Senegalese Dream

I’m still here.

I’ve been out of touch, and I know it.  To everyone equally, I hope. The cold season is still here and stubbornly refusing to go away (not a problem, not a problem at all).  There’s no choice but to take advantage: I sleep until 9, with a sweater and long pants on and a sheet pulled up over my head, I walk around the village smiling without thinking about the heat, and I shiver while standing in direct sunlight as I dump a cup of water over my head during my mid-day bucket bath.  I no longer have to wonder which droplets on my skin are water and which ones are sweat.  It’s my second cold season, and my last.  In about three months I’ll be home again.  For now, I’m really enjoying the time that I have left in Kanel.  Even when, for example, I might open my water bottle and get a whiff of what smells like 3M brand Scotch tape (which reminds me of Christmas), it doesn’t send me into a slump of homesickness.  Funny that now that I have America staring me in the face, I miss it the least. 

I learned something important the other day: You don’t know what being self-conscious is until you stand in front of a classroom full of 60 thirteen-year-olds all simultaneously screaming at you “Sir! Sir!”  My counterpart, Mr. Thiam, is an English teacher, and sometimes I just don’t understand how he does it.  I had come to help, and already just walking into the room was overwhelming.   There I was, standing awkwardly in front of them as they all stared holes into me, making me feel like a piece of Swiss cheese.  And you can’t get Swiss cheese anywhere within a two hundred kilometers.  Now that is self-conscious. 

The first thing I did was teach them that I wasn’t a Sir, I was a Miss.  That was easy enough.  It was impressive that they were first year English students, and I was able to speak to them completely in English, and they more or less understood.  I mean, it was slooooow, E-N-U-N-C-I-A-T-E-D, English, but they got it.  Back when I was a freshman in high school, I remember my French teacher, Mrs. Duncan, getting frustrated because we would speak like this….” Je voudrais something something…” when we couldn’t think of the appropriate French words.  She had this French flag that she would put on her desk and, we were instructed, when we saw this flag we were to only speak French.  Of course this didn’t work.  Thankfully, I didn’t have to tackle that problem with Mr. Thiam’s students.  They were a little more willing to put themselves out there and make mistakes.  The self-consciousness subsided a bit. 

Mr. Thiam put me in charge of two lessons.  The first was to draw a picture of a person on the board and label various parts of the body: eyes, ears, feet. My back was to the kids as I drew the picture on the blackboard.  I could hear them laughing and talking to each other in Pulaar or Wolof or whatever.  They never spoke French to each other, even though that is the language in which the lessons are taught.  The sense of order that was almost always present in the American classrooms from my memory was noticeably absent.  Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Mr. Thiam calmly standing in the corner, waiting for me to finish.  He’s a cheerful guy with a permanent semi-smile on his face.  There was a perfect pleat down the center of his khaki pants.  He was unflappable.  Even though I was pretty sure that all 60 of his students were using their outside voices.  Standing up there, with the comforting din behind me, I felt a little more at ease.  I had drawn a picture of a boy.  At the last minute, I wrote “AKON” boldly across the front of his t-shirt.  Akon, the Senegalese-American, rapper, English-speaker extraordinaire, made me think that they’d relate to my blackboard boy a little more.  When I turned around to face them again, everyone was clapping.    

The second lesson was a dictation that involved me pronouncing vocabulary from the classroom so the kids could hear it from a native speaker.  I had to repeat each word at least ten times because they had such trouble understanding me.  This may sound strange, but I felt the slightest bit vindicated at that moment for all those instances I had had a tough time with the Pulaar glottal stop.  I took this idea and tucked it away for later: the next time someone laughed at me for my pronunciation, I am going to say “Oh yeah, well then pronounce the word ‘chalk’ correctly and then we’ll talk.”

I’m not sure how much those kids learned from me.  If anything, they learned that pop culture references are always appropriate, and that American English is really different and perhaps funny sounding.  Actually, I probably learned that too.  Also, I learned that even though you may start out on the outside,  the people here just pull you into their friendliness and silliness and not-taking-themselves-seriously-ness and pretty soon, even a weird and out-of-place piece of Swiss cheese can fit in.

