking every tubab we saw was a friend. Alison thought a girl wearing pink rain boots and leggings was her roommate. I thought a middle-aged woman with shoulder length brown hair was my mom. When I left to find a bathroom, I realized I had forgotten my toilet paper. Then I realized I wouldn’t need to bring my own.

Eventually everyone left for different gates and Alison and I boarded a plane for Newark and Alison commented that it was shorter to fly from Dakar to DC than it was to take a sept place (taxi) from Dakar to The Gambia for spring break. And I realized it took only a little longer to fly from DC to Newark than it did to walk home from WARC to Sacre-Coeur 3 after school each day. As the plane landed in Newark, I looked the window at the highways and factories and refineries and truck depots and thought how cute they all were. When I saw a white disembarkation staircase on the runway, for a second, I thought it was a goat.

Back home, I was overwhelmed by how green everything was. I could see about twenty different shades of green in my backyard alone. I always used to say that what I loved most about Dakar was the colors – of people’s clothing, of the trash on the side of the streets – but Dakar is so dusty brown compared to this vivacious green. After I smelled the grass in my backyard, I hugged the oak tree and petted the lettuce outside my front door. Later, when it started to rain (my first rain in four months), I ran to the front garden and danced.

After five days, I’m still forgetting that sinks have hot water taps. And towards the end of each shower, I still sit down in the tub and let the warm water fall on my head and think about how I’m essentially sitting under a waterfall. I don’t think I can describe it any better. The pleasure that most New Jerseyites would get from discovering a secret hidden waterfall, I now get from taking my morning shower.

I visited campus Tuesday. My friend David laughed when I thanked him for taking me home, when he had in fact driven me an hour away from my house. But Princeton is my home. Pretentious as it sounds, I feel as though I belong there. When people ask me about Dakar, my opening statement has come to be that I found it difficult to feel comfortable there. Not so on campus. Looking out the window from David’s quad, I watched guys pass bellow in twos and threes without my heart rate starting to elevate or my eyes darting to the ground. I no longer crossed to the opposite side of the road whenever even a single man approached. I could wait outside East Pyne for a friend without feeling like a sitting duck, without crushing my bag under my arm, worried it might be nicked.

Do I miss Dakar at all? At present, no. There are aspects I expected to miss: the goat that lived on the roof next door, waking up to birds chirping, the herd of longhorn steer that ambled up and down Alice’s street, hearing prayers coming from the Sacre-Coeur mosque at night. But I don’t miss any of that, not yet anyways. I feel a bit as though Dakar never happened. I’m almost ashamed by how much I like feeling like it never happened. And when I’m confronted with the fact that it did happen, I feel as though regardless, it didn’t matter. I have some stories now with some shock-value, but that’s about all. And yes, I know this is too simplistic and that Dakar has changed me and that I’ll discover just how much as time wears on, but for now it seems as though I haven’t changed and I’m happy pretending that’s true.

Yes, I suppose I still have some obvious vestiges of Senegal with me still. I have a lingering upset stomach and a cockroach that was unpacked with my luggage and a saran wrapped backpack, one last Leopold Sedar Senghor Airport scam. Funny, that I avoided being scammed at the airport in January when I arrived (Andrea rescued my bags from an overeager baggage attendant with an eye on our dollars), but had to shell out my last CFA on the way out. It seems symbolic, evidence that after four months in Dakar, I was just as much a tourist to take advantage of as I had been when I arrived. Jërëjëf, Dakar, for making that so blatantly obvious. I’ve never been one for subtlety myself.

Dakar Bingo

Nearly being run over by a kaar ràppid	Goat	Jelly sandals	Hearing “Inch’Allah”	Credit Orange seller
Hearing “Tubab!”	Unsupervised toddler at the side of the road	Hair (on a woman) that you think is real	Public urinator	Empty taxi that doesn’t honk at you
Bottle of ananas	Dakar Dem Dikk bus with no more room for passengers	FREE SPACE	Couch on the side of the road	Baobab
Taalibe with a yellow plastic bowl	Female tubab jogger	Marriage proposal in Wolof	Man wearing a boubou and boat shoes	Hearing “Waaw” by Viviane Ndour
Mango at a street fruit cart	Woman wearing fabric in a pattern you want	Prayer mat	Street food shack serving mafe	Power outage

Alice holds intellectual property rights for the concept of Dakar Bingo.