I’m standing in a kitchen, waiting for the seconds to tick down on the humming microwave so I can pull out my handsome reward, a steaming bowl of oatmeal.  My hip is leaning against the tiled countertop.  My mind wanders as I passively note the magnets populating the refrigerator; it’s the run-of-the-mill kind with the smaller freezer door on top and a fake wood grain handle on its left side.  It all seems so mundane, from the white silver-handled cabinets hiding nestled plates and bowls to the frosted light fixture gazing over the room from above.  Then, the deep, throaty “BAH” of a ram tethered up outside brings me back to reality.

This non-traditional siren reminds me that I’m not in America.  I’m not playing the role of America Renee, waking up from 8 hours of restful sleep in a temperature controlled room to a breakfast prepared by the magical zap of micro-waves.  Nope. I’m now Senegal Renee.  For the past year and a half, I’ve been sleeping on a 4 inch thick foam mattress, which lies on top of a woven plastic mat, which lies on top of the cement foundation next to my hut and only steps away from the pen where my family’s sheep stay the night.  I bathe out of a bucket.  I lounge under neem trees.  Pillows are a luxury.  Meals are prepared in a huge iron pot over a roaring open fire.  

I’m just a visitor in this nice kitchen, like so many other kitchens across Dakar, Senegal’s relatively luxurious capital city (the word “relatively” is important here for those of you who have been to Dakar).  How does one reconcile these different lifestyles?  I could jump in a car right now and drive in almost any direction and find huts, the thatched roof kind, begging children with their skin diseases, traditional healers, herders staring towards their herds in the distance with tooth sticks protruding from their mouths.  Dakar is like a different planet, because here the local flavor changes dramatically: here, there are Rich Senegalese People. 

These curious specimens…Rich Senegalese Women actually wear high heels because there is actually pavement.  The Men wear ties to work, with glasses so they can see clearly (almost unheard of in villages). They drive nice cars and go to dance clubs on Saturday nights.  They eat their meals at kitchen tables with utensils, instead of out of a communal bowl on the ground with their hands.  These Rich Senegalese People would probably relate much more to America Renee than to Senegal Renee. “Why would you want to live in the north where’s its hot?” they might ask,  “Why would you want to live in a village where life is harder?”   

Sometimes, when I see them in their natural habitat (eating pizza at a restaurant, standing in line at the bank) I wonder how they got there.  They seem so removed from the new normal that I’ve become accustomed to in the villages.  Did they go to university? Do they watch movies with friends? Have they seen how the majority in their country live? And what do they think about it?  They are the privileged few.

This t-shirt belongs to my adorable little year-old host nephew, Sada.  His mom purchased it at the lumo, or weekly market.  Just in case you think your eyes are playing tricks on you, I’ll translate the text: “TOP SPORT ment nautical instrument thec, lock (or iock?) young 78 of newstan new top.” 

Yeah, I don’t know what that means either, but I do understand why so many people tell me that English is easy.  It depends on the KIND of English we’re talking about.  Everything makes sense to me now!

….A good score on the GRE!  No that isn’t just a really large bracelet on my arm, it’s a gris-gris!  Gris rhymes with glee (c’mon people, its French!).  I’ve been openly studying for the exam with my family during the past few weeks and maybe my stress was starting to show.  But lucky me, we have a visiting Koranic teacher staying with us who offered to make me my very own special charm to bring blessings on the big day. 

Thierno Samba (thierno means teacher), took me aside and scribbled down my vitals in his notebook: Your name?  No, your real name, not your Senegalese name. What problems are you having while studying?  Where are you taking the test?  He went away, presumably to perform some abracadabra type incantation, and a few hours later, he handed me a string about 8 inches long with 7 knots tied into it.  Thierno Samba slowly counted them in front of me “goo, didi, tati, nayi, joyi, jegom, jeydidi,” as if that was supposed to have some significance (guess I missed that).  Then he listed the benefits that my new gris-gris will bring me: “All of the information that you need will enter into your head,” he said “And even if someone tries to distract you, you will succeed.” 

I took my magical string to a leather worker who fashioned it into a band wrapped in white goat leather.  Per Thierno Samba’s instructions, I am to wear my GRE gris-gris continuously until I’ve taken the test.  Does this mean I can stop studying? (Kidding, Mother, only kidding) Wish me luck!