Here we go again with still more anecdotes

My friend Jess was shoved against a wall in an alley by a family friend who whispered sweet nothings into her ear. 

A taxi driver grabbed Alice by her shirt and wouldn’t let her out of the cab until she tripled what she was paying him. 

Did I ever mention that my friend Zoey was clubbed on the back of the head by a man with a baseball bat as she walked to school? Or that no one did anything until a man from the Indian embassy pulled over and told her to get in his car?

Or that my friends Ian and Gabe and two Senegalese friends of theirs were mobbed and robbed after the national soccer game against Cameroon and had their wallets, phones, and glasses stolen? Or that one of the attackers pulled out a knife?

Top 10 countries supplying readers of my blog: 

1. United States
2. Senegal
3. Switzerland 
4. Ukraine 
5. Germany
6. France
7. Singapore
8. Israel
9. Russia
10. Denmark

Several of these make sense. Many of these (particularly Singapore, Israel, and Ukraine, Russia, and Denmark) do not. But please keep reading regardless!

Someone has been reading my blog from New Caledonia. My blog has now been read in six continents! Now if only I could find a reader in Antarctica...

Searching ‘Japanese with diarrhea porno’ has led people to my blog. 

Marie Sophie: His name is Ben Laden?

Host father: Yes. 

Marie Sophie: So he’s Christian. 

Host father: No...

Marie Sophie: But his first name is Ben.

Before this past Monday, Marie Sophie had never heard of September 11 nor the Twin Towers. I like the thought of a world where that’s possible.

My host father took advantage of bin Laden’s death to explain to Ibou and Marie Sophie the circumstances in which it is and is not acceptable to kill people. (As a pacifist, I felt slightly uncomfortable overhearing the conversation.) When my friend Andrea’s host brother told her bin Laden had been killed, his eyes were red and puffy.

Received two emails from Princeton in the past 24-hours warning me to avoid public celebrations, demonstrations, American embassies, Occidental business interests, and other locations where foreigners generally congregate. Guess I can’t go to N’Ice Cream anymore.

The power has now twice gone out while I’ve been in the middle of shaving my legs.

I have now also twice knocked my razor into the toilet before having flushed. Both times, I’ve just stuck my hand in and pulled the razor out. You can’t be squeamish in Senegal. (Although Marie Sophie still screams when she sees bugs in the house.) 

Then again, Marie Sophie was also horrified to hear that a friend of a friend of mine (who is 23) is married and has a kid. So sheltered. Apparently 50% of Senegalese women are already married by the age of 18. 

Killed a cockroach that was three inches long. I think I killed Gregor Samsa. 

Some nights there are mewlings outside my window as I drift off to sleep. I have yet to determine whether it’s cats in the garden or the children upstairs.

A few night ago, the maids were chatting in Wolof over dinner about how cold it was. One asked (still in Wolof) how to say ‘It’s cold’ in French. I answered. They hadn’t realized I understand Wolof now.

Marie-Sophie asked me for help with her French grammar homework. Such a proud moment.

Last night my host father sang along in his Senegalese-French-accented English to country music. 

In their birthday wishes to me last Saturday, both my host grandparents wished me a good husband and many children. In turning 21, I have reached marriageable age. What a terrifying thought. 

Walked home from downtown Dakar with four friends Saturday night at 10:30 through closed-up market stalls and still-open fruit stands and shoes laid out on the road. After an hour, we hopped on a kaar ràppid that took us to Sacre-Coeur 3, where men sat in plastic chairs clumped round a fire amongst trucks abandoned in parts.

There is no point, it’s just the truth. More anecdotes for your enjoyment.

I love road tripping in Africa. You look out the windows and see warthogs and monkeys. See pictures below for details. 

The WARC kids (aka my friends and I) have begun to greet each other by asking, “How’s it going?” The reply: “It’s going.” That would be a pretty literal translation of the French, “Ça va?” “Ça va.” 

Was inordinately proud of myself for writing ‘Inch’Allah’ in a text. Have yet to use ‘Alhamdulillah,’ but I’m working on it. 