The last time I went to Ndendory, I spent the entire trip trying to swallow the hard marble of suppressed tears after Jeynaba’s death.  And here I find myself again, to greet her brother on his first trip home from Angola to see his family since it happened. 

Ndendory looks so much different now.  The rains have brought vivid colors to the landscape.  A cool breeze blows across the spaces between the bright green new grass and the deep blue sky and it reminds me of my brother’s paintings.  I imagine all the changes that have happened since the last time Jeynaba walked this same dirt path.  There’s a new house along the way and I wonder if it was there when she was, if she had gotten to see it. 

Jeynaba’s family has also changed.  Her mother seems to be in much better spirits.  It is still shocking to look into her eyes and see her daughter there.  This is what Jeynaba would have looked like.   We all sit in a semi-circle under a tree.  Jeynaba’s mom and sister, Fatimata, are sitting on a rusted bed frame back to back and swiveled toward my sisters and I in chairs.  A cup of water is passed around for everyone to drink, customary to welcome visitors.  Jeynaba’s brother arrives dressed all in white.  I notice that he sits outside of our circle so that I have to turn my back to see his face.  Maybe he doesn’t want us to see his expressions, since we’re well outside of the acceptable time limit for grieving.  My sister patiently asks about every member of the family and their health, while I sit and calculate the time it must have taken him to save for his plane ticket from Angola.  On February 7th he started saving, and now here we all are only a week away from August.  

As much as she tries to stop it, tears fall from my sister’s eyes as she’s talking about perfectly ordinary things.  She wipes them discretely with her headscarf and everyone successfully pretends that everything is fine.  In my mind, I am thinking about my own recent loss: My aunt, my mom’s older sister.  I can’t sit with my family now under a tree somewhere and share their grief.  I’ll miss their first steps in healing.  Suddenly there’s so much sadness that it pushes down on my shoulders like the humidity in the air and I hear a voice saying distinctly: ”This is horrible.” I feel like I’m only seconds away from crumbling right there in front of everyone, crumbling like the roads after a heavy rain, crumbling like Jeynaba’s family’s expectations after she so quickly slipped out of their lives.  The marble returns and I try so hard to swallow it down.  I picture myself as a cartoon with an Adam’s apple like protrusion. 

Then there’s the sound of someone peeing.  Through my panic, the scene has continued, the absent-minded conversation is still going on, I’m still here, and I’ve managed to retain some semblance of composure.  But where is that sound coming from?  I literally expect to see a child squatting nearby, or a sheep.  I finally see the water cup sitting in between Jeynaba’s mom and sister.  It had tilted on the wired cage-like surface of the bed frame and now is slowly spilling out into a little pool in the grass.  Fatimata is staring into space.  The other women are talking quietly.  No one even glances at the cup.  

Another woman approaches with a baby boy in her arms, Fatimata’s son Thierno.  There’s a little unspoken game that people like to play here when I’m around.  I call it: ”Will the child cry at the sight of a white person?”  Or perhaps they’ll scream?  Maybe they’ll giggle?  If the result is positive they say things like “See?! He isn’t afraid!” accompanied by a big grin.   If negative, they sit around and laugh until they complain of stomach pains and tease the child relentlessly (“How are you ever going to go to America if you’re afraid of white people?” or “If you do anything bad, we’re calling the white person over!”).  It is great fun.  

This round of “Will the child cry at the sight of a white person” provides a necessary distraction.  Thierno is immediately passed to me and I sit him in my lap, doing the bouncy knee thing and humming ”Yummaa yehii jabbe,” a favorite with the kids in my family.   He just looks at me, one little eyebrow raised, mouth wide open, perfectly round droplet of drool poised on the edge of his lip, ready to take the dive on to my blue pagne.  Memories flash through my mind like a movie and I don’t see him anymore.  I see Jeynaba in her new red complète, excited about the birth of her nephew.  I see Jeynaba fanning herself on my bed and talking about home.  I see Fatimata sobbing with her new infant in her lap, only days after the death of her sister.   He was only a month old when Jeynaba died and this is how far we’ve come since then.  He can hold his head up and make little cooing noises.  He’s seen rain for the first time, and all of the changes that it brings, even if he can’t understand them.  Time has marched on without Jeynaba, but we still have her in some ways.  We still have her fingerprint on our lives.  We still have the knowledge that we’re better for having known her. 

Thierno doesn’t cry.  He looks up at me with his little gummy grin.  It fills me with incredible optimism.

My shoes are gone again. I had just sat down on the mat with my family, leaving my sandals on its perimeter, and already they’ve shuffled away on someone else’s feet. “To paddam ngoni?” – “Where are my shoes?” I ask my family. In response, three separate people offer me their shoes, including little four-year-old Papa, who is wearing two rights, one blue, one red. Of course, there’s the momentary annoyance. I should be used to chasing my shoes around because it seems like every time I take them off, they’re hijacked. But I guess anyone’s shoes are fair game, because when someone leaves the mat on which we’ve been lounging in the shade, they instinctively go to the closest pair, no matter if it isn’t theirs. Sometimes I wonder if anyone owns anything around here.

I find them later on my sister Binta’s feet as she’s stoking the cooking fire about to prepare lunch. She apologizes profusely even though I’m pretty sure she’s not used to people caring about a stupid thing like their shoes.

That’s the way it is here among families, with everything seemingly. Everyone shares their cell phone chargers, their scarves, their notebooks. Have you ever had a child with a ripe mango walk up to you and ask you if you’d like some, even before they’ve taken one single bite? I have. And I was blown away when it happened. There’s no crying, or screaming “Mine!” They’ll just give anything to you, as if you had as much right to it as they do.

When I first noticed this phenomenon, I remember sitting down with a friend and explaining my frustrations. In the West, I had said, people work hard to earn what they have, so by our standards, when someone uses our things, sometimes without asking, it is considered rude. But here, I was told, when a person buys something they understand that it is not only them, but the entire family who will benefit. Sharing is so, so important.

It’s one of the things I’ve had to get used to in the past year, this communal way of living. It’s kind of nice in some ways and difficult in others. If I need anything, my family will give it to me if they can. But on the other hand, I’ll be asked incessantly for things like pens, shampoo and yes, my precious shoes. I’m sure my family thinks it is great to have a new addition, as for me, perhaps I should have paid closer attention in nursery school.

Myrum comes to our house every night to watch television.  Well, it probably isn’t the television-watching scenario you’re imagining.  For starters, it isn’t really in a house.  There aren’t any comfy sofas.  Actually, there isn’t any furniture at all, save for a rickety stand that elevates the TV to an appropriate level for its audience, seated in rows on a woven plastic mat on the sand under a tall and noble neem tree.  An extension cord snakes its way across the yard and into the house, connecting the television to its power source and connecting my Senegalese family and friends to the outside world. 

 I look forward to these times when the neighborhood comes over to watch the overacting skills of a Spanish language telenovela dubbed into French.  It was during these breezy desert nights in the north of Senegal that I came to know Myrum. 

 She always comes and greets the family quickly, her baby strapped to her back with a colorful tattered cloth: the traditional way.  Those usual Pulaar greetings are clipped as she maneuvers her tiny baby into her lap and finds her place on the mat.  I never talked to her much, but it didn’t take long to realize that these shows which enthrall her are also completely incomprehensible to her.  Myrum doesn’t understand a word of them, because she doesn’t speak French. 

 In Senegal, there are dozens of local languages – guttural Wolof is dominant.  There’s the language of the laamba wrestlers, Sereer, and the lovely and singing Pulafuta in the South.  But in the north, it’s Pulaar that is taught in homes across the region.  French is the not-so-official “official” language of the country and what children learn in the schools.  So, if you meet someone who can’t speak French, you can logically conclude that they either didn’t attend school, or left at an early age.  Even now, this is all too common.  In Pulaar country, it isn’t unusual for some boys to leave their studies to join the herders in the fields, and the girls who leave, sometimes as early as 12, help with the housework, or for their shiny new arranged marriage.  This is undoubtedly the case with Myrum. 