Just confirmed that the room I’ve been living in for the past three plus months actually belongs Marie Sophie. Now that I’m here, she shares a bed with her grandmother. Why does she not resent me for stealing her room?

Hot, stand-up showers may be the greatest invention of mankind, debatably even better than the right to vote and courts of law (and even earplugs). I’m learning I’d be pretty willing to trade a substantial amount of political freedom to be guaranteed my creature comforts.

In researching for a presentation on Senegal’s neighbors, my friend Zoey was dismayed to learn that nothing of note has happened recently in Guinea. I’ve decided the country would make a perfect location for my police state. (Mark, would you still be interested in serving as my propaganda minister?)

These next two comments are in response to Marian’s thoughts on trash collection in Cairo when she studied there last spring: 

1. Trash collection in Cairo might often be late, but trash collection in Senegal is oftentimes nonexistent. I can’t think of any other explanation for why the driver’s cabin of a train car has been sitting just outside UCAD’s Faculté des Lettres since January at the latest and probably for several years. When trash pickup does happen, the refuse is driven into the brush and just dumped there. So whenever you travel outside of Dakar, you see entire fields covered in trash because the wind has blown the garbage for miles. 
2. My friend Sam has an internship in the psychiatric ward of a hospital. The ward disposes used syringes in an open courtyard. A large portion of the psychiatric patients are drug addicts. Because disposing of used syringes where drug addicts have easy access to them is not a health concern.

We now publicly have sing-alongs to Disney movies in the WARC computer lab. 

Someone in my host parents’ bedroom has been listening to ‘Born to Make you Happy’ from Britney Spears’ debut CD. No comment on why I know what CD that song is from. It may or may not have been the first CD I ever owned.

Saw a man in Saint-Louis wearing a sweatshirt that said ‘The Beatles’. Saw a taalibe in Dakar with a Pink Floyd ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ shirt. I love obvious clothing drive donations.

Jess was reminiscing about cross walks while attempting to dart across Avenue Cheikh Anta Diop. She mentioned how wonderful the little person icon who flashes at you to tell you when to cross is. I had entirely forgotten those icons existed.  

Jess interns in a school as a teacher’s assistant in a history class. The teacher told the kids one day that Jews control the American government and the global economy. Considering how much Senegal struts its fabled harmony between Muslims and Christians (more on this in a later post), I majorly did not expect anti-Semitism to be taught in Senegalese public schools. Note to self: don't give countries the benefit of the doubt.

Had shack mafe for lunch, eaten under a tent set up on the side of a road, where a woman with two metal bowls two-feet in diameter filled with mafe and ceebujen served heaping bowlfuls enough for two or three servings to the people sitting on the benches around her for $1. Her customers ranged from construction workers to men in business suits. 

Imani (a guy in my Islam class): What’s the point of having Mary in the Qur’an?

History of Islam in Senegal professor: There is no point. It’s just the truth. 

My favorite Wolof phrase is “Xam uma,” which means “I don’t know,” “I don’t think...” and “I don’t understand.” All so useful in Senegalese life.

Wolof professor (during my oral Wolof final): Am nga jafe jafe ci Senegaal? Do you have problems in Senegal? 

Me: Am naa jafe jafe ak góor u Senegaal. I have problems with the men of Senegal. 

P.S. I’ve uploaded the photos that accompany older posts, so take a look back through the months if you’re interested. For some reason, my computer would only recognize about 1/4 of the photos on my camera whenever I plugged it in to upload them. For some other reason, this problem ceased when I plugged in my camera this morning. 

I'm back with more anecdotes (blame the hiatus on the JP)

At least six girls in my group have been groped on the street. Whenever I start to feel comfortable walking home by myself, I learn fun facts like that and swear to never walk alone again.

My host mother shouted at the three-year-old that if she vomits again, she will kill her.

A neighbor of my two friends who live in Baobab (a district of Dakar) has told them she wants to drink their blood.

Me: My dad has orange skinny jeans and my mom has purple ones. My parents are so much cooler than me.

Alice: Clearly.

Alice: (talking about a sixteen-year-old wearing bright green pants and no shirt and standing in the middle of the VDN trying to direct traffic) It was like he was Jesus.

Marie Sophie has spent the last week blasting Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” and singing along.

We were in a taxi with our African Cinema professor driving to a film screening at the Institut Français and Senegalese popstar Viviane Ndour’s “Waaw” came on the radio and we all started singing along to the chorus. The professor and the taxi driver were probably less than impressed. 

Watched a Nigerian movie in my African Cinema class. Apparently Nollywood (because having Hollywood and Bollywood already wasn’t enough) puts out 1,800 movies a year. The one we saw had about five murders, five rapes, ten sex with prostitute scenes, and one backstreet abortion. Our professor told us afterwards that it was the most ‘tolerable’ Nollywood film he could find. 

Alice’s host family installed solar panels in their house. Now they will always have power. 

My host father was holding 150 10,000 CFA notes in his hands in the car on the way to school last week.That’s the equivalent of $75,000. $75,000 in $20 bills. 

The three-year-old is learning English. She likes to interview herself: “What’s your name? I’m fine.”

Every day for a week, my host father bought ten loaves of bread at the boulangerie down the road for the group of women and children who sit on the side of the street. Then he stopped.

My host aunt and two of her children spent the weekend at my house. My host mother referred to me in conversation with her sister (sister-in-law?, other random relative they kids just call ‘aunt’?) several times as the ‘tubab’. That’s the first time anyone in my family has used that word. She was speaking Wolof, so I don’t think she thought I understood. But when you barely know a language, the few words you recognize tend to stick out.

I always thought the commercialization of holidays was an American thing, but my host family bought an Easter cake and Easter eggs even though they’re Muslim. They also love to look at Christmas lights. And buy Christmas presents. 

Sunday morning, Marie Sophie and I were told to carry a crate of juice and a large box of rice as a gift to a neighbor who celebrates Easter. I love random acts of kindness, Senegal style.

Over breakfast on Sunday, we watched ‘Holy Week: The Cartoon Musical’. When I left, Pontius Pilate was singing in French.

Earplugs are officially the greatest invention of life. There were five kids in the house under the age of twelve all weekend. They were loud. There was also unexplained construction Monday morning, and my host parents had an argument Monday night. My JP (junior paper) was due Tuesday. I spent the entire three-day weekend editing it in my room. If I hadn’t had earplugs, I would have gone mad.

Saint-Louis

Saint-Louis was Senegal’s capital for centuries during colonization. It’s in the north of the country, four hours from Dakar, just below the border with Mauritanea. The twenty WARCers road tripped here for the weekend, our last group excursion before flying home. But there’s still four weeks until we get to that. 

Our hotel in Saint-Louis is in the old town, an island five blocks wide connected to the mainland and the rest of the city by bridge. The hotel was once barracks for French troops. It’s very old colonial, with a grand wooden staircase and shutters opening onto shabby back streets. I feel a bit as if I’ve stepped into Pirates of the Caribbean. The whole old section of town remindeds me of the British Virgin Islands, with all the concrete houses in pastels with wooden shutters and second-storey balconies. But instead of the vibrant blues and pinks of the Caribbean, the housepaint here is peeling or smudged black or entirely worn off. 

Saint-Louis is far past its prime. Our hotel must once have been beautiful, but now there are cracks in the walls and paint drips on the moulding and exposed patches of concrete in the stairwell. The city may be more picturesque than Dakar, but the dulled colors of once vibrant buildings just make me feel sad. 

Yesterday we took horse-drawn carriages through town, the sides of our seats painted with ads for restaurants and discotheques. We embraced our inner tourists (three months in Senegal and we still little more than tourists), snapping pictures of boabab trees growing up through house walls and a mother shielding her daughter’s face from the tubabs’ cameras and a seaside market that stunk of urine and salted fish. And as we rode around I started wondering how much the average Senegalese’s life has bettered since independence. Not much, it would seem. 

Today we visited a bird reserve, traveling by boat through of river flocked with thousands of pelicans. On the way to the reserve, our bus pulled off the road so that we could wander by foot into Mauritania. On the way back to Senegal, I stopped off in the one-room customs house to use the the bathroom and ended up drinking attaya (tea served in shot glasses) with the border guard. 