 As Myrum sits, focusing on Marina, the glamorous telenovela heroine, I am focusing on her.  In seeing her, I can’t stop myself from viewing my life in relation to hers.  And what type of life does she lead?  In my limited knowledge, I do know that she lives with her husband’s family.  She just had her first child, who accompanies her everywhere, as she goes to the market to buy rice and fish or precariously picks her way around thorn bushes, following the sandy path to our house.  On the television, Myrum absorbs the images of paved streets patrolled by new cars, swimming pools, fancy homes filled with furniture.  On some level, these sights are familiar to me.  But chances are the only paved road that Myrum has ever seen is the crumbling national “highway” that skirts our town.  How does Myrum feel about these discrepancies?  How does she feel about going home to her husband after another night of seeing Marina kiss Ricardo?  

 I watch Myrum laughing and saying her goodbyes to my family as the final scenes of the show play out, and I can’t feel sorry for her.  And she wouldn’t want me to.  As far as I can tell, she is comfortable here on the edge of the desert.  She knows this town well and everyone knows her.  It’s all she’s ever known.  What more could she want when she has all her loved ones in one place?  After all, even seemingly perfect Marina has problems.

 In the end, we’re just two girls from very different backgrounds who somehow ended up sitting together on that simple woven mat.  Maybe we can learn from each other, but I feel lucky, because I’ve already learned so much from Myrum.

The journey leading to my glorious two-week vacation in the States starts out early in the morning on Day 1.  I strap my backpack onto a flat backed wooden charrette, pulled by a very skinny horse, then I jump up and take my seat, holding on to the backpack, as I’m taken across town from my family’s house in Kanel to the garage, where I will eventually catch an Alham to the town of Ourossogei, an hour to the west.   

Only a few minutes after arriving at the garage my Alham leaves.  This is record time.  Sometimes I have to wait hours, or sometimes we never leave at all.  Upon arrival, I plunge into the Ourossogei garage, an extremely confusing and much larger version of Kanel’s transit spot.  I’ll have to find another car to Ndioum as I slowly make my way west.  The trip will take about five hours.  I haggle with the apprentice about the price my ticket and take my seat on Alham #2 of the day.  And we’re off, navigating the potholed roads of  RN 2.  After a few minutes, I notice the panicked bleating of a captive sheep just above my head.  I immediately inspect the ceiling above me, ensuring that there are no holes, so if the sheep does have to pee, it won’t drip all over me as it has those three times before.  I’m lucky.  Either the sheep doesn’t pee, or there are no pesky ceiling holes because I escape Alahm #2 five hours later free of sheep urine. 

In Ndioum, I try to find a charrette in the market to take me to the Peace Corps regional house, but this time I’m not so lucky.  It is about three in the afternoon, the paralyzing heat has started, and no one wants to take poor me, burdened with bags to the other end of town.  So I buy a bag of water and I walk, arriving 20 minutes later, dehydrated and exhausted.  Ndioum is a nice stopping place on my journey.  I sweat perpetually in the stifling heat as Day 1 turns into Day 2. 

Day 2 begins with a brisk morning walk to the road from the regional house, bags in hand (or, on back, as it were).  I flag down a Dakar bound bus rather easily and settle in to a nice comfortable seat next to a sweet elderly Pulaar lady who tells me she sells fabric.  Lots of pondering happens on long bus trips, which is kind of nice.  On this particular trip I think about things like the fact that Senegal is well-known for its incredible variety of birds.  I always found it interesting that these birds, who have the freedom to fly anywhere they’d like, have decided to land and make Senegal their home, while most of the people here are scheming about how to leave it.  Maybe those birds can see something we’re missing. 

Ten hours later I arrive in Dakar.  The next two days are a blur of cab rides, office visits (have to print ticket, obtain WHO card with vaccination record, and get more malaria meds), and market trips for gifts. 

This next part I’ll recount speculatively because I haven’t experienced it yet.  At around 11 pm on Day 5 of travel, I’ll take yet another cab to Leopold Sedar Senghor International Airport, where my flight will leave at about 1:30 in the morning (Insh’allah).  I’ll arrive at Washington Dulles in the wee hours of the morning, get my luggage and then recheck it to prepare for the final domestic flight to Charlotte, where I’ll be greeted by my dear mother, wearing a bright blue Carolina Panthers hat because she’s afraid I won’t see her in the crowd otherwise. 

There it is….one charette ride, two Alhams, a twenty-minute desert trek, a cross-country bus trip, and countless taxis…   all the steps I have to take to get to you. 

I miss you guys, see you soon!

<3