After a lazy afternoon of three naps and a philosophical debate, Alice and I snuck out for stealth crêpes (banana for me) for dinner while most of the others went out as a group. They might be at a discotheque dancing by now. I’m writing this post from a patisserie, where Alice and I are both drinking hot chocolate made with real milk, not powdered, and typing away on our Macs. I’ve missed this these past three months, missed being able to go out at night without being scared of the dark and of Dakar. I’ve missed walking across campus by lampost light to Nassau Street to grab hot chocolate from Small World before setting myself up to work in Chancellor Green. I would love to be back on campus.

I didn't realize that yesterday marked the end of my third full month in Dakar because I was too focused on the fact that as of tomorrow, it's only one month until I go home (and other anecdotes)

Attaya should always be drunk on the beach. You might not think you’d want to drink hot tea from shot glasses by the beach, but you do. Especially after you’ve been bodysurfing and need to get the tast of salt water out of your mouth. 

Great as beach attaya is, piña coladas would be better. I wonder where I could find a blender.

Made a Senegalese friend who works near WARC. Bumped into him Monday morning outside the egg man shack. Bumped into him there Tuesday morning, too; he mentioned he’d seen me walking by the previous afternoon as well. Dakar can be so small sometimes. 

Went to a concert at the Institut Francais with a 30-year-old grad student who’s in Dakar doing disertation research. I’ve missed being overwhelmed by brilliance in everyday conversation. 

For example: after knowing me for all of four days, Casey (the grad student) linked my compuslion to compare myself to others to my training in a comparative discipline. (I’m a Comparative Literature major.) I’ve known myself for nearly twenty-one years and have been a comp lit major for months now. Why did I never make the connection?

The lead singer of the Ugandan band playing at the Institute Francais wore a dark vest, a white Oxford, and khakis. Why do I feel a deep connection to everyone whose preppy dressing reminds me of home? I passed a guy at the university wearing white jeans, a white button-down, and a purple sweater. I wanted to run up and become his friend. 

Every time I saw a tubab my first few weeks here, I wanted to dash across the street and say ‘hi.’ Fortunately the urge had passed by the end of the first month, but still, I hate the idea that I would feel I had something in common with strangers simply because they and I were both white and in Dakar.

Chatted in Casey’s dorm before the concert. All his hallmates are Senegalese. His room held two beds, one mattress, and a closet. There was barely space to move. He guessed six guys normally piled in there to sleep. Never have I more appreciated living with a host family.

Someone is reading my blog from Iran. Senegal suspended diplomatic relations with Iran several weeks ago. I feel so subversive. And yes, Zach, so cool.

Booked an apartment for this summer in Paris’ Latin Quarter. Goodbye Sacre-Coeur 3.

My (real) dad sent me a picture of a fox in my backyard at home. Alice sent me a picture of a monkey on top of a store in Sacre-Coeur 3. Which location has more impressive animals: New Jersey or Dakar? 

This one’s for Liz: learned in my African lit class that the scientific term for cannibalism is anthropophagie. 

If I read Wikipedia instead of going to History of Islam in Senegal, I would learn just as much. 

My African Cinema professor spent much of one class explaining the works of Frantz Fanon. I’ve read both Peau Noir, Masques Blancs and Les Damnés de la Terre. I got the impression my professor had read neither. 

In African Cinema this past Monday we watched a Wolof-language adaptation of Der Besuch der Alten Dame, a play I read last year in German 102-5. Officially the weirdest cross-culteral experience of my life.

My Wolof professor has realized that by next week we’ll have had fifty hours of class, so he’s cancelling our last two weeks of classes because he thinks fifty hours is enough.

In Wolof, ‘rasta’ can be a verb meaning to have one’s hair done in dreadlocks. A hairdresser who rastas one’s hair is a ‘rastakat.’ Some days I think my Wolof professor just makes words up as he goes along.

Fun Wolof phrase of the day: Jëng uma. I am not circumcised. A guy in my class tried to say he hadn't learned anything yesterday and this came out by mistake. Whoops.

Second fun Wolof phrase of the day: Soo ko naanee, dangay màndi. If you drink that, you’ll be drunk